Sermons Archive 2005-2012

Holy smokes! Hearing that list, do you wonder whether that dog nips or bites? We may be feeling a bit sheepish right now, scared to death the collie is going to nip our heels because we don’t know what half that fancy church language even means—all we know is that Jesus loves us. Or, we might be feeling like the Border Collie, fearful that the gate to the sheepfold is open far too wide—the wolves might come in for a feast any minute now if we aren’t careful.

And then we hear Jesus say to us, to the nippers and the nipped, the lambs and the Border Collies, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”

Jesus sounds so gentle and gracious, so reasonable. He does not sound angry or defensive or frightened as so many church people can. A cup of water in Jesus name— how refreshing. Just hearing Jesus’ voice makes our fists loosen and our jaws ease.

Amidst the gruesome cries of those who have been wounded by overzealous snarling dogs and the fearful moans of those who worry that things are never quite secure enough, let us listen once again to the voice of Jesus for he speaks to us all: “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”

Jesus gathers us all together, the nippers and the nipped, and tells us that a cup of water in Jesus’ name is enough. Yes, just a cup of water in Jesus’ name.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 23, 2012
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 9: 3-37
"A Weird Dream"

I had a weird dream Friday night. Dagmar and I were the owners of a futuristic theme park. The park had a host of different areas: one area helped you improve your golf game; another guided you in emulating great historic heroes. Here is how the park worked in my dream. Through sophisticated computer technology, your body fit into the body of someone famous or highly accomplished. In the golf area, for a piddling $495, your body was placed into a computerized image of Tiger Woods’ body. Every golf shot you took was transformed into a Tiger-like shot. This area guaranteed that your golf score would decrease by 20 strokes if you played two rounds with this new-fangled technology. In another area, you could actually fit into the body of the likes of Winston Churchill or Martin Luther King Jr. and your speech patterns would immediately rise to their astonishing standards.

Bear with me…When I woke up, I wondered what in the world my dream was about. Perhaps it was offering Dagmar and me a nifty get rich scheme making us the next Bill and Melinda Gates. I thought about my crazy dream all day yesterday, wondering what it was all about. An ancient rabbi once said, “A dream uninterpreted is like a letter from God unopened.”

Here’s my ten cent interpretation of my dream…And here’s the reason this entire sermon changed yesterday afternoon, all because of a dream.

I spent all week thinking about Jesus’ words, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” I struggled with this morning’s sermon: what to say of these tough words of Jesus both in an honest and compelling manner?

Thinking about my dream and about Jesus’ words that the first must be last, I realized how desperately we need models to teach us to live in such a dramatic way. Humility and servanthood do not come naturally. The thought of losing our lives for the sake of the gospel, of being last—who are our models for that? The disciples certainly don’t fit the bill. The best they seemed able to do was talk about which of them was the greatest. Jesus, of course, is “The Model” but, honestly, who is vain enough to think we can emulate him? When we hear about Jesus suffering and dying on the cross, we sometimes just give up and, at best, make a joke about the first being last.

Jesus understands what a hard act he is to imitate. And so, he gives us a scheme that can fit into our theme park and give us a fair chance of imitating him. He takes a child in his arms and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Whoever thought greatness would come with burps of milk running down our silk blouses and messy diapers oozing onto our newly dry-cleaned suits? Whoever thought greatness would come here, Sunday after Sunday, as we find God’s great glory in little chatter-boxes scampering around the sanctuary with ants in their pants?

Do you have a model of someone who took a child in her arms, someone you might imitate? I have the exact person I can use in our theme park to make people more Christ-like.

When I was in fifth grade, we stopped our classes at Woodsdale School every Wednesday at 1 p.m. and walked across the street to Vance Presbyterian Church for Bible school.

(For those of you who long for those days when prayer and Bible reading were part of the public school curriculum, count me out of such company. While I cherish my Bible school as a fifth grader, I will never forget two children, Barbara Wiseman and Terry Sterling, who were forced to go in the other direction, to Temple Shalom, as their twenty-eight classmates went the other direction to Vance Presbyterian Church. At least for me, this hardly is “letting the little children come unto me.” Let our schools teach writing and arithmetic; let our churches and synagogues teach the Bible and prayer!)

Mrs. Keister was my Bible school teacher. She was the finest Bible teacher I ever had—that includes a fine religion department at Wittenberg University and some world famous biblical scholars at Yale Divinity School.

In full disclosure, I have no idea what Mrs. Keister’s first name was. She was not a member of my Lutheran church. I know nothing about her family. Like most Sunday school teachers when we think back, she seemed about 102 when I had her as a teacher. She wrote no books as far as I know.

I called my Aunt Ruth on Wednesday; she knows everything about my hometown and yet even she was stumped by Mrs. Keister. All that my Aunt Ruth knows is that Mrs. Keister lived somewhere around Holly Road and her son’s name was Paul.

Mrs. Keister took us into her hands and entrusted us with priceless biblical treasures for a lifetime. She required us to memorize Psalm 1 and Psalm 23, Psalm 100, 121 and 150. She refused to let us look in our Bible’s index to find page numbers for Zephaniah, Obadiah, and Jude. She insisted we commit all 66 books of the Bible to memory. She provided a helpful method to remember how many books there are in the Bible: 39 in the Old Testament and 3 X 9=27, the number of books in the New Testament. This is exactly how I teach it to our confirmation students and you adults in our Reading Through the Bible in a Year group.

Mrs. Keister is the perfect model for the Miller’s Computerized Theme Park, to teach Christians how to live Jesus’ words, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” It seems to me we have a far better chance trying to be like Mrs. Keister than like Mother Teresa of Calcutta or Dietrich Bonhoeffer of Germany.

Aren’t we all a bit like Mrs. Keister? Perhaps you have a lingering regret that you are not leaving a lasting mark on this earth. You just don’t feel important enough, appreciated enough. Like Mrs. Keister, you are engaged in the dreary routines of life, nothing spectacular really, taking your aging mother shopping, talking well into the night to your grieving friend who is a new widow, coping with your daughter’s mental illness, struggling to make a stale marriage vibrant. These lackluster chores, the ones no one applauds or seems to notice, are almost certainly the ones Jesus had in mind when he said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

We are now going to sing a hymn, a humble ditty really. I haven’t sung “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus” in 51 years. It is not a stately hymn that stirs the soul. The words are trite, the music hackneyed. It may cause you to snicker. This little song makes me think of the woman who taught it to me, Mrs. Keister. Not one of you knew Mrs. Keister. Her name is mostly forgotten—even in Wheeling—and yet her willingness to be servant to a bunch of snot-nosed kids lives on, even here, 2,392 miles from where she lived in West Virginia. One of those snot-nosed kids is your pastor. Whenever I gather at your loved one’s death bed or with you before a serious operation, we bow our heads together and I recite Psalm 121, the Psalm Mrs. Keister taught me to pray with you: “I lift up my eyes unto the hills—from whence does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Might God bless us all for such humble service. In such service, lies our greatness.

by William Henry Parker

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 16, 2012
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 8: 27-38
"Passing the Test with Our Lives"

We spend the first half of life trying to get the answers right. What is the capital of Mississippi? Who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope? If a train is going from Los Angeles to New York at 60 miles an hour and another train comes from New York to New York going 63 miles an hour and makes one stop in Topeka, which arrives first…. We need to learn correct answers if we want to succeed in life.

The disciples spent the first half of their ministry learning correct answers. Jesus asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” They had watched and listened to Jesus and they knew the answers: “Some say John the Baptist, others, Elijah; and still others one of the prophets.”

And then Jesus asked the question, “And who do you say that I am?” Peter proudly raised his hand and answered brilliantly, “You are the Messiah.” Peter thought for sure he had gotten an “A” in the course. But there was one more question to be answered.

It took eight chapters in Mark’s gospel before Jesus spelled it out. The question focused on Jesus’ words, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and three days rise again.”

When Peter heard these words, he rebuked Jesus for even raising such a possibility.

Jesus, in turn, scolded Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”—the most famous words ever uttered by a teacher to a pupil.

Following that heated volley between Jesus and Peter, Jesus popped the final test question worth 75% of the final grade: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Jesus now was looking for far more than a verbal answer. He wanted the disciples—and us—to answer with our lives. German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew a thing or two about answering with his life, said it this way, “When Jesus calls us, he bids us come and die.” The Jesuit activist Daniel Berrigan said it a bit differently, “If you want to be a Christian, you better look good on wood.”

Jesus’ final test question doesn’t play well in San Diego or anywhere else for that matter. We had no idea that the final question would involve losing our very lives.

When I was in college, my home pastor was fond of saying, “We have no burning issues at our church.” He meant the words as complimentary. I smelled a rat. I know that wasn’t the whole story of that congregation’s considerable life, but I did wonder at the time whether there was anything worth fighting for at our church, let alone worth dying for.

A pastor friend of mine calls such places “no hits, no runs, no errors churches.” They are the ones with spotless bathrooms, perfectly air-conditioned meeting rooms, and Council meetings that last forty-five minutes. Such churches refuse to discuss controversial topics except for the color of the carpet; they dare not get their fingernails dirty except for repairing the church roof.

In the second half of Mark’s gospel, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross. No longer would the disciples give proper answers with neat words; now they would give far messier answers, all with their lives.

The poet Mary Oliver, in her poem “The Summer Day,” writes:

Jesus could easily ask us, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?”

The Dali Lama counsels: “Learn to obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.” Great writers and artists do just that. They spend the first half of their lives learning the rules of proper grammar and precise perspective. Once they have learned such rules, they take the risks that lead to memorable literature and stunning art. They use improper grammar from time-to-time; they paint pictures way outside the lines. Wild and precious stuff, you would say.

It seems to me that First Lutheran Church has done just that over the years. Our ancestors here trusted that Christ had already died and risen for them—they had learned that answer well in Sunday School and at Sunday morning worship—so they did not need to fear death and could walk out on the tight-rope doing astonishing ministry. They took wild and courageous steps—building Luther Tower in the late 50’s (the first low-income senior citizen building of its sort in San Diego), starting Bread Day 1975 which has morphed into what today is TACO (Third Avenue Charitable Organization), becoming a Reconciling in Christ congregation back in 1989. In some ways these decisions didn’t seem quite right—at least not quite right in that they were out of step with what other churches were doing at the time. They got their fingers dirty, risked getting things wrong. All they could do was trust that God was leading them and guiding them as they risked this congregation’s very life for the sake of the gospel.

The Rev. Allan Boesak was a South African pastor deeply involved in abolishing South Africa’s hideous apartheid system. You can imagine the risks he took, the agonizing battles over what steps were appropriate to put an end to the mistreatment of blacks in his country. He once said, “We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask, ‘Where are your wounds? Was there nothing worth dying for?’”

Is there anything worth dying for in your life? Is there anything you face today that will cause you wounds if you are to make a difference? I bet there is—in each of your lives. It comes out of the blue, something you never expected. The phone rings, demanding you come right away, and all the way you wonder what to do. No matter what you do, you know your hands will get dirty. There seems no good answer but you know you must provide one.

You have figured out by now, I’m certain, that almost anything worth doing involves wounds. Each of us and this ministry here at 3rd and Ash will face a final exam. There will come a time when we must act and almost every possible answer will seem an agonizing one. There are enormous “burning issues” if we are to live in this world in Jesus’ name. We will get hits, we will score a few runs, and we will make countless errors.

If we are so blessed, we will hear Jesus bidding us along the way to take up our cross and follow him. Hearing that, we will know we have received an “A.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 9, 2012
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 7: 24-37
"Busting Down the Door"

July 31, 1976. I was the on-call chaplain that night at Lutheran Medical Center in the heart of Brooklyn. The moon was full, the heat sweltering.

Every gurney in the emergency room was filled. A fifty-two year old construction worker had just been rushed in with a massive heart attack; one fellow had been shot but was feeling no pain because he was three sheets to the wind; an elderly woman was hanging on for dear life after being clobbered by a drunk driver as she walked across 53rd Street and 4th Avenue.

And then there was the Hispanic mother, 19 years old. She rushed into the emergency room shouting, “Help my baby!” Her precious little girl was hotter than a boiling tea kettle. She was unfamiliar with the niceties of inner-city hospitals and scared out of her mind. The charge nurse told her to please wait patiently and, in the meantime, to sign the necessary forms. The young mom took one look at the clipboard, launched it against the wall, and shrieked, “I want a doctor for my baby, NOW!”

I, frankly, was much better behaved six years ago when Dagmar rushed me to the Grossmont Hospital emergency room. I told Dagmar to “settle down and wait our turn” as she worried about my shortness of breath and severe abdominal pain. Though I was near death, I knew that good boys are obedient—I would patiently wait my turn and, all the while, say “Yes, ma’am, thank you very much.”

But not the Brooklynnite mother. It was now or never. The nurse advised her to calm down and instructed me, the inexperienced chaplain, to tend to her. The next thing I knew, the mother shoved past me and began kicking down the emergency room door.

What this young mother knew and I didn’t quite grasp was that her baby was burning up. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” A crumb was all she needed to make her baby well and it was just beyond those doors.

The Syrophoenician woman in the region of Tyre must have been the great-great-grandma of the young Puerto Rican mother in Brooklyn. She, too, knew where to get help— from Jesus. Yet again, there were niceties to be observed; she observed none of them. She was a Gentile and God only knows how long she might have to wait for her precious baby to be healed of that devilish spirit. She was an outsider, a woman, and an unchosen one to boot—she might just wait forever. Jesus had come for the children of Israel and, well, she wasn’t that kind and that means she was at the end of the line. All the while Jesus was babbling on about crumbs and dogs and such and how her little baby was not fit for such food. This gibberish didn’t stop the mother. (You have noticed, I’m sure, that frantic mothers quickly lose the politeness gene.)

“Dogs, you say. Listen here, Jesus, even the mutts under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” She, too, was about to break down Jesus’ doors, NOW!

These pushy sorts…If they only followed procedures, considered decorum. There are others who need help too.

But these moms have had enough. Dogs or not, they want help. We look in amazement at the rawness of their demands. There are no polite Emily Post “pleases,” no pietistical “if thy will be done, dear God.” They are breaking on through to the other side.

While neither the Puerto Rican woman nor the Syrophoenician woman was a Jew, in a way, they acted like those Jewish folks who wrote the Old Testament Psalms of lament. They say things like, “Look on me and answer, O Lord my God,” and “Why have you rejected us forever, O God.” Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes of these Psalms: “The speaker has no time for theological niceties, but must secure action for his or her own well-being…There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate…Everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God.” The Psalmist shakes his fist at God and demands answers NOW.

"Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

By the way, how do you pray? Are you the mannerly sort who says things like “If it be your will, dear God” or “You know what’s best God” or “God must have wanted my baby more than I?” or are you like the Syrophoenician and Puerto Rican mothers who bang down God’s doors with your prayers and say, “NOW!”

I remember hearing a Lutheran theologian say that we should ask God for exactly what’s on our mind. That surprised me. Shouldn’t we nuance things a bit, not asking for things that are impossible? Shouldn’t we leave everything in God’s hands?

Do you ask God for what you really want? If you have some dread disease, do you pray, “I’m not sure you can help me out on this one God, but, if it be thy will, please heal me, otherwise I will certainly understand” or do you flat out pray for healing? If your child is plagued by the deadly demon of drugs, do you say, “You know what’s best, God,” or do you shake your fist and say, “Do something now, God.” If you are not getting along with someone you love, do you pray, “Oh God, make me a patient sort,” or do you say, “God, make things better now.”

Watch a mother protect her child like a mother hen if you need a little prayer instruction. Watch her sharpen her beak and hone her claws to a razor’s edge. Never mess with a mother protecting her ailing little one…That’s how to pray.

The mothers of Brooklyn and Tyre forgot about the niceties, the manners, and the sweet religious pieties. They held to only one thing and that was that Jesus could heal their daughters.

Oh God, teach us to pray like those mothers acted. May we know that a few crumbs from Jesus are enough to make those we love and us well again. May we bang down the doors and say to Jesus, “Now!”

Oh yes, in case you were wondering, both the little girls were healed.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 2, 2012
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Song of Songs 2: 8-13; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
"Well Chosen Words"

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

I love words chosen well.

Dagmar and I like Clint Eastwood movies. Gran Torino and Million Dollar Baby are two of our favorites. I was disappointed by Mr. Eastwood on Thursday evening at the Republican Convention. It was not his sophomoric gutter mouth or bizarre ramblings that troubled me; it was his poor choice of words. When he said of President Obama, “Make my day,” I am familiar enough with Eastwood’s movies to know that detective Harry Callahan uttered these words before killing some lowlife criminal with his .44 Magnum. I doubt Clint Eastwood meant that someone should assassinate the President but, as we have tragically learned, careless words can become ammunition for crazed racists and psychotic killers.

Martin Luther explains the eighth commandment (“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”) this way: “We should fear and love God, and so we should not tell lies about our neighbors, nor betray, slander, or defame them, but should apologize for them, speak well of them, and interpret charitably all they do.”

The church has always placed a high premium on words chosen well. Go into any old church and you will see a massive pulpit carved in stone or wood. The centrality of the pulpit suggests that words are vital to our Christian gatherings.

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, God creates the entire universe with nothing more than a few well chosen words—“Let there be light…Let us make man in our image.” We are a people who believe that words alone can bring life and sadly, words alone can bring death.

As kids, we said, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” We just assumed those words were true, especially when someone said something sickening about our race or our sexuality; or made “fun” of our family living on the wrong side of the tracks or ridiculed our father’s job. The scrapes and bruises from the playground’s sticks and stones have long since disappeared but the wounds from careless words—we don’t seem able to shake them even after fifty years or so.

The Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho says: “Of all the weapons of destruction that man could invent, the most terrible—and the most powerful—was the word. Daggers and spears left traces of blood; arrows could be seen at a distance. Poisons were detected in the end and avoided. But the word managed to destroy without leaving clues.”

Jesus understood the power of words. When the Pharisees questioned the disciples’ eating habits, eating with dirty hands, Jesus was nonchalant. What mattered far more for Jesus than dirty hands was what arises from our hearts and eventually flows forth from our mouths: “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Perhaps you have met such people who seem incapable of graceful words. They seem incapable of talking about anyone or anything but themselves and their accomplishments. Rarely, if ever, do they shift the conversation from their own brilliance and ask of your hopes and dreams; rarely do they offer any words that will lift your soul. If they say anything about you, typically, it is some kind of criticism. Otherwise, conversation is all about them.

I hope everyone here this morning has encountered a graceful person who has thrown a bouquet of words your way that you will always remember. How can your forget the first time someone other than your mother or father said, “I love you?” Only three words and yet so precious.

Grace is the gift of hearing someone say kind words to us. There are people who have the knack of grace, who know the right word to say at the right time. They take time from a busy schedule to send you a small note or an email; those few words alone demonstrate they care for you.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus’ entire life, even his death, was God’s three words, “I love you.” On that resurrection morning, when Jesus broke the chains of death, yet again, three words chosen well, Christ is risen!

Our bulletin cover contains some of the most beautiful words in all of scripture. They are from the Song of Solomon, words spoken well between lovers. Join me:

Oh, to hear such words spoken to us. Our heart skips a beat as God chooses the perfect words for us.

Beth Slevcove’s brother Mark died this past Tuesday morning after a five year battle with brain cancer. The family bound together, caring for Mark, walking with him, drinking wine with him. Beth sent me an email the day after Mark’s death. She was delighted with this morning’s reading. I was surprised by Beth’s reaction: I have heard these words from Song of Solomon used countless times at weddings but never have I heard them at the time of death. But hear how Beth heard God speak these words to her brother Mark: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” Suddenly these words are God’s love song, inviting Mark beyond the winter of suffering and death and into heaven’s eternal embrace. Would Beth and her family ever use these ancient words if they hadn’t been chosen so well?

Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). May God grant us hearts to receive such graceful words from God and mouths to speak them one to another.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 26, 2012
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
John 6: 56-59
"Home Sweet Home"

Whenever we go on vacation, I visit every church in our path. Just ask Dagmar. I don’t go just to see the architecture. That is fun but far more exciting for me is worshiping in congregations with different traditions.

We worshiped at Holy Trinity-Sloane Square on our first Sunday, an Anglican church; we attended Evening Prayer at Westminster Abbey and, surprise, surprise, the choir was from Carmel by the Sea, California; we attended Evening Prayer twice more that week at St. Paul’s Cathedral and heard gorgeous music from the Merton College choir of Oxford. In Paris, on our very first day, we attended Saturday evening Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame; the next morning, we went to the other-worldly Divine Liturgy at Saint Alexander Nevsky, the Russian Orthodox cathedral. In Germany, I attended Sunday Mass with my sister-in-law at her Roman Catholic Church; I went to midday prayer at the Lutheran Church in the town square of Bremen.

In each congregation, I learned something about being a visitor. In one church—whose liturgy was magnificent, whose choir was well rehearsed, and where the sermon was memorable—the ushers ran out of bulletins and no one thought to share their bulletin with Dagmar and me. It is funny how this little thing affected our feelings about that congregation and made us feel far away from home.

At every worship service, I wondered whether we were welcome to receive the body and blood of Christ. Before we went on vacation, I read this morning’s gospel reading and it was echoing through my brainpan: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” I so wanted to abide in Jesus.

I asked my sister-in-law, Annette, whether I should receive Communion in her Catholic Church. Without pause, she said, “Of course!” Annette is a committed Catholic and her invitation made me feel at home though thousands of miles away. I told her that, in many ways, her church reminded me of First Lutheran. The only difference was that the cantor had a t-shirt with a picture of Pope Benedict XVI on the back.

On our trip, there was so much that was foreign to me: the London and Paris subway systems; the exchange rate of the pound and the Euro; we shared one toilet and shower with others in our London hotel; imagine me trying to navigate in French and German. What was not foreign, though, was the worship. At every service, whether Lutheran or Roman Catholic, Anglican or Russian Orthodox, I so wanted to abide in Christ, eating his body and drinking his blood. When I couldn’t because of historic religious differences, rather than being angry, my heart ached for the divisions within Christ’s family.

In our “Quote for the Day,” John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road, writes: “Take away the ritual of meals from a family and what you have left is a way station; human contact is not guaranteed, even by love. It must be fought for, earned, desired, fed. Hope and courage are required.”

Look at a family’s meal patterns and you will learn a lot about that family. If no one gathers at the dining room table for a meal lovingly prepared by mom and dad, you sense problems, somewhere, deep down. Maybe mom and dad are too busy to eat with the kids; maybe television is more important to the youngsters. If a family is content eating pizza on the run, you sense a family that has miles to go before togetherness is achieved.

Christ’s body and blood is our family meal. It guarantees that we are home, no matter who we are, no matter our struggles, no matter how ostracized we feel in other places of life, no matter how far from home we may be.

Kathleen Norris writes, “A monk once said, “Go to the dining room and to prayers, and you’ll find out how a monastery is doing.” (Kathleen Norris, Cloister Walk, pg. 22).

We could say that about First Lutheran Church. Go to our dining room—here in our sanctuary or out on our patio—and you will learn volumes about how we are doing as a family.

Martin Luther King said it a bit differently but quite pointedly about our nation’s meal patterns on Sunday: “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning.”

You can learn a lot about a Christian community by who is and who is not at the Sunday morning meal.

Some of my colleagues through the years, especially those who care deeply about the outcast, have, from time-to-time, poohooed worship as almost irrelevant when it comes to social justice for the downtrodden. I have always begged to differ: I believe that worship is the most radical thing a Christian community can do. How open is our table? Who is here and who isn’t? Who feels uncomfortable entering our doors and who doesn’t? If you are a visitor, did someone notice you and say “hello”?

This table is about you and me, the outcast and broken, the visitor and stranger; this table is about us feeling at home as we abide in Christ.

Many of you have asked, “How was your vacation?” We were within 10 yards of Usain Bolt as he prepared to run the 200 meters; I am almost certain he threw a kiss right at my lovely wife. We had coffee at the Paris café where Ernest Hemingway loved to meet with his Bohemian writer friends, the café, by the way, which Hemingway claimed (in his book The Moveable Feast) to be cheap which was certainly not our experience. Dagmar and I took at 26 mile bike ride through the enchanting northern German countryside and walked and walked and walked through charming neighborhoods in London and Paris.

And yet, and yet, I longed to be home, here, at First Lutheran Church, with you. It is here, week after week, where, with you, I eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood.

May God make this table a place where every person feels at home and where we can all abide with Jesus. Whether you are a visitor and feeling a bit nervous or a longtime member concerned about someone you love or simply here to eat and drink with your brothers and sisters in Christ, may you discover a meal where you can abide in Christ. That, my dear brothers and sisters, is home sweet home.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 29, 2012
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
John 6: 1-21
"Simply Magical!"

I would call the story of the feeding of the 5,000 magical. “Magical” is not a proper theological term. Biblical scholars and theologians would prefer we use the word “miracle.” But for me, this story of the little boy sharing his five barley loaves and two fish is simply magical.

Think back as far as you can remember, your mommy leaving you off at kindergarten on the first day or your daddy swinging you in the backyard until your toes touched the sky or hiding from ghosts and goblins with your sister in grandma’s closet amidst her fur coat that smelled of moth balls. Magical memories. And, there is the memory created by your old white-haired Sunday school teacher who told you of the large crowd that came to hear Jesus and then began to get very hungry. You wondered how Jesus and his friends could feed such a throng. How can you forget the little boy with the five barley loaves and two fish? Remember: “Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.” Your head starting spinning when you heard that. And then this: after all the people’s bellies were full, there were still twelve baskets filled to the brim. This is not a story about sharing a little bit until each person has enough—that is a good thing but not what this story is about. Rather this is a story of discovering the magic of God’s astonishing abundance. The story has floated around in your mind for years now. You have forgotten lots of stuff; you can’t even remember some people’s names whom you know as well as yourself. But the five barley loaves and two fish—that you will not soon forget.

When was it, my dear friends, that we lost the magic? When was it that we started saying that the magic of the loaves and fish could never happen again?

The headline in Thursday’s (July 26, 2012) Los Angeles Times read: “Withering in Hunger’s Grip.” The article stated: “Nearly 1 billion people are malnourished… At least 8 million die every year of hunger-related diarrhea, pneumonia and other illnesses—more than succumb to AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.”

[Pause for 11 seconds…] During those eleven seconds, a tiny child has just died of hunger.

The article wonders how we will ever feed this growing planet of ours: “Most of Earth’s best farmland is already under cultivation, and prime acreage is being lost every year to expanding cities and deserts, contamination from agricultural chemicals and other causes…Complicating the problem is that rivers and aquifers are running dry, and heat waves and droughts associated with global warming are withering crops. Pests and diseases thought to have been vanquished are bedeviling farmers again, often in more virulent forms.”

You might harrumph about such a report. Typical stuff, you say, from a big city rag spouting global warming.

[Pause for 11 seconds]…Another child has just died. And we ask the same question as the disciples, “Where are we to buy bread for these to eat.”

Where’s the magic?

During these summer weeks, I have been struck—and I hope you have too—by how the Bible isn’t terribly impressed with big things. Biblical wonders, over and over again, come in small packages. We have talked of the runt David slaying the giant Goliath with only five smooth stones and a sling. And, when David got bigger, he was morally miniscule at best; and yet, he is the great, great, great…grandfather of Jesus. Those of you reading through the Bible in a year have just read about a hapless bunch of ragtag slaves set free from Pharaoh’s grand army by the mighty arm of God. Oh yes, and there is the story of the carpenter from Nazareth who hung on a cross and, three days later, rose from the dead. Magical! No matter how we explain these stories away, imprisoning the wonder in our conservative blather or robbing the enchantment with our liberal interpretative shenanigans, we do so wish we were still kids, mesmerized by the magic of five barley loaves and two fish.

Where has the magic gone?

We know the story well of this place, First Lutheran Church. Thirty-seven years ago, with hopes of revitalizing a ministry on the verge of extinction, a group of ragtag parishioners decided to offer cups of coffee and donuts to passersby on their way to work. So goes the story, no one stopped except for a motley group of homeless folks. Who knows exactly what happened next? This is where the magic begins. Instead of saying that the coffee and donut gimmick was a lamebrain failure, deciding to call the Lutheran Church in America for 2,000 thousand glossy, color brochures, and handing them out to residents of nearby apartment buildings, that ragtag bunch of First Lutheran members—call them fools for Christ if you must—started feeding God’s blessed poor. These hungry souls, by and large, would not fill many chairs on Sunday morning or pay the light bill. Do you wonder why those people kept feeding them and we continue to do so thirty-seven years later? One can only imagine that some remembered the barley loaves and fish from when they were kids. Yep, magical abundance was still in the air.

Today six new members join our congregation. Somehow, the bread and fish are still sufficient in this place. We aren’t terribly significant, really, but my oh my how God blesses us. As these new members say, “We do, and we ask God to help and guide us,” somehow we will tally, much to our astonishment, twelve baskets full.

By my count, we have one loaf of bread and some fairly cheap wine just a step above rotgut about to be set on the table. We will momentarily say, “The body of Christ given for you. The blood of Christ shed for you.” Now, there is magic for you. Here, at 3rd and Ash, Jesus is present.

When you leave this morning and read of the world’s hungry children, when you run into a grizzled old fellow who asks you for a buck on the way to your car, God willing, you will remember the magic, the magic of a God who always has enough even when we can hardly imagine just how much.

Five barley loaves and two fish…who ever will forget. [Let 11 seconds elapse.] “Take and eat, this is my body given for you, you hungry child”….Magic.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 22, 2012
Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56
"The Grace of Rest"

God spent six days creating the heavens and the earth. And then the Bible says, “On the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” Did you catch that? God rested.

God got tuckered out from six days of creating aardvarks and meteors and orca whales, let alone our great-great-grandpas and great-grandmas. God had to rest. Yes, God. It hardly seems possible that God needed a rest.

One of the most memorable courses I took in divinity school was taught by the late Dutch priest Henri Nouwen. He counseled us soon-to-be pastors on the necessity of going to a quiet place and resting a while.

Henri didn’t cook up this idea on his own. I will never forget how he read this morning’s gospel reading with his Dutch accent: “In the morning long before dawn, Jesus got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there.”

Whenever we read the Bible, it is important that we put our reading into context: what comes before and after. What comes before this morning’s reading is the gruesome beheading of John the Baptist. John was Jesus’ cousin. Imagine the toll this grizzly execution must have taken on Jesus—similar, I’m sure, to the excruciating anguish family and friends are experiencing this morning in Aurora, Colorado. Exhaustion, grief, dumbfoundedness! No sooner had Jesus and his disciples gone off to a lonely place to get a much needed rest than the crowds were after them, hounding them: the people were hungry—5,000 of them. Word had gotten out that Jesus was the one who could provide food and fill empty tummies. And then as soon as the throngs were fed, the sick ones came, more and more as word got out of Jesus’ miraculous power.

Jesus and his disciples didn’t get much R & R but they took every opportunity they could get. Jesus knew that if he didn’t rest in God’s gentle arms over and over again, he would cease making a difference in the world. Resting and relaxing were and are essential ingredients to caring for our suffering world.

Many of us, sadly, have learned to measure our worth by our work. How many times do we hear people say, “I don’t have a free second. I am so busy.” Even those retired say, “I have never been busier.” No sooner do we meet someone than we ask, “What do you do?” The church does it too: people read our church newsletter, The Pulsebeat, and say, “You have such a wonderful church. You are so busy, so many programs, so much for the poor”—and we are quite proud. But….

I used to be very proud of how hard I worked. I was like an alcoholic who brags about how many beers he drank the night before except I bragged about how many hours I spent at church. I had a wonderful seminary internship supervisor; I learned volumes about being a pastor from him. What I never learned, though, was about the necessity of resting. I learned to measure the finest pastors by how hard they worked. Pastors who took a day off or more than a week’s vacation in a year or who didn’t work 15 hours or more a day were considered idlers and not to be trusted. It was an exhilarating place to be but there was precious little rest for the weary.

It has taken me time. I have faced the withdrawal from frantic work habits, habits by which I measured how good of a pastor I was. You have helped me change that and I thank you. When I came here to First Lutheran, I promised Dagmar things would change. Not a single one of you has asked, “Pastor, how many days a week do you work?” More often you say, “Pastor, you must take your vacation.” Sometimes we need others to keep us, to help us “remember the Sabbath Day and to keep it holy.”

There is nothing a matter with hard work, but that is not what today’s gospel message is about. Today’s message is about coming away to a deserted place by ourselves to rest awhile. If vital ministry is to continue here, each one of us absolutely must learn to come away to a deserted place all by ourselves and rest awhile. There is great grace to be discovered in resting—for ourselves and for those we are called to serve If God the creator needed rest, if Jesus needed rest, what makes us think we are different?

Churches like First Lutheran run a great danger. We find it almost impossible to say “no” to someone who is hungry, sick, or forlorn. If we hold a day long retreat here at 3rd and Ash, we find it a challenge not to open the door when someone comes knocking for food. We feel guilty for being on retreat, alone, resting. And yet, if we never rest, we will burn out. Caring people often suffer from “compassion fatigue.” They finally have had enough and they go to greener pastures. Urban pastors, sadly, often end up burning out and leaving the ministry altogether or fleeing to “cushier calls” because they can’t keep on keeping on. Jesus understood this, the necessary rhythm of rest and work and worship, rest and work and worship—over and over again. Jesus understood the critical nature of rest if we are to carry on vibrant ministry in Jesus’ name over the long haul. Any break in this pattern of rest and work and worship will wreak havoc on those called to care for God’s suffering ones as eventually they say, “I used to be into caring for the poor in the city but I couldn’t take it any longer.” We who are called to tend to the heart of the city with Christ’s heart are called to do it over the long haul and not in short, shining, frenetic bursts of ministry that quickly burn out and die.

The mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote, “God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by subtracting.” We could say God is discovered in communities where there is grace enough to pause from the rush, to stop from the work, to rest in God’s arms.

The greatest and most compassionate people of the last century—astonishing women like Dorothy Day who ran the Catholic Worker soup kitchens in the toughest parts of New York City and Mother Theresa who ministered to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta—knew the absolute necessity of getting away and resting. While they always lived with God’s blessed poor and cared for them in astonishing ways, they also knew that if they were to keep caring for the world’s downtrodden, they had to get away to a quiet place, to pray, to worship, to rest. These two women had a surprising conservative streak that understood the necessity of structuring their lives so that daily prayer and Mass were central to who they were and what they did. Both women, of course, were in it for the long haul, all their lives, until the day they died! They, too, needed to be fed.

When the disciples went away with Jesus, to a quiet place, they realized that they couldn’t save the world. Only God could do that. Resting reminds us that we are not in control of the world’s destiny. Resting reminds us that there is only one God and, surprise, surprise, we ain’t the one.

Coming here this morning is one way to rest. Turn off your cell-phone when you enter here; better yet, leave it in your car; and best of all, place in under the tire of your car and run over it. Sit without checking your text messages and emails. Close your eyes and do nothing. Rest, rest in the arms of God.

Rest is a precious gift from God. During these summer days, rest. Do not feel guilty to take a walk in the mountains, to read a book, to listen to a symphony, to swim in the ocean. When you do this, in some mysterious way, you emulate Jesus who, over and over again, went to a quiet place to rest awhile. Take the time to go to the Lord’s throne when you are troubled, to lean on God’s everlasting arms, to renew your strength, to bathe in goodly grace.

Slow down, my dear ones, slow down.
Hasten to the Lord’s throne.
Relax in God’s arms.
Find joy in loving the Lord and knowing that the Lord loves you.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 15, 2012
2 Samuel 6: 1-5, 12b-19
"The Mad and Glorious Hallelujah Dance"

I have attended more than my fair share of wedding receptions during my ministry. I have sat with lots of grandmas and had ample opportunity to dance. I love grandmas; I hate dancing. The music has ranged from Sinatra to San Francisco rock & roll, big band to hip-hop; at one wedding, the couple had the Drifters (of “Under the Boardwalk” fame) sing live in honor of their guests. No matter the music, Dagmar will tell you I am an uptight sour puss when it comes to dancing. Dagmar has tried. We have gone to ballroom dancing classes, group and private. No matter whether cha-cha, waltz, or twist, my dancing skills are bleak.

The great American modern dancer Martha Graham once said: “Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.” I am sure she was telling the truth but you couldn’t prove it by me. I just can’t boogie-woogie.

That’s why I admire King David so—now there was a dancer. When the Ark of the Covenant came to Jerusalem, David danced up a frenzied storm. The Ark is said to have contained the two tablets with the Ten Commandments given to Moses on the mountaintop. Its arrival was a coup for King David. Finally, God’s people had seized their cherished religious treasure from enemy hands and it was coming to their capitol—kind of like getting the Liberty Bell back in Philly if the British had stolen it. Being close to the Ark was about as close to God as most people could imagine.

David and the Israelites were so thrilled that they pulled out all the stops and let ‘er rip. They were “dancing before the Lord with all their might.” They were shaking and spinning, banging drums, blowing horns, and clanging tambourines all to the glory of God. It got so raucous that David nearly lost all his clothes.

That word “hallelujah” comes from the Hebrew word hallal. Hallal means praising God but there is actually more to it than that. Hallelujah means to offer joyous praise that seems almost mad and foolish to others.

We always sing “hallelujah” right before reading the Holy Gospel. Just as the Ark entered Jerusalem with much ado, God’s gospel, the good news of God with us, enters into our midst with similar fanfare—our hearing of this Gospel is about as close to Jesus as we can get. We just sang one of our favorite alleluia verses, “Halle, Halle, Halle,” and we even danced around the sanctuary in round as Melody Ruth danced the Gospel book into our midst. Even we Lutherans get a tad clappy-happy with this Caribbean rhythm. We whistle for days afterward. The Lovell family even named their dog “Halle” in honor of this verse. What ever got into us?

And yet, let me warn you, while Martha Graham said that nobody will care whether you dance well, I believe she was wrong in some cases. David’s wife, Michal, cared. As she watched from afar as her husband danced his jig of joy, she was mortified by his foolishness. He was the king after all—what ever became of royal decorum? David’s dance was as scandalous to her as Michelle Obama putting her hand on the back of Queen Elizabeth II. Michal was too prim and proper to dance as the Ark entered Jerusalem.

This is how it often goes if we offer too much praise to God. Someone will be offended. I imagine that is why some Christians through the centuries have been so troubled with dancing. Is it any wonder that some of Christianities greatest detractors have called us “the frozen chosen?” We can be such killjoys as if praising God with reckless abandon is not an appropriate thing to do.

There is a time to dance so says the Bible. I have not forgotten my sister, Marcie, as a young girl, asking our parents, after watching people come back from receiving Holy Communion, “Are you allowed to smile on your way back from the altar?” She had beheld the frozen chosen.

We are a hallelujah people for goodness sakes!

There is a time for dancing. Jeanette Greeley was a mentally challenged member of a church I served. She couldn’t read a single word in the Sunday bulletin or a musical note in the hymnal and yet she participated enthusiastically. She sang the hymns by repeating everything others sang only a word or two behind. I will not forget a call committee coming to hear my preaching and to see me preside at worship. Wouldn’t you know it: the group sat right behind Jeanette. I was mortified. When we met afterwards, the call committee immediately commented on how impressed they were that the congregation allowed Jeanette to be at the center of our life as she offered her unbridled praise to God. Needless to say, I was astonished at who had impressed them most that day.

I must tell you that I take great delight in being part of this worshiping community. You also allow one another the glorious opportunity of offering unbridled praise to God. Some congregations are not so good at that; they are a bit like Michal when it comes to exuberance and change. And yet, you take delight in experimentation as well as tradition. When we first used incense during Lent, not a single one of you experienced the dreaded “Protestant coughing disease” or complained—at least to me. I thought surely someone would huff and puff. When we clap during a gospel song, no one frowns even thought we are not terribly adept at clapping in unison. When we baptize babies in the nude, no one screams bloody murder—except the baby. When we sing traditional hymns, new hymns, odd hymns, old chestnuts, hymns with quirky melodies, you delight in the variety even if one isn’t exactly to your liking. I tell visitors that I love this congregation’s gift of not critiquing every little thing but allowing one another to offer God our praise and thanksgiving in a variety of surprising ways. The more open this or any congregation is to creativity and adventure done with excellence and delight, the more we become an hallelujah people, albeit, from time to time, appearing a bit mad and foolish.

In a few moments, we will bless four new people who have spent considerable time and energy preparing to be Simon’s Walk volunteers. Their ministry will involve walking with the homeless dying of our community. They are being called to be an hallelujah people, taking the joy of this sanctuary out onto the San Diego streets. They will huddle with those dying miserable deaths. With God leading them and guiding them, they will take the hands of those breathing their final breaths this side of the kingdom come and they will lead them in the hallelujah dance toward eternal life.

When God says to us, “May I have this dance,” let us take God’s hand. We are an Easter people after all, called to the mad and foolish hallelujah dance. Let us dance to the glorious music, “Alleluia. Christ is risen. Death has lost its sting.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 8, 2012
Mark 6: 1-13
"Let’s Talk Credentials"

So, let’s talk about credentials for a moment. I am from West Virginia. “Oh, Virginia,” you say. “I have been to Norfolk and Richmond.” Not Virginia, West Virginia! Don’t you know that West Virginia was the only state formed by seceding from a Confederate state Virginia during the Civil War and we are proud of it.

I am from Wheeling, West Virginia. Credentials. My hometown is famous for garbage cans, Mail Pouch chewing tobacco, and country music.

Wheeling has some folks we like to chirp about: Walter Reuther was the head of the United Auto Workers; Bill Mazeroski hit the winning homerun in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series against the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs—in truth, he was from just up the Ohio River a bit but born in Wheeling.

The fellow who made Wheelingites most proud, though, was Bill Lias, all 368 pounds of him. Big Bill—as we locals call him—was head of the Wheeling mob. Illegal booze and slots, the numbers racquet, the Wheeling Downs Race Track, and some stuff unmentionable here—big Bill controlled it all. It wasn’t unusual as a boy to hear of some thug getting into his car early in the morning and having it explode. That was Wheeling.

Ask me where I am from and I will tell you, Wheeling, West Virginia, like Jesus saying he was from Nazareth.

Talk about credentials. When Jesus came home to deliver his first sermon, people were initially awestruck. One guy, sitting in the last pew of the synagogue, elbowed his pal Buddy as Jesus taught and said, “He ain’t too shabby.” But that attitude didn’t last long. Most of the folks did not feel particularly good about being from Nazareth themselves and so they wondered, “Who does this kid think he is?”

The Bible hardly mentions Jesus’ credentials. There were apparently no athletic accomplishments at Nazareth Community College, no post graduate degree from Jerusalem U, no honorary doctorate from Israel Tech. Jesus was a carpenter for goodness sakes—nothing wrong with that but what does a hammer and nails have to do with furthering God’s kingdom here on earth? And the folks in Nazareth couldn’t gossip enough about Jesus’ parentage: his mother was that young thing Mary and, at least what the locals said down at the watering hole, there were serious questions about who the kid’s old man was. Jesus’ credentials stunk.

When Jesus called the twelve disciples, who was he to ask for credentials. He picked a few fishermen, a crooked tax collector, some liars, cheats, scoundrels, and dimwits. Jesus had twelve picks and all were underwhelming. Jesus couldn’t brag about a single one of them. But, could it be that there was some rhyme and reason to Jesus’ picks? Maybe Jesus didn’t want the disciples to attract attention to themselves. After all, the disciples’ job was not to point to themselves but to God. If they were too successful, you know what would happen: people would start saying things like, “Isn’t Peter a fabulous guy” or “I go to Andrew’s church” or “What would we do without John?” Pedigrees sometimes cause us to forget why we came in the first place.

When Jesus sent the disciples out, not a one of them had a fancy degree in their attaché case or a reference from a noted rabbinical scholar or a glitzy resume from an upscale company. Jesus ordered them to take nothing except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts. When they arrived in a new town, they were more or less empty-handed. Some must have wondered when they saw the disciples coming who these clowns were.

And then there are you and I. What are our credentials? As our son Sebastian once said of our dog Max, we are “almost purebred.” If we are honest, we know our best credential is the one we acknowledged at the beginning of worship this morning: “We are sinners.”

I know that doesn’t please some of you. How can our church thrive if we keep mentioning that we are sinners? Sin is not a credential to brag about. It will get us no where.

And yet, when Jesus sends us out, like the twelve, our claim to fame is our baptism, that we are named in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Our task is to tell others that we have been saved from our sin—not by our flashy credentials but by being washed clean in the blood of the lamb.

The crowds, if they listen to us at all, start to get it. They relate to us if we tell the truth about ourselves because they are so much like us. When we stop talking about our credentials other than our baptism, people are attracted to what we have to say. They think there is hope for them yet.

When I think of people who made a difference in congregations I have served over the years, I typically don’t think of the credentialed ones—unless I want to drop a name or two and appear more credentialed than I really am. The ones I remember are the saints who knew their only credential worth anything was their baptism.

I think of Bill Shepard. He had a temper like a rattlesnake. He worked in a hardware store until some guy came to the cash register and told him the service was rotten and he was a jerk. Bill said, “Enough. Shut your trap.” The guy wouldn’t shut up and Bill slugged him and was fired immediately. Bill painted the church doors red, sang in the choir though he couldn’t carry a tune, mowed what little lawn the church had, and brought older women to church who didn’t drive. He was a high school drop out. His claim to fame was that he liked to come to church every morning, start the office coffee, and hang around where the Lord claimed to spend a goodly amount of time. His only credential as far as I could tell was knowing that the Lord loved him in spite of his foul-ups and flair-ups.

As I think of those who have made a difference, I think of many of you. Sometimes you say, “It’s just me,” as you quietly enter the church on your way to straighten out the sacristy, fold the bulletins, serve on the TACO food line, get your crafts ready for the children at Sunday School. Just you and yet people adore you because you radiate a certain aura of being loved by God. Behind your back, people say of you, “I love how he has grown in Christ’s love in spite of his wretched past” or “You can see the Lord shining on her as she quietly visits those who can no longer come to church.”

God chooses you from a Podunk town, struggling with drink, or with a temper that gets the better of you from time to time. You tell others, “If God can love me, God certainly loves you.” That is your credential. That’s why people love you—and it’s why Jesus loves you too.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 1, 2012
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Mark 5: 21-43
"The Gift of Tears"

When I was fourteen, I was captivated by a book about one of America’s most famous pastors. What I remember most is the description of the conclusion of his funeral. The pastor’s wife followed her husband’s casket out of the sanctuary at the final hymn. Suddenly, she stopped and put her arm around one of the many mourners and said (as best I can remember), “Do not weep. My husband is now among the risen.” I was tremendously moved by this. Grayer and balder now, I have rethought the pastor’s wife’s counsel not to weep at the death of a loved one. Ecclesiastes proclaims, “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” Our culture has gotten the laughing and dancing part down pretty well; it is the weeping and mourning we struggle with.

I learned to hold back my tears at an early age. I was taught that boys do not cry. To this day, I am not much of a crier—guess why? Maybe you learned some similar lesson which causes you to apologize profusely when you shed tears publicly.

Imagine my shock as a young pastor when I discovered that the people at my first congregation cried buckets of tears at funerals. Many in that African American congregation had learned a far different lesson about crying than I. Public mourning for a loved one was not only deemed appropriate and acceptable but, more importantly, healthy and cathartic.

I will not forget Juanita Garvey’s funeral. She was laid out in her casket in the front of the church in a beautiful pink dress with a lavender orchid. As the mourners paid their final respects, there was more crying than I had witnessed in a lifetime. Women in white nurses’ uniforms tended to the grieving family, especially to the hysterical daughter, with Kleenex, smelling salts, and hand fans. I was nervous and uneasy. I had learned somewhere along the way that one is not supposed to cry at funerals; I had even heard rumors that some took medication to “tide them over” when grief became too much to bear.

I was entrusted with an invaluable gem by that African American congregation: tears are a precious gift from God.

King David and the other psalmists knew of this gift of tears: “Every night I flood my bed with tears, I drench my couch with my weeping” (Psalm 6:6); “My tears have been my food day and night” (Psalm 42:3).

Oh yes, David knew tears. He had a disastrous relationship with King Saul. Saul was a dark and cloudy sort, kind of like Richard Nixon. When the crowds sang, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands,” Saul exploded with jealousy and rage. How dare they sing of David’s successes as he struggled to be their king? Saul had had enough and tried to kill David, enlisting his son, Jonathan, David’s dearest friend, to do the dirty work. The relationship between Saul and David was a tragic one that spiraled downward until King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in battle…David was the first to weep.

David was a complex person with mixed motives—like many of us. Who knows what exactly caused David’s tears when King Saul and Jonathan died?

Frederick Buechner writes: “You never know what may cause [tears]. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it…A pair of someone’s old shoes can do it…A horse cantering across a meadow…You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.

“They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next” (Whistling in the Dark: Doubter’s Dictionary, pg. 117)

Yes, your tears are a gift from God, holy water if you will.

Of tears, Washington Irving once said, “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”

When my father died in 1997 after a battle with cancer, a pastor friend offered me wise and gracious words though at the time they were painful to hear. He told me that I would never get over my father’s death and that I would find myself crying at the unlikeliest times. Once those tears came at the unlikeliest of places, the Holiday Bowl at Qualcomm Stadium. Who would expect tears on that occasion? The University of California and Texas A&M were playing; this was well past my father’s death—nine years. Texas A&M’s drum and bugle corp came marching onto the field dressed in military style uniforms with spit-shine boots. They were playing a John Philips Sousa (my father had no time for marching bands that played music from the Beatles and Sonny and Cher—this was anathema to him!). Being a former drum major himself at the University of Pennsylvania where his claim to fame was throwing his baton over the goal post and catching it every time the Quaker band marched onto the field, he would have been enthralled by the A&M band. As the band performed in military precision, I turned to our sons and said, “Grandpa would have loved this.” And I wept. Was it that I wished my father were there with us? Was it that I still felt badly that I was not at my father’s side when he died? Or could it have been that I had not felt appreciative enough for all my father and mother had done for me? Who knows where those tears came from? It was well worth my consideration to find out.

Some Christian traditions speak of the gift of tears in reverential, almost sacramental tones, describing them even as a second baptism. Jesus wept such tears over Jerusalem as he looked over the city; he wept sacramental tears when he heard that his friend Lazarus had died; he shed holy tears for all those he loved and for their sins the night before he died in the Gethsemane’s garden. And when other people wept, Jesus brought sacramental healing to their pain.

Yes indeed, like his ancestor David, Jesus knew tears. He wailed from the cross in that final hour, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Far from our culture’s invitation to keep on the sunny side of life, Jesus urges us to shed a tear or two if our pain is too much to bear.

How blessed are we when we see Christ coming through the fog of our tears, to heal our diseases and to raise those we love from the dead. How blessed are we to be part of a community where we can weep blessed tears in the face of our most profound losses, our most dismal failures, our deepest lonelinesses, or our most pathetic humiliations. The gift of tears trusts that God will work amidst our brokenness even as God worked amidst the brokenness of David. And so let us weep and trust that, one day, Christ will wipe away our every tear and we will sing and dance forever.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 24, 2012
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 17: 32-49; Mark 4: 35-41
"Just Five Smooth Stones and a Sling"

The story of David and Goliath is one of the first Bible stories we learned as children. We were mesmerized by the runt David and the giant Goliath. And, yes, this story continues to be a favorite even as we grow older. We have tasted the bitter tears caused by giants.

Goliath was bad to the bone. He was “ten feet tall in his stocking feet, with a size 20 collar, 19 ½ inch hat and a 52-inch belt” (Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who). He had a bronze helmet and was dressed in armor that weighed 126 pounds. His spear was as big as an automobile axle.

And then there was David, a scrawny thing, all of 90 pounds dripping wet. He, too, was outfitted with a bronze helmet, armor, and a sword and yet he was a pathetic sight: he couldn’t walk two feet because of the weight of it all. David said the heck with it and dropped all his armor. All he had left—and who will ever forget—was five smooth stones and a sling.

“[Goliath] took one look down on [David] and sneered—a mere youngster, apple-cheeked and peach-fuzzed” (Eugene Peterson, The Message).

Have you ever been bullied and wept, called “ugly” and had your heart broken, told you had “cooties” (clueless what exactly cooties are) and never forgotten—even sixty years later? Have you ever wondered whether you will survive nasty Goliath’s onslaught? Perhaps that’s why we love this story so.

Do you remember the picture of little African American Ruby Nell Bridges? She was on her way to first grade on November 14, 1960, integrating William Frantz School in New Orleans. Ruby’s parents had to work that day and so she was all alone, escorted only by federal marshals. (You probably remember how frightening your first day of school was and how much you needed your mommy. Thank God, for most of us, the crowds were not jeering and yelling the most horrible things at us.) It seemed all little Ruby had that day was five smooth stones and a sling as she walked to school in her little white dress and white shoes and white socks.

The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell

This is how Ruby describes the events that day many years later: “My mother was all for it. My father wasn't. ‘We're just asking for trouble,’ he said. He thought things weren't going to change, and blacks and whites would never be treated as equals. Mama thought I would have an opportunity to get a better education if I went to the new school—and a chance for a good job later in life. My parents argued about it and prayed about it. Eventually my mother convinced my father that despite the risks, they had to take this step forward, not just for their own children, but for all black children.

“The next morning my mother told me she couldn't go to school with me. She had to work and look after my brothers and sister. ‘The marshals will take good car of you, Ruby Nell,’ Mama assured me. ‘Remember, if you get afraid, say your prayers. You can pray to God anytime, anywhere. He will always hear you.’

“‘That was how I started praying on the way to school. The things people yelled at me didn't seem to touch me. Prayer was my protection’” (Ruby Bridges Hall, “The Education of Ruby Nell,” Guideposts, March 2000). All little Ruby had was her prayers—five smooth stones and a sling.

Most of us have felt a bit like little Ruby at one time or another, underdogs.

This is a pretty good place for underdogs to come every week or so. We huddle together here in the nave which comes from the Latin word “navis” which means ship. Our ship is called “First.” Jesus tells us that peace can be found here when we are all hunkered down, fearing giants and buffeted by storms from stem to stern.

482 years ago, in Augsburg, Germany, the reformers of the emerging Lutheran church were asked to bring a document to Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, explaining what exactly it was that they believed. These reformers were battered by the fierce winds of their own day, repeatedly having their lives threatened because of their longing to reform the church. The document they presented to Emperor Charles V is known as the Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana in Latin); it stated what they believed to be essential for the existence of Christ’s church.

You may wonder what is so important about an old, musty confessional document of our Lutheran church that many of you have likely never heard of before. The seventh article of the Augsburg Confession states, “The church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly.” That’s all.

Our five smooth stones and a sling are bread, wine, water, and the Word of God. With these simple weapons of the Spirit in hand, we can stand tall against the bullying giants of our day.

If only we could remember the power we have in bread, wine, water, and the Word. We want so much more. We want to be like Goliath. I know.

I remember June 25, not because I am history whiz but because I was ordained on that day thirty-five years ago, our son Caspar was baptized on June 25, 1985, and I served Augustana Lutheran Church in Washington, DC. My ordination certificate, presented to me on the Day of Confessio Augustana and which hangs on my church office wall, says: “Be it known that our Brother the Reverend Wilbert Smith Miller was ordained as a Minister of the Church in The Holy Office of the Word and Sacraments according to the Confession and Order of the Lutheran Church in America.” It sounds pretty highfalutin, I know, but, in truth this certificate reminds me that all I was entrusted with on my ordination day is bread and wine and water and the Word. Over the years, I have wanted so much more. When I visit you in the hospital, I bring a Sunday bulletin with the Bible readings and a little bread and wine in my little black box. When I see the doctors in their white coats and with their stethoscopes, I want so much more.

Five smooth stones and a sling. That’s all. Our Lutheran ancestors said of this bread and wine and water and the Word, satis est, Latin for “that is enough.” These precious gifts are enough for us to stand against giants and to face ferocious storms. In these simple gifts, we hold the power of heaven in our hands.

We all have faced giants and storms in our lives. We all have hunkered down in this boat called “First,” fearing for our very lives. Jesus tells us that we have enough. And then we hear him say, “Do not be afraid!”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 17, 2012
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 15:34—16: 13; Mark 4: 26-34
"The Ruddy Runt King"

The Lord Almighty told King Saul to kill all the Amalekites and everything that belonged to them. “Do not spare them,” said the Lord, “put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” (1 Samuel 15: 3). King Saul obeyed the Lord…well, almost. Saul made the fatal mistake of sparing the lives of King Agag and the best animals.

These Old Testament blood baths bewilder us. What kind of God orders such butchery?

God was disgusted with Israel’s desire for any king. God was raving mad at King Saul, Israel’s first king, who disobeyed divine orders and let a few living things live. The moment King Saul showed mercy on Israel’s enemy, God ordered Samuel to begin the search for a new king. Ouch!

If you were in Samuel’s shoes, searching for a new king, what qualities would you look for in a leader? I imagine we would look for someone handsome, decisive in decision-making, articulate and persuasive, with very good recommendations.

Samuel must have been looking for similar leadership qualities when he visited Jesse and began the kingly vetting process. Jesse had seven or eight sons (the Bible is unclear on the exact number). First, Samuel looked at the oldest son, Eliab, and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the LORD.” But this wasn’t the guy. God warned Samuel not to be fooled by appearance or height. Then Jesse paraded Abindadab before Samuel. Abindadab was not to be the future king either. Jesse marched seven sons before Samuel’s inquisitive eyes and none fit the bill. Finally the youngest came along. Who would predict that the runt of the litter would become the future king of Israel—not even the father imagined this. David was “ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.” (I love that word “ruddy” which means “having a healthy reddish color”). Of the runt, the Lord said to Samuel, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.”

The choice of David as the future king of Israel should come as no surprise. Over and over again in the Bible, we hear, “God’s ways are not our ways.” God inevitably detects some mysterious quality that escapes our notice and enables a person to further God’s kingdom here on earth. Think of the disciple Peter the coward, Paul the Christian killer, Jacob the scoundrel if you need further proof of God’s unorthodox choices. Repeatedly, God flabbergasts us in who is picked for divine purposes.

The oddest of God’s choices comes a thousand years after King David when God chooses Jesus, the son of a young maiden and an uncertain father, born in the rinky-dink town of Bethlehem. Yet again, we must put on new godly spectacles if we are to discover magnificence in a tiny mustard seed. On this occasion, God’s kingly choice ends up on a cross. Indeed, God’s ways are not our ways.

Of course, David will grow up to be an astonishing musician, a creative poet, a feared warrior, a revered statesman, and yet, when Samuel first sees him, he is the ruddy runt.

If you have not seen the movie, The King’s Speech, rent the DVD immediately. It is the finest movie I have ever seen. It is the brilliant account of King George VI (Queen Elizabeth II’s father) who ends up ruling England at the most critical time in its history. King George VI must rouse a nation, desperate for a charismatic leader as it stands on the brink of World War II. King George VI is the unlikeliest of kings. He has a dreadful speech impediment that causes him to stutter terribly and uncontrollably, especially at the most important and nerve-wracking times. Through the instruction of an eccentric speech coach, the king delivers a crucially important speech that inspires his nation and unites them in battle. An unlikely king indeed.

Sometimes, kings and queens are surprising people—take you for instance. Through your baptism, God calls you to be a king or a queen here on earth. As the water was dripping down your head, your pastor anointed you with royal oil just like kings and queens of old were anointed to rule God’s chosen people. You were called to oversee your little part of the globe in God’s name, be it your home, your neighborhood, or your job. Sometimes you feel like King David, a runt, or like King George VI, a bumbler of speech. But God does the surprising thing and selects you to be a king or queen on God’s behalf.

On this Fathers’ Day, we think of all those men called to the awesome responsibility of fatherhood—you could say the kingship of our children. None of us took a “Fatherhood” course in high school or college. Ours is an immensely trying vocation. We do the best we are able as we stumble along. There are days when we are sickened by the errors in judgment we make in rearing our children. We discipline them too much or too little. We don’t spend enough time with them as we sneak a peak at ESPN or work too hard to earn a living. And yet, we are the runt, the one God has called to the awesome responsibility of tending the kingdom of our beloved children. We fatherly kings all need a modicum of mercy.

If left to our own devices, we would likely choose someone more imposing, more “perfect,” for any position of leadership, be it father or mother, aunt or uncle, friend or neighbor, brother or sister in Christ. That’s how we seem to choose our presidents. Of the last ten presidents of the United States, all but two have been 6 feet tall or more. President Carter was the smallest at 5 feet 9 ½ inches; President Nixon was 5 feet 11 ½ inches. Are we surprised that arguably the two most unpopular presidents in the past fifty years were the shortest? (Oh, by the way, James Madison was the smallest president at 5 feet 4 inches and Abraham Lincoln the tallest at 6 feet 4 inches.) Funny how we choose our leaders.

Like little David, you and I may not be the obvious choices to be kings and queens of the places and people we are called to tend. Of course, Michelangelo tried to make David seem more significant by making that famous marble statue of him in the buff that measures 14 feet 3 inches tall but we know that was a dream really and not the whole truth. We, too, try to appear more significant than we really are: we pretend we are more charismatic, wittier, more popular, smarter, and yet we know that is but a dream too. For whatever reason, God chooses us, small and insignificant, just as we are, to proclaim the kingdom. Curious, isn’t it?

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 10, 2012
Second Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 8: 4-11, 16-20; 11: 14-15: Mark 3: 20-35
"The King Thing"

Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee is going on even as we speak. I frankly haven’t given much thought to Her Majesty’s sixty years as queen of Great Britain. Monarchy does not float my boat and is as foreign to me as Yorkshire pudding. We Americans are not much given to queens and kings unless, of course, it is those extravagant royal weddings or Princess Diana.

As peculiar as the thought of a king or queen is to U.S. citizens, it was an even stranger one to many of God’s people in ancient Israel. As the Psalm 96 proclaims, “Say among the nations, ‘The LORD is king!’” Israel had only one king, Yahweh-God. God had proved God’s mettle by freeing Israel from Pharaoh’s brickyards and conquering Egypt’s mighty army. This great victory entitled God the name “King” forever.

Funny thing. Even though God had spared their ancestors the torture of slavery in Egypt, there were still folks in Israel clamoring for a more state-of-the-art king, one like their neighbors had, a more up-to-date model. Whether to have a new king was a lively debate in Israel. There were those who wanted a king in the worst sort of way and those, most notably Samuel, who said there was only room for one king and that king was God.

So who was Samuel who was opposed to a king? Frederick Buechner writes: “Samuel was a combination prophet, judge, and one-man band… When he reached retirement age, he might have turned things over to his sons, but they were a bunch of crooks who sold justice to the highest bidder, and the Israelites said maybe he’d better get them a king instead. They’d never had one before, but they felt the time had come. Samuel threw a fit.”

It seems human nature not to be satisfied. We always want something we don’t have. It is called coveting, idolatry. If our neighbors have a king, we want a king. Advertisers have figured this out about us: they look for ways to convince us of our need to have what our neighbors have, something shiner, faster, bigger, different, sexier.

Israel was being harassed by their mighty neighbor, the Philistines, and felt their case was hopeless unless they got a flashy leader who, once and for all, put an end to their bullying neighbors.

As you know, politics in any nation are never stagnant. Most nations, as we see so often in the news these days, have tetter-tottering political debates all the time. You can see this in our own nation. Some believe government performs an essential function—defending our nation from intruders, creating public works projects like roads and bridges, and maintaining our safety with police, fire fighters, and air traffic controllers. There are others who decry big government spending and want it out of their lives for good.

Israel ended up with a king just like they wanted, King Saul. Samuel vociferously protested Saul’s coronation. God was also disgusted by Israel’s choice and yet said, if you want a king, I’ll give you a king.

Things started with big dreams as Saul became Israel’ first king. In the summer weeks of worship, you will hear about the kings who follow Saul, kings like David and Solomon. Frankly, after King David—and before with Saul, the whole king thing went downhill faster than an Olympic bobsled. There were some honorable kings along the way but, by and large, most were rascals of the highest order.

The Bible constantly critiques rulers, governments, and citizens. The prophet Jeremiah held the kings accountable long after King Saul: “And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocently blood in this place” (Jeremiah 22: 2-5).

Whenever we forget that God is the ultimate authority, duck! Whenever we live as if God and country are one word, God utters, “I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other gods.” We think as long as our party is in power, God is pleased as punch. But it is never quite so easy. God ultimately is king whether we have a king or queen or president and whether that president is a Democrat or Republican.

But here is what astonishes me. God could have said, “I told you so,” and washed His hands of the whole stinking mess and laughed at Israel as their monarchy started smelling putrid but that is not God’s way. God has a surprising knack for working in the midst of our confusion and mistakes, our arrogance and failures.

We often have a starry eyed belief that God only works with those who get things right in God’s eyes. Though God was hopping mad that Israel opted for King Saul instead of God and though Israel paid a steep price for its unfaithfulness, God never abandoned Israel. If you know your Bible stories, you know that Jesus followed in Israel’s long line of kings, the line, by the way, that God never wanted. God takes our human messes and makes miracles occur. God finally says, let me give you a king worthy the name and gives us King Jesus.

God refuses to abdicate divine rule. King Jesus cast out demons. King Jesus’ rule, however, was so peculiar that even his family thought him crazy. He was so different from what people expected. How dare the king walk with the poor, eat with sinners? What kind of royal leadership is this, they wondered.

Today, we are faced with the same question: who is our king? Every time we gather here and lift the bread and cup, we are reminded of a far different leader from the one our nation or any nation wants. We end up with a king who lays down his arms and loves his enemies, a suffering king, a crucified king. Every time we say to one another, “Take and eat, this is my body given for you,” we hear King Jesus pleading with us to be a different kind of people.

We come again today and pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Much like the Israelites who wanted a king, we, too, stumble along, sometimes oblivious to who rules over all creation. It is in this place that we are invited to look at a different kind of king, one who never gives up on us. Never. King Jesus.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 3, 2012
Holy Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6: 1-8; Romans 8: 12-17; John 3: 1-17
"Restless Until We Rest in God"

In the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I was in a funk most of this week. I spent far too much time idly staring out my office window and fiddling on my computer even playing a few hands of Solitaire. I am not sure what got into me. I think it can be traced to my struggles with preparing this morning’s sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday.

I know a few things about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We learn this stuff in seminary as we prepare to become pastors. I took an intimidating graduate course, only a few years ago, called Trinitarian Theology. Nevertheless, preparing this morning’s sermon has been agonizing.

Maybe my struggle has something to do with being sixty-one. As I read my Holy Trinity sermons from past years, I sensed that I had more answers to the tough questions about the nature of God when I was younger. No more. The more I ponder Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the more questions I have. I don’t feel less faithful than in my earlier years but I am not nearly as cock-sure as I once was.

I am increasingly suspicious of theologians and pastors, politicians and talk show hosts, who have all the answers. I once adored theologians who answered tough questions with arrogant bravado. These days I find such bravado turns my stomach—and, by the way, this goes for conservative and liberal alike. There is a conservative arrogance that has neatly packaged answers to difficult questions like who will end up in heaven and who in hell—as if they have been there to know. There is a liberal arrogance that is condescending toward any doctrine steeped in holy tradition such as the resurrection of Jesus and the Holy Trinity.

Now, please do not get me wrong. I am not critical of people who hold strong beliefs or of those who raise serious questions about the faith. What I am critical of is those who say, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe.” Really? Adolph Hitler had some very strong beliefs—did it really not matter what he believed? Terrorists have strong beliefs—are you telling me it doesn’t matter what they believe? Come on, of course it matters!

And yet….our beliefs rarely come easily. Maybe that’s what people are trying to say when they utter, “It doesn’t matter what you believe.” Maybe they, like so many others, find that the life of faith is filled with nagging doubts and even personal agony.

Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, speaks of this process of belief in her own life: “When the Christian assembly stands together to say the Creed these days, I still say ‘I believe’ with everybody else, but I say it knowing that I believe quite differently now than I did in years past. As a result, I am convinced, the faith that lives in me now is a more demanding, more robust variety than it was in the earlier stages of my spiritual life. It is also a far less certain kind of faith and, therefore, I think, a great deal more real than when I believed the unbelievable. I used to believe, for instance, that the apostles themselves wrote the Apostles’ Creed. They didn’t. I used to believe that every statement in the Creed was ‘fact,’ in the sense of provable, historical, ‘real.’ It isn’t. I used to believe that God was male. Impossible. I used to believe a lot of things that I no longer believe; so do I have faith or not?” (Joan Chittester, In Search of Belief, pg. 2).

It often seems the more we know about God, the less we feel we understand God. That is not a bad thing. The Bible casts a harsh eye toward those who think that they have all the answers about God tied neatly in a little package. Adam and Eve wanted all the answers as they ate the fruit from the one tree in the Garden of Eden which God had forbidden them—they found it impossible to let God be God and not to have all the answers. Their sin was wanting to be know-it-alls. The people of Babel tried to build a tower that would touch the heavens—they wanted to be eye-to-eye with God, equals really—and the tower came tumbling down. Over and over, we discover there is only so far we can go before our knowledge becomes exceedingly displeasing to God and then, it seems, God dashes whatever certainty we have to smithereens.

Trying to figure out the mystery of God, we are a lot like our cat, Dosty (as in Dostoyevsky). Whenever Dosty sees the reflection of my watch dancing across our living room floor and up the walls, he goes bananas trying to swat it and pounce on it. He never quite catches it though: just when he is ready to pounce, the reflection flees his energetic paws. Trying to catch God can prove equally frustrating. When we feel like we are so close to God, God seems just beyond our grasp.

You might be thinking, “So, what’s the use of trying to fathom the nature of God?” One classic answer is offered by Saint Augustine, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." We yearn to rest in God’s loving arms and thus we seek to understand this mysterious and wondrous God. And yet, God is always beyond our energetic grasp.

More and more, I find myself attracted to Christians who bear a certain modesty about their beliefs. These modest Christians are always humbly pointing beyond themselves. They celebrate the beautiful mysteries of faith without spouting off strident and naïve answers; they cherish Christian tradition without adopting every trendy theological alternative that slights our rich creedal traditions won, by the way, with the blood of the martyrs.

As we now sing the creed, confessing the Holy Trinity, let us celebrate the mystery and tradition of the church. Let us rest in the magnificence and wonder of God that surpasses our human understanding. One thing may God grant us, to know the astonishing love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 27, 2012
Pentecost
"Come, Holy Spirit, Come"

The first Pentecost must have been a doozy of a hullabaloo. Crowds crammed into Jerusalem to celebrate God giving the Law to Moses. People came from everywhere: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Phrygians, and Pamphilians—the kind of people and places your computer’s spell checker bounces back in a flash. There were eruptions of wind and explosions of fire. The dimwitted disciples sounded like Stanford linguistic scholars as they spoke a host of esoteric languages. And Peter—remember him the coward who denied knowing Jesus when Jesus’ life was on the line—there he was courageously preaching in the public square; the sermon was such a stem-winder that 3,000 people were baptized that very day. It was such an uproarious affair that passersby thought Jesus’ disciples had tipped too many frosties and it was only nine in the morning.

Pentecost takes your breath away and yet, strangely, Pentecost is about giving breath, life-giving breath, the breath of the Holy Spirit.

Every Sunday, we confess, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” At the beginning of the service today, we prayed, “Breathe life into our bones”—that’s the Spirit we are talking about. At James William Mehlow Morris’ baptism we will pray, “Sustain James with the gift of your Holy Spirit.” At Communion we will plead, “Come now, O Spirit of Christ, brood over these bodily things, this bread and wine.”

One wonders whether we expect the Spirit to come into our midst as it did in Jerusalem two thousand years ago and to send our lives spinning all topsy-turvy.

My favorite author Annie Dillard writes, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no 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. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, pgs. 40-41).

Whenever the Holy Spirit comes thundering our way, we claim that we can be changed in a flash. Do we really believe this?

William Sloane Coffin says of that first Pentecost, “After Pentecost [those disciples] became ten times the people they were during Jesus’ life on earth.” I love that: ten times the people they were during Jesus’ life on earth—that is quite a change, especially when you think we are talking about cowards, lamebrains, and flops.

We have decked out our congregation in red today; many of you are outfitted similarly. Our theme is “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” The Rev. Alan Jones, the former dean of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, said: “Only a fool would pray for the Holy Spirit. Only fools for Christ.”

“Come, Holy Spirit, come,” we cry. How many of us have prayed that the Spirit would stir this place up and send us lots of children? I told the confirmation class last week that they are the answer to a lot of our older members’ prayers. Many of you have been praying for kids to come into this place for years and years, hoping these rambunctious darlings will cement this congregation’s future as the heart of Christ in the heart of the city. When we ask God for such a thing, do we have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?

Last Sunday at our second service there was a children’s invasion. Children were scampering up and down the aisles, climbing around the baptismal pool, chattering throughout the liturgy—at one point I was almost certain I heard a little one “amening” my sermon. When we prayed for the Spirit to send us kiddies, did we ever imagine that their holy racket would resemble the wind and fire of Pentecost?

In one church I served, during the interview to become the next pastor, the call committee asked me how I would bring more children into the church. Lo and behold, when the Spirit starting answering our prayers, on more than one occasion, fuming parishioners accosted me at the door, demanding, “What are you going to do about the rumpus, Pastor? You must put a stop to the noise.” They had no idea what power we had so blithely invoked.

Do you pray for the Spirit in your life? “Lord,” you pray, “Make me more of a Christian.” And then, God goes overboard. Suddenly you are giving money away— more than you ever imagined and sometimes more than you can afford—to ministries supporting God’s blessed poor. You surprise yourself as you start speaking out rather forcefully on behalf of the vulnerable ones in ways that, only months ago, would have shocked you. You even catch yourself reading your Bible on the trolley and praying at the beach. Oh, that pesky Spirit: sometimes you hardly know yourself anymore.

And this morning, when we thrust James William Mehlow Morris into the baptismal pool, we will join his parents, Jenny and Randy, in praying for the Spirit to dive-bomb the waters. James may be the smartest one among us when he might just start screaming bloody murder. He will realize that this Holy Spirit stuff is life-changing and not to be blithely invoked. We will pray that the Spirit will lead tiny James to proclaim Christ through word and deed and that he will care for others and the world God made. Randy and Jenny: what if your little one actually is filled with the Spirit? Have you thought what might end up happening to him? My former bishop Roy Almquist once said to me, “When our children turn out the way we prayed they would, we are horrified.” Imagine if one day little James starts crying out for peace and justice the way we pray he will. Will we celebrate or be horrified?

Yes, here we are again, praying for the Holy Spirit to show up, now. Just a word to the wise: get the life preserver from right under your seat and put on your crash helmet. A change is coming and we hardly know what will occur. Come, Holy Spirit, Come.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 20, 2012
Ascension Sunday/Seventh Sunday of Easter
"The Ministry of Waiting"

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

When I was eight, I loved snuggling next to my father in our 1956 Dodge Coronet. Every once in a while he let me hold the steering wheel. I knew Dad was right there in case anything went wrong. I did not use the break or the gas pedal and certainly not the clutch. Dad did that. I just steered. It wasn’t until I was ten that Dad took me out on an old country road, sat me on his lap, and let me steer and press down on the gas pedal.

Finally, I hit sixteen. My father said, “Okay, Wilk, it is your turn.” I remember getting out and changing seats with him in one of Oglebay Park’s parking lots. I had not been paying attention most times when Dad was driving and had no idea how to use the clutch or shift the “three on the tree.” With patience on Dad’s part I learned the basics and then the most frightening day arrived: Dad told me to go to Wheeling’s steepest hill and to start driving upwards. We had gone thirty yards when he yelled, “Stop!” I stopped and then he said, “Start again.” Do you remember the first time you tried to start a car on a steep hill, going up, with a clutch? You never gave it a second thought when you were in the passenger seat, but now that it was your turn to drive and the car was drifting backwards, you were horrified.

On that day so long ago, when Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples’ reaction must have been similar. Just as I had watched my father drive our car, the disciples had watched Jesus teach the crowds, heal the suffering, and perform miracles. Now that Jesus was going to heaven, it was all different, it was now going to be the disciples’ turn.

Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave the disciples careful instructions: “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

The waiting for power from on high can be painful, frightening, even depressing. Think of the times you have had to wait: waiting for the envelope from your first choice college telling you whether you got in; waiting for the call from the employer who had told you, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you;” waiting for the person of your dreams to call and ask you out on the first date; waiting days and weeks and months after your dear loved one died as you prayed to God things would get better.

As Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples stared dumbfoundedly into the clouds. I have got to believe we would have been no different. Who would not stare into heaven if Jesus suddenly started floating up into the clouds?

Jesus had been with them for three years of intensive ministry and they had grown close. On the good days they could finish Jesus’ sentences. After Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, they walked with him on country roads, just talking; they ate a dinner with him in the evening; they had a fish fry together at the lakeside. Once Jesus went up into the sky, what would they do?

There are those times when we just stand staring into space, wondering what next. At those times, we need to remember Jesus’ words before he ascended into heaven, “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with the power from on high.”

When we are at the wheel, it can be as petrifying as it was for the disciples and for the early church. We remember Jesus’ direction to stay in the city, to wait, but we do wonder how much longer. We wonder whether it will get better, whether we heard Jesus right, whether he will really clothe us with power from on high.

You First Lutheran Church members know what it means to stay in the city and to wait to be clothed with power from on high. Where are all the other churches downtown? San Diego has fewer downtown churches than any city I know. Did the others churches give up waiting in the city?

For 124 years now people like you have waited here. There have been good times and bad times, exciting days and ones when no good future seemed in sight; there have been months and years when we have wondered whether the Lord would provide for our ambitious ministry. And yet, on every occasion, the Risen Savior has told us to take the wheel and to wait in the city for further instructions.

What we have discovered over time is that there are occasions when we must wait longer than we ever imagined, occasions when we cry out fiercely to be clothed with power from on high and times when we wonder what is next. At those times, the waiting is the ministry, the waiting for the Spirit to enliven us again.

I just came back from our synod assembly in Irvine. Our two San Diego conferences went around the room and each congregation told the amazing things happening in their place. As I read this Bible reading, I realized that not one congregation, including ours, mentioned a ministry of waiting, waiting on the Lord to clothe us with power from on high. Every congregation sounded incredibly busy, doing a million and one things, but not one of us mentioned waiting as ministry. And yet, I imagine every single congregation has had to wait at one time or another.

How we wait together shows just how graceful this or any community is.

We come here Sunday after Sunday, waiting for that power. What I love about staying here in the city and waiting as Jesus has told us to do is that we have learned to trust that God’s power will come in due time. When we learn to wait here, we learn to wait in other occasions of life, too. When the nights seem never ending and when we awaken and wonder if it was all a nightmare, we are told by the Risen Savior that he will clothe us with the power from on high in due time. Sometimes we need others to remind us that the power will come, those who have waited and almost given up but not—they become our finest teachers; they teach us how to be a people of grace.

The first time I went up that very steep hill and stopped and started again, I was a wreck. I am sure I screamed at my father, something like, “You take the wheel. I am done. I will never be able to do this.” My father, a gentle soul, certainly said something like, “Oh yes you will. Just wait. I felt just like you when I was sixteen in my dad’s Model A Ford.”

You have probably taken the wheel a time or two in your life when you wanted to scream to the Risen Savior, “I am done. You take the wheel.” And Jesus has whispered, “Everything will be all right. Just wait.”

And so, yet again, here we are like the disciples before us. Some of us are waiting and some of us are giving thanks after a long wait. We are here together this morning, praying for the Spirit to descend upon us all. Let us encourage one another to wait and wait and wait even longer if need be until we are all clothed with the power from on high.

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 13, 2012
Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 15: 9-17
"What a Friend We Have in Jesus"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

On this Mothers’ Day, let us ponder a mother’s love. Evelyn Manley lived in a rat infested inner-city housing project with her two teenage sons, Alex and Anthony. Their apartment building was rife with drug dealers; gun shots could be heard all hours of the day and night. Alex was in my confirmation class. He was a quiet kid, a follower, not a leader. He was a superb playground basketball player but lacked the discipline to play on his high school’s championship team. I received a call one afternoon from his hysterical mother pleading for me to come quickly. Her angelic son had just been arrested for possession of narcotics with the intent to sell and for carrying a loaded handgun.

Evelyn was a gentle soul and she cried and cried. When she caught her breath, she spoke the identical words mothers have used down through the centuries to describe their wayward sons: “Alex is such a good boy. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. He simply got caught up in the wrong crowd.”

“Caught up in the wrong crowd” was Evelyn’s motherly code for an infinite willingness to forgive all manner of her son’s mayhem and skullduggery. “Caught up in the wrong crowd” meant she would always have a tasty meal on the table and a warm bed waiting for Alex.

It is doubtful you would describe Alex the way his mother did. You would likely describe him as a hellion, trouble from the get-go, deserving of a penitentiary education. You would not think to say that he got caught up in the wrong crowd.

Love makes us do mighty peculiar things for those we care for. God acts peculiarly. too. While others might call us misfits, malcontents, slackers, or arrogant good for nothings, God has a weak spot for each of us; we are, after all, God’s dear children.

Jesus had his heavenly Father’s weak spot when it came to friends. The night before he died, he gathered his most trusted ones around a meal. Amidst the impending flurry of betrayals and denials, Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you...You are my friends.” Peter, Judas? Friends? Jesus’ love for them was like a mother’s love. Call it naïve, hopelessly forgiving. Whatever, Jesus loved his friends until the end and, even after the resurrection, he came back loving them with a renewed gusto.

Evelyn Manley understood this kind of love. She suffered untold mental anguish and embarrassment because of Alex. The one others called good-for-nothing, despicable, and worthless, she called dear, sweet, and adorable.

Jesus said it this way, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

I wonder at times whether we are a bit too cavalier with the term “friend.” I hear people speak of friends as if they come a dime a dozen. “I have seventy Facebook friends,” you might say. Or perhaps you catch yourself saying, “She is my best friend,” and realize you say this about fifteen other BEST friends.

What is required for you to call someone your friend?

In a study done at Cornell University, it was discovered that most Americans can name only two or fewer close friends. The study asked participants to list those with whom they can discuss “important matters.” 48 percent listed only one name; 18 percent listed two names; and 29 percent listed three names. 4 percent listed no names. Do you have more than two friends with whom you can discuss important matters?

When Jesus speaks of friendship, he raises the bar. To be a friend in Jesus’ eyes means to remain loyal through thick and thin, caring for your friend even in the face of denials and betrayals even to the point of laying down your life. Looking at friendship that way, how many friends do you have?

Do you have a friend in your life of whom you can say, “I could call her at a moment’s notice and she would come running.” Or are you a friend of someone for whom you would fly across the country if need be”

The thought of not having such friends might leave you feeling very lonely about right now.

In our Lutheran tradition, one of the things we cherish is the gift of “Individual Confession and Forgiveness”—call it private confession. While we Lutherans do not much avail ourselves of this gift, it is a gift offered to us by the church on behalf of our dearest friend Jesus. “Individual Confession and Forgiveness” is the church’s promise that you have a friend who will never let you down, a friend who will let you bare your soul and will hold all you say in the strictest confidence. “Individual Confession and Forgiveness” is mother church’s promise to offer you forgiveness no matter what troubles you, no matter how shameful the thing is that you have done. Like the mother who never tires of forgiving her son, the church never tires of saying, “Your sins are forgiven, in the name of Jesus your friend.”

Someone came to me Friday morning at our patio meal and said, “Pastor, thank you for this church putting up with my crazy behavior over the past few years. I know I have been an obnoxious fool and completely out of control.” This person has tested me and others. He is trying to return to the straight and narrow. He was able to make his apology, his confession really, sensing that this community never wearies of offering forgiveness to him and others like him. That is what it means to be “the heart of Christ in the heart of the city.” That is why we have been here at 3rd and Ash for 124 years. We are called to be like Jesus and to love every one of God’s children who comes by here.

Whenever I think of friendship, I think of Evelyn Manley and the love she showered on her rambunctious son Alex. I think, too, of all those mothers who love their sons and daughters no matter what they do, no matter how crazy they drive them. Whenever I think of friendship, I think of Jesus who loves you and me no matter what.

So, how many friends do you have? Have you been counting? If you are thinking zero, think again. You have a very fine friend in Jesus.

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 6, 2012
Fifth Sunday of Easter
John 15: 1-8
"Saint Raymond the Boysenberry Grower"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Raymond Hachten was an expert jam maker. Every year, on his way out of church with his daughter Carolyn, he would tell me, “Next week I will be bringing your boysenberry jam.” And then, the next week, he would present me with the much anticipated jar of boysenberry jam.

The boysenberry is a hybrid mix of the raspberry, blackberry, and loganberry. You may be interested to know that the first boysenberries were grown at Knott’s Berry Farm.

Raymond Hachten knew boysenberries. He understood the discipline required to make his backyard on Mount Foster Avenue in Clairemont come alive with boysenberry fruit.

Apparently when tending his bushes, Raymond did not prune them the first year. He left them untouched and let them grow, almost wild you might say. He trusted that, in good time, the boysenberry harvest would arrive.

When the harvest did arrive, Raymond performed the operation that scares non-boysenberry types half to death: he cut back the vines that had produced the boysenberries almost to the ground. This radical surgery encourages future fruit growth and yet, such surgery, while necessary, requires enormous faith that what appears dead will, in fact, return to life.

Raymond had the patience of a boysenberry grower. For seven years now, I have called him Raymond Hatchen. Maybe you did that too. The true pronunciation is actually the good German way, Hachten and not Hatchen. Ever the patient, gentle, and gracious one, Raymond never once corrected me. He must have figured that, with time, I would catch on—at least on the day of his funeral.

Raymond Charles Hachten was born in 1918, in Buffalo, New York, one of ten children. He married his wife, Catherine, in 1949. They had their dear daughter, Carolyn; their son-in-law David; their granddaughter, Launa, and her husband; and two great grandchildren, Dawson and Aveley, who will offer a tribute to their great-grandfather a bit later in the service.

The Hachtens moved to San Diego in 1955 where he worked as a mechanic and engineer at what eventually became Solar Turbine. They joined First Lutheran Church. They moved to Clairemont and searched for a church nearer to home but their heart was with First Lutheran. It was a journey to come to church back then because the 805 and 163 were nonexistent and the only way to get here was down the Pacific Coast Highway. You can call that patience or commitment or love for the “heart of Christ in the heart of the city.”

Raymond was First Lutheran’s oldest member, 93 years old. I can only imagine the changes he saw over the years. The church moved from its old building two blocks away and built a new sanctuary where we worship this morning. Raymond was proud that his congregation constructed Luther Tower, the first senior citizen facility in San Diego for people on fixed incomes. He served on the Council and worked with the Sunday School… Think of all that took place here during Raymond’s nearly sixty years as a member.

Until his dying days, Raymond was at church almost every Sunday, brought by his faithful daughter Carolyn. What a witness he was to us. Raymond came here to listen carefully to Jesus’ horticultural instruction: stay close to the vine and you will bear good fruit. And so, close he stayed, coming here with his family to hear God’s word and taste the fruit of the vine Sunday after Sunday.

Even in the lean years when things seemed bleak at First Lutheran, he accepted this as a natural part of the growth process—the pruning and the growing. He remained with his church when downtown San Diego was as rough and tumble as it gets. He remained with his church when there were very few children. He remained even when some said his beloved church would soon die. He was a boysenberry gardener after all; he knew how radically trimmed vines return to life in even more astonishing ways than before.

This is important instruction for us all, especially when we face lean times in our own lives, when we wonder whether God will provide. People like Raymond Hachten are our best mentors for they teach us the wisdom of waiting patiently upon the Lord even when hope seems so faint or even nonexistent.

Jesus gave his disciples these instructions for tending the vine the night before he died when things looked very bleak. In less than a day, the pruning process would destroy Jesus and leave many wondering for years and years, even today, whether the plant was dead. Even with death in the air, Jesus called those he loved to wait patiently for his heavenly Father, the vinedresser, who would never let death be the final word. After all, God reminds us: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2).

Some of you never knew Raymond Hachten. If you are visiting this morning, you might be wondering why a funeral on Sunday morning. We do this today because Raymond was a saint and is a saint; he is our saint. In his quiet and gentle way, he taught us a thing or two about living the Christian life. He taught us to be patient, to wait, and not to fear even when the vine seemed all but dead. Even yesterday, as Raymond was buried in the ground, we heard Jesus’ words: “Unless a grain of wheat fall into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

There is something enormously instructive about a man like Saint Raymond. You see, we will all arrive at the deaths of those we love and at our own deaths. We will wonder whether the vine is dead and gone for good. Saint Raymond has taught us a better way, to wait on the Lord. In the grace of waiting, we become an Easter people, trusting that though Christ died, Christ also rose again. This promise is for all of us: though we die, we, too, shall rise.

And so, this day, we give thanks to God for Saint Raymond the Boysenberry Grower. We thank God for having given him to us to know and to love on our pilgrimage on earth. We pray that we might all, by God’s grace, trust that the vine will never die and that the branches will bear much fruit for ever and ever.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 29, 2012
Fourth Sunday of Easter
John 20: 11-18
"Called by Name"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Names don’t come as easily to me as they once did. Now that I have hit sixty-one, I struggle a bit more to remember people’s names. You who have visited here a few times have probably figured that out by now. “What is your name?” I ask you at the door. And you tell me yet again. And it isn’t just visitors. Even those of you whom I know far better, every once in a while, I catch myself silently running through the alphabet, hoping to come up with your name sooner rather than later. It is maddening. I know how good I feel when someone I hardly know calls me “Wilk” or “Pastor Miller” and I certainly wish I could reciprocate.

Some of you may remember the Rev. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry. Dr. Fry was the president—we call it bishop today—of the United Lutheran Church in America in the 1950’s and the first president of the Lutheran Church in America. (First Lutheran was a member of these predecessor bodies before the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was formed in 1988.) Dr. Fry was a giant of a man. He even appeared on the cover of Time magazine on April 7, 1958. I am told that he did not suffer fools gladly.

Among his gifts, Franklin Clark Fry had an exceptional memory. Before he became president of the national church, he was pastor of the large Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron, Ohio. I read somewhere that Dr. Fry knew every member’s name and never forgot visitors’ names after meeting them at the door for the very first time. Whenever my memory disappoints me, I cower at the thought of Dr. Fry’s prodigious mind.

What troubles me most is the realization of how important knowing people’s names is and yet how hard it can be to do just that. It is a blessing to be called by name. God called us by name at baptism; in my case, “Wilbert, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” God knows us all by name.

In our gospel reading this morning, we hear of how dear the sheep are to Jesus the good shepherd. So dear that Jesus says, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the father.” So dear that Jesus lays down his life to protect those he loves. This shepherd calls us by name and we adore the soothing sound of his voice.

I am currently reading When I Was A Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson. Marilynne Robinson has written a number of books, including the gorgeous Gilead. In her current book of essays, she writes of this morning’s hymn, “In the Garden.” Many of you love this hymn about Mary Magdalene walking in the garden alone and hearing her Risen Savior call her by name, “Mary,” on that first Easter morning.

Robinson writes of this hymn: “For a long time, until just a decade ago, at most, I disliked this hymn, in part because to this day I have never heard it sung well. Maybe it can’t be sung well. The lyrics are uneven, and the tune is bland and grossly sentimental. But I have come to a place in my life where the thought of people moved by the imagination of joyful companionship with Christ is so precious that every fault becomes a virtue. I wish I could hear again every faltering soprano who has ever raised this song to heaven. God bless them all.”

She goes on: “In that old hymn as in the Gospel, Mary is awakened out of her loneliness by the sound of her own name spoken in a voice ‘so sweet the birds hush their singing.’” (pgs. 125, 126)

Don’t we all come to that point in life when we long for the joyful companionship of Christ, to hear his sweet whispering in our ear? Sara Miles, in her book Jesus Freak, refers repeatedly to Jesus as her “boy friend.” I like that. What a thrill to be in love with Jesus and to hear him call us by name.

How sweet, really, that Jesus, even after we have left him hanging alone at the cross time and time again, returns to us, loves us all the more, and calls us by name.

Jesus calling us by name brings to mind those gorgeous words from the Song of Solomon: “The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills…My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away” (Song of Solomon 2: 8, 10). That is the voice we long for, the voice of Jesus inviting us to come away with him.

Perhaps you have noticed that during this Easter season, we are not using a confession of sins. If you are worried about this, I assure you there will be ample time to confess your sins in weeks and months to come. For now, though, we celebrate that the Risen Savior comes to us, as he came to Mary, and calls each of us by name no matter what our sin may be. There is a wonderful tradition in the Russian Orthodox Church that says we cannot sin during Easter. Of course, we know better than that but how beautiful to imagine that the power of Christ’s resurrection renders our sins mute so we can, for a season, simply listen for the sweet voice of Jesus calling us by name.

As Jesus called Mary by name at the empty tomb, it is left to us, the body of Christ, to call each other by name as we share Christ’s resurrection peace with one another. I invite you to find someone whose name you do not know or even whose name you have forgotten. Introduce yourself and learn their name. This community will be far richer as we follow Jesus in calling one another by name.

The peace of the Risen Christ be with you always.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 22, 2012
Third Sunday of Easter
Luke 24: 36b-48
"A Matter of Affection"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Along with 10,000 others, Dagmar and I heard the 14th Dalai Lama speak on Thursday morning at San Diego State University. (If you are unfamiliar with the Dalai Lama, think “the Pope of Buddhism.”) I got chills as the Dalai Lama came on stage in his gorgeous saffron robe and as he bowed to the crowd. I will not forget the Dalai Lama’s unassuming manner, his plain manner of speech, and his charming laugh.

In his talk, the Dalai Lama spoke of the importance of receiving affection at the beginning of life; he noted, too, that affection is just as important as we advance well into the autumn years of life and face illness and death. Isn’t he right: don’t we all long for affection, whether young or old?

The Dalai Lama’s point is so simple and yet so profound. The minute we are born, we thirst for mother’s affection. I have watched this morning’s three tiny baptismal candidates, Cassandra Smith Trunzo, Marjorie May Berry, and Caleb James Jensen, reach out for mommy. With hands and mouths working overtime, they long for the certainty that mommy is near and has not left them alone.

In a few moments, all three will reach out for mommy and daddy as I thrust them into the baptismal waters. We will get a lump in our throat—as we should! Baptism is frightening because we go into the cold, unknown, scary water that shocks our system. More to the point, the water shocks Satan who lurks nearby to do his dirty deeds. Baptism is a monumental battle between good and evil. Is it any wonder these little ones scream and grasp for mommy and daddy? Oh yes, they realize the enormity of the struggle.

And we, the community of faith, stand by with bated breath. When the babies come up from the water, dripping and washed clean, cast free of Satan’s snare, we breathe a sigh of relief and sing with gusto, “Alleluia!” God has routed death yet again and we shout for all the world to hear, “Christ has triumphed! Alleluia!”

Any community worth its salt does not stop today as soon as Cassandra, Caleb, and Marjorie have been baptized. Though Christ has triumphed, the Evil One is thick-headed and will not surrender. One of the monumental challenges of good parenting and, yes, of faithful communities, is never forgetting the promises we make this day. We promise to bring these little ones to God’s house and to teach them the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. When the time comes, we place in their hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for their instruction in the Christian faith. The challenge is to keep these promises as these little ones grow older and as evil tempts them all the more. The promises we make on their behalf are not sweet nothings that can be easily forgotten once the baptismal clothes are packed away and the party is over. Satan refuses to give up. And so our responsibility as parents and the people of God, is to provide our little sisters and brother the weapons to fend off the evil one throughout their lives.

We all long for affection. The promises you make this day are about your affection for these dear little ones—not just for today, but for eternity.

As we grow older, we all continue to hunger for affection. On Friday, as part of her devotions for those preparing to feed the homeless—as we have done here now for thirty-seven years, Rachel Line (our administrator and TACO’s volunteer coordinator) focused on Jesus’ resurrection words: “Have you anything here to eat?” This is the question Jesus asks after he has risen from the dead. Rachel noted that five to ten times a day, someone comes knocking at our door and asks, “Do you have anything to eat?” The question can become tiring, monotonous, even maddening. And yet, the day any of us was baptized, someone promised to care for us and provide us with something to eat should we ever get hungry. And so, years later, a bit more bedraggled than the day we were baptized, some of us come knocking and ask, “Have you anything to eat?” God willing, we remember the day of baptism and we say, “Yes, we have something for you to eat.”

As the Dalai Lama counsels, it is a matter of affection. We give bread and wine, here on Sunday morning, too. People often comment: “Pastor Miller, you certainly give a huge chunk of bread at Holy Communion.” Yes indeed, a matter of affection: “Take and eat...” We do our best to announce that Christ is risen by answering Jesus’ question, “Have you anything to eat?” with a resounding “yes” and a delicious piece of bread.

I did my seminary field work at the Masonic Home and Hospital in Wallingford, Connecticut. One of my responsibilities was to lead worship on the dementia/Alzheimer’s unit. People who could not remember their husband’s name of sixty-five years could still sing “Rock of Ages” and “Jesus Loves Me.” When it came time to receive Holy Communion, we would give these aging saints tiny little wafers. One woman refused: “I am not eating cardboard.” Deep in her soul was the remembrance of her baptismal day when Jesus promised to give her something to eat even when she was lost in the fog of forgetfulness. In her own way, she was manifesting resurrection faith that Jesus would feed her day-by-day. Call it a matter of affection.

As tiny little babies reach for the security of mommy and daddy, as hungry homeless take a tray on Friday morning in our lounge, as the old woman’s arthritic fingers reach for the tasteless wafer, as you and I come yet again this morning, we all ask, “Have you anything here to eat”—we all reach out for God’s milk. It is all a matter of affection—we long for the Risen Savior.

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 15, 2012
Second Sunday of Easter
"Rumspringa"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Every year, on the Second Sunday of Easter, today a matter-of-fact, we hear Thomas request to see Jesus’ crucifixion wounds; unless he sees and touches these wounds, he will not believe that Christ has been raised from the dead. With the exception of Christmas Eve and a few feast days in the church year, no other day repeats the identical Bible reading every, single year.

The church cannot get enough of Thomas. Perhaps we talk about Thomas so much because there is a little bit of Thomas in each of us. Please do not raise your hand, but do you harbor a doubt or two?

If the truth be told, many of us prefer not to talk about our doubts, at least in polite Christian company. We learned in Sunday School that good Christian boys and girls have no doubts and, if they do, it is best not to tell a soul. Whatever doubts we have, we keep them locked tight and buried deep.

Is it any wonder that when many young people head off to college and take their first religion course, their lives are often turned upside down? Some parents like to blame liberal arts colleges and so-called liberal professors for our children’s doubts. Perhaps the problem is that our young ones have spent eighteen years with their doubts boiling under a lid, ready to explode; never have they been offered the opportunity to blow off the steam of doubt. I believe we owe great debt of gratitude to colleges and professors for providing a safe haven where the festering questions of faith can finally be dealt with without ridicule, threat, or judgment.

Many of us never learned that doubts are actually a necessary ingredient to a vibrant faith. Does that surprise you? We never heard anything like what Frederick Buechner writes: “…if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep…Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep [faith] awake and moving.” Such thinking might even horrify us. And maybe we were asleep in Confirmation Class when Martin Luther’s explanation for the third article of the Apostles’ Creed came up: “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.” If the giants of the faith have created room for doubt and questions, why is it that the church has so often been embarrassed by them and prohibited them?

The Amish community is viewed by most of us as incredibly tradition bound and conservative when it comes to religious matters. You might be surprised to learn that the Amish have a tradition called rumspringa (“running around”). When Amish young people turn sixteen, they are permitted to venture out into the world and, for the first time, are free to behave as they choose, even if that means indulging in the heretical stuff of dancing, drugs, alcohol, and television. Rumspringa offers Amish youth an opportunity for doubt and questioning, to blow off a little steam if necessary. It allows these protected young people the opportunity to go out into the world and touch Jesus’ nail and spear holes if they so choose.

We Lutherans do not call this time of life rumspringa; we call it “post confirmation.” This is a frightening time for many parents, pastors, and parishioners. As young people begin to resemble Thomas with their doubts and many demonstrate lackadaisical attitudes toward the church, we worry that we have done something terribly wrong. We try to put a stop to this stage of life as quickly as possible. We create new-fangled worship services with hopes of attracting young adults; we give them names like “contemporary” and “seeker friendly.” Pastors go to conferences and read millions of books on young adult ministry imagining that they might discover magical solutions for the “retention of youth.” Council meetings and congregational meetings are filled with the inevitably scary and often judgmental question, “Where have all the youth gone? What are we doing wrong?” Somebody or something must be blamed—the parents, the pastor, the style of worship.

Could it be that we have not paid careful enough attention to how Jesus treated Thomas? Could it be that we have not discovered the grace of Jesus and learned to honor the questions and doubts not only in our young people’s lives but in our older lives as well? Do our youth’s honest questions scare us because, so long ago, we lost the courage to ask the very same questions?

The Orthodox Church, another pretty conservative religious outfit, reads the fourth century Easter sermon of Saint John Chrysostom every year. No one has ever accused the Orthodox Church of being wishy-washy when it comes to matters of faith. But listen to a bit of John Chrysostom’s sermon:

I trust that we, too, can be a graceful community that makes room at this table for those who harbor doubts and have a million questions. May we somehow be like Jesus and make room for Thomas in our midst for, almost certainly, Thomas is each of us.

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 8, 2012
Easter Morning
John 20: 1-18
"No to Death, Yes to "

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Your presence here this morning, your dazzling finery, and your shouts of joy make this quite a glorious day!

God has raised Jesus from the dead! Is it any wonder we make such a to-do this Easter morning?

You would think, given the hoopla, that we would have found a more festive story to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. There must be one where the disciples high five and chest bump each other when they find the tomb empty; there must be one where Mary Magdalene and the other women pirouette all the way home after discovering that Jesus’ body has vanished from the graveyard.

Oddly, none of the four resurrection stories have people dancing with delight. Perhaps the church should hire “hypesters” from NCAA March Madness or the Masters golf tournament to enhance the Easter accounts. What we get instead of hype are heartbreaking tales of forlorn folks befuddled by the immensity of it all. Mary Magdalene goes to the cemetery alone, finds the stone rolled away, and runs in the opposite direction. She does not shout, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” She pouts: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Not exactly the Easter parade.

When Mary reports what she has seen to Peter and the other disciple, they do not say, “Mary, you dummy, Jesus has risen from the dead!” Oh no, they take off running to the tomb as fast as their feet will carry them—big shots, those guys! When they arrive, the other disciple looks in but does enter. Peter then goes in and is baffled by the empty grave cloths. He doesn’t shout “Christ is risen!” He just stands there. Then the other disciple goes in and the Bible claims, “He saw and believed.” Not too shabby but then John’s gospel adds these puzzling words to the beloved disciple’s resurrection faith: “for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” What that means, I will never know. What I do know is there are no fireworks or marching bands. The disciples simply return home. They look more like dogs with their tails between their legs than people celebrating Jesus Christ’s resurrection.

What we see next is that Mary has returned to the tomb. She is weeping—not exactly Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” Jesus is standing there with her but she supposes him to be a gardener. Odd, don’t you think? A gardener?

Or is it so odd?

You have come here this morning, some because you do this every Sunday, others because it is Easter, and still others because, well, those you care about were coming and it was this or no Easter brunch afterwards. Whatever the case, you are here. It may all feel a bit hokey—you do not typically stand around screaming, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” And, not to put too fine a point on it, but what in the world is the resurrection of Jesus anyway? (The bulletin cover by Max Engel, a sixth grader in our Confirmation Class, says it all.)

If you are a bit uncertain about this resurrection stuff, join the excellent company of Peter and Mary Magdalene, the beloved disciple and so many others who arrive at the empty tomb, look in, and utter, “Huh?” Not “Christ is risen!” but “huh?”

By the way, it is okay to say “huh?” Resurrections do not occur on a daily basis; in fact, a resurrection has only been reported to have occurred once in the history of the world.

The amazing thing is that there are communities of people who stake their lives on the claim that Jesus has been raised from the dead. These communities cannot explain Christ’s resurrection but they believe with all their hearts that God conquers death for all creation.

We can see such a resurrection community right here. Millions and millions of dollars have been offered here over the past 124 years by ordinary people just like you whose deepest desire is to proclaim that God’s answer to death is always “no” and God’s answer to life is always “yes.” Death must never be the final answer in this place! We say “yes” to life here by offering free meals and free medical, acupuncture, dental, legal, and social services to all who come by here; dying homeless people are accompanied with dignity in their final days and even buried next door in our chapel. All this occurs because people have believed over the years that God cherishes life. Can we prove it? Of course not! But we push all our chips to the center of the table, betting that God makes no junk, that every human life is invaluable in God’s eyes. Call it resurrection.

You know this though, don’t you? You recently ran to a dear friend’s house in the middle of the night when you received word her husband had just died of a massive heart attack. When the new widow opened the door, you were speechless. You ended up stumbling a bit, saying things like “God will not forget your loved one,” “He is in God’s hands now,” “God will give you peace.” You felt out of sorts. You could not explain a resurrection in a million years but, in your words, you told your dear friend that because Christ died and rose, her husband would rise too. Call it resurrection.

I have heard your resurrection story. You were spiraling down, fast and ugly, drinking far too many half gallons of cheap vodka. You received DUI’s, lost your marriage, squandered the better years of your life. And then, in a way that flabbergasted you, you heard God say “yes” to you in a way that trumped all your crazy “no’s.” God called you by name and said you mattered when you had all but forgotten how precious you are. You have been sober for eight years and counting. Yes indeed, call it resurrection.

As Mary Magdalene stands at the tomb weeping, out of the blue, Jesus calls her by name, too: “Mary.” That is all it takes. She is no fancy-dancy-schmancy theologian, but when she hears Jesus call her name, her life is changed. Oh yes, call it THE Resurrection!

You have come here this morning like so many before you. You, too, may be wondering, what is resurrection? I invite you: let your imagination run wild; listen for the Risen Savior calling your name. Imagine a place where there are no more tears, where wars are distant memories, and death is unthinkable. It’s hard to imagine, I know—and that is a good thing. It means that Jesus’ conquering death is beyond your wildest dreams. Frankly, if we understood resurrection, we could all do a resurrection and how spectacular would that be? This resurrection, the one where Jesus bursts the tomb wide open and promises life eternal for us and those we love, well, that one is up to God. And that, my dear friends, is what all the shouting is about today.

And so, since we are all here, for good measure, let’s give our Easter shout one more boisterous try…

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 7, 2012
Easter Vigil
"Let Me Tell You a Story"

This is the night when light scatters the darkness, when life trumps death, and when God prevails! This is the night when God’s “yes” hushes all the world’s “no’s,” making them mute and irrelevant.

This is the night when we tell stories to one another, not just any stories but God’s stories.

Let me tell you a story…

We have all told stories around campfires and living room hearths. No sooner has one story been told than another springs forth.

“Oh, oh, oh, let me tell you this story.” There are all manner of interruptions, no one can wait to tell their story: “Let me tell, let me tell. Let me go next. I have a great one!”

We always want to tell a more outrageous story than the previous one, a funnier one, a more astonishing one. Each story must up the ante of astonishment and surprise.

There are memories, tears, and laughter in the telling of these stories; there is delight that touches others’ hearts. Wired deep in our soul is that ancient longing, “In the beginning was the word and the word was God.”

We long to tell a story. Words. Wondrous words. God’s word.

Here we are, once again, gathered at night by the fire—the Easter fire, the paschal fire. We are about to tell stories, one more marvelous than the last. And then there comes the one of the empty tomb, the most astonishing story ever told. It is the story we tell when no other story will do, when no other story is capable of wiping away the tears or offering any semblance of hope. We tell the story at kitchen tables late into the night. We tell the story to a friend whose life has spun out of control and who needs one last story. We tell the story when illness has rendered a dear friend speechless. Oh, my, how we need to tell the story whose ending can only be told by God.

We have gathered to tell stories filled with God’s power and beauty, with words that create life from chaos, that free slaves from wicked rulers, that cause boneyards to rattle with life, that burst tombs asunder when death’s stench still lingers, that call people like you and me once again to the waters of baptism where life is promised forever. All these stories are ones where God rules the day…and the night...and eternity.

So let the stories begin. God’s stories.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 6, 2012
Good Friday
John 18: 1 - 19:42
"Amidst the Heart of Darkness"

In our quiet little gathering here tonight, we feel stranded and forsaken, left to wallow in pity and pain. Jesus’ words, “It is finished,” echo through this sanctuary.

The darkness is tinged with loneliness. Jesus has died and, like Peter and his friends, Mary and hers, we are left to ponder what has happened.

Loneliness takes its fiercest toll following the death of a loved one. You know that. Family and friends have returned home; all that remains are a few spoonfuls of potato salad, a handful of cookie crumbs, and an extra portion of left-over memories. All is quiet. It is then that the long loneliness sets in.

The day of my father’s funeral and burial, I told my mother that I would get up early the next morning and help her with the things that needed done—going through financial documents, cleaning up, making necessary calls to the attorney and the bank. When I awoke that morning, I felt as if I were battling a vicious bout of the flu. My stomach was so cramped that I went straight back to bed. The long loneliness had set in: the one I loved and who loved me was gone.

You have been there, alone, wondering whether the ache will ever go away. The broken heart, the tears, the “what ifs”—almost too much to bear. Have you lost your mind, you wonder, as the sleepless nights persist and death renders you helpless and blue?

Here we are on Good Friday evening. Yet again, the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed. And, yet again, amidst the quietness of this hallowed evening, we pause to remember all that has happened to Jesus and, of course, his great love for us. We can still hear the nails, the tearing flesh, and those words, “It is finished.” We envision Jesus descending into the depths of the greatest loneliness, hell itself, so that we might be comforted forever.

Somehow though, tonight, in the heart of darkness, we are reminded that we are never alone; even in this deep darkness, we have a friend who will never leave us.

And so, it is good for us, at least once a year, on this silent night, holy night, to remember that death is not the final word. It is a good and right thing to remember that in the utter despair of “I am thirsty,” “it is finished,” and our Savior’s final breath, that we do have a friend. This friend ventures into the unknown, into the jaws of hell, so that we might know the joy of God’s presence even on this night and even unto ages and ages, forever and ever.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 5, 2012
Maundy Thursday
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
"You Will Have to Learn to Do This for Yourself"

Tonight is the night of remembrance. We remember what Jesus has told us to do.

The word Maundy—Maundy Thursday—comes from the Latin word mandatum which means command—“Do this.” We remember to “do this.”

As I think you know, I have been quite taken of late with the Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall. Not only has he influenced my thinking, but, perhaps more importantly, his gentleness has touched me deeply.

It was with great joy that I received the Halls’ Christmas letter this year. Dr. Hall wrote of visiting their family in Vienna, Austria, during the Christmas holidays. The letter was filled with learned observations on European history and reflections on composers who have made Vienna a musical wonderland. What particularly moved me, though, were Dr. Hall’s reflections on his family and in particular his dear four-year old grandson, Daniel. Dr. Hall writes: “For the first five nights, Daniel tucked me into bed and kissed me good-night, very sweetly. On the sixth night, however, he announced, ‘You will have to learn to do this for yourself.’”

Grandpa and Grandma Hall, in their eighties, would soon fly back to Montreal and “The Little Theologian” would not be there to tuck them in and kiss them good-night. Somehow, though, you can imagine that every time Oma and Opa (Grandma and Grandpa) tuck themselves into bed these nights and exchange a good night kiss, they remember that their little Daniel has snuggled in with them.

“You will have to learn to do this yourself.” Jesus could have just as easily spoken “Little Daniel the Theologian’s” words. Jesus commanded his disciples on his final evening to love one another. Not only that, he told them, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” And he took some bread and wine and told his friends, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Our Lutheran tradition places great importance on learning to do these things right. We send men and women to seminary so they can learn Jesus’ words. When they visit dying parishioners in hospitals, go to the homes of those too old to worship here, and preside at occasions like this evening, they will remember Jesus’ words and, with them, will touch those they are called to serve.

We are a community of memory. We remember Jesus’ words, cherishing them and passing them down from one generation to the next. Loving, eating, washing— somehow Christ is present with us in a way that passes all human understanding.

“You will have to learn to do this for yourself.” We are a community that has watched closely and listened carefully to our Savoir. And so, once again, we do what Jesus has commanded us and, in so doing, we celebrate his presence with us.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 1, 2012
Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion
Mark 14: 1 – 15:39
"Hosanna or Crucify Him-Which Is It?"

Imagine the excitement of being in Jerusalem as Jesus enters the holy city. The thrill of it all—the crowds jockeying for position at the curb, the palm branches being sold at every corner, the king coming in sight any minute now. You arrived the night before and have one of the best seats in town. You will be within arms length of Jesus when he passes by and have already joined in with the crowd’s fevered chant: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”

The other part of this week, though, when we join the other frenzy, the other fevered chant, “Crucify him”—that is another matter. We may even be offended at the suggestion that we would shout such a thing.

There is no other day in the church year when our best and worst thoughts and actions and failures to act come so close together. We have our soaring moments, of course we do, and, to be honest, we have our nauseating ones as well. Our decency and depravity are mixed together like a riotous child’s kaleidoscope.

Today is not just a story about how religious leaders, occupying soldiers, petty politicos, and run-of-the-mill bystanders treated Jesus 2,000 years ago. Today is also about how we treat Jesus now.

As this Holy Week unfolds, the mood swings will be electrifying, at times exhilarating and at others disgusting. There will be moments when we understand Judas’ betrayal; it will call to mind an occasion in our own life when we stooped to a pathetic low just to satisfy some wretched desire. There will be moments when we grasp Peter’s spineless denials; we will hearken back to a dismal bout of cowardice when we should have stood up for what mattered but refused to do so for fear of what others might say. And even Pilate—while we have not achieved such power—we understand his part in Jesus’ death; like politicians seeking their party’s nomination, we, too, try to curry favor with others and change like an Etch-a-Sketch to get ahead. Oh yes, we understand.

At no other time in the church year are emotions quite as raw as during this Holy Week. I was at a worship service similar to this when one of the readers broke down in tears and could not go on—what moment was she dredging up in her life, what failure deep down in her soul? I have watched you during Holy Week services, sitting here in somber silence when worship ended: what were you pondering, what part did you play in Jesus’ crucifixion—dare I ask? You were paralyzed as much by your complicity in Christ’s death as by his wondrous love for you. Can your good friend, Jesus, love you enough after what you have done or left undone? Sometimes it causes us to tremble!

It is amazing, though, isn’t it, no matter how we act, decently or devilishly, courageously or cowardly, how Jesus holds the donkey’s reins steady as he draws near to Calvary. He loves us so much that he rides on in considerable majesty, straight to the cross.

But is not quite enough to stare at Jesus with mouths agape. Of course, we can watch Jesus and learn of his obedience unto death and his love for us. But there is more, there is an opportunity to learn from those who watched Jesus close up. We can learn how to live in the face of our failures, how to move forward in spite of them. We can learn to do the mundane tasks, much as Simon of Cyrene did when he did nothing more than bear Jesus’ cross; though we have failed, we, too, can still make a difference in Jesus’ name. We can learn to pray as did the wretched thief next to Jesus on another cross; even though we stumble and sometimes fall, we can keep praying, “Jesus, remember me in your kingdom.” We can learn to be like the women who went to the tomb, numb with grief, and yet prepared to anoint Jesus’ lifeless body; we, too, can rise up the morning after our defeats and anoint those we love with works of mercy.

The learnings from this week can be many if we only keep our eyes and ears open. We will experience the tears, the anger, the numbness as we walk under the shadow of the cross; and yet, by the grace of God, we will also taste the grace of our Savior who loves us so much that we will be changed forever.

A blessed Holy Week to you.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 25, 2012
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Hebews 5: 5-10; John 12: 20-33
"The Glorious Struggle"

Holy Cross Lutheran Church had the loveliest sanctuary I ever saw. The church was located at 9th and Lehigh. This is one of Philadelphia’s toughest neighborhoods in a city with more than its fair share of tough neighborhoods. Back in 1977, Holy Cross’s pastor, Father Howard Black, wrote to a friend of mine who was about to begin ministry in another tough Philly neighborhood. He said of this new pastor’s ministry to come, “It will be a glorious struggle!”

Father Black’s coupling of the word “glorious” and “struggle” hardly makes sense.

As Jesus drew near his death on the cross, he said, “It is for this reason I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Not in a million years did Jesus’ followers imagine that his “glory” would come by dying on the cross. How could glory and struggle ever be inextricably linked?

We expect a different kind of glory for Jesus. We expect glory more in keeping with the title our second reading from Hebrews confers on Jesus when it calls him “a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” “The order of Melchizedek”—that has a glorious ring for our expectations of Jesus.

Not much is known of Melchizedek other than he blessed old father Abraham and bore Abraham’s tithe to the altar. The thought of “a priest in the order of Melchizedek” creates an image of a six-foot-seven man standing three steps up at the majestic high altar in a gothic cathedral; he has a flowing white mane, is dressed in ornate brocade robes, and chants the prayers in a stately baritone voice. The priest is separated from the people by clouds of incense that make it nearly impossible to see him. This glorious territory is where only a few are privileged to tread.

This is the sort of glory I had in mind as a boy when I concluded that I wanted to be a pastor some day. I loved dressing up like a priest according to the order of Melchizedek though I had frankly never heard of Melchizekek! I wore the requisite bed sheet for a robe and a satiny red Christmas ribbon for a stole. I stood gazing in the bathroom mirror as I practiced my chanting and preaching style with the family Bible in hand. Now this was glory!

When Father Black spoke of the “glorious struggle” of ministry, he was talking about a far different kind of glory. He was a pastor who walked the mean streets of North Philadelphia at all hours. If a young boy was murdered, he was immediately with the family at their ramshackle row house on Indiana Avenue. If Grandma Perkins was rushed to Temple Hospital at four in the morning, he was right behind the ambulance. This was what it meant to be a priest in the “glorious struggle.”

This “glorious struggle” is a different way of seeing God. The priest, Jesus, came down from the high altar and lived among the people. The writer of Hebrews says of Jesus, "He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.”

It takes a dramatic shift of gears to discover glory amidst the struggle. William Sloane Coffin preached a Good Friday sermon in which he spoke of the book Your God Is Too Small by J. B. Phillips. He suggested that our God, rather than being too small, may actually be too big: “Your God is too big to keep his eye on the sparrow, too big to worry about every abused child, too big to worry about the children the world around.” God became small in Jesus, small enough to die on the cross.

I suppose most of us—all of us perhaps?—prefer a God way up high and yet we so desperately need a God way down low…here. Our high priest needs to be wrapped in robes of suffering and vulnerability not stateliness and certainty. Our priest needs vestments sewn with fabrics of lowliness and weakness not arrogance and might.

Many people refuse to make the journey under the shadow of the cross—it is too depressing, too much of a downer. Many prefer to show up only on Easter when the cross has been removed from our center aisle and replaced with lilies and songs of joy. We are so used to looking for a priest who stands above us that we are jolted when our priest ends up getting arrested, jailed, roughed up, sentenced to death, and killed with the cruelest form of capital punishment. This is a smaller God than we expect. This is a priest who spent his life with people like you and me, sick and wretched people, maimed and blind people, cynical and dispirited people, drunk and depressed people. This priest wears such odd vestments that most people have a hard time recognizing him as God’s own son when he walks down the street.

And yet, only in this way could Jesus glorify God’s name.

Earlier we heard the hauntingly beautiful music, “Gabriel’s Oboe,” from the movie, The Mission. The movie is about the glorious struggle of eighteenth century missionaries who come to South America from Spain. The Spanish priests struggle against the powerful church of Europe as they minister with the indigenous people in the South American rain forests. Eventually, the priests and their parishioners are slaughtered by the mighty ones who long for a different kind of God, a God of the high and mighty, a God with priests standing high up at marble altars amidst clouds of incense. The haunting music of “Gabriel’s Oboe” calls us to a similar glorious struggle as those missionaries in South America where the church sides with the vulnerable and uneducated, dies with the poor and powerless, and mysteriously, in so doing, finds Jesus in our midst.

We have tried to be part of the glorious struggle during this Lenten season. Many of you have put on the vestments of solidarity with our Christian brothers and sisters at Christo Rey in Lima, Peru. We could keep the more than $4,000 in offerings here—God knows we need it for our own outreach ministry to the poor and rejected and wretched, but, by God’s grace, you have joined the glorious struggle, discovering the authenticity of life lived in service to our poorer neighbors to the south, all in the name of Jesus Christ.

In our ministry here and now in Peru, God calls us to come down from the high altar. May we follow where Jesus our High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek calls us. May we be linked to the glorious struggle in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior for the salvation of the whole world.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 18, 2012
Fourth Sunday in Lent
John 3: 14-21
"Quite a Beastly Text"

In his new book, The Four Gospels on Sunday, worship scholar Gordon Lathrop calls the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John “beasts.” Mark is the lion, Luke the ox, Matthew the beast with a human face, and John the eagle. These beasts are dangerous and not to be tamed.

Let’s take a closer look at this morning’s gospel reading from John, the eagle: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We ask: Does God’s love for the world include the whole world, including suicide bombers, Ponzi schemers, and drug dealers or are there limits to God’s love? Does God eventually say, “Enough!” Those are tough questions. This beast cannot be tamed.

John 3:16 gets even beastlier. “God gave his only Son.” What kind of God gives his only son to die on the cross? If you were at worship this summer, you heard Kit Brothers read the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on a scorching fire. Kit’s voice cracked as he read about Abraham placing his son on the sacrificial fire; the horror of it all was too much to bear.

A seminary friend of mine, Chris Schlauch, who teaches at the School of Theology at Boston University, writes: “The question, ‘What kind of God would allow one of his children to be sacrificed for his other children?’ is central to the gospel message.”

God’s love takes us to untamed places, places that make us uncomfortable and frighten us silly.

Chris Schlauch goes on: “Our question about a God willing to allow one child to be harmed for the well-being of other children illustrates the limits of our understanding. It is only through being born anew that [we are] able to see and hear with new eyes and ears, to understand the depth of God’s love that is signaled in such a confounding way by this passage.”

When we think of God as a parent, like our mom or dad, we tame the beast and reduce God to our own measly insights. God becomes like a fuzzy puppy, not a powerful beast. Like Nicodemus who came to Jesus in the night, we must come to Jesus and be born again if we are ever to come close to grasping God’s love for the world and us.

And yet, it is true that parents sometimes surprise us with what great lengths they go to protect and care for their children. Some parents can give us a glimpse into astonishing love.

In these challenging economic times, I talk to many parents who are financially supporting their adult children. They are using their own retirement savings to assist their beloved children who are unable to find jobs. These parents are not retiring as early as they had wished. Their friends mock them, saying, “Let your children fend for themselves. Enjoy you retirement. You earned it. Put a bumper sticker on your car—‘we are spending our kids’ inheritance.’” These obviously are not words of parents making profound sacrifices for the love of their children.

In the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated (March 12, 2012), the sacrifice of another parent is lifted up. Former University of Oregon distance runner Rhiannon Hull and her six-year-old son, Julian, moved to Costa Rica where she started a kindergarten of the Waldorf tradition. She and her son went swimming in the Pacific Ocean on October 28. Suddenly, a great tidal fluctuation came out of nowhere and swept them out to sea. Though Hull was a world class distance runner, nothing she had faced tested her physical strength quite like the battle with the ocean. Two local surfers saw the mother and son struggling for their lives. One of the surfers swam out to save them and retrieved the son. As he turned to place the six-year-old on his surf board, the mother sank and was lost. Estimates are that this mother held her son up out of the water for half an hour as she kept going under. Hers was a superhuman effort especially for a mediocre swimmer.

Rhiannon Hull saved her son, she died. This is deep love. This is the kind of love God has for you and me only God’s love is far deeper. Sacrificial love is impossible to understand unless, of course, you are the one in love. Love is not a quality that holds up well to intellectual debate, theological inquiry, or self interest. Sacrificial love is always more profound than anything we can grasp. Sacrificial love inevitably leaves bystanders asking, “Why did she do that?” or saying, “That doesn’t make a bit of sense.” God’s love for his children is even more difficult to comprehend.

My friend Chris writes: “When we hear [“For God so loved the world…], we should not avoid the confusion. We should not prematurely ‘resolve’ the unimaginable dilemma. We should embrace it.” If we stand dumbfounded in the face of God’s mysterious love, we may be born anew and “hear heavenly things in a new way—and begin to understand more deeply and fully what now confounds and even repulses us. It is the experience of the unimaginable that reveals the poverty of our human thinking and imagination.”

Maybe the best way to grasp this kind of love is to examine the love we know best, the love that has been witnessed here at First Lutheran Church over the years. Today is our 124th birthday. Since March 18, 1888, this ministry has not seemed terribly wise to those not in love with this neighborhood and who do not care for her people. Ministry in God’s name has often been risky here and there are outsiders who have seen our love for this place as crazy or, worse, have condemned what we do and even ridiculed us—and there are those who continue to do that to this very day. Members over the years, just as you do, have committed time and money, sweat and tears, so that Christ’s love might be known here. That love has been showered on people for whom most of the world finds unlovable and expendable. There have been times—and there will be times—when we feel like that mother holding up her child for dear life or, better yet, like God giving his son for the world.

God’s love has birthed remarkable surprises here throughout the past 124 years. Just in the past few months, we have had to add chairs to our sanctuary due to the growing number of worshipers. It seems, by God’s grace, that the sacrifices of the saints’ who have called this church “home” continue to pay rich dividends as we sink the roots of heaven deeper in this place and seek to open our doors and tables wider.

God’s love surpasses our human understanding. The love we see friends and parents shower upon one another is dwarfed in comparison to God giving his only son for our sake. And so when we ask, “How could God love the world so much as to offer his only Son?” perhaps it is best simply to sing, “What Wondrous Love Is This.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 11, 2012
Third Sunday in Lent
1 Corinthians 1: 18-25
"There's a Crack in Everything"

Most of us have been around Christianity long enough now to be comfortable with the cross. We enter church and see it and it is like a dear friend, blending in with the brickwork and organ pipes and stucco ceiling. We even wear it around our neck or tattoo it on our arm because it is such a good friend.

I particularly like our Lenten cross placed at the center of our sanctuary. If you are not careful, you will stumble over it. A bit of a nuisance, to be sure, to get to your chair or to Communion but, otherwise, the old rugged cross is a good friend indeed.

Comfy with the cross? We have almost forgotten that the cross is an instrument of execution. We could just as easily place a hangman’s noose from the ceiling or place an electric chair in the aisle. That would shake us up!

How easy to forget that the cross is a stumbling block for so many and foolishness to quite a few others. The cross at the center of our life is a deal breaker for many: any religion with an instrument of death at its heart….well, I think you can finish the sentence.

This God comes and dies for us. “Foolishness!” many cry.

When Saint Paul spoke of the cross, he was speaking to the cosmopolitan city of Corinth, a city filled with people bedazzled by soaring oratory and mesmerized by the latest fashionable intellectual skills. And then there was the cross. As Paul noted, it was a stumbling block, foolishness.

Is it any wonder in our own age that many churches have gotten rid of the cross altogether? Crosses are depressing unless, of course, Jesus’ body is kept off or if the cross is decorated as a chic piece of furniture. But the bare cross, in all its starkness, ghastliness, and deathliness, is an offense if it is the center of our church’s life. Go to churches with thousands at worship and you will likely have a hard time finding a cross. Churches that want to grow are warned to keep the cross out of sight.

And yet, of the cross, says Saint Paul, “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

In the book one of our groups is using during Lent, Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr writes: “I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken again, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others” (Richard Rohr, pg. 12).

The poet and musician Leonard Cohen sings it a bit differently, “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets through.”

So much of the world is geared to not being cracked and certainly not broken. We prefer success, victory, wealth, fame. If there is brokenness, it is best to hide the cracks with a lovely veneer so no one will know the trouble we’ve seen.

And yet, we are crying out for someone who understands our brokenness, someone who can empathize with our pain, someone who can embrace our anguish. Many of us are crying out for authentic people, not phonies, for people who have found some health in the midst of their brokenness.

The cross is a crack in creation. The cross is how God gets heavenly light into the midst of our broken world.

Once we become a community of the cross, we no longer have to hide our brokenness. Suddenly, as people of the cross, our cracks are visible for all to see. There is no whispering of secrets because there are no hidden secrets to be whispered about—we are cracked for all to see and, surprise, surprise, the light is shining through.

Sadly, the church, while it would never admit is, has catered to fraud. How many of us learned as children that Christianity is about being good girls and boys? A wise pastor once told me that the worst thing we can teach children is that Christianity is about being good girls and boys. Children should learn in Sunday School that they are broken, sinners, imperfect. Perhaps, if children learn this, there might be hope to create communities that can teach one another to lean on the everlasting arms of God.

Our Lenten group has heard personal testimonies of how Alcoholics Anonymous and groups like it create the occasion for people to share their brokenness and to let the light through.

Frederick Buechner writes of such groups: “Know that you can trust these people with your secrets because they have trusted you with theirs. The meeting in the basement begins with all of you introducing yourselves,' I am Fred…I am Mary…I am Scotty,' you say, and each time the rest of the group responds with 'Hi, Fred… Hi, Mary . . .Hi, Scotty. Just by getting yourself there and saying that, you have told an extremely important secret, which is that you cannot go it alone.”

He goes on: "I do not believe that such groups as these . . .or Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the group they all grew out of, are not perfect any more than anything human is perfect, but I believe that the church has an enormous amount to learn from them. I also believe that what goes on in them is far closer to what Christ meant his church to be, and what it originally was, than much of what goes on in most churches I know. These groups have no buildings or official leadership or money. They have no rummage sales, no altar guilds, no every-member canvases. They have no preachers, no choirs, no liturgy, no real estate. They have no creeds. They have no program. They make you wonder if the best thing that could happen to many a church might not be to have its building burn down and to lose all its money. Then all that the people would have left would be God and each other." (Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets: A Memoir)

How wonderful if all we had here at First Lutheran was God and each other.

During this Lenten season, may we admit to our brokenness and discover God’s light shining through the cross and through the brokenness of one another.

Let us confess, “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets through.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 10, 2012
Memorial Service for Michelle Matson
Matthew 6: 25-29

In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas writes:

In Michelle’s own unique and beautiful way, she raged against the dying of the light. Said more positively, Michelle loved life.

You who loved Michelle and journeyed with her through the valley of the shadow of death know that she loved life far too much to accept death easily.

You who have shared remembrances this afternoon and those who have shared stories in recent days have spoken repeatedly of how much Michelle adored life and how she eagerly anticipated every new adventure. It started when she was a tiny tyke and continued until the day she died.

A few days ago when I asked Mark to share his thoughts about Michelle, he said, “I’m not sure I have that kind of time.” Michelle’s life was far too vibrant to capture in a few words or even fully in this celebration this afternoon…And yet, I must say, you have tried your best.

I sensed at almost every stage of planning today’s service that you wanted to avoid, at all costs, one of those services where the pastor fills in the blanks and people walk out saying, “Who in the world was he talking about?” You have jealously protected this occasion, making certain the focus is on Michelle’s zest for life… and I say, hooray for you!

Whenever I have thought of Michelle in recent days and months, I have been reminded of a little poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Listen:

Michelle took off her shoes over and over again because she beheld a universe crammed with heaven.

Many funeral services talk a lot about heaven and that is not such a bad thing. Michelle, amazingly, did not wait until she died to taste the glory of heaven. Michelle taught us how to catch breathtaking glimpses of heaven right here on earth. She took Jesus’ prayer seriously: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Hear Michelle say, “On earth as in heaven.” Hear her say, “If earth is crammed with heaven, why wait until you die to experience its wonders?”

Michelle’s mother, Elva—you recalled your daughter growing up, building boardwalks through the Everglades as a teenager even though you weren’t sure that was such a good idea, swimming and snorkeling and scuba-diving, horseback riding in the Dakotas—she lived life at breakneck speed, thrilled by every moment. She celebrated earth crammed with heaven.

Michelle’s brother, David—you spoke of your big sister, eleven years older than you. She always had answers for you; you could call her a “scholar of creation.” When you wondered why lightening lighted, she told you why. When you wanted to buy a canoe, she instructed you on the finer details of boat stability…This woman knew creation!

Michelle taught you all a thing or two about discovering earth crammed with heaven. She taught you of the thick-billed Kingbird, the gray flycatcher, the Townsend’s warbler… You loved her because she encouraged you to get more out of your life.

Of course, Michelle did not accept death. Life was for living not for dying. Perhaps you were as surprised as I when you learned that Michelle and Mark were going bird-watching in Trinidad a few weeks ago. You said, “Trinidad? Now?” You have learned from Michelle that bird-watching is a good and noble thing and yet be honest: you wondered how Mark and she could go on such an excursion. Things looked bleak: Michelle was on oxygen; she over-heated easily; she was weak, in a hospital bed in the living room. Mark—as you did so astonishingly well and lovingly throughout Michelle’s illness—you catered to Michelle’s every need, carrying her across the living room to get her from place to place. When I visited with Michelle and Mark before they headed off to Trinidad, I must confess to having had some “pastoral fear and trepidation”: can they take oxygen tanks on planes; can you carry her, Mark? But then it struck me: Michelle was raging against the dying of the light and Mark was her partner in crime, helping her every step of the way, cheating death and eking out every bit of life left this side of the kingdom come. Earth was crammed with heaven and Michelle was going to drink it all up if she could.

Trinidad? Think: “On earth as in heaven.” Think the spectacular green honeycreeper, the stunning Rufous-breasted hermit hummingbird, the exotic scarlet ibis. And so off Michelle and Mark went to glimpse a few of the exotic birds that Michelle had not yet added to her bird count. Even in her final breaths, Michelle wanted to see more. Nothing had changed since she was a little girl—life was for living—and she had a wonderful partner, Mark, who said, “Let’s go, Michelle.” Her final breaths were a celebration of a life lived well and fully, bird-watching in Trinidad.

Now, we must take our cue from Michelle and dare to allow her to embark on an adventure like no other. Close your eyes for a moment and picture Michelle: what is she doing right now?.......Of course, we do not know exactly—it is a trip filled with the astonishing promises of Jesus. Jesus’ life and death and resurrection prepared Michele for this adventure called death. Jesus told her to take the journey and not to fear. As Michelle trusted Mark to take her to Trinidad, now we must trust Jesus to take Michelle on this next adventure. Michelle would tell us: the most thrilling adventures are almost always ventures into the unknown. This time, Michelle’s new adventure ends up at the doorsteps of God’s mansion in heaven. Not in our wildest dreams can we fathom what God has in store for Michelle so grand are the promises. We can only begin to imagine her walking through the gates of heaven.

As a daughter, a wife, a sister, a friend who got more out of life than most, she now has embarked on a new journey, trusting only that God is leading her and guiding her. This God, who watches over the sparrow, now watches over Michelle. This God, who raised his son from the dead, promises now to raise up Michelle to new life.

So I urge you to open your hands and let her fly. As she flies heavenward, remember Jesus’ words: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you, Michelle, not of more value than they?”

My dear friends, let Michelle fly. Watch her soar like a sparrow into the arms of God.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 4, 2012
Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16; Romans 4: 13-25; Mark 8: 31-38
"God's Dirty Fingernails"

Let’s immediately get this straight: Peter loved Jesus. When Mark’s gospel says, “Peter rebuked Jesus,” Peter was saying to Jesus, “How dare you die on us?”

Peter and the other disciples had big plans for Jesus. It was Peter who said, “You are the Messiah,” in that most eloquent of confessional statements. This Messiah, Jesus the Christ, would make the disciples’ hopes and dreams come alive. He would conquer the occupying nation and return Israel to its rightful owners, the chosen people of God.

You can imagine the disappointment of Peter and his friends when Jesus started talking about undergoing suffering and rejection and death on the cross. Their dreams were being dashed before their very eyes. If someone you love starts talking that way, about impending suffering and death, you quickly try to steer them in another direction, helping them see that they have a long life ahead of them and much still to accomplish. The last thing Peter wanted was to look at Jesus on a cross.

Let’s also get this straight: Jesus loved Peter. When Jesus looked into Peter’s eyes and said, “Get behind me, Satan!” he was trying to make Peter understand how much he loved him.

I suppose it is only human to prefer Jesus to be much more than we are, to be more heavenly and not so tied to earthly experiences, to walk at least a few yards above the earth if not more. If Jesus is also God, the last thing we want is him going and dying on us. We would prefer our God to have more pizzazz, to be more esoteric, to be higher up in the clouds. I have a hunch that many people opt out of Christianity and turn to more esoteric religions because Christianity is so down to earth, so, well, human, such a “dirt in the finger nails” kind of faith. How dare God stoop to our level? How dare God be as vulnerable as we are? How dare God die on us?

When I was in seminary, world famous theologians visited campus from time-to-time. They would give lectures and preach at Marquand Chapel. I remember hearing more than one sermon that was so far over my head that I left worship feeling like a complete imbecile. After some of these sermons, I heard my classmates talking excitedly about what astonishing sermons they had just heard. This made me feel ever worse, like the West Virginia country bumpkin I was and am. One day, I asked my friend Steve what in the world the sermon was about. He said, “I am not sure but it was amazing.” It struck me then, in that seminary, sometimes, the best sermons were assumed to be those that no one understood; the preacher's brilliance was measured by how hard it was for people to fathom their scholarly musings.

I also learned in seminary that the most suspect professors were the ones that most of us did understand. The line of reasoning went something like this: if someone was able to converse in a manner that most of us understood, then he or she must not have been too academically or theologically exceptional.

I remember one theologian, who will go unnamed and whom I particularly admire, whose writing, at least for me, was like swimming through tar. I always thought that he was so smart and I was such an idiot. Imagine my great surprise when another professor, years later, said of this theologian, he cannot write! And here I thought it was me—or to be a highfalutin grammarian, it was I.

Thankfully, I have learned over time that remarkable preachers and excellent teachers are not the ones who speak over our heads and make us feel like imbeciles. The great ones touch our hearts and cause us to say, “She was speaking directly to me.” The finest ones make us realize they are one of us, with similar hopes and dreams, fears and weaknesses.

Jesus touches us in the heart and yet that still causes some of us problems. God shouldn’t hang out with people like us. Groucho Marx, the best theologian on this point, said it best, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Maybe that’s how we feel about God. Any God that would become one of us isn’t worth the effort.

It is precisely at this point that Jesus screams at Peter and at us: “Get behind me, Satan.” Jesus didn’t hate Peter and Jesus doesn’t hate us. Jesus wants us to see he is here for us, no matter what our successes or failures, our achievements or disappointments.

And yet, we, like Peter, keep wondering: what kind of God hangs on a cross?

In the book, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees, Garret Keizer writes of the little church he serves in Island Pond, Vermont. His congregation decides to hold an Easter Vigil for the first time and, when he arrives that Saturday evening, there are three people in attendance. “The candle sputters in the half darkness, like a voice too embarrassed or overwhelmed to proclaim the news: ‘Christ is Risen.’ …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 goes on, “The Lord is with us, or we are pathetic fools.”

Today, in each of our readings, we hear of people for whom it could easily be said, the Lord is with them or they are pathetic fools. We hear of Abraham and Sarah who are 99 and 90 respectively. The Lord promises them that their descendants will be exceedingly fruitful and that even kings will come from them. What kind of fools plan on children as they near 100? Our second reading is from Romans. It is amazing that the book of Romans is even in the Bible. It is written by Saint Paul who, before his conversion, was a persecutor of Christians and cheered mightily as Saint Stephen was stoned to death and became the first Christian martyr. What kind of fool would ever dream of God turning his life around and becoming one of the chief writers of the Christian Bible? And then there is Saint Peter to whom Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan” and yet, following Jesus’ resurrection, ends up preaching a sermon in the public square that converts thousands. The Lord was with all those folks or they were pathetic fools.

That goes for you and me too. It was one of the professors I did understand, Bill Muehl, who said: “Once we see a God who suffers for our sake, we begin to see ourselves differently. Suddenly, we are able to accept the vulgar, passionate, and torn and bleeding part of [ourselves] that has always seemed somehow unworthy of our best definition of ourselves.” When God dares to live with us and die with us, if we are lucky, we begin to see ourselves as more precious than we ever imagined. You could call that grace.

Lent, if it is anything, is forty days of staring at the cross and seeing how much God loves us. As we stare at the cross, about the best we can do is think, oh, what wondrous love is this.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 26, 2012
First Sunday in Lent
Genesis 9: 8-17; Mark 1: 9-15
"Never Again"

Noah’s Ark is one of the first Bible stories many of us learned as little children. We loved the animals going aboard the ark two-by-two, the rain pouring down on Noah and his clan for forty days and forty nights, and the rainbow stretching across the sky, announcing that the destruction had ended. As we grew older, the joy of it all gave way to puzzlement: What kind of God sends a flood to destroy almost everything and everyone in sight?

Many people have experienced Lent like Noah and the Flood: they seek safety from the violent storm preachers who hurl fire and brimstone that scare them out of their britches; they hang on to the ark’s side for dear life as harsh Lenten disciplines make them miserable for forty excruciating days. The angry God that annihilated most of creation blends well with a gloomy Lenten where there is not a trace of joy to be found.

At our Easter Vigil (the wonderful liturgy on Easter Eve), we hear the story of Noah and the flood. Often times, we use the poem, “Noah Built the Ark,” by James Weldon Johnson. This poem comes from Johnson’s book, God’s Trombones, in which he recollects the African American preachers he heard growing up.

I like this version of the great flood. There is one part, however, that slipped past my detection the first few times I heard it. It is when God says, “No more will I judge the world by flood—Next time I’ll rain down fire.” James Weldon Johnson’s “Next time I’ll rain down fire” makes perfect sense to me. There must come a time when God’s forbearance reaches its limits; God must have a three strikes and you are out policy as he finally screams, “Enough!”

And yet, to my surprise, no where in Genesis, at least in my search, does God say, “Next time I’ll rain down fire.” I have looked and looked. Maybe you are aware of something I am not able to find.

A careful reading of today’s story reveals that once the flood subsided, God, far from being angry, was sickened at himself for the havoc he had rained down upon our ancestors. Read carefully what God said once the waters subsided: “Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

God had seen enough tears, heard enough screaming, smelled enough death. God said, “Never again.” Yes, God repented.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says of this “never again”: “What has changed is not anything about humankind or creation or waters or floods. What has changed is God. God has made a decision about the grief and trouble of his own heart” (Brueggemann, Genesis, pg. 83)

God has every reason to rain down judgment upon us, too. Things haven’t gotten any better since the flood; people are just as rotten, just as mean, just as bigheaded, just as self-centered. But for some reason, God has seen enough destruction. “Never again.”

The way God changed was by creating a rainbow. Every time God has had enough of our lousy, no good shenanigans and is ready to zap us again, God looks up and sees a rainbow.

Frederick Buechner writes: “With the rainbow tied around [God’s] little finger to jog his memory, surely God would never forget what he’d said” (Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who, pgs. 138, 140). Never again.

Lent is our forty day walk where we look for the rainbow everywhere. Lent is our walk to look closely at ourselves, one another, and the entire universe through God’s eyes. God’s “Never again” rings in our ears during this Lenten walk. Lent is our invitation to walk with God whose love for us is beyond our imagination.

I was struck by our “Quote of the Day.” David Lohse, a professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota writes of singer Whitney Houston’s tragic death: “Kevin Costner, one of the eulogists at Whitney Houston's funeral, shared that as famous and successful as Whitney was, she was forever plagued by a fear that she wasn't good enough, wasn't pretty or talented enough, to measure up. Deep down, I suspect, we all share that fear. But as Costner wished for Whitney, we might also promise [one another] this week, that when you are standing before your heavenly Father, the one revealed in the man hanging on the tree, Don't worry, you'll be good enough.”

I suppose there is a little bit of Whitney Houston in all of us. We are often our worst judges, feeling we just are not good enough; sometimes this insecurity oozes out of us and ends up directed at others as ugly rage. Our fear of not being good enough plagues us and those we love: it drives us to drink because of low self-esteem, makes us insanely jealous of anyone who has different gifts than ours, and depresses us for no apparent reason to others.

Lent is the forty day journey when the church stands on its head, waves its hands in a frenzy, sings songs, burns incense—does whatever it takes to let us know that God loves us no matter what. The church teaches classes, has extra worship services, takes special offerings for missionaries in Peru—all to help us see how much God loves us and our brothers and sisters.

“How can I ever get them to know how much I love them?” God must wonder. Rather than raining down fire, God rains down his Son. Jesus takes us by the hand and points us to the precious rainbow God has strung across the sky. Jesus embraces us and whispers, “God will never wreak havoc upon you or creation again.” As we look, the rainbow is a cross.

And so, during these days of Lent, let us encourage one another to see what it looks like to be forgiven and loved; let us tell one another, “Don’t worry, you’ll be good enough.” Let us walk hand-in-hand with Jesus and see the beautiful rainbow cross in the sky that promises us, “Never again.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 22, 2012
Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
"Remember that You Are Dust"

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Strange words to begin any season, even the Lenten season. They sound so ominous, somber, depressing, bleak, discouraging—you pick the word. These “ash words” have a criminal feel to them when etched upon a baby’s forehead, when ashed upon those counting their final days of life.

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

William Saroyan writes: “I know everyone has to die, but somehow I always thought an exception would be made in my case.”

I am glad he said these words. I thought I was the only one who caught myself thinking the exact same thing a time or two in my own life—that I might never die. I know it seems silly but maybe a miracle drug will be discovered before I die or Christ will return in the nick of time. Have you ever thought you might not die?

Barbara Brown Taylor says that “Ash Wednesday is the day Christians attend their own funerals.”

Yes, Ash Wednesday is the church’s clear announcement that we will all die. The thought can be quite disconcerting and yet that is not Ash Wednesday’s intention. The words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” are an invitation to celebrate life, to live life fully, now, in the presence of God.

I think a good definition for sin might be: not living each day as if it is a precious gift of God. Even when we think we are being pretty holy, pretty sin-free, we might not be living life fully in the presence of God. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks of such people: they do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. They pray, give alms, and fast. And yet, these disciplines, rather than helping them focus on God, cause them to focus even more upon themselves and in the midst of all their pious practices, they forget about God altogether. We run a similar risk in Lent as we attend church, pray, and read the Bible more regularly than ever before; rather than discovering how good God is, we risk ending up congratulating ourselves on what astonishingly spiritual people we have become…God might as well be a million miles away.

Lent is an invitation to live life anew and fully in God’s presence. What if we lived every day as if it were our last day?

Michelle Matson is a First Lutheran member for whom we have prayed going on more than a year now. She has struggled valiantly with cancer. I am sad to announce that Michelle died yesterday. Those of you who knew Michelle fell in love with her zest for life even as she was dying. She puzzled some of us because she refused to give up living. Even when hospice came to her, she was not exactly sure that was for her; she did not want to give up quite yet.

I took the altar flowers to Michelle last Sunday. She was in her living room in a hospital bed. She had oxygen tubes in her nose. She was weak and overheated. She could not get to the other side of the living room without her beloved Mark carrying her. She did not seem to have much longer to live. How depressing, you think. Imagine my surprise when Michele told me that she was going bird watching in Trinidad. Michelle was a devoted bird-watcher and there were some exotic birds she had not seen yet and she wanted to see them before she died. All I could think of was her weakness, the oxygen tanks, the medications. But not Michele. Off she went with her loving husband, Mark, to Trinidad, just this past week. She died there, less than a week after she arrived. Michelle lived those last days fully because she knew each one was an incredibly precious gift from God. What a wondrous way to die!

My favorite author, Annie Dillard, encourages would-be writers, “Write as if you were dying.” She says when we write like that, we make every word count because it might just be our last word. What if we chose our every word that carefully? What if each word we spoke to family and friends were treated as if it were our last opportunity to speak with them? What if every prayer we uttered to God were treated as if it were our very last one?

Ash Wednesday says, “Live as if you are dying.” That is not meant to be a sad message; it is intended to be an incredibly life-giving message. Suddenly all our moments are cherished ones, all our relationships invaluable ones, each day is suddenly lived in the glorious presence of God.

And so, my dear brothers and sisters, on behalf of the church throughout the ages, I invite you to observe a holy Lent. As Lent begins, let us commit ourselves as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ to struggle against everything that leads us away from God and our neighbors. May our repentance, fasting, prayer, and works of love—the disciplines of Lent—help us in this struggle and lead us to cherish our life with God.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 19, 2012
Transfiguration of Our Lord
Mark 2: 2-9
"Up and Down the Hill"

The Transfiguration of Our Lord is a snapshot of the Christian life. That life, if you wish to follow Jesus, is a little like Jack and Jill—we go up and down the hill repeatedly.

Peter, James, and John accompanied Jesus to the mountaintop and got as close to heaven as possible this side of kingdom come. Jesus was transfigured before their eyes as his clothes became dazzling white and he stood there with Moses and Elijah. It was a stunning sight. The gospel writer notes that Peter “did not know what to say.” Peter’s best shot was, “Let’s build some booths!”

One thing Peter did know is that whatever occurred on the mountaintop was far better than what had occurred six days earlier when Jesus spoke to the disciples about his own impending death and then Jesus added these sobering words, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” These words were still ringing in the disciples’ ears on the mountaintop. They had imagined a lot that might occur after they had dropped their nets and tax ledgers and followed Jesus, but not in a million years did they imagine following Jesus would entail ending up at the cross.

The Christian life, according to Jesus, goes up and down the hill.

We are in the midst of black history month. During this month, many recall the great sermons of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His most famous sermon was perhaps the one delivered in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968, the night before his tragic death. Remember Dr. King’s words: “Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Dr. King understood the up and down the mountain of the Christian life. He needed the mountaintop as much as we do. He needed a vision of the promised land to sustain him as much as we do.

There are those spectacular mountaintop experiences when we are certain we have seen or heard Jesus. They change us in a flash and we never forget them even though we are afraid to tell others about them lest they think us nuts. The glimpses come and go quickly—like when Peter, James, and John saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah. The famous Trappist monk Thomas Merton called these experiences “KISSES FROM GOD.”

I can only speak for myself. I have been kissed by God. These occasions have always been surprising and come and gone quickly. Some have come at worship. I was kissed by God when Dagmar and I were at London’s Westminster Abbey for Evening Prayer in the middle of the week and heard the heavenly music of the men and boys choir as they processed down the side aisle—I cried from the beauty of it all.

These kisses do not always occur at worship. I was kissed by God a year ago, during Lent, when Kit and Amy Brothers, Frank Jessie and Elizabeth Moss, Dagmar and I took a hike into the Anza Borrego Desert to the Goat Canyon railroad trestle, what was once the longest bent wooden trestle in the world; as we walked out onto the middle of that rickety old thing, I was transfixed.

I was kissed by God as a little kid when I was ten years old and walked into the Pittsburgh Pirate’s old Forbes Field and saw the green grass of a major league baseball stadium for the first time—I had never seen green so green!

Have you ever been kissed by God?

As stunning as these moments are, we cannot keep playing kissy-face with God. Transfiguration kisses from God always send us back down the mountain to struggle to make this world a better place where others can realize they, too, are kissed by God.

In Dr. King’s final sermon, while he had spoken of being on the mountaintop and seeing the promised land, he also spoke of coming down: “It's alright to talk about ‘long white robes over yonder,’ in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It's alright to talk about ‘streets flowing with milk and honey,’ but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's alright to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.”

We, who worship here this morning, are called to talk about a new San Diego, right here and all around 3rd and Ash. If our worship is worth anything this morning, it will finally push us down the mountain into the world.

In about a month, a few of us from First, along with representatives from the San Diego Organizing Project, will begin meeting with city officials in what we hope will be ongoing conversations, seeking how we might address homelessness in downtown San Diego in a creative, loving way. The question in these meetings will be: can San Diego’s streets flow with milk and honey for all God’s children?

The city’s powerful, wealthy, politically connected believe that milk and honey can flow if only we get a new Charger’s football stadium. Maybe in some small way they are right. But we, God’s people, are called to advocate for something very different, for milk and honey to flow for God’s blessed poor, those who have not been to the mountaintop in a long time, if ever. You will likely be invited to join this struggle for those with no money, no power, and few good dreams. This struggle will occur in the valley and not on the mountaintop and rarely will we sing “alleluia.”

The disciples needed the strength of the mountaintop so, when Jesus was gone, they could continue to proclaim that the kingdom of God was near. We need such strength, too. And so, this morning, we pray and sing and feast on Christ’s bread and wine. Once we have behold God’s glory, may God grant us courage to go down to our city streets, to our suffering brothers and sisters.

By the grace of God, may we go up the mountain and be kissed by God and may we come down together with Jesus Christ for the good of the world.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 12, 2012
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Mark 1: 4-45
"Touch Has a Memory"

In the 1960’s and 1970’s the worship lives of many Protestant and Roman Catholic churches changed dramatically. Altars were pulled out from the wall so that the assembly could gather around the table together. Baptismal fonts were retrieved from dusty, concealed corners and moved to the center of the sanctuary; in some places, more water was used and tiny fonts were replaced by pools with fresh, flowing water. The most significant change in Lutheran churches was celebrating Holy Communion every Sunday morning; no longer did Communion occur four times a year whether we needed it or not. Surprisingly, in most congregations, none of these changes proved the most controversial. The change that was most maddening for many congregations was asking worshipers to turn to people next to them and say the “Peace of Christ” and maybe even to shake their hands.

There were those who hated what they viewed as a folksy gab session that disrupted the majestic flow of worship; others felt the Peace robbed them of their personal time with God and forced them to recognize that others were worshiping with them. Some people simply declined to share the Peace; resembling the Statue of Liberty, they faced straight ahead and stone still. I have a suspicion that the distaste of sharing Christ’s Peace had something to do with the fear of sullying themselves by touching another person’s hand.

The life of Jesus was similar to sharing the Peace at worship. When Jesus was going about proclaiming that the Kingdom of God had come near, a leper came to him and said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” At first glance, we would agree with the leper: Jesus could make him clean. The problem, though, was that the leper was dirty. Jesus was well versed in the ways of sacred Scripture and knew the risks associated with touching anyone who was unclean, especially someone with leprosy. The book of Leviticus offers clear guidelines about who not to touch. For some mysterious reason, Jesus was moved with pity when the leper came to him; he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said, “Be made clean!” He could have simply said, “Be made clean,” and never have touched the man—after all, there are accounts of Jesus doing just that. This time, though, Jesus touched the leper and he was healed.

So much of what we call holiness seems exactly opposite of Jesus touching the leper. We churchy types often call people “holy” if they steer altogether clear of the unclean. “Holiness,” in polite, pious circles, means to be squeaky clean. What Jesus did is exactly opposite of squeaky clean: Jesus touched a leper and got very dirty.

One of my worship professors, Gordon Lathrop, writes: “If Jesus Christ is our holiness, then holiness is no longer separation and ritual purity and perfect observance. In Christ holiness is connection with others. It is the unclean cross and life through death and welcome to the outsiders and transformative mercy for the world.” Pure and simple, if we are to be followers of Jesus, holiness means mixing with the unholy, touching the untouchables, getting our hands dirty for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the world.

I have always found that where the church is needed most are the places where squeaky clean Christians refuse to go for fear of getting dirty. I remember well the first few hospital visits I made to people dying of AIDS. You will remember the horrible things some Christians said about those suffering with AIDS. At the time, part of the fear of the disease, in addition to all who were dying, was that so little was known about it. I remember visiting Stephen in George Washington Hospital. Before I entered his room, the nurse told me to put on a gown, booties, a hat, and latex gloves; all that was missing was an oxygen tank! What was so disconcerting was that I had come to anoint Stephen with oil; I had come to touch him like he had been touched as a tiny baby at baptism. How to anoint with latex gloves? How to touch dying Stephen in the name of Christ who had dared touch the leper?

The practice of holiness is finding ways to touch one another in Jesus’ name. Gordon Lathrop notes that “the practice of holiness involves the constant work on the open door, both that all others may come in and that what is seen in the liturgy may flow out.”

This practice of the open door is letting the world in to our lovely, clean, and spotless sanctuary and then taking our sanctuary out into the world. Our greeters and ushers know by now that on Sunday morning I want all the doors leading into our church wide open. Even if it is a bit chilly outside, the world needs to know that First Lutheran Church is open for the business of healing and all people are welcome in this place. We want the world to touch us and we want to touch the world.

Our ministry here at First Lutheran has received its greatest blessings when we have dared to get dirty and touch the world. This past Friday, once again, someone called the church office spewing a tirade of profanity about our ministry. “How dare you care for a bunch of drunks and bums!” he said. He called “Bread Day,” the ministry we have done on Friday mornings going on thirty-eight years now, “freeloader Friday.” I wish I could have spoken with him. I would have told him that he lives in a building started fifty years ago by this free-loader loving church for seniors on fixed incomes.

Over and over again, we are reminded by some of our angriest neighbors that the painful way to holiness is not spending time with so called “perfect people.” Our holiness is discovered when we dare get down and dirty with God’s blessed poor, those whom most people can only hurl nasty four letter expletives. Yes indeed, the company we keep soils our reputation and yet, it is precisely when our reputation is soiled that we are likeliest closest to what Jesus would have us be for the world.

You never know what people experience when they worship here at First Lutheran Church for the first time. One person recently said, “When you all share the Peace of Christ with one another, you have a holy extravaganza. You don’t just turn to the person to your left or your right. You run are all over the sanctuary. It is holy mayhem.”

The poet John Keats wrote, “Touch has a memory.” The memory of touch we have here began long ago when Jesus touched a leper. Holy people from that day onward have gotten their hands dirty for God’s sake. As we share the peace with one another today, once again we will get our hands dirty. When we take the memory of that touch out of this church’s doors, we will take holy mayhem to the streets. Yes indeed, touch has a memory, a holy memory.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 5, 2012
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Isaiah 40: 21-31; Mark 1: 29-39
"A Deserted Place"

In the first chapter of the gospel of Mark, we glimpse a day in the life of Jesus. Jesus begins his day at the synagogue on the Sabbath and, while worshiping, drives out an evil spirit from a demon-possessed man; Jesus leaves worship, goes to supper at Simon Peter and Andrew’s house, and ends up healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever; after sundown, with the Sabbath completed, people swarm to the house with hopes of Jesus healing their sick and demon-possessed family members. All this in a day.

One wonders how Jesus survives such a hectic life. Listen carefully, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” Jesus takes a break from the demands of a bone-tired, weary, suffering world and spends it alone, with God, in a deserted place. The rhythm of Jesus’ life: worship, work, prayer; worship, work, prayer—over and over again.

It has been my experience that those who care for our bone-tired, weary, suffering world are often the ones who find it most difficult to observe Jesus’ rhythm of worship, work, and prayer. You work and work and hardly ever take a break, hardly ever go away to a deserted place, alone, to pray. To rest, to take a break, seems selfish.

I can think of countless people who have cared for dying parents. You brought your mother into your home and were with her every moment. She fell ill, was rushed to the hospital, and you stayed with her night and day. Your greatest fear was not being with her when she breathed her last. You were so exhausted one evening that you left your mother so you could go home to take a short nap and a quick shower—you needed a deserted place. Your beloved mother died when you were away. You have beaten yourself up for fifteen years now for not being with your mother at her darkest hour. Caring people are like that: they forget just how much they do for others and how little they do for themselves.

The weight of caring is sometimes too much to bear. There is a fancy name for what can consume people who care: “compassion fatigue.” Compassion fatigue afflicts those who love animals and take in more and more strays until their homes become public nuisances; compassion fatigue haunts those who are so passionate about justice and equality that they never stop to smell the roses until it is too late and they grow so bitter toward everyone that they quit caring altogether; compassion fatigue drives those who can never do enough for others to alcoholism and other addictions.

When I was in seminary, I was fortunate to have the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen as one of my professors. Henri (as we called him) begged us to do as Jesus does and go to a deserted place to pray. (Do yourself a favor and read Henri Nouwen’s Out of Solitude about this subject.) Henri instructed us that when we became pastors not to let anything interrupt our time with God. If people call the church to speak to us when we are in prayer, the secretary should tell them that the pastor is in prayer and cannot be interrupted. He urged us to model this longing for a deserted place so that you, too, might cherish it in your life and our ministry together might remain vibrant and life-giving over the long haul.

I wish I had taken Henri at his word. Unfortunately, a few other very good pastors trained me that good pastors work longer than anyone else, never take a day off, and rarely go on vacation. I am a recovering workaholic—ask Dagmar. My inability to take a break and go to a deserted place took its toll on me and those I love—and I suppose even on those I was called to serve.

I have always loved the Sabbath-keeping tradition of the Orthodox Jews. When sundown comes on the Sabbath (Friday evening), no more work is done—no cooking, no turning light switches on and off, no driving of cars to the synagogue. They simply rest in the Lord. Funny thing what good Jews can teach us Lutherans about the grace of rest on the Sabbath.

Marva Dawn, in her book, Keeping the Sabbath Holy, writes: “A major blessing of Sabbath keeping is that it forces us to rely on God for our future. On that day we do nothing to create our own way. We abstain from work, from our incessant need to produce and accomplish, from all the anxieties about how we can be successful in all that we have to do to get ahead. The result is that we can let God be God in our lives” (pg. 29).

People often ask me about our ministry here at First Lutheran, “What does your church do?” I always start by saying, “We worship.” Inevitably there is silence, befuddlement. “Worship?” they ask. “What else do you do?” as if worship is not enough. When I mention all other things that occur here, especially our outreach to the poor and homeless, everything suddenly seems better. “Oh, that is so wonderful,” they say. And yet, we must never forget to start and end with worship. Worship is the supreme witness of this community over 124 years; without worship we would have quit caring for our bone-tired, weary, suffering world and likely would have left the city for green pastures long ago. Worship has sustained us for the long haul and kept us anchored here in the middle of the city with all its wondrous joy and deep sadness, its incessant demands and astonishing vitality.

Sabbath-keeping happens here, now. We have turned off our iPhones, lost access to our computers, cannot even watch the lead-in to the Super Bowl. We feel helpless, out of touch. It is precisely this feeling that tells us we are in the hands of our precious Lord.

Sabbath-keeping does not just happen here on Sunday morning. Where are those places that enable you to forget about the cares of the world but for a while? Last Sunday we went whale watching following worship and the congregational meeting. I watched a gray whale rise to the surface and flip down under with the splash of the great Leviathan-like tail; chills formed on my neck, tears in my eyes. I completely forgot about our congregational meeting; that, my dear friends, is grace.

Find those places where you can forget about our suffering world for a few moments. Hike in the mountains, frolic in the ocean, watch a quality movie, listen to fine music, read a good book, go to a baseball game. It not only o.k. to rest, it is a very good thing and God commands it, “Remember the Sabbath Day.” God even models this resting after a grueling week of creating the universe. If God needs rest, you know that we do!

The prophet Isaiah promises us, “Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

There will be plenty of time to care for those you love. You owe it to the bone-tired, weary, suffering world to go to a deserted place and to be refreshed so that you will return far more positive and filled with a deeper compassion.

So, find a deserted place. Treat yourself to a Sabbath. Rest.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 29, 2012
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
1 Corinthians 8: 1-13
"What's for Dinner?"

Should Christians eat meat offered to idols? This question, to my knowledge, has never been debated at a First Lutheran Church congregational meeting in our 123 year history. Paul’s words about meat sacrificed to idols catches us in a time warp. And yet, maybe these words are timelier than we ever imagine.

Paul believed that eating meat sacrificed to idols is not hazardous to our souls since idols in themselves are nothing at all; and yet Paul also believed that eating such meat might be hazardous to the souls of weaker brothers and sisters in the community who are offended by this idol meat-eating.

Listen to how Eugene Peterson translates Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “When you hurt your friend, you hurt Christ. A free meal here and there isn't worth it at the cost of even one of these ‘weak ones.’ So, never go to these idol-tainted meals if there's any chance it will trip up one of your brothers or sisters.”

To make this business of food sacrificed to idols a bit more contemporary, think of the food you serve your guests at home. When you invite someone over for dinner, if you are wise, you ask in advance what they like and what they detest. After all, you want your guests to eat what you prepare. It would be unwise to serve prime rib when vegetarians are coming; pork chops would not be a good idea when your Jewish friends come to dine; you might think twice about offering two kinds of wine when your guest is an alcoholic; and, by all means, never serve liver and onions—better to be safe than sorry. Eating any of these foods is fine and dandy but why offend your guests.

The issue Paul and the Corinthians faced was how to live as a community overflowing with grace. Listen to the aggressive tenor of the current political debates— and these are people who are supposed to agree with one another on the basics. And lest we think this ornery behavior is reserved for Republicans, recall President Obama and Senator Clinton going at it a few years ago. I worry that we may be losing the capacity to carry on conversations of grace, especially with those whom we disagree.

This is where a community like ours does well to listen to what Saint Paul has to say. First Lutheran Church, like any church community, is a laboratory where people with differing opinions have learned to live together with grace over the past 123 years now. We have learned to measure our words, to speak words well, to forgive instead of to judge, and better yet, to pray before we ever speak, “Let the words of my mouth be acceptable to you, O Lord.”

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther explains the eighth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” this way: “We are to fear and love God so that we may not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbors, but defend them, speak well of them, and explain their actions in the kindest way.”

In our political debates we hear a lot about “You shall not kill” which, more often than not, deals with the sanctity of life around the issue of abortion. This is a worthy debate but one does wonder why we have not heard one word about the commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” All manner of half-truths are being spouted, candidates are viciously attacking one another to the applause of delighted crowds. Pollsters tell the candidates unless they attack their candidates they are toast. When political candidates lament the decline in values and long for the Ten Commandments to be placed in courthouses and on school walls, ask them whatever happened to explaining their neighbor's actions in the kindest way. Why do they avoid the eighth commandment?

Speaking with love does not mean we do not tackle tough issues. This text has often been used this way and when it is, it becomes a sorry excuse to keep on treating people badly and never engaging in worthwhile debate. African Americans, women, and gays and lesbians know well what it means when someone in the church says, “Let’s not discuss that because there are those here who might disagree.” Such advice is nothing more than the undergirding of the status quo and a call to business as usual or, as a pastor friend of mine says, a ministry of no hits, no runs, and no errors. Paul urges us to higher ground, to wrestle with important matters and, at the same time, to do so with considerable grace and with words measured well.

Should we eat meat offered to idols? This is a brilliant question on this day of our congregational meeting. My experience at congregational meetings at First Lutheran Church is that we do a wonderful job seeking the mind of Christ in this place. We cherish words, especially God’s word, and we understand the power of the words we speak. We measure our words so they bear the creative power of God who is at the center of our life together.

This, unhappily, is not always the case in some churches. Sometimes the word is used, not to bring life but death, not love but hatred, not togetherness but discord. Some of you have heard me say, “When I get to heaven—assuming God lets me in—if there is a congregational meeting in session, I will ask if there is another option.” I know that sounds harsh but I have been to my share of church meetings. Like you, I have heard remarks that have curdled my blood and that have wounded people, including me. I have heard people speak the “truth,” riding roughshod over just about everyone present, and yet if this very “truth” was spoken to them, they were not long for the community—they only wanted to speak the “truth” as long as they were doing the truth-telling. The problem, almost always, was that the words were not chosen well and certainly not with love for the community in mind. I know of pastors’ families who refuse to attend congregational meetings because they have been brutalized so badly; I know of lay people who have left congregations because of the nasty rhetoric of some meeting. While it was not a matter of meat offered to idols, it was a matter of whether the love of Christ triumphed and grace prevailed in the community as people discussed tough issues.

God has invited us here to dinner yet again. God’s hope is that we will speak words filled with the power of creation, words overflowing with love for one another. God gave his only Son so that we might dine well here this morning. May we be a community committed to a passion for the truth for sure; far more importantly, though, may we be grounded in the greatest gift of all, the gift of love for one another just as Christ loved us.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 22, 2012
Third Sunday after Epiphany
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Mark 1: 14-20
"God Calls You to Follow"

We continue the Epiphany season this morning. Yet again, we watch God come among us, bringing heaven to earth, as Jesus calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, to be his disciples.

The four fishermen fascinate us: what possibly could cause them to drop their nets and follow Jesus in a flash? There is a tinge of irresponsibility about it all. They leave the family business without planning whatsoever for their parents’ well-being. They do not negotiate for fair wages, vacation time, a pension plan, or even health benefits. The four fishermen drop everything and follow Jesus. Their sudden following of Jesus is breathtaking.

I doubt many of us follow Jesus with such reckless abandon. We count the costs. Common sense weighs pluses and minuses. We do this all the time here at First Lutheran Church. You will receive your annual report this morning and part of the report discusses the cost of doing ministry. We have a detailed budget to guide us through the year so that we do not break the bank and so that we can proclaim the gospel. We call it RESPONSIBILITY.

When we see Simon and Andrew, James and John dropping everything and following Jesus, we might get a bit envious. Why don’t we respond so quickly? Are we unfaithful when we plan ahead and examine the costs in detail?

It is important to be familiar with the whole variety of biblical call stories before wondering about our own. Unless we do so, we risk believing that the way of Simon and Andrew, James and John is the only legitimate way to follow Jesus, that one size fits all. If we pause even for a moment and give careful thought to the future, we might feel unfaithful. That is why we must know how God comes to people and says, “Follow me.” No call story is identical. There are occasions when people drop everything but not always. When God calls Moses, Moses hems and haws, alleging he is a clumsy public speaker. God says not to worry, his brother Aaron can do the speaking. God calls young Jeremiah and Jeremiah says, “I am only a boy.” Note that these responses are hardly spur of the moment decisions like that of the boys down at the shore.

In our first reading, we hear another call story. God calls Jonah. Jonah’s response is by no means spur of the moment. Jonah’s is a call story gone sour from beginning to end. He kicks and screams every step of the way. God wants Jonah to go to Ninevah (part of modern day Iraq) and to call this enemy of God’s chosen people to repent. Jonah will have none of it. He jumps on a boat and goes as far from Ninevah as possible. He fights with God while on board and the crew, sensing trouble, tosses Jonah overboard. Jonah is swallowed up by a whale—or at least a big fish. That huge fish vomits Jonah onto the shore. Jonah, ever the petulant one, huffs and puffs and growls, “Okay God, have it your way. I’ll preach a sermon of repentance to the Ninevites.” And off he storms and preaches the shortest sermon ever, eight words, “Forty days more, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!” Jonah looks up at God, shakes his fist in disgust, and snarls, “Are you pleased now?”

Surprisingly, this petulant prophet with his eight word sermon causes 120,000 Ninevites to turn to the Lord; even then Jonah sulks. Jonah is steamed because God shows mercy on the ancient enemy rather than casting them to the fires of hell. Jonah has had enough and he mopes for the rest of the story—and perhaps for the rest of his life!

All to say, the Bible is overflowing with all kinds of call stories. Each is unique and not all of them are pretty.

God comes to us, too, in many different ways. How does God come to you? Not how does God come to Simon and Andrew, James or John, or even Jonah or Jeremiah, but how does God come to you?

Your calling does not have to be churchy. To be called by God does not necessarily mean you spend your every waking hour here at church; in fact, you might not spend much time here. Luther captures this well when he speaks of the priesthood of all believers. Luther longs for us to discover God in our everyday lives, in those places where, as Frederick Buechner says, “our deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet each other.” Luther lauds his barber, his cobbler, even the good ruler, those who do their jobs well. He admires mothers who care for their children. He celebrates your call in the garden as you snip the roses and smile all the while. He adores your grocery shopping for your elderly neighbor and your passion for important causes of social justice that lift up the lowly. In every one of these callings, we witness a miracle: God invites us to do our very best for the world and to discover our greatest joy all at the same time.

There will be days, however, when our callings make us miserable. The disciples have bad hair days, for sure: Jesus castigates them for their arrogance, lashes out at them for their stupidity; and as they watch Jesus bear his cross to Calvary, you can imagine the agonizing pain they feel. And yet there are other days, mountaintop days, when 5,000 are fed, when a blind man gains his sight, when they experience Jesus’ resurrection—their lives suddenly overflow with wonder and all the challenges and disappointments disappeer. Julius “Dr. J” Erving, the great Philadelphia 76er basketball player, once said, “Being a professional is doing the things you love to do on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”

I love being your pastor but there are those days. This Friday was one of those days; it was like being in the dentist’s chair right here at 3rd & Ash on our patio. I along with our staff and volunteers spent the better part of the day acting like parents of unruly children who refused to listen. I so wanted to send someone to the corner for a time-out—I even said that to one person. There are other days, though, like preaching this morning or singing a hymn together with joy or giving out 235 sleeping-bags and tarps to homeless people at Christmas when the thrill is beyond compare.

The joy of God’s call is that God promises to be with us for the long haul, on the good and bad days, the rich and poor days, the happy and sad days. To know this is to celebrate the miracle of doing those things we love to do and all the while making this world a better place in God’s name.

Keep your ears open. When you hear God say, “Follow me,” your most pious exclamation might just be, “Who, me?” That, my dear friends, is an epiphany, your special call.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 15, 2012
Baptism of Our Lord (transferred)
Mark 1: 4-11
"In Line with the Sinners"

Mark’s gospel begins when Jesus is an adult. There are no shepherds, no wise men, not even a baby Jesus. Jesus makes his first appearance as he is getting ready to be baptized by John the Baptist at the Jordan River.

This seems a peculiar way to start a gospel. Let these words roll around in your mouth just a bit, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Let the words echo through your mind, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Do you notice: Jesus is in line with sinners?

The early church was deeply troubled by Jesus submitting to a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. After all, the church confesses that Jesus is pure and spotless. Why is Jesus in line with sinners when he could be in the express lane of perfection?

You have noticed, incidentally, that we still seem to be observing Christmas even though we are well into the midst of the Epiphany season. The poinsettias are still here and the wreath is lighted as if it is Christmas Eve. You may have taken your decorations down at home, but First Lutheran is milking its decorations for all they are worth.

This is the time of the year when the church celebrates God’s appearance on earth in a host of different ways. At Christmas God appears to the poor shepherds. On Epiphany, God appears to the wise men; they are outsiders like the shepherds but, rather than being poor, they are foreigners, from the other side of the border, and certainly not the chosen people of God. Today, you could say Jesus appears to the riff-raff. Whether shepherds, foreigners, or you and me, God seems most pleased to appear to outsiders.

If you are here with your toes in the Jordan River waiting to be baptized and you look around and see Jesus, aren’t you baffled? You lean to the person next to you and say, “Isn’t that Jesus? What in the world is he doing here with us?”

During these days God keeps appearing to the unlikeliest people. Sara Miles, in her book Jesus Freak, writes: “The first thing we learn from the story of Jesus’ baptism is that God is probably not planning to reveal anything particularly important in church, or in any kind of temple we think is appropriate for the holy, or through anyone who’s an official holy man…John the Baptist was, not to put a too fine a point on it, a total nutcase, sort of like the unwashed guy with the skanky dreadlocks and the plastic bags over his socks who sleeps in the entryway to the library. John the Baptist ate bugs. He ranted and raved and spoke sedition. He railed at decent temple-goers, shouting that their sacred ceremonies were useless, threatening them with damnation if they didn’t repent” (Sara Miles, Jesus Freak, pg. 5).

“This profane setting, outside the majestic temple doors, is where God chooses to reveal his love for his son. Like the table Jesus will share with tax collectors and sinners, like, in fact, the cross: these scandalous places are exactly where we will find salvation” (Miles, pg. 6).

We think we know where to find holiness until Christmas and Epiphany roll around and God is unleashed in the weirdest places and to the oddest people.

The good news of it all is that Jesus is not too important or so holy; Jesus stoops down and becomes one of us. He trusts his heavenly Father enough that he does not worry when people say, “What are you doing with them?” He trusts his heavenly Father enough that he gets his sins washed away whether he needs to or not.

There is something so freeing about Jesus’ baptism if we only get it right. Truth-telling is always freeing but often so difficult to do.

I suppose, in addition to your Christmas tree, you have tossed out the Christmas cards and letters that came from family and friends. Did your friends and family tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth in their Christmas letters or do you suspect a classy veneer was placed over their lives so that all appeared well and good for another year? Almost all the news from our friends and family was upbeat. Johnny competed in his first marathon and, though thirteen, has Olympic aspirations; Bill’s business continues to attract new customers in record numbers; Helen and Hank’s marriage is idyllic with ne’er a spat between them. Oh, and the grandchildren: every one of these little ones might just be Christ come again. I do not know about you, but most of these Christmas letters make me, well, want to vomit. I want to scream, “Get real. How about a little truth-telling?”

Inevitably there is one letter though….It is the riskiest one because it is the honest one. My friend Henry reports that their twenty-something daughter cannot stand him or his wife and never wants to see them again; their teenage son has returned to drinking after one year of sobriety. He also notes that he hopes to get out of his current church sooner rather than later because it is a rats' nest and declining faster than the Titanic. None of this is easy to hear but the truth-telling is freeing. I breathe a little easier; finally, there is someone who might understand me a bit better if I dare to tell the truth.

Jesus’ baptism is very much like an honest Christmas letter: all the pretension has been washed away. Here is the God who loves us so much that he comes to live among our foul-ups and failures, our disappointments and disillusionments, our embarrassments and shenanigans. For whatever reason, this God is not afraid to be at our side.

This is the Epiphany season. The ripple of God’s appearances spreads further and further. The ripple spreads to us this morning. It might surprise us, if we listen carefully, to hear God say to his son Jesus standing by our side, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This alone should make us feel so good. God is very pleased because Jesus chooses to be here with us today.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 6, 2012br> The Epiphany of Our Lord
Matthew 2: 1-12
"Six Miles from Bethlehem"
(Sermon preached at Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala for the ELCA Conference of Bishops’ Academy in San Diego)

We Californians love the wise men. They are our kind of people. They almost saw the face of God in that twinkling star in the sky so long ago and, if they traveled here, one assumes they would come in flamboyant Tommy Bahama shirts and almost see God’s face in the Pacific Ocean’s crashing surf…Almost see the face of God, I said.

A star gets us only so close, to Jerusalem perhaps, even to King Herod’s inner sanctum, but never to the manger. We need more; we need someone who can answer the wise men’s question, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” or Luther’s "Was ist das?”

The chief priests and scribes in Jerusalem knew exactly where to find the Messiah—they had faultless biblical GPS: “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

This information leaves us scratching our heads: if the religious leaders and Bible scholars knew where to find the Christ Child, why didn’t they hot tail it to Bethlehem—David’s little town was only six miles away! They could easily have walked there in two hours, especially if they had been following the ELCA Wellness Wheel and Stretching and Praying with Bishop Finck. They had perused the ancient manuscripts, debated the textual nuances at weekly pericope studies, and scrutinized the most troublesome questions at retreats. One wonders, then, why these religious leaders were sitting in their rocking chairs and smoking their pipes when the Messiah was so near. Matthew does not tell us why so let’s venture a guess: they needed more information!

Good people often need a little more information before acting decisively: after all, we want to get things right. You have noticed, I’m sure, how searching people long for that one magical book that will provide the authoritative answer once and for all to that nagging question that has plagued them. And yet, experience tells us that reading one more book inevitably raises as many questions as it provides answers. Finally, God beckons us to start the hike to Bethlehem without all the answers in our pockets.

On July 16, 1769, Father Junipero Serra established this “Mother of Missions,” Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala, the first of twenty-one historic missions in California. One of the priests, Father Luis Jaime (whose birth name was Melchor—one of the names we often give one of the wise men) had great rapport with the Native Americans. Sadly there were those who became disgruntled and burnt this mission down. In the chaos, Father Jayme became California's first Christian martyr and is buried here, right behind the altar. In retrospect, one might question the motives and sensitivity of those mission developers who came from Spain, even the wisdom of it all. At the time, though, they heard God inviting them to proclaim the gospel in these parts. And California, here they came!

Like those priests who established this mission, we begin the hike to Bethlehem at God’s behest, often with some fear and trembling—that’s often the way it is with things that matter and it is why decisive leadership is such a gift. We long for gospel voices along the way that remind us over and over again that the Lord is leading us and guiding us; oh, how we need to hear that the Lord errs on the side of mercy and is lenient in the face of our blunders and missteps.

Or…could it be that the religious leaders’ reticence to go to Bethlehem had nothing to do with acquiring more information? Maybe they had too much information. Perhaps they had witnessed King Herod’s fearsome side and sensed that worshiping the tiny Savior would cause Herod to unleash all manner of mayhem throughout Judea. Think of the innocent lives that might have been spared if the ones we call “wise” tonight had exercised a modicum of patience as did the chief priests and scribes.

Each of us finally faces the question: whether to hike to Bethlehem? Believe it or not, we even face that question here in “American’s Finest City,” San Diego. 4,000 people are homeless in this city of paradise, 1,000 living in encampments downtown like those surrounding our church, First Lutheran. Our congregation has tried to address homelessness for thirty-seven years now, seeking Jesus among the homeless, hungry, and naked—frankly, there are some days when our staff and parishioners wish there were not so many Jesuses to be found! We provide medical, acupuncture, dental, and legal clinics and warm meals twice a week to 200 people and more; our social workers offer a myriad of services; we even have a hospice program for those dying on the streets—all free of charge. Not a cent comes from our city, county, state, or federal government. Thank you ELCA for your support. You would think we feel pretty good about ourselves, pretty close to the manger. And yet, more often than not, we are six miles from Bethlehem.

Some irate neighbor calls us almost weekly complaining that what we do is not Christian. “They are a bunch of drunks, drug addicts, and bums,” she tells us. One prosperous downtown developer came to my office a few months ago, unannounced, and threatened to sue us for damages, saying that we are to blame for homelessness in our neighborhood and that we make it impossible for him to rent his upscale Victorian apartments to the well-scrubbed and well-healed.

One could say that because we RSVP to God’s invitation to celebrate the Holy Child in the naked, hungry, and homeless, we have caused all hell to break loose. Luther was right: just when we think Jesus is so near, the devil has pitched his tent just as close by.

But you, dear bishops and you spouses, you know this, of course you do. You confront the question whether to go to Bethlehem almost daily. I assume you have all had more than one perfectly good day ruined by a telephone call, out of the blue, that quakes your soul. Your spouse meets you when you return home, gives you a hug, and supports you well into the night as you grapple with the monstrosity of it all.

Remember when the professor of pastoral care asked your seminary class, “What would you do if….?” and wove a preposterous scenario that you and your classmates scoffed at. Remember how you said, “That will never happen.” You were right: it would never happen; what happens is often far worse…And your spouses wait for you at the door.

I have said to my bishops over the years that we parish pastors come to you in the midst of our messes after we have tried every solution and found them all wanting—as least that is what I have done. We then expect you to provide the perfect answer. And there you sit, at your desk, wondering…God invites you to act and yet any action feels like, well…six miles from Bethlehem that might as well be a million miles away.

The world was turned upside that Epiphany because God came to town and Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar opted to do nothing more than take a little hike and worship the Christ Child. There were no guarantees as to what would happen once they presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They had no idea what fury would soon be unleashed in Herod’s court. What was guaranteed was that they would behold the face of God in a tiny child.

God’s invitation to us is one of grace, to take the six mile journey, over and over again, and to invite others to join us in the thrill of worshiping the sweet Babe of Bethlehem. It is such a simple journey and yet an often treacherous and bewildering one.

Ours is a harsh and astonishing calling. The only guarantee we have is that Christ will be awaiting us at the manger, murmuring, “Take and eat, given for you.” And that is enough for now and, really, it is all we will ever need.

My dear bishops and dear spouses, we give thanks for your courageous leadership and tireless support, for taking us by the hand in these challenging and uncertain times and leading us to Bethlehem to see the Christ Child…A blessed Epiphany to you.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 1, 2012br> The Feast of the Name of Jesus
Luke 2: 15-21
"The Sweet Name of Jesus"

Names are important. They tell something about who we are and about our parents who named us. My name is Wilbert; I am the third Wilbert. My Grandma Miller would be horrified to hear you call me “Wilk.” She would say to you, “‘Wilbert’ is a perfectly good name.” That tells you something about our family, I think.

Every parent understands the importance of names. Parents love giving careful attention to their children’s names and spend considerable time coming up with the perfect one. The most popular names last year for boys were Mason, Liam, Noah, Ethan, and Jacob; and, for girls, Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Isabella, and Ava.

We named our boys Caspar and Sebastian. Sebastian was named after the British middle distance runner Sebastian Coe. We were watching him break the world record for the mile run when our little Sebastian kicked inside Dagmar for the first time. Of that name, Sebastian, Grandma Miller said: “You pastors certainly name your children odd names.” When we named our second son, Caspar, Grandma Miller wept for joy. You would think she would have been even more horrified, but this name, Caspar, was her father’s and it was also Dagmar’s great-grandfather’s. That tells you something about our family, too.

We all have a tendency either to want a traditional family name or an altogether different and unique name. When God names His son, God insists on a name that will save us. It happens to Elizabeth and Zechariah when they are about to name their son. The crowds want them to name their son, Zechariah, after the father—that naming would have pleased my Grandma Miller. But Elizabeth immediately speaks up and says “He is to be called John.” She has gotten this name from God via an angel. Like those corporations who attach their name to stadiums—what is with Snap Dragon Stadium and no longer Qualcomm--God insists on the naming rights.

And then there is John the Baptist’s cousin. He is also given his name, not by his parents, but by an angel. His name will be Jesus. The name “Jesus” is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Joshua” which means “the Lord helps” or “the Lord saves.”

Oh, how important names are. A few evenings ago, Dagmar and I watched Ken Burn’s PBS documentary, The West. There was a discussion of the importance of names in the Native American tradition. Naming coexists with meaning. If something does not have a name, it is suspect. The name gives a person being, it gives power, stature, bearing. There are names like Old Wolf, Conquering Bear, Rock Face, Owl Woman, the Whirlwind, Thunder Rolling from the Mountain.

You, too, were named, not just by your parents, but, even more importantly, by God at your baptism. In the old baptismal liturgy, the pastor would ask, “And how shall this child be named?” And with that name, these words were spoken, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Suddenly, your name was filled with the power of God’s name. Your name became much more than your parents ever imagined because you were now named with God’s name. You became much more than Jim or Susan, Frank or Linda. You were wrapped up in God’s name forever. When someone asks you your name, do not forget this part, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Way of the Pilgrim is a devotional classic about a Russian peasant who devotes his life to praying a little prayer known as the Jesus Prayer. The pilgrim wanders through Russian with nothing more than a few dry loaves of bread, a small pocket Bible, and the simple prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Over and over again, he repeats this prayer, sometimes 10,000 times a day.

He tells a story of the power of this prayer, of Jesus’ name really. A hopeless alcoholic is advised by a God-fearing man to pray the Jesus Prayer whenever he is tempted to take a drink. Whenever he has the desire for a drink, he is to pray the simple prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” This prayer alone has the power to drive him from drink. You might call invoking the name of Jesus his “higher power.”

The question is asked of the pilgrim, “And which is the best, the Prayer of Jesus or the Gospels?” He responds, “It’s all one and the same thing. What the Gospel is, the Prayer of Jesus is also, for the Divine Name of Jesus Christ holds in itself the whole gospel truth.”

Isn’t he right? The divine name of Jesus, God saves—what more can we ask for? As the Psalmist proclaims, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

How fitting to begin this New Year 2012 on the day when we celebrate “the Name of Jesus.” What more can we ask than to carry Jesus’ name with us throughout the year. Whenever problems arise, let us simply pray to Jesus. Whenever we have cause to celebrate, let us say, “Thank you, Jesus.” As the old hymn reminds us, “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds. It soothes our sorrows, heals our wounds, and drives away all fear.”

Who knows what this New Year has in store for us? Whatever this year may bring, joys or sorrows, wounds or heath, victories or defeats, fears or celebrations—let us wrap ourselves in the name of Jesus.

The prophet Isaiah foretold to us so long ago: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” How good that Mary was obedient and named her son, Immanuel, God with us. Jesus, the Lord saves. May you have a blessed New Year, and may you carry God’s name with you, the name given to you at your baptism, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 24, 2011
Christmas Eve
Luke 2: 1-12
"The Babe of Bethlehem for You"

Guess what? Christmas has arrived. Your presence here this holy night means one thing for certain: your Christmas shopping is finished whether you are ready or not. So…are you happy with the gifts you have purchased for your family and friends?

When I do my Christmas shopping, I search for the perfect gift and rarely find it. Last year I agonized over what to give my wife, Dagmar. I researched laptops extensively. I grilled my hi-tech friends who communicate in the mysterious and cryptic language of gigabytes and megahertz, rotors and right clicks—stuff I know nothing about. After being thoroughly confused by these technological wizards, I took the nerve-wracking plunge and bought Dagmar her very first laptop. She returned it to Best Buy the very next morning.

Christmas shopping is an agonizing and overwhelming undertaking for me. I mull over the perfect gift for months. I go to the mall well in advance of Christmas morning—Christmas Eve, 4:00 p.m., to be exact. The pleasant clerk almost always informs me, “We are so sorry, sir, but that item is temporarily out stock and will not be in the store until January 7.” My stomach sinks; I go home with no gift in hand and no gift in mind. What I do have is visions of sugar plums rotting in my head.

I want to let you in on a secret: I have finally found the perfect gift. It is Neiman Marcus’s 2011 Christmas catalogue fantasy gift. This present should put the finishing touches on Dagmar’s glorious garden and my Yuletide shopping. It is a $1 million dancing fountain for our backyard; for a measly half million extra, Dagmar’s new fountain can be choreographed by the guy who makes the Bellagio fountains dance in Las Vegas. Since my wife is here this evening, I cannot tell you whether I have obtained the fountain or opted for the choreography.

Our emotions rise and fall with the gifts we give and the ones we receive. One homebound member I visited on Wednesday has counted every Christmas card she has received—thirty-two. For her, those thirty-two cards are tokens of how much she is loved. I am no different: I look to see whether the people I have sent cards return the favor. Do you do that?

There are others besides older people who are counting cards. Timothy Radcliffe, an English priest I like very much, writes: “Too many of our young are empty. The anorexic cheerleader; the nerdy genius at Stanford filled with a numb, nameless rage because she did not get into Harvard; the aimless young man living in his parent’s basement with only video games to look forward to; the legions of others who suffer from ‘failure to launch.’ We must help them to discover the one who will fill that emptiness with more than we can imagine” (Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go to Church?, pg. 136).

Think back with me for a moment to the night Jesus was born. The first ones to see the baby had little to offer him. The shepherds in Luke’s gospel were poor outsiders, riff-raff. The best gift they could muster was a stinky sheep and what in the world was the new born baby going to do with a stinky sheep? You could say the shepherds suffered from a “failure to launch.”

During communion tonight, our organist Jared Jacobsen and oboist Julie Morton will play the gorgeous, moody carol “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Listen to one of the verses:

What can I give him, poor as I am? I wonder if this is the wrong question, at least tonight. The Christmas question for which we so desperately need an answer is not what we can give the Babe of Bethlehem but rather what the Babe of Bethlehem can give us. No matter how rich or poor we are, we come empty handed. “We are all beggars” as Martin Luther said on his death bed. We are beggars who have come here looking for a Christmas gift only God can give us.

Saint Augustine’s House is located in Oxford, Michigan, and is the only Lutheran monastery in the United States. It is where my seminary internship supervisor is now a monk. The monastery’s Christmas newsletter tells this fanciful Christmas legend: “When the shepherds came to find the Child in Bethlehem they each brought a gift. All, that is, except one shepherd who was too poor or perhaps too simple to bring a gift. When Mary saw all the gifts to be received, she realized that she would need to free her hands and make room on her lap. So, she looked around and spotted the one shepherd who had brought no gift and whose hands were empty. To him, she gave the Christ Child. And so, the story is told, the one who came with the least received the most.”

The magic of this story is that the one who cradles the baby Jesus in his arms has nothing to give in return. He feels out-of-sorts because everyone else has given tiny Jesus something and he, nothing at all. God comes to people such as this on this Christmas night, to angry teenagers texting incessantly, to middle-agers wondering, “Is this all there is in life,” to old women counting Christmas cards—all searching for love.

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote, “God's gifts put [our] best dreams to shame.” How right she is. God’s dreams are so spectacular that we can barely fathom them if we possibly can. How can the Creator of the universe come as a baby? How can a young virgin bear a son? These questions are beyond our wildest imagination—yes, “God’s gifts put our best dreams to shame.” Who among us can recognize that the most extravagant gift of all comes in such a tiny package and, when we open it, it is filled simply with bread and wine? Bread and wine! Like little children, we are suspicious of small packages. It takes time, sometimes years, to savor the exquisite beauty that comes in the smallest package, the one where heaven comes to earth.

If you are able, at least in the coming moments, cast from your mind the thoughts of the thirty-two Christmas cards; cease texting but for a moment. Come like that one shepherd, the empty handed one. Watch for God in a tiny package, born in our midst, now.

When you see Mary and she sees you, form your hands as a manger and receive the greatest gift of all: “Take and eat; this is the Christ Child of Bethlehem given for you.”

A very happy Christmas to you all.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 18, 2011
Fourth Sunday in Advent
Luke 1: 26-38
"Nothing is Impossible with God"

I love being around children at Christmastime. They are filled with dreams and visions. Nothing is impossible: a pony will be under the tree; reindeers can fly; a little baby born in a far off country is God’s son. Don’t you wish you could be a child again when nothing is impossible?

It is not only the young I love being around at Christmastime. I love being around our oldest members, too—quite a few who rarely, if ever, are able to worship here any more. Tonight, we will go caroling at some of their homes. As they see our little ones it will be magical for them, their eyes at least as wide open as our children’s at this morning’s Christmas pageant. I love to watch our older members as they hear the story of Jesus’ birth for perhaps the 93rd Christmas in their lives. They know it so well, especially the King James Version. Whenever we read it to them, I feel as if I am at a revival. When someone reads, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree…” they jump in and respond, “from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” On we go. Someone else reads, “And she brought forth her first born Son…” and they whisper reverently, “and wrapped him in swaddling clothes…”

They dab a tear, remembering a Christmas past. They realize, perhaps more than most, that the Christ Child is better than a flying reindeer. They recall this Holy Child being with them when their husband died or when unspeakably nasty words were spoken to them, when life was almost too much to bear. It was this Babe of Bethlehem nestled by their side who made the impossible seem possible again.

In a few moments we will watch our little ones dream dreams. There will be angels with crooked haloes; they might be imagining they can fly. There will be shepherds, wondering whether the littler sheep might break lose any moment. There will be teenagers who should know better but this stuff is still so exciting. They will be equipping themselves with visions and memories of the baby Jesus who will be with them for a lifetime.

Today is about dreaming. Today is about a young girl named Mary, the age of some of our pageant participants, who hears an angel say, “For nothing will be impossible with God.” Mary had no reason to believe angel Gabriel’s words that she would soon be the mother of God come to earth. The angel’s words scared her at first. And yet, amidst the fear, Mary dreamed, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

This morning, we hear yet again, “Nothing will be impossible with God.” Treasure these words.

How many of you have recently said, “It is impossible.” You are so afraid to hope for fear that your hopes will not come true and you will look the fool. You have lost the confidence you once had—scratches and bruises can do that to us. Even your prayers have become dull, lacking any spark of excitement. You pray only for things you know will come true, not those things which are only possible with God.

Keep you eyes open now. Watch the young people of First Lutheran Church put on the Christmas pageant. Look into their eyes. There is something astonishing going on in this place this morning. Someone said to me a few years ago that it is impossible to get children here at First Lutheran Church. Keep your eyes open; look at all the kids. You who have been members for years and years—watch. Chairs have been stuffed into this sanctuary week-after-week. All things are possible with God. Our oldest members, this evening, will witness this excitement immediately as our children enter their homes; they will hardly notice the adults. It is the children who will captivate them. They tell me often, from reading The Pulsebeat and seeing the pictures of our children, that their prayers have been answered, that their church is alive, that the astonishing news of the Christ Child will be told here at 3rd and Ash for ages and ages to come.

Christmastime is about people who have no good reason to hope and yet, suddenly, out of the blue, catch a glimmer of Christ coming very close. It often happens when we least expect it. God is that way. God has been good to this congregation for 123 years now. Watch the children and you will see that God continues to be good to us.

Let us pray….Now open our eyes, dear God, that we may see the dreams of our little ones, the dreams which are our dreams too, with a few more scrapes and bruises and broken edges. Remind us yet again that nothing is impossible when you are present with us through Jesus, the Christ Child. Amen.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 11, 2011
Third Sunday in Advent
John 1: 6-8, 19-28
"Waiting on the Lord"

If you are in charge of the lighting on a movie set, your job is to shine the chief spot on Jesus for all you are worth.

It is not always easy to aim the spot exactly right on the leading character. There inevitably is some unknown actor who steals the thunder and demands a bit more light than what was previously expected.

I remember that happening when I first watched the movie, Easy Rider. This 1969 counterculture classic starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. They were the long haired hippies, Captain America and his pal, traveling across the United States on their souped up California choppers. The actor I most remember is neither Fonda nor Hopper but the lawyer who bailed them out of jail; his name, Jack Nicholson. This was the first time I had ever seen or heard of Jack Nicholson; he mesmerized me. Some stars have a way of pushing themselves into the light.

John the Baptist had all that potential and more. He was an eccentric firebrand, a fierce preacher. Throngs of people trudged through the desert to catch a glimpse of him and to hear him speak. Some even waded out into the Jordan River where John thrust them under as they forsook their wicked ways.

Interestingly, in the gospel of John, there is no mention of what intrigues us most about John the Baptist—his peculiar eating habits, his bizarre clothing choices, his fire and brimstone preaching—all these tidbits come from the other gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John’s gospel is sparse. His literary technique casts brightness on Jesus and shadows on John the Baptist.

You would think John the Baptist would have been tempted to ask for a little more light to be directed his way. After all, the crowds were flocking to him and chanting, “You’re #1.” He was no slouch, he was the real deal. “Are you the Messiah?” the crowds wondered. “No,” said John. “Are you Elijah?” “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” “No.” Why didn’t John grab a little of the attention?

Most of us long to be noticed. It is human nature. We love to be listened to, told how wonderful we are. And, really, how sad if we do not receive a little positive attention once in a while—we all need a little tender loving care.

John resisted being the center of attention with everything he had: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.” These words are not even original to him. He copied them from the prophet Isaiah.

John kept his heart pointed beyond himself to the one who, according to him, “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

Have you ever said anything like, “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal” or even “I don’t have all the answers.”

People often ask me an obscure question about the Bible about which I am clueless. I am often tempted to give some answer, any answer. My hope is that you will not notice my dim-witted response. It is almost impossible for me to say, “I don’t have a clue.”

Don’t we all face a similar temptation? When someone’s spouse dies far too young and they come asking us, “Why did this have to happen?” don’t we almost always offer some answer? It’s so hard to say, “I have no idea” or simply to cry with them.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was asked by a reporter whether he thought the Iraq war was immoral. He paused for twelve seconds, an interminably long time for live radio, and said, “‘Immoral’ is a short word for a very long discussion” (Rupert Short, Rowan’s Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop of Canterbury, pg. 289). His response allowed the question to hang silently in the air. Archbishop Williams did not rush to have all the answers.

Our Advent worship is our liturgical instruction in waiting: we wait in silence between readings; the Advent hymns are not always the most familiar and yet we resist singing Christmas carols until another day; the sparse plainsong music that punctuates our liturgy is also an invitation to restraint. Here this morning, for sixty-five minutes or so, we wait a bit longer for Christ to come into our midst and give us what we need most.

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes: “John the Baptist does not have the ultimate or full message—but his glory and genius is that he knows that! He hands it over to the one who does” (Richard Rohr, From Wild Man to Wise Man, pg. 48).

There is a deep dignity in individuals and communities of people who do not have all the answers, especially answers to life’s most perplexing dilemmas. I witnessed such dignity in the theologian Douglas John Hall who spoke at our Professional Leaders Conference in October in Palm Desert. After three days of substantial lectures, Dr. Hall, one of the world’s finest theologians, spoke of a brilliant student of his with a promising career in front of him. He was married, had a small child, and was suddenly struck down with leukemia. When this student came to Dr. Hall, even with all his sophisticated theological knowledge, he told us that he had no answer why such a dreadful thing was happening to this amazing young man. I liked Dr. Hall very much for his humility. It was precisey at this point he seemed most brilliant to me.

There are certain questions for which we must wait for nothing less than the Coming Christ. May we be a humble people whose glory comes in our willingness to wait for Jesus to provide the answers to our deepest needs and creation’s most profound longings. Like John the Baptist, during the Advent day of our lives, may God grant us the grace to let the stage lights shine on Jesus.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 4, 2011
Second Sunday in Advent
Mark 1: 1-8
"Down at the River"

Mark’s gospel starts out like a roaring 1960’s muscle car at a California drag strip. There is the tiny introduction (“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ”) and then Mark slams down the accelerator. Our backs are thrust against the seat and we are going a hundred and fifty miles an hour. When we finally catch our breath and climb unsteadily out of the car, we catch sight of a ranting madman in the middle of the river. Is this any way to start a gospel, especially three weeks before Jesus’ birth when this is the season to be jolly?

Mark skips the Christmassy stuff altogether. Not once in his entire gospel does he mention the baby Jesus. The other three gospels (Matthew, Luke, and John) ease us in slowly before mentioning distasteful topics like sin and repentance. We like it that way. Luke starts out with charming talk of angel visitations to Elizabeth and Mary, quaint shepherds, the little town Bethlehem and, of course, the baby Jesus. Matthew has the wise men from afar regally bearing their pricey gifts and placing them before the holy child. The gospel of John chooses high-fallutin language that is almost too rich, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Mark is different: he gets us to the Jordan River, and fast.

When we finally climb down the riverbank, we catch sight of John the Baptist. He looks like a wild man and reminds us of a primitive country preacher. As William Sloane Coffin notes: “No one would accuse [him] of having had a sunny personality. No one would describe him as a fun-loving fellow.” He goes on and on about repentance and sin and makes us squirm.

We much prefer our sin talk in small doses; if it must to be mentioned at all, we desire it to be directed at someone other than ourselves and about sins that we tend not to commit on a regular basis.

Pure and simple, all John’s talk of sin is painful. Frederick Buechner says it this way: “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob.” (Telling the Truth, pg. 7)

Sin is a lot like old, arthritic knees. Those knees ache something terrible but the prospect of surgery is far worse. How many people have you heard say, “I can barely walk but I will never have surgery.” An orthopedic surgeon friend of mine used to go into his patients’ rooms following surgery and ask, “Are you in pain?” The patients almost always responded, “It is excruciating, Doc.” He responded, “Good, the surgery worked.”

Those who have worked the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous understand the necessary pain of healing. The fifth step of AA recovery is: “Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” It takes humility to go under the knife and to admit our wrongs, especially to someone else. And yet, if we dare fess up to our shortcomings, what awaits on the other side of brokenness is the miraculous healing of all that haunts our hearts.

The church’s age old wisdom understands our need to tell someone else of our wrongs. You have probably been there a time or two when what you wanted most was to tell a dear friend about what was eating you up inside.

The gospel of Thomas, while not one of the sixty-six books in the Bible, attributes these words to Jesus: “If you bring forth that which is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.” These words alone, in my mind, warrant serious consideration for inclusion in the biblical canon.

Individual Confession and Forgiveness is the church’s lost art of healing for those of us longing to go down the river and bare our souls. It always seems to surprise Lutherans to learn that our hymnal actually has a section entitled “Individual Confession and Forgiveness.” We thought only Roman Catholics did that stuff anymore. You might be protesting this very moment: “I don’t have to confess my sins to anyone but God.” You, of course, are right: you don’t have to. But, I suspect that we all need to.

The only place we can think to go offering anything remotely similar to individual confession and forgiveness is the therapist’s office. Therapy is extremely important and can be incredibly beneficial and yet it should never be confused with individual confession and forgiveness. In addition to being free of charge and allowing us to unburden ourselves in the confidence of our pastor, individual confession presents us with a far more precious gift: “[your name], in obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Those words of forgiveness, my dear friends, are the biggest difference between therapy and confession.

Maybe you will never come to me or to another pastor for individual confession and forgiveness and that in no way means you are a worse Christian. However, most of us have a need to go to someone at one time or another and say, “Can we talk?” We have an even greater need to hear that person say, “It’s all right. I still love you.” And the church adds to that, “You are forgiven in Jesus’ name.” To hear those words! Never forget that this gift awaits you here.

I read somewhere that “the forgiveness of sins is not a change that comes over God but a change that comes over us, brought about by God.” (Herbert McCabe, The New Creation, pg. 73).

At first glance, most of us are repulsed by John the Baptist’s rants about sin and repentance. We want no part of those naïve folks gathered at the river. And yet, as we stand watching and listening, we feel a sudden yearning deep inside to go down and join them. Oh my, how we long to go down and sit on the mercy seat all clean and refreshed, holding the Christ Child in our arms.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 27, 2011
First Sunday in Advent
1 Corinthians 1: 3-9; Mark 13: 24-37
"Entering the Darkness with Christ's Light"

These are the darkest days of the year; each day grows darker than the previous one. You may have said recently, “The time change exhausts me, I can’t stand the darkness” or “I find going home from work in total darkness absolutely depressing.” If you need any reminder that the church is often out of step with the world, Advent is Exhibit A.

The church does a most peculiar thing in these Advent days. We begin preparations for one of our most joyous and important festivals, the celebration of the Christ’s birth, at the most depressing time of year, when things are at their darkest. How to muster an iota of hope in these days?

I recently read the most depressing book I have ever read. The Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges examines our nation’s current political and economic landscape. Hopelessness fills every page, despair is the ink with which it is written. The author writes bitterly of the political process, liberal and conservative alike, saying, “If voting made a difference, it would be outlawed.” In his mind, the wealthy corporations run Washington; the rich get richer and the poor poorer. Whether it is the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street crowd, he believes the common denominator is that the average person is angry. He has harsh words for the church and its preachers as well. According to Hedges, you would throw me out of this pulpit in a heart beat if I dared tell the truth about our nation’s thirst for weapons and lust for world domination, of corporations riding rough shod over the poor or our complete disregard of the impending environmental disaster.

Whatever your political persuasion, you may be one of those who has just about given up hope. You might be one of the angry ones who, if you were a bit younger, would occupy Wall Street. If you are younger, you may be frustrated beyond belief trying to find any job let alone a decent one.

How many of your recent conversations have been tinged with despair, colored with judmentalism? Think of the criticisms you have leveled against our leaders, whether president, congress people, mayor, or bishop. Not that these people always get it right and not that we should not tell the truth when our leaders oppress people. And yet the Psalmist warns us against eating up people like we eat our bread. It is so easy to judge, especially in these times, and it can be so much fun. Like watching a wreck on the interstate, we just cannot help ourselves when it comes to a conversation criticizing someone in leadership—we positively love it! What seems far harder is to discover some ray of hope.

The world really does not need another genius on the radio to figure out that it is dark outside nor does it need a whiz kid on television to determine that things are not going particularly well in our world these days. What the world does need, however, are a few courageous people who will enter the darkness and let light shine.

Those who enter the darkness these days and speak a word of hope in a time of sweeping judgments and unbridled pessimism are likely going to be viewed as frauds and Pollyannas. Whenever I try to give some leader in the church or government the benefit of the doubt, saying something to the affect that they are in a “no win situation and there are no good solutions left,” someone inevitably accuses me of kowtowing to those in authority. It seems more acceptable to be pessimistic and judgmental than hopeful and imaginative.

It was amidst such a grim landscape that Mark wrote his gospel. The temple in Jerusalem had recently been destroyed. Jesus had been dead for quite a while and he did not appear to be coming back any time soon as he had promised. Where was the hope? Most people had every ounce of imagination wrung out of them and found it impossible to believe that anything good could happen. People were sitting around belly-aching, criticizing just about everything and everyone. Jesus called people to rally against despair, to keep alert, to be on the watch, to keep awake, yes, to hope.

What if we were so moved by Jesus’ invitation to keep alert and awake and on the watch that we replaced moaning and groaning with a healthy dose of watching for Jesus in every moment of our lives? What if we became, as St. Paul said, “Enriched in [Christ], in speech and knowledge of every kind.” If only we let Jesus “strengthen us and make us blameless for the day of his return.” Are you ready for Jesus’ return today, this morning, now?

When I was a pastor in downtown Washington, DC, there were a number of occasions when we expected a key government dignitary to appear at our church for a wedding, funeral, or some other occasion. Whenever this occurred, we were on our best behavior. The custodian would clean the sanctuary like it had not been cleaned since Harry S. Truman visited for a gathering of the national Augustana Lutheran assembly; the garden group pulled weeds and planted new flowers; the choir rehearsed long into Thursday evening; greeters were chosen who smiled at every visitor and asked where they were from—expecting Nazareth to be the possible answer; deacons spent hours crafting their prayers. Our waiting was active, hopeful. If someone special came, we wanted to be ready.

The interesting thing, of course, is that in waiting for someone special, every person who entered became special. While we were waiting for a dignitary, unbeknownst to us, every person became an honored guest.

It works that way, and more so, when we await Jesus’ return. Our entire ministry and our lives become holy occasions for Christ’s return. To expect Christ any moment now makes every one of our actions significant. Whether it is how we greet one another in a few moments, how we sing the next hymn, how we make our offering this morning, how we pray, how we bake cookies for hospitality—suddenly we are standing on tippy-toe, eager for every moment to usher Jesus into our midst. Advent hope works like that. If each and every person might be Christ, then every occasion is precious and all people are holy.

It is fitting that we do our finest hoping when all seems so bleak and dark. When people are saying, “I am so depressed by the absence of light,” we are the ones who enter that very darkness and begin lighting candles, one-by-one. How exciting it is to expect that Jesus will come by here any moment now.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 20, 2011
Christ the King
Matthew 25: 31-46
"A Most Peculiar King"

If First Lutheran had a signature Bible passage to go along with our mission statement, The Heart of Christ in the Heart of the City, we could not do better than today’s gospel reading: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

This certainly seems a peculiar reading for Christ the King Day. You would think there would be a more regal reading on this day when we conclude the church year, something with trumpets and timpani and cheering crowds. And yet, in the church’s wisdom, this text about the homeless, the hungry, and the naked is appointed for this Christ the King Day.

We at First Lutheran Church have ample opportunity to worship this king who comes to us unawares—hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, imprisoned. Not a day goes by that one of these blessed ones isn’t knocking at our door.

But, I must confess, at least for me, it is not always easy to see Jesus in the homeless and the hungry, the naked and the imprisoned. There are days on my way to work when I make the turn from 4th onto Ash and the church comes into view and my stomach sinks. There they are—or is it Jesus? They are hanging out in front of the church again, drinking and doping, littering and urinating and defecating. Someone will almost certainly have called the office by the time I arrive, to complain, and who can blame them. It is not a pretty picture—for them or you or me. And yet, it seems First Lutheran is not called to paint pretty pictures— painting pretty pictures will be cheerfully picked up by other eager ones. You and I are the ones who, dismayed and discouraged at times, questioning our priorities every once and a while, have these words ringing in our ears, "What you did to the least of these, you did to me.” This work, that hardly seems kingly, is how this church, at least, has been told it can best find Jesus.

Friday was quite a day here at First Lutheran Church—and yet not too terribly different from all the rest. It was a day that can make you proud of being a member here and, at the same time, drive you crazy. As we have done now for 36 years, every Friday, we served breakfast to our patio parishioners. There were more hungry people than usual, about 250; this caused a few tempers to flare and some heightened anxiety. The minute breakfast was over, we immediately transitioned and Episcopal Community Services came to serve a Thanksgiving lunch on our patio to more than 100 of their clients. All the while our medical and acupuncture clinics were going full force. At the same time, the Friday women’s AA group was meeting in the library. And, out of the blue, a woman stopped by and asked if we could use 200 brand new sleeping bags! I was busy preparing for Pastor George Carlson’s memorial service when the door bell rang and I got up from my desk. Water was cascading into my office. The toilet had overflowed and was flooding our entire office area. Once we got that all mopped up, a woman was at our entrance with all her earthly belongings (two shopping carts full) unpacked and spread over the entire sidewalk as if she were selling her belongings to all comers at a Marrakech bazaar. We had asked here to leave repeatedly the day before. I wanted to get home and fast. I was worried. What if she returned this morning when you all arrived, messing up the entrance and making our Sunday morning a tad uncomfortable and messy?

It was only when I closed my car door that I realized how astonishingly stupid my worry was. If that woman were here this morning, nothing could be better. She would provide the perfect opportunity for us to see Jesus’ words come alive, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” That poor, confused, homeless woman who was raising my blood pressure was Jesus. She was writing my sermon and I was oblivious.

As I drove to my warm house for a peaceful rest and a tasty meal, I was lucky to remember what always shakes some sense into me. I thought of the Russian Orthodox Church’s tradition of the holy fool. In addition to their orders of priests and deacons and bishops are the holy fools, the ones who sleep on church steps in Moscow on rainy nights, who talk to themselves, who it is uncertain whether they are on the verge of breakdown or breakthrough, who are the Christ come to visit us whether we notice or not. The Orthodox community accords them the highest honor. These holy fools hardly remind us of Christ the King until we remember those troublesome lines about what you do to the least of these, you do to me.

And those of you who are here this morning, who are homeless (astonishingly, there were more homeless people than usual at worship!), recognize that you are as important as a bishop and a pastor and a deacon and anyone else—and maybe more so. Recognize that God—and only God—has accorded holy orders upon you; you are the one gifted ones who bear Christ in your own unique way, at a terrible cost to you personally. May you know great blessing being Christ in our midst.

Strange king…I pray every day for the grace to see Christ in the people you and I have committed ourselves to serve. Our calling, at least here, is to see Jesus in the naked and hungry and imprisoned, in the ones conveniently discarded by most of society.

On my best days, I remember that our king was hungry and homeless and that he was finally hung on the cross which was his final throne in this world. It is then that I am able to give thanks that you and I are called here and offered the astonishing opportunity to see Christ every single day. God grant us open eyes and open hearts to see Christ the King in our midst.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Memorial Service for the Rev. George W. Carlson
Held At Christ Lutheran Church-Pacific Beach
(where Pastor Carlson served from 1982-1990)
Luke 2: 25-35

Pastor George Carlson bears a striking resemblance to Old Simeon. You can see the twinkle in his eyes as he nestles the Christ Child in his hands; you can hear him preach, “For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples...” George’s entire life was devoted to lifting that Child so that all whom he was called to serve might see their salvation.

I assume you have thumbed through your bulletin by now and realize this service is going to be a bit longer than most. Marlyss kept asking, “How long do you think the service will last?” Trying to be pastoral, I said, “There is no telling.” There was so much to squeeze in from George’s life lived abundantly—hymns treasured, Psalms cast to memory, prayers indispensable to the Carlson clan’s life together.

The planning for this celebration began the day little George was baptized at First Lutheran Church—Des Moines, Iowa. Ever since then, just like parents who tell their children that one last bedtime story to keep the monsters away, George has been telling that one last story about Jesus dying and yet conquering death by rising from the dead. He knew this day would come and, when it did, he wanted you, whom he loved, to be prepared and to have no fear.

By the way, did you know this story-teller had a big heart? That may come as a surprise to those familiar with George’s medical history. It was 1976. George and Marlyss had five children and a big church to tend, First Lutheran in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Out of the blue, George, who was 49, was stricken with the first of a number of heart attacks. Many of you were spellbound by this man with the big heart, albeit a jerry-rigged one. Rather than tip-toeing through the rest of life, George dove back in, heading to the golf course and sailing on the shining sea.

Pastor Carlson also headed back to the pulpit—he cherished the homiletic craft. I am sad to say I never heard Pastor Carlson preach a sermon. However, I did have the honor of watching him live a sermon. On my visits in past weeks, Marlyss or one of the children was always waiting at the door; they would whisper, “Dad doesn’t have much longer to live.” And then, as I quietly entered so as not to stir him, George, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, would whisper an unforgettable blessing over me (Bishop Finck told me the same thing happened to him). George could not give up being the big-hearted pastor even in his dying.

George Carlson celebrated life. It was not that he was afraid to die; in fact, he spoke of the prospects of heaven like a Swedish explorer preparing to embark on a new polar adventure. And yet the enchantment of heaven could wait, for George wanted to eke out every ounce of life he could this side of the kingdom come.

Why accept death? Life is for living not for dying. God gave George a beautiful wife, Marlyss. The two were exemplary “partners in the gospel.” I watched them ply their craft one afternoon at Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest. George needed every ounce of oomph to navigate the hallway with one hand holding an IV pole, the other clutching the back of his crazy hospital-issue pajamas. Marlyss, as love-dovey as on their first date, was arm-in-arm with her handsome George. They came upon a nervous young woman sitting precariously on the edge of her chair. They started talking to her as if they had known her for years. She was applying for a nursing job. George and Marlyss told her: “Relax. You are smart and beautiful. You are going to get the job.” I wondered how they ever knew. Fifteen minutes later the woman came out of the personnel office and the “partners in the gospel” went to work yet again, “So, how did it go?” The woman said, “I’m not too confident—there are 100 other applicants.” Not missing a beat, George and Marlyss said, “We are certain you will get the job.”…My, was I proud to be at the side of George and his bride, ever “partners in the gospel.”

The truth is we do not choose how long we will live or how we will die. Some people die in a flash and others, like George, cling to life a little longer. Those longer days can be a precious gift if done right. God gave George and Marlyss five children who adored their parents and continuously doted over them in those final days. The grandchildren were there too—oh my, the stories your grandpa told of you—could they all possibly be true?

Father George gathered each of you (Greg and Mike and Mary and Sue and Kathy) at his bedside, one by one; he lavished heart-deep words upon you with his few remaining breaths; he told you things only you were blessed to hear. He gathered each precious grandchild into his hands, too, and, yet again, created heart-deep words just for you.

And then, on his last night, as the shadows lengthened and his story-telling drew to a close, you gathered at his side to pray the final story, telling of your hopes and dreams; it went something like this, “Into your hands, O Lord, we commend my dear husband, my dear father, my dear grandpa.”

The writer and pastor Eugene Peterson says to pastors and their families: “People watch [you]. They see and are influenced either for good or bad by the seriousness and reverence in which [you] order [your] response to God…they notice the way [you] live with [your] families and friends—they see or don’t see forgiveness and grace, blessing and patience in [your] body language, gestures, and offhand remarks” (Eugene Peterson, The Pastor, pg. 316). You, with your beloved husband and father and grandfather at your side, have gotten it right. We have been watching you with considerable wonder. You have committed your life to telling the story of Jesus’ triumph over death to thousands and thousands of people. We thank God that you have touched our lives with your considerable grace over the years and particularly in these days as you have walked in the valley of the shadow and yet have feared no evil.

Even in death, George has one final story to tell us all. If you listen, you can hear him preaching: “Dear and beloved friends and family, have no fear; celebrate life, please, celebrate life.” And then, look, he cocks his thumb as only he could and says: “Never forget, death has been destroyed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Rejoice, my dear loved ones, rejoice.”

Pastor Carlson should be here now so let me be so bold to utter a few final words on his behalf: “May the Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 13, 2011
Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 25: 14-30
"Joyous Risk-Taking"

One talent is equivalent to about fifteen years’ wages. That is a lot of money. What would you do if someone gave you fifteen years’ wages as you left here this morning?

In today’s parable, the master of the house is going to be gone for quite a while; in anticipation of his absence, he entrusts an astonishing sum to three of his servants: one is given seventy-five years worth of wages all at once or five talents; another thirty years or two talents; the final servant fifteen years wages—while lower than the other two, nothing to sneeze about.

The master leaves no parting instructions for how to use their new found fortunes. For that reason alone, it is intriguing to see what the three do with their money. According to Jesus, people use money that God entrusts them in drastically different ways.

The English poet John Keats once said, “I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the best.” This sentiment sums up the first two servants. They are not afraid of failure. They take risks by devising elaborate trading schemes and they double their money. When the master returns, he is thrilled by their ingenuity and daring. “Enter in the joy of your master,” he says to them both.

The third person takes no such chances; instead, he buries his money. He reeks of caution, cowardice, and fear. I think you know the tongue-lashing he receives from Jesus.

There are people who prefer exercising caution to taking risks in order to spread the news of Jesus’ love. I know of a church just like that. For years now, it has amassed a considerable fortune in the bank. While their roof does not leak, their sanctuary is beautifully appointed, and their organ is in tune, their ministry to the community is nonexistent. This congregation will soon die very rich. It will be remembered not for its mission but as a cob-webby museum that refused to risk its considerable fortune for the sake of God. Sad.

Jesus invites each of us to risk some of the gifts entrusted to us for the joy of the gospel. Each of us is invited this morning to make a financial commitment, a pledge, to this church’s ministry in 2012.

While I hope not, there may one or two among us petrified to make a pledge. The guy who buries his talents suffers a similar fear. He abhors stewardship time, loathes his preacher ever mentioning money, and refuses to join the other two servants in the master’s joy. He is a sad guy to behold.

There are many here today, however, who are thrilled to share their financial resources for God’s ministry in this place. One of you determined your pledge right in front of me a few days ago, calculating what 10% of your salary—the biblical tithe—will be in 2012. You said, “I’m not sure I can afford this, pastor, but I want to do it. It brings me joy.” Your risk reminds me of what a Philadelphia disc jockey urged his listeners to do every night before he signed off: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.”

Jesus enjoys such daring. When he tells his parable, he has only days to live. He will be shooting for the moon, too, heavenly actually, for the sake of his friends, for you and me.

I don’t need to tell you that this congregation finds astonishing joy in risk-taking. I have never heard anyone at First Lutheran tell stories of caution, cowardliness, or how much money we have in the bank. The stories we love to tell are always about this congregation’s reckless abandon over the past 123 years.

We love telling how this congregation, about sixty years ago, moved only a few blocks from its original site to stay smack dab in the middle of the city. Other congregations deemed it far wiser to move to greener suburban pastures but our ancestors did a contrarian thing, took an enormous risk and stayed right here and built a brand new church building. Some wondered whether people would continue bringing their children downtown to church—isn’t it dangerous at 3rd and Ash at night? We continue to thank God for our risk-taking forbearers who stayed in the city for good.

We love telling of Bread Day, a story really of an evangelism program going haywire. So the story goes, one Friday morning, a group of good First Lutheraners baked delicious bread and brewed aromatic coffee for the well scrubbed business people on their way to work—a brilliant evangelism scheme, really. Apparently no tie guys or dress gals stopped by. Who did smell the aromas were our homeless and underserved brothers and sisters who have been stopping by here for thirty-six years now. Funny how the Holy Spirit works. This story has become positively mythological in this place. It is hard to know exactly what happened on that first Friday morning but, one thing is for certain: we have entered into the joy of our master as those who preceded us took a daring risk and we sure love telling their story.

We have a new story to tell, too, by the way. It has always seemed that this congregation’s heart has been bigger than its pocket book. In the past three out of four years, we have balanced our budget. Not only that, we have given more and more money away, every year, to the ministries of our Pacifica Synod and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—we support missionaries and seminaries and disaster relief all around the world. We could, of course, say we are helping the downtrodden, reaching out right here, without increasing our commitment beyond our doors. But we have chosen, by God’s grace, to do otherwise, to share our gifts with a church bigger than ourselves, here, at 3rd and Ash. We have increased our ministries here, too. Who would have imagined that we would have a growing Sunday School for all ages? Enter the joy of the master! Who would ever have guessed that we would have a confirmation class with six students and acolytes to boot? Positively joyous! And believe it or not, there are three babies on the way to First Lutheran parents--our ancestors must have been visionaries to build right here!

First Lutheran Church could have played it safe but, by God’s grace, this congregation has risked over the years and in so doing has entered the joy of the master.

I pray that you will be part of the joy. Please take a risk and make a pledge to our ministry in 2012. Really, when you hear Jesus tell that parable of the three servants, which servant would you most like to be? I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 6, 2011
All Saints Sunday
Matthew 5: 1-12
"Saint Detection"

When you hear the word “saint,” if you are at all like me, you think of some famous follower of Jesus like Martin Luther or Martin Luther King, Jesus’ mother Mary or the disciple Peter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Rosa Parks. These saints are well worth our holy pause this morning. And yet, lifting up the big time saints can make those we love and us feel pretty insignificant.

What we celebrate this morning, All Saints’ Sunday, is actually two church festivals in one, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Historically, All Saints’ Day is on November 1; this day lifts up the martyrs and those who performed extraordinary wonders and acts of mercy. All Souls’ Day, November 2, is when the church remembers those not nearly so famous; they are the people who have touched our lives and whose company we tend to keep. In our prayers this morning, we will remember those blessed ones from this congregation who died in this past year: Emil Magdich, Virginia Kleinmeyer, and Beverly Michaelson. We will also remember those who are very dear to us whose pictures are gathered at the altar. These are the saints with whom we have rubbed elbows; they are our friends, our mothers and fathers, our grandmas and grandpas, our fellow worshipers.

According to the tradition of the church, the title “saint” is bestowed upon us at our baptisms—not at our death and not, at least for Lutherans, when we perform three certifiable miracles attested to by Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson. When water is poured over our heads and the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” are uttered, that is all that is required for us to be elevated to sainthood. In our prayers this morning, we will also lift up those who were baptized this past year: Henry Carter and Madelyn Storm. They became saints before our very eyes. We might wonder how they can possibly be saints. Henry and Madelyn are both cute as buttons but they have done nothing exceptional in their little lives—unless, of course, you ask their parents and grandparents. Nevertheless, we call them saints because God has made them saints. This is God’s doing, not ours. God makes saints.

The difficulty, more often than not, is our inability to detect sainthood in one another. “Saints?” we ask. “How possibly can he or she be a saint?” We know these people all too well.

Frederick Buechner offers a helpful hint at saint detection: “In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.”

We have all caught these handkerchiefs fluttering from heaven and yet, if we admit it, these handkerchiefs have all been a tad flawed: he was so committed to the work of the church but rarely paid any attention to his own family; she visited all the sick of the parish but thought she was better than everyone else; he always stood up for the poor and oppressed and yet was so judgmental of those who did not demonstrate a similar passion for the downtrodden. All saints, all flawed. We can be so quick to see the imperfections in our friends and family and our brothers and sisters in Christ that we find it hard to discover God’s image in them. What we do here this morning, by God’s grace, is to practice the craft of saint detection in one another.

I read a few evenings ago that ancient spiritual teachers urged their followers, “After God, consider each person as God.” Are you able to see God or even sainthood in the people sitting around you this morning?

I first met with you as your prospective pastor on a rainy and blustery Saturday, January 8, 2005. As we gathered around cake and coffee in the lounge, and I answered some of your questions about my past ministries, I told you of my favorite character in all of fiction; his name is Mr. Fruit. Mr. Fruit appears in Pat Conroy’s book, Prince of Tides. He is an odd duck. Mr. Fruit could often be seen directing traffic on a Friday afternoon in his little South Carolina town’s busiest intersection though he was not a police officer. Mr. Fruit always led the 4th of July parade, waving a little American flag, even though he was not an honored dignitary or elected official. It was the community that allowed Mr. Fruit the places of honor in their community.

Pat Conroy writes that the character of a community is measured by how it treats its Mr. Fruits. I would add: the character of a Christian community is measured by how it detects sainthood in our Mr. Fruits. Every community has its Mr. and Ms. Fruits, and, surprise, surprise, most of us have the name Fruit.

How might we discover sainthood in one another? Jesus’ beatitudes offer instruction in saint detection. It is tricky business though. The attributes Jesus lifts up in saints are rarely easy to spot; they are not characteristics we typically ascribe to blessed ones, to saints. Jesus said: “You’re blessed when you are at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” That is sainthood? “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.” A saint? “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less.” Do any of you relate to these sayings of Jesus? Did you know that you are a saint? (These beatitudes are from Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation of the Bible.)

The joy of Christian community is when we see Mr. Fruit singing in the choir, Ms. Fruit collecting the offering, tiny Fruits passing the peace on Sunday morning. The wonder is when we realize we are Mr. and Ms. Fruit, all saints. Strange, my dear saints, but true.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 30, 2011
Reformation Sunday
Romans 3: 19-28
"The Gift of Grace"

Those of us who are Lutheran love Reformation Day. Since October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses onto the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, we have never quite acted the same. Reformation Day feels like such a triumphant day: our church is decked out in red, the color reserved for the Holy Spirit and martyrs who spilled their blood for the gospel’s sake; we sing “A Mighty Fortress” with more gusto than we do most other hymns; and, for good measure, we place Luther’s picture on the bulletin cover lest a single soul misses what this day is about. Reformation Day is the birthday of the Lutheran church.

And yet we must ask: is today, Reformation Sunday, really all about Luther’s audacity before Pope Leo X and his famous line, “Here I Stand,” as if he and we are some churchly version of Frank Sinatra’s doing it “my way?” or is there something more important afoot? Strange as it may seem, the Reformation really is not primarily—if at all—a celebration of Martin Luther—it cannot be—it must be more. Luther would have been horrified to hear of a church body named after him and to find people defining themselves as his followers rather than followers of Jesus Christ.

Up until the Reformation, Luther was a faithful and yet troubled Augustinian monk, trying repeatedly and unsuccessfully to save himself by doing what was right. He never felt as if he was pleasing what, in his eyes, was an angry God. Then came that momentous day when Luther read, as if for the first time, Paul’s words in Romans 3: 23, 24 (“Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”). With those words, “justified by his grace as a gift,” ringing in Luther’s ears, his life, the church, and the world were turned upside down.

Luther’s discovery of the free gift of grace shattered the imprisoning chains that have enslaved so many of us through the years who try to get things right and yet always seem to come up short. The Reformation is about a God who loves us though we are, more often than not, at least a tad unlovable. We sing “A Mighty Fortress” so loud because the chains of our unworthiness have been burst asunder, not by Luther, but by God through Jesus Christ.

While the words were spoken almost 1200 years before Luther, I love how old Saint Basil said it: “I am a sinner; I give you thanks, Lord, for having patiently borne with me.” That is the Reformation spirit! Thank you, God, for bearing with me, a sinner.

So, what exactly is this gift of grace? The author and preacher Frederick Buechner describes grace this way: “Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it, deserve it, or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

“A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace.”

Oh, to be a people who celebrate God’s grace.

This past week, pastors and other professional leaders of our Pacifica Synod had our yearly retreat in Palm Desert. I arranged for one of our speakers, the Rev. Dr. Douglas John Hall, to be with us. Dr. Hall is one of the world’s finest theologians. He taught at McGill University in Montreal for many years. He is eighty-four years old. He uses a cane, sits down to lecture, and is hobbled by a number of illnesses. For the past year, I have been in conversation with Dr. Hall and fallen in love with his graceful manner. Right before it was time for him to speak to our group, Dr. Hall told me he was very nervous. He said he was an old man and past his prime. He wondered whether he was up to the task. As we all watched him and listened to him, we were mesmerized by a man of considerable grace. When I thanked him for his astonishing presentations, he said something to the effect: “Whatever I have said these past few days that is good and rings true is due to the wonderful teachers I have had over the years—they taught me everything I know. I am simply an old eighty-four year old man giving my swan song.” That, my dear friends, is grace.

Many of you are people of grace. To be graceful does not necessarily mean that you have the discipline to read your Bible every day or that you always say your prayers before falling asleep at night. To be graceful means to be deeply indebted to God who loves you no matter what your failings. To be graceful is to understand that anything you achieve worthy of praise occurs thanks to God.

A graceful person says, “Good evening, my name is John and I am an alcoholic.” John understands his sobriety is a supreme gift of grace from God. He could not stop drinking on his own, but one day, when he was at rock bottom, God gave him the exquisite taste of grace.

A graceful person is a sister who has hated her brother since that petty slight thirty-nine years ago, and then, out of the blue, decides to make that nerve-wracking telephone call. When her brother lifts the phone, she weeps for she knows what is soon to occur….That, my friends, is grace.

A graceful person wakes up in the morning and simply says, “Thank you, God, for another day I do not deserve but that I certainly will cherish.”

Martin Luther risked his life to make it clear to any who would listen that God’s deepest passion is to save us from all our foul-ups, failures, and shenanigans. Even when we find it hard to love ourselves, God loves us all the more. That, my dear friends, is why we celebrate the Reformation. That is grace.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 23, 2011
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22: 34-46
"Which Commandment Is the Greatest?"

“Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Not a bad question, really. I suppose we have all wondered about this from time to time. Whenever such a question is asked, we do well to look at who is asking it. Are they asking the question to enhance God’s love for the world or simply to engage in an ornery debate?

If Babe Ruth asked you how many balls and strikes a player gets at each bat, you would smell a rat. If Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts asked you now many amendments are in the U. S. Constitution, you would immediately know games were being played. If Betty Crocker asked you how many cups of sugar go into baking a sheet cake…..I think you get the point.

The Pharisees asked Jesus, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Do you really think they wanted Jesus’ opinion?

It was not just any Pharisee who asked Jesus the question about the greatest law. It was a sophisticated lawyer. He had spent a lifetime pondering all 613 of God’s laws. He understood the minutiae, had parsed the nuances, and was well versed in the ancient debates surrounding God’s laws. This was his job. The 613 laws told God’s people what to wear, what to eat, how to treat their children, how to treat their enemies, when to rest, when to work. When someone wondered whether he could milk his cows on the Sabbath, he went to him for an answer. If a person was starving in the desert and only had a two day old lobster, he could answer whether it was permissible to eat this dead shellfish to save her life.

Most of us have been involved in such contests of wits. If a woman is going to lose her life unless she aborts her child, is abortion permissible? If a drunken husband beats his wife repeatedly, can she walk out on him? Is it ever acceptable in God’s eyes to give a lethal injection to a mass murderer? Have you ever asked such questions?

“So, Jesus, out of the 613 laws and commandments in the Old Testament which is the greatest?” The Pharisee, an accomplished lawyer, a partner in the offices of “Pharisee, Sadducee, and Sons,” must have known. Before he could walk, he had seen the decorative mezuzahs hanging on the doorposts of every room in his family’s house, reminding him of the words from Deuteronomy 6: 4-9: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” He had worn tzitzit, ceremonial fringes hanging from his waist, since he was a boy, constant reminders of God’s precious gift of the law. This man knew the law.

“So, back to the question, Jesus, which is the greatest?” Jesus must have wanted to scream, “Don’t play games with me.” Jesus did not miss a beat. There was one small problem, however: Jesus offered two laws rather than one. You can hear the lawyer’s exasperation, “I said one commandment not two.” Jesus offered one commandment from Deuteronomy 6:5 (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all our might”) and a second for good measure from Leviticus 19:18 (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”).

Jesus’ answer did not take the lawyer or other Pharisees anywhere they had not been before. What he did, though, was astonishing: he called us all to revere not only God but also our neighbors and ourselves, all in one breath, as if all three are equally important. Already we want to protest and debate: “But Jesus, which is more important: God, neighbor, or I?”

Most of us like playing these intellectual games, at least occasionally. We sometimes prefer trouncing someone in debate than focusing on how best to love one another and God and ourselves. I often hear this debate pitted this way: which is more important for the people of God, to worship on Sunday morning or to serve our brothers and sisters and stand up for justice?

The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a discussion group with a group of seminary students in the late 1930’s, told his students, “Only someone who speaks out for the Jews has the right to sing Gregorian chant.” Unless we serve others, our worship is worthless. Some people love that; they clench their fists in solidarity with the downtrodden and claim that those who care much for worship are simply misguided chancel-prancers and foolers with fringes. As in so many religious debates, there is another side. Who can imagine the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s soaring calls for civil rights without first casting those words to memory during his Baptist Church’s worship services while growing up? And Mother Theresa—who can imagine her working with the world’s poorest on the streets of Calcutta, alongside her Sisters of Charity, without continuously retreating to daily prayer and daily Mass for sustenance?

So which is more important, service to our brothers and sisters or worship of God? Perhaps you have noticed: there are three answers—just like Jesus offered: worship of God, service to our brothers and sisters, and the spiritual uplifting of ourselves.

It is so easy to squabble over these kinds of questions. Jesus answered the Pharisee’s question in two short sentences--and, in truth, he did not have to answer with even one word for in a few short days his answer would be given with his life, hanging on the cross. As his detractors pondered religious questions well into the night, Jesus hung on the cross, loving those debaters and detractors and the entire world.

Too often, I am afraid, we invest an inordinate amount of time and energy debating questions for which there are no satisfactory answers. Perhaps it is better, the moment we get into a heated debate about some religious question, to immediately remember what Jesus did: he loved the Lord his God with all his heart, and soul and mind, and he loved his neighbors as himself. Rather than forming a sophisticated debating society, Jesus spent his life, even on the cross, loving his Father in heaven and you and me.

So, which is the greatest commandment? I think you already know.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 16, 2011
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22: 15-22
"Our Highest Allegiance"

I suppose we have all done it a time or two in our lifetime. We have driven the same route home for years and years; we could drive it blindfold. And then there comes a day when we drive by that very spot we have driven by a million times and, for the first time ever, we notice a fascinating house or a gorgeous view we never saw before. Out of the blue, our trip home is like it has never been. It is all a matter of focus.

Most of us have driven by this morning’s gospel reading quite a few times in our lifetime. It is the King James Version that we likely know best: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” The moment we hear these words, we ask the same, familiar, worn-out questions: What is legitimate for the government to ask of its citizens and how should we respond? How should church and state interact? When is it appropriate to say “no” to the government, if ever? Almost always when we hear “Render unto Caesar” our mind goes to government.

Driving by this text earlier this week, I saw something I had never noticed before. This text is all about God and only tangentially, at best, about Caesar, government, the United States of America. To hear this text and immediately think of taxes is to miss the point.

When I drove by this text this week, I saw for the first time Jesus inviting you and me to offer our highest allegiance to God. Now, in order to see this text this way, we must refocus and look much more carefully. Jesus knows the Pharisees could care less about how he answers their questions—they want to trap him and drag him to the cross—something they will succeed in doing by week’s end with Pilate’s help. So, Jesus is very careful and, because of his care, we can miss the point as did the Pharisees.

The minute the Pharisees say to Jesus, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth, and show deference to no one…” just like Jesus, we smell a rat. When certain people say, “Pastor, we really love you,” I know what is coming next: “BUT….” And so, if the Pharisees want to play mind games, Jesus will play too. But I know you are here for something more than playing mind games so let me give a shot at what I think Jesus wants us to hear beyond this boxing match with his adversaries.

This gospel reading is all about where we place our deepest loyalty, to whom we show our highest reverence and allegiance.

As a kid, one of the people who sat two pews behind us in church was Henry Nehemiah Nickerson. Mr. Nickerson was on board the USS Utah when his leg was blown off in the battle of the US Occupation of Vera Cruz, Mexico, on April 21, 1914. He was twenty-six years old at the time and his leg was amputated close to the hip. Mr. Nickerson received the Medal Honor. Mr. Nickerson came to church every Sunday with one pant leg folded up and pinned. You did not have to see him to know when he was entering the sanctuary because you could hear his old metal crutches squeaking the moment the sanctuary doors opened. My father told me the Medal of Honor was the highest award one could receive for bravery in battle. Every year at Christmas, Mr. Nickerson sat on the reviewing stand for the Wheeling Christmas parade. The year our junior high marching band was in the parade, I blew my clarinet a little harder and a tear formed in my eye as I passed the hero I had been taught to revere.

We all learn about reverence. We stand for the singing of the National Anthem and remove our hats and place our hands over our hearts. At the Sunday Padres’ Sunday games, who isn’t moved when the crowd stands for the singing of the Marine Hymn as we offer our reverence to the assembled Marines who protect our nation?

But I have gotten a little bit ahead of myself. I have talked about warriors and allegiance to nation. In getting ahead of myself, I have almost driven past the most important part of what Jesus has to say. If we are to be followers of Jesus, we must always ask first, not what we should render to the United States of America, but rather what we should render unto God. In asking this question, what to render Caesar is not even in the equation.

I read this week, “We appear guilty not so much negatively by disobedience, but positively by not enriching ourselves by nearness to God.” (Paul Evdokimov, Ages of the Spiritual Life). “Render unto God the things that are God’s” is meant to draw us near to God. All that has been given to us is given by God. We have been created in God’s image, not Caesar’s or President Obama’s, but God’s image.

When we understand our highest and ultimate loyalty is to God, everything else falls into place a bit more neatly. When God gets our highest loyalty, we might even have a chance of seeing our enemies as bearing the image of God and perhaps, for the first time, finally getting our loyalties straight.

The Psalmist said: “Those who look to the Lord are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame” (Psalm 34: 5).

My dad taught me to reverence Mr. Nickerson. Does anyone teach us how to look to God and reverence God? Absolutely.

Last Sunday morning, when I was standing near the baptismal pool, greeting worshipers and preparing for worship, I watched Geri Engelke, one of First’s longest time members, walk into the sanctuary. She went directly to the baptismal pool, placed her fingers in the water, and made the sign of the cross. She was teaching us reverence. Geri was remembering whose she is, that she bears the image of God from her baptism. Focus, friends, focus on God.

On Friday, I watched Doris Shimizu hand out coffee to our homeless and underserved brothers and sisters—Doris has been doing this now for thirty-six years. As I watched her, I sensed her teaching us all how to reverence God, this time, though, a bit differently. She was teaching us to see the image of God’s son, Jesus Christ, in every person who went through the food line, calling many by name and honoring all. Focus, friends, focus on God.

In the weeks ahead, each of us will be invited to reverence God in our lives by making a financial commitment, a pledge, for ministry here in 2012. This is one of our highest honors. Every time we place our envelope in the offering plate, we teach one another about reverence, showing others how richly God has blessed us. Whether we commit 75 cents a week or $275, we are reminding one another that God has given us everything we need. Our commitment to ministry in this place is our demonstration of reverence for being able to gather here, week after week, in the presence of God and to share God’s blessings with all our brothers and sisters in need. Focus, friends, focus on God.

Wherever you drive today, I pray that you will focus on the words, “Render unto God the things that are God’s.” As you do so, may you be drawn very near to God.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 9, 2011
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22: 1-14
"Grace Upon Grace"

Today’s parable makes me sad. It rips at my gut actually. Wedding preparation should be filled with joyous anticipation. If you have ever planned a big celebration and anticipated your best friends coming, you know how excited the king must be about his son’s impending wedding. You can imagine the lavish preparations—cleaning the palace, preparing the finest recipes with the most delectable oxen and tender veal, hiring a band that played the favorites of young and old alike.

You would think people would drop everything to come to the king’s palace. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. Wouldn’t you drop everything if you were invited to a state dinner at the White House? But that’s not what happens when the king sends out the dazzling gold embossed invitations and then waits eagerly for the RSVP’s to return. The responses are disappointing to say the least. One invitee goes back to his farm instead of attending the festivities—pigs apparently are more important than the king’s son; another simply goes away—where could he go more important than the king’s palace; another has business to attend to— couldn’t the business wait a day; and others mistreat the ones delivering the invitations, even killing them—and this because they are invited to dine with the king.

Imagine how discouraged you would be if your child is getting married and no one wants to attend. What would you do?

We just taught our confirmation class that Sunday morning is a wedding feast with God—actually, every Sunday is Easter. God invites us here. What can be more important in our lives—the beach, the Chargers, the Sunday Times? Is there anything in your life that can possibly trump celebrating God’s love offered through the death and resurrection of Jesus? And yet many of us have our reasons for not attending.

I want to reveal to you one of my deepest, darkest secrets. Whenever people do not show up for worship here and attendance is lower than anticipated, my entire Sunday is rocked and ruined. Really! I sulk through the rest of the day and Dagmar inevitably says to me, “Attendance was poor today, huh Schmus?” Last Sunday was one of those low days. I was so excited in advance. We had picked rousing hymns, I had worked on my sermon, Jared’s organ music was stunning, the flowers were arranged beautifully, the altar was exquisitely set with gifts from heaven, and yet, not so many showed up at worship. Though worship attendance has climbed steadily in recent years, one day did me in. Now, I understand that this happens from time-to-time—people are on vacation, others at conferences, some sick—and yet, low attendance eats at my insides like termites on raw wood.

The king, though disappointed by the pathetic response to his upcoming festival, does not give up; he does not let disappointment ruin the day. When the A-Listers send their regrets with “cannot possibly make it, but will be thinking of you,” the king immediately dispatches his servants to the highways and byways to invite the B-Listers. The feast is ready and someone must attend. The show must go on.

Now at this point, the parable not only makes me sad, it also makes no sense to me. When the B-Listers finally arrive, one is tossed out on his ear. Why is this poor person thrown out--after all, he was not deemed good enough to be considered on the first list and he really is invited as an after thought on the king’s part. Jesus says he is thrown out because he isn’t dressed properly. Did the king really think a single B-Lister would own a tuxedo or Chanel dress?

I assume this bugs you too. Elton Richards, a predecessor of mine in Ardmore, says this: “The dramatic turn in the parable has little to do with the dress code. Some had made light of the invitation by staying away, but this man was making light of the invitation after he had come. God's gracious invitation always comes to us as we are, but we need to come not as we were. Grace is free, but it is not cheap. It involves change—repentance. Insiders are always tempted to take God lightly—to assume once at the table we can stay as we are. Consumers of God's grace, we dare not be presumers of that grace” (Elton Richards, “Sorry, I’m Busy,” Day One, October 13, 1996).

The Bible is filled with meals of grace at which no one should presume an invitation. All biblical meals are for B-Listers, people like you and me for whom an invitation to any meal hosted by God comes as utter surprise—call it grace! What better definition for “grace” than B-Listers invited to a special meal? One of the most beloved stories in all of Scripture is the extravagant meal the father throws for his prodigal son’s return home; this meal is sheer grace. The night before Jesus dies, he pauses for one more meal with his closest friends who will betray and deny him—again, grace. When Jesus rises from the dead, there are all manner of graceful meals for Jesus’ cowardly and forlorn friends—one in the evening as the confused disciples gather at table at Emmaus and another as the despondent disciples come to a breakfast fish fry with the surprise guest, the Risen Lord. And in Revelation 19:17, we hear of that heavenly eternal banquet where redeemed sinners will gather before the king’s throne forever, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God.” Grace upon grace, all these meals.

My dear friends, this meal, this morning, is one more of those astonishing meals. Jesus speaks so fondly of our gathering here— “Whenever you do this, do it in remembrance of me.”

Without meals, this congregation can close up shop. In fact, without meals, whether we know it or not, the shop is already closed! If Christianity is about anything, it is about meals. Our meals are essential to what we do here in Christ’s name; all dish out grace upon grace whether here on Sunday morning or outside on the patio where hundreds receive their daily bread. God is present in every one of these meals.

Each of us has been invited to this meal this morning. Though we are all B-Listers, each a curious mixture of good and bad, grumpy and happy, miserly and generous, nevertheless, God has invited us here to celebrate his son’s resurrection.

I am very happy you are here this morning—thrilled actually! I am certain your presence makes God even happier.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 2, 2011
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 21: 33-46
"Tending God's Vineyard"

Tony Bennett is best known for singing “I Left My Love in San Francisco.” This eighty-five year old has just come out with a new album, Duets II. He sings with the likes of Queen Latifah, Willie Nelson, Andrea Bocelli, and Lady Gaga. The British jazzy hip-hop singer Amy Winehouse joins him on “Body and Soul.” Ms. Winehouse died tragically in July after struggling with alcohol and drug abuse. She was twenty-seven years old and far too young to die

Tony Bennett became very concerned about her health when they met in London to record together. “I wanted to tell her that she needed to shape up or she could end up destroying herself.” Bennett knows from experience. He had his own spell when, as he puts, he “was naughty with some drugs.” He was offered sage wisdom that turned his life around. Someone who had watched far too many talented artists die from drug and alcohol addiction told him that such abuse was “a sin against his talent.”

Tony Bennett’s words, “a sin against his talent,” have stuck with me since I read them a few weeks ago in The New Yorker magazine (Gay Telese, “High Notes,” The New Yorker, September 19, 2011, pg.62).

In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus tell a parable about a landowner who owned a vineyard and asked people to watch over it when he went to another country. The landowner had seen to it that all was in order before he left: he planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. The vineyard must have been as pretty as the Napa Valley. He also was certain that those who would watch over his vineyard had all kinds of talents.

Those called to tend to the vineyard got pretty selfish. The owner repeatedly sent people to collect grapes from the vineyard and repeatedly the tenants treated his representatives with sickening brutally. They beat one, killed another, and stoned yet another. He sent others and they abused them too. Things got so dreadful that the landowner finally sent his own son—surely they would respond kindly to him. When the son arrived, “They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.” I think you could easily say the tenants sinned against their talent.

In this allegorical parable, the vineyard owner, of course, is God; those who initially tended the vineyard are the Jewish people and later the early church and still later you and I; those first sent to collect the grapes are the prophets; the owner’s son, of course, is Jesus. I have wondered these past couple of days what exactly the vineyard represents. Is it the land of Israel, is it the church, or is it something more? Is the vineyard all of God’s creation? I hope it is the latter.

You and I are called to tend to God’s creation. Each of us has a different gift in this enterprise. I am called to preach here on Sunday morning, to preside at the Lord’s Table, to visit the sick and homebound, and, yes, now to teach confirmation class. You are called to do something different but at least as important.

What are you called to do in the vineyard? Be careful. Whenever we hear a parable like this, our immediate inclination is to offer a churchy answer to what our calling is, something like setting up the altar, singing in the choir, serving on church council, helping out at TACO, offering a regular portion of your income to the ministries of this place. These are all wonderful pursuits but I fear perhaps a bit too narrow in the tending of God’s vineyard.

Martin Luther refers to our callings as the priesthood of all believers. Whatever we do throughout the day—preparing the morning coffee, talking with a loved one on the phone, interacting with a colleague at work, going grocery shopping—all these are opportunities to be priests. I know they don’t seem like particularly holy tasks, not terribly churchy, but they all have something to do with caring for God’s vineyard.

Tony Bennett’s words keep ringing in my ears, “Don’t sin against your talent.”

Have you ever thought about what it is in your life that only you can offer Jesus Christ when he comes your way? Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, provides a helpful answer. (We can learn oodles of important things from our brothers and sisters from other religious traditions.) Thich Nhat Hanh calls us to practice “mindfulness.” Mindfulness is being aware of and grateful for every little thing in our lives. He encourages us to chew our food 30 times before swallowing. Thirty times! As we chew our oat meal and munch on dill pickles, we praise God for these delicious gifts of creation. Our calling becomes gratitude for the simple things of life.

One particularly beautiful tradition from our Native American brothers and sisters is giving thanks for the cows and chickens whose lives have been sacrificed so we might eat our fill. Hear their prayer: “We give thanks for the plants and animals who have given themselves so that we can enjoy this meal together.” Our calling as we sit down for supper is our profound appreciation for all creatures, great and small, that help us live.

What better saint to exemplify this way of living than Saint Francis of Assisi. The church gives thanks to God for Saint Francis on his own day, Saint Francis Day, this Tuesday, October 4. Francis loved God’s vineyard so much that he even talked with the birds and sang hymns to God together with the stars and the sun and the moon. Though he gave away all his earthly possessions, he seemed rich beyond measure. I suppose we all would like to be a bit like Francis; isn’t that why bird baths and statues of his likeness fill our gardens? Isn’t that why people bring their beloved dogs and cats to churches everywhere this weekend to have them blessed? We love that happy and holy fool.

I suppose, if truth be told, we all sin against our talent from time-to-time. And yet, as often as we forget to demonstrate our gratitude to God, even more often, God sends his son, Jesus, back to tell us of the wonders that are ours living in God’s garden. “Take and eat,” he says. Oh, to live in God’s garden.

And yes, I believe that God is still watching over Amy Winehouse and inviting her to sing with the angels and Saint Francis in heaven.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 25, 2011
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 21: 23-32
"Liver and Onions and Stewed Tomatoes"

For some peculiar reason, Grandma served liver and onions that beautiful September Sunday afternoon when your family went to visit her. The side dish was stewed tomatoes. Remember how you could hardly eat a bite though you tried? Your father saw your untouched liver and stewed tomatoes and said, “Honey, aren’t Grandma’s liver and onions and stewed tomatoes scrumptious?” Even at four, you knew the correct answer, “Yes, I love them, Grandma.”

We learn early that good boys and girls give the right answer even when the wrong answer more adequately describes our feelings.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus meets up with Jerusalem’s temple leaders. You have got to believe that the chief priests and elders are in leadership positions because they, too, learned early on when to say the appropriate “yes” and the appropriate “no.” Perhaps that’s why Jesus drives them batty.

The battle of wits between Jesus and the religious hierarchy follows quickly upon the heels of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the week of his death. Passions are running at a fevered pitch as visitors gather in God’s holiest city to celebrate the Passover and the religious officials are none too happy—they love the crowds but can stand the chaos. The shouts of “hosanna” for this backwoods carpenter’s son make the crowd feel out of control. And the mess of palm branches and coats littering the city streets disgusts their sense of decorum. To make matters worse, Jesus overturns the money-changers’ tables at the temple—such erratic behavior. Jesus even kills a perfectly healthy fruit-bearing fig tree—why come to town and perform such a malicious act? The leaders are in a dither. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about change; killing trees and turning God’s blessed city upside down is not the right way.

Jesus senses that the chief priest and elders are all about public perception when they engage in a little verbal jousting with him, asking who exactly he thinks he is. And, in the spirit of a red hot debate, Jesus asks them a baffling question about John the Baptist, whether he came from human or divine origins. The chief priests and elders are no dummies; the question about John the Baptist is similar to the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?” There is no good answer. Like good politicians, they seek the point of least resistance—or of the most votes—and simply say, “We do not know.”

Most of us are quick to judge the chief priests and elders. Our judgment comes, in no small part, because we have never been in their place of power and authority. We can opine on the economy, the wars in the Middle East, immigration, and health care because most of our futures do not depend on how we answer these perplexing questions. The religious leaders’ “yes” or “no” will affect their jobs and the people they are called to serve. And so they are careful how they answer Jesus’ question.

Jesus tells the chief priests and elders a remarkable parable about the brother who says “no” to his father’s request for him to work in the vineyard and the other brother who readily says “yes” to his request. The right answer, of course, is a liver and onions answer. Whenever dad asks us to do something, the correct answer is “Yes, sir. Immediately.”

And yet, in order to grow as individuals, there comes a time when we must move beyond liver and onion answers, when our “yes” and our “no” must be born in the crucible of our own faith struggle. I can think of no better example of this than young people who, the day they head off for college, quit going to church for years and years except on those Christmas Eves when they return home and humor their moms and dads and dress up for a trip to church with the family. Parents fret over their children’s lack of commitment to the church. I suppose we are afraid our kids will end up in hell. I wonder, though, if young people’s not going to church at this point in their lives is more profound than simply not doing what we expect of them.

Perhaps we should not get too alarmed when our twenty-something kids quit going to church. Like confirmation class, not going to church is a rite of passage for many young adults, something many of us must go through in order to get to the other side of grace. Maybe the “no” to going to church is part of our growing up and essential to the struggle of finally believing for ourselves, struggling the best we can to say, on our own, “I believe in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Of course, we pray for the day our dear young ones will return to God’s house and we hope it will be sooner rather than later, but, until that day, perhaps it is best to accept their “no” as their struggle of faith and their search for truth. Let us patiently await the day when their “yes” to Jesus Christ is their very own “yes.”

One of my professors of worship, Gordon Lathrop, in a lovely little book, The Pastor, writes these words: “Ah, dear believer, by all means, when you can, be side by side with your children, be a struggling believer, hands out for mercy….Be side by side with your beloved ones, kneeling at the holy table. Do not know all the answers.” While these words are directed toward pastors, they certainly should resonate with all of us. When dealing with our children, especially our older ones, we dare not have all the answers!

The chief priests and the elders do not seem to have the patience to wait for their children’s yes”—they must hear the “yes” immediately. This attitude is what gets Jesus all worked up and, of course, finally hung on a cross. Because the religious leaders always say “yes,” they think they are better—better, at least, than the tax collectors and prostitutes and, I’m sure Jesus meant to add, Sunday morning soccer players. But Jesus says, “Truly I tell you the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”

Never forget this about this morning’s parable, however—and read it again if you missed this point: Jesus does not say that the chief priests and elders are not going to get into the kingdom of God; he simply points out that they may not get there on their scheduled time of arrival or even ahead of the tax collectors and prostitutes. As we struggle with our “yes” and “no,” let us give thanks to God who welcomes tax collectors and prostitutes, chief priests and elders, liver detesters and Sunday morning soccer players, yes, and you and me, too. That good news is way better than grandma’s liver and onions and stewed tomatoes.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 18, 2011
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 16: 2-15; Matthew 20: 1-16
"A Free Brunch for All"

Is there anyone here this morning who doesn’t grumble at least once in a while?

In the Bible and in our two readings this morning, we hear of people grumbling.

In our first reading from Exodus, the Israelites are grumbling in the wilderness, not long after God miraculously frees them from the brutality of Egyptian bondage and feeds them with manna from heaven. It is almost inconceivable that the Israelites can find any cause for grumbling. You would think they would celebrate with reckless abandon since God has finally freed them from slavery—but, my, how they grumble. They grumble about the food, mystery food in their mind, and they tell Moses they would much prefer going back to Egypt as slaves than to face the uncertainty of desert wandering—unimaginable but true.

Unimaginable perhaps but then again, how many of us grumble even when we have it so good. We start grumbling early, complaining about mom’s spinach and leftover zucchini casserole when can barely walk. When we head off to college, we complain about the abysmal cafeteria food and have gigantic food fights with the miserable stuff even though it is all we can eat. When we get married, we complain about our wife’s food—it isn’t nearly as good as mom’s home zucchini “mystery food” which, by the way, we complained about incessantly when we were living at home. When we are hospitalized, we complain about the flavorless fare even though we have experienced miracle upon miracle of modern medicine. When we move to the retirement community and no longer face the drudgery of preparing our own meals, we complain like little kids. Does the grumbling ever end?

Jesus’ parable about the laborers in the vineyard demonstrates yet again our proclivity toward grumbling. This time the grumbling is not about the food but who gets paid for what work. Whether the laborers start at seven or nine in the morning and work through the blazing midday sun or they start later, say at five o’clock, and miss the hottest part of the day, they are all paid the identical wage by the landowner. “How can this be?” we demand to know. How dare Jesus suggest that people be treated equally no matter how hard or how little they work.

There is a lot of grumbling going on in our nation these days. Much of it revolves around who deserves what. Who deserves health care? Who deserves to live in this country? Who deserves tax breaks? Grumble, grumble, grumble.

This grumbling is alive and well in the church too—in case you haven’t noticed. God must have some kind of ranking system, making distinctions between good and bad, hard-working and lazy, faithful and back-sliding, right and wrong. Even when we Lutherans insist, “You don’t have to do anything to receive God’s grace,” more than a few of us—yes, we Lutherans!--insist that if that grace business were actually for real, there would be no incentive to do the good. We say, “You at least have to accept God’s grace. Otherwise, what would it matter?” We find it next to impossible to believe that there is such a thing as a “free lunch.” We know there is fine print somewhere, placing a caveat on all this grace business. We who think of ourselves as good Christians—yes, we grumble, too.

This morning, we are invited to a free lunch or, I guess, more properly, a free brunch. There will be no pre-trial test before we receive Holy Communion to find out whether we have been naughty or nice, no evaluation to find out who has worked the hardest during the week, not even an examination of our giving records through the first eight months of 2011. Every last one of us, even the tiniest among us, will be invited to the table of our Lord. “How can this be?” a few of us grumble. “How can two year olds receive the Sacrament? They have not confessed their sins and they certainly don’t have a clue what they are receiving. I had to wait until I was fourteen, on my Confirmation day. Why can’t they wait, too?” Like at so many meals, it is easy to grumble at this one, too, about who is worthy and who is not even if it is heavenly fare we are talking about.

And yet as the little ones come forward this morning, watch their joy as they reach out for the bread of heaven. They do not for a second think they are deserving of this gift—they do not even know what deserving means. They are simply delighted to join their friends, their moms and dads, their brothers and sisters, and to celebrate a free brunch.

We are indeed very fortunate people here this morning. We receive this meal from heaven now, and, when we arrive home, few of us will wonder where our next meal will come from. There are, of course, people not quite so fortunate. This very morning, according to a recent letter from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, over 13 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Djibouti suffer from famine and drought….Tens of thousands—predominantly children—have already died…Approximately 750,000 more people in Somalia are predicted to die in the next four months if governments around the world do not increase assistance to the region.” Why is it that almost everyone here this morning has never gone hungry, never faced a famine of such proportions? Why is it that can’t think of a single child close to us who has died of hunger? Is it because God thinks we are so good, so hard working. I doubt that even for a second. What you and I are is blessed, very blessed, yes, very lucky indeed.

Martin Luther urges us to pray before we eat our meals. As we bow our heads and fold our hands, we become mindful of how fortunate we are to sit down at any meal whether at church or at home. Perhaps you did not learn in Confirmation class that Luther also urges us to pray after we eat. I confess my family growing up didn’t do this, even once, nor has our family since then; I have visited few households—none that I can think of—where a prayer is offered at the end of the meal. Do you do this? What a wonderful idea it is. Frankly, many meals are occasions, forums, for grumbling. Grumbling seems as central to many a meal as meat and potatoes. Rather than ending a meal grumbling about the food that has been placed before us or about some other issue that might have consumed our dinner hour, what a splendid idea to pause to give thanks to God for how blessed we are, lucky really.

Please bow your heads now and join me in Luther’s prayer for the end of a meal….“O give thanks unto the Lord, for God is good; for God’s mercy endures forever. God gives food to all flesh; God gives to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry. God delights not in the strength of the horse; God takes no pleasure in the legs of humanity. The Lord takes pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in God’s mercy…We thank you, Lord God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, for all your benefits, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 11, 2011
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 14: 19-31; Matthew 18: 21-35
"Remembering 9/11"

It was about one year after 9/11 that the parents of a beautiful young teenage girl asked to meet with me. No sooner had my office door shut behind us than the parents began to weep. Their precious daughter was the joy of their life, so spirited and fun-loving, with an ever present smile; and then, seemingly overnight, she became sullen and distant. Her teacher called the parents expressing her concern. Their daughter was becoming more and more isolated, inattentive in class and sorrowful looking. Then the parents’ world crumbled; they discovered that their daughter was addicted to the deadly prescription drug Oxycontin. They tried to figure out what could possibly have caused this startling spiral downward and they immediately zeroed in on 9/11. Since the day the towers fell, their daughter hadn’t been quite the same.

9/11 has changed us all in one way or another. This past Thursday afternoon, when the power outage brought San Diego to a grinding halt, what was your first thought once you realized you had not blown a fuse? We waited with bated breath, didn’t we, hoping that terror had not struck again.

In these ten years we have grown less trusting and angrier. Even now, in this place reserved for peace and holiness, we catch ourselves holding our breath, hoping our nation will make it safely through this day. Please Lord, we pray, please Lord, please.

How should we respond to the threat of terror hanging continually over our necks? We might look to this morning’s Bible readings for answers. And yet, you probably noticed that our readings from Exodus and Matthew, when placed side by side, do not exactly make for easy answers; in fact, they create a jarring dissonance.

The Exodus reading is one of those Old Testament readings that causes us to wonder how God can be so violent and bloodthirsty: “The Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.” There almost seems to be delight in the death of the Egyptians. This is the proof text some of us have been looking for: if God slaughtered the Egyptians, why not terrorists and wicked leaders in our own day?

God’s word, though, is rarely so simple. If Exodus suits our fancy on how to treat our enemies, let us not forget Matthew 18. Just when we are about to bang our tambourines and dance in the streets over the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Jesus bids us to forgive one another not seven times but seven times seventy. Now, I admit, these words are likely instruction on how early Christians should treat one another; however, once we hear Jesus’ passion for forgiveness and mercy, we dare not let our thirst for revenge be our final word in God’s name.

Apparently not even the Jewish people were entirely comfortable with Egyptian bodies washing up onto the seashore. Though they had felt the sting of Pharaoh’s whips, they still wondered whether God could be so vicious. The Jewish people are fond of telling an old Hasidic tale. The angels were rejoicing over the deliverance of Israel at the Red Sea. They were playing harps, singing and dancing up a storm when one of the angels said: ‘Wait. Look, the creator of the Universe is sitting there weeping!’ The angels approached God and asked, ‘Why are you weeping when Israel has been delivered by your power?’ ‘I am weeping,' said God, ‘because the dead Egyptians washed up on the shore are somebody’s sons, somebody’s husbands, somebody’s fathers.’” This Hasidic tale warns us not to celebrate even when our fiercest enemy has been killed for even that rotten apple is precious in God’s sight.

It seems to me that unless we are psychopathic maniacs, we understand that the use of violence has a ghastly way of boomeranging back toward us. Winston Churchill said, “The most frightful of all spectacles is strength of civilization without mercy.” When we resort to cruelty against the enemy, no matter how angry we may be or how just our cause is, our character is diminished and our finest traditions are tarnished.

As the towers came tumbling down in New York City ten years ago and the death toll rose, what we remember most of our nation’s people that day is not a vindictive desire to exact revenge on our enemies but rather a heroic longing to end the suffering of innocent people. As the ashes piled up, we were repeatedly moved to tears as fire-fighters and police officers and ordinary citizens risked their lives to usher complete strangers out of harm’s way. On that day, September 11, 2001, we beheld the noblest spirit this nation has to offer.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.”

One dragon waiting to be turned into a prince showed up at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Ardmore at our Service of Prayer and Remembrance the night after the towers fel1. The dragon hung up a hand-lettered sign that read, “ASSASINATE BIN LADEN,” right outside our sanctuary doors. The sign caused many of us to tremble. That Sunday, the dragon appeared at worship for the first time ever. He came and, in tears, confessed to hanging up the sign. Not long after his sign was but an embarrassing memory, he joined our church family; after that, he attended worship every Sunday, helped with our youth group, and regularly fed the homeless at 63d Street. The fire-breathing dragon turned into a prince because he had witnessed a community act with considerable beauty and courage.

It has been said that hatred is a failure of imagination. If that is the case, then love of our enemies is the triumph of imagination. Loving our enemies will never be easy this side of the kingdom come; perhaps that is why it is so rarely tried. And yet we dare not let hatred rob our nation or us of our highest ideals no matter how bitter we may be.

May the Lord inspire our nation to stand fast to its highest ideals and may we all, by God’s grace, become princesses and princes who pray for the day when God’s love will miraculously rise from the ashes of hatred and love will triumph forever in Christ’s name.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 4, 2011
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 18: 15-20
"The Community Oozing Mercy"

Our family has had four wonderful dogs: an Airedale Terrier named Max, a Cocker Spaniel named Minor (as in Unaccompanied Minor—we found him abandoned on the streets of DC), a Golden Retriever named Blue, and currently a fuzzy Boykin Spaniel named Cisco (as in Saint Francis). Each dog has had the same surname: not Miller but Nein, as in Max Nein or Cisco Nein, or, more precisely, Max No or Cisco No. I have loved all these dogs.

One dog we have never owned but that I greatly admire is the Staffordshire Bull Terrier better known as the pit-bull. You have heard the grizzly accounts of pit-bulls mauling infants and being bred as ferocious fighting dogs. Some nations and states have outlawed owning pit-bulls and yet there are people who swear by them, claiming that if treated with both love and discipline, they can make adorable family pets.

The church is a pit-bull; it can be ferocious or it can be adorable.

Some of you, sadly, have experienced the church as a ferocious pit-bull. You served a dreadful stint on a bickering church council, had an atrocious encounter with a domineering pastor, or were told that you are not welcome in God’s house. Being near the church often feels as dangerous to you as cozying up to a snarling pit-bull.

Others of you find the church an adorable puppy. Church is where you have heard the finest music ever, where your heart has been stirred to care for a lonely senior citizen or advocate for the rights of homeless people, or where friendships have been created that have sustained you in life’s darkest hours. You cannot imagine a more comfortable place to be on Sunday morning than the comfortable lap of a church pew.

When I meet with couples getting married, I always ask them, “How do you fight?” I don’t ask if they fight but how they fight. Being human, the bride and groom will have good days and bad days or, as Lutherans say, days filled with a curious mixture of saint and sinner, or, as the wisdom of the church’s wedding liturgy claims in no uncertain terms, better days and worse days.

We will fight; the only question is how. Jesus knew this about church people and yet our kind often seems inept at fighting fairly. There is a cottage industry of authors and consultants making small fortunes catering to squabbling congregations. Bishops and their staffs are run ragged trying to keep parishioners and pastors from killing one another. Perhaps you have been part of a congregation that caused you to say, “I have to get out of here before I lose my soul.”

Today’s gospel reading provides instruction for Christian communities eager to live together more peacefully than a pack of brawling pit-bulls. Now be warned: if we only hear this morning’s gospel reading without putting it into a greater context of Matthew’s gospel, we might get the zany notion that Jesus wanted to equip Christians with weapons to toss out pesky alligators from the church’s swimming pool—and, to be fair, the reading from Matthew 18:15-20 feels a tad top heavy or, in today’s parlance, a bit ferocious. However, Jesus’ words are not intended as ammunition to toss people out of our congregational doors and to put them of their misery the moment they disagree.

When you go home today, get your Bible, turn to Matthew 18, and notice how this morning's reading is nestled amidst two other passages like a little child between two comfy blankets. Since we did not read the other two passages this morning, let me tell you about them. The preceding passage is about one sheep that strays from his 99 other pals. Common shepherding technique is to protect the 99 at all costs even if it means losing the lost one. Jesus offers a radically different approach: he urges us to risk everything for the sake of the lost one. The passage that follows today’s reading is Jesus’ answer to how many times we should forgive one another. You know the answer but, in case you prefer to forget it, Jesus suggests forgiving one another 490 times! Mercy, not nastiness, oozes from these texts like a Texas oil well gone berserk.

If we want to have a friendly pit-bull, we need to discipline it with love, not chain it to a fence and beat it its brains out. Yes, indeed, we, too, must ooze mercy.

Here’s Jesus’ counsel on how to train loveable church members in order to create a happy kennel. “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” Now here was a completely new understanding for me as I prepared for this morning: Jesus doesn't say, “If that member "agrees" with you;” rather he says that if that member “listens” to you--listening and agreeing are very different things. If listening doesn’t work, Jesus urges us to take one or two others to the person in question. This is not meant to gang up on the person but to give her or him a chance with two or four more listening ears added to the mix. I had one more astonishing learning preparing for this morning's sermon that had never struck me before: Jesus says, if one doesn’t listen to you, treat her or him like a Gentile and a tax collector. Sounds very harsh—at least to me—but do you remember how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors--he was always hanging around with them and making others batty because of the company he kept. Yes, this all oozes mercy and a desire for brothers and sisters to live in peace.

How does First Lutheran Church fight? I must confess, after first six years here, I take great delight in how we do that together. Do we agree with one another? Hardly. Does your pastor drive you whacky at times? You answer that. My sense, though, is that this congregation, by the sheer grace of God, does a masterful job at living together in peace. We have not had to call in Bishop Finck to referee an out-of-control melee. It seems, more often than not, when we disagree, we go straight to the person, speaking what’s deep on our heart and listening to the other person’s concern, all the while praying and hoping for healing to occur. We do not seem to delight in watching one person viciously club another or gossip about someone. If that occurs, invariably I have found there is someone who suggests, lovingly, this is not how we treat our brothers and sisters here at First Lutheran Church.

Have you ever experienced a miracle? If you haven’t, following our prayers in a few moments, be attentive to how we share the Peace of Christ with one another. Visitors have told me that they delight in the sheer bedlam of it all as we run about this sanctuary, hugging and kissing one another in Christ’s name. We disagree on a number of matters but what we do seem to agree upon is that sharing the peace of Christ with one another is a far better idea than chewing each other's neck off.

We really are a bunch of pit-bulls. We do, in all honesty, have the frightening capacity to be vicious and deadly. And yet, because we have been treated so well by our master, Jesus Christ, our tails are already wagging and we can’t wait to scamper to our communal bowl, with our litter mates, where we will lap up a little bread and wine in Christ’s name.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 28, 2011
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 3: 1-15; Matthew 16: 21-28
"Who, Me? Yes You!"

You remember singing this ditty back and forth with your friends when you were a kid:

Moses gets involved in a similar routine with God. He is minding his own business, tending his father-in-law’s sheep when God appears to him, in a bush, in the midst of his distasteful drudgery. The dialogue between the two is comical. God tells Moses of the terrible situation the people of God are facing under the repressive regime of Egypt’s Pharaoh—as if Moses did not already know—after all, he had been there in Egypt and become so fed up that he killed one of Pharaoh’s crack troops. God delivers a moving testament for the need to end the king’s wicked ways. The misery, the injustice, the brutality—we expect God to snap His fingers any second, sending lightening or an earthquake or a hurricane to annihilate Pharaoh. What we don’t expect is God to ask the sheep-tender Moses to do the dirty work. Did we hear God correctly: “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

It is then that the silly banter between Moses and God intensifies. Moses asks God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” “Who, me?” Moses seems to say and God relies, “Yes you!”

Moses is convinced he is not God’s man. Pharaoh will slam the door in his face if he comes knocking. Moses is certain his own people will do about the same thing—after all, they know who Moses is. If he starts masquerading as God’s spokesman, his closest friends will be so turned off by his arrogance that they will tell anyone within earshot how they watched Moses kill one of Pharaoh’s soldiers in cold blood.

More and more convinced he is not the one for the job, Moses continues to box with God, "What if they ask me your name?” God says, “Tell them I AM WHO I AM has sent you.” Moses scratches his head: “Did you say I AM WHO I AM? What will Pharaoh think when I say, ‘I AM WHO I AM sent me?’”

On and on it goes. Moses continues to look for an out. He even laments his speaking abilities. Like many of us, Moses’ worst nightmare is public speaking, especially on behalf of I AM WHO I AM. Moses would prefer stumbling in sheep droppings any day than speaking to Pharaoh. God assures Moses that his speaking skills will do just fine and, if they do, at times, seem a bit shabby and deficient, he can turn to his brother Aaron who has been known to deliver some stem-winding speeches.

I understand Moses. I am always looking for an out, too, especially when I am called to speak God’s truth to power. It has happened to me on a number of occasions as I have served as your pastor. First Lutheran is one of 25 member congregations of the San Diego Organizing Project, representing 41,000 people in the San Diego area. From time to time, I get a call from the SDOP organizing staff asking me to speak publicly on some issue facing our city, state, or nation. Typically—at least for my small mind—the issues are complex and lack simple solutions; they involve matters like health care, development downtown, education for our youth. Whenever I get the call, “Could you speak at San Diego City Council on Tuesday afternoon,” my knees start knocking instantly. Who am I to speak? When I finally get to the microphone at City Hall, before the powers, I want to scream, “What am I doing here?”

I am always astonished by the men and women from SDOP congregations who heed God’s call and speak to the powers-that-be as if they do it every day. These folks have no fancy degrees nor are they paid to preach on Sunday, but they don’t miss a beat; they speak as if they are running the show. They understand that God has called them to speak at city hall just as God called Moses to speak in Egypt. These faithful people are empowered to speak because they know they are not speaking on their own behalf but on God’s.

It really is interesting how God comes into our midst. In Moses’ case, God comes in a scrubby piece of tumbleweed. If God can talk from a measly bush, what’s stopping God from talking through you, me, or Moses?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was a giant of a man who certainly must have been called by God. His two books, The Prophets, are required reading in Jewish and Christian seminaries alike. If you have seen a picture of Rabbi Heschel, you know that you are looking at a man who knew God. He had a majestic white mane flying every which way and a six-inch goatee that made him look like a wizard from some enchanted land. He looked every bit the Old Testament prophet who was on daily and confidential speaking terms with God. If someone knew what to say on behalf of God, Rabbi Heschel must have been the one. The story is told how he once went with another rabbi to visit friends who had just lost a loved one. “When they arrived, Heschel hugged the grieving family members without uttering a word. Then he sat down and remained silent. After an hour passed, Heschel got up and hugged the mourners again; then the two rabbis departed.” Not a word was spoken but you sense that God was very much present even in Rabbi Heschel’s absolute silence.

God comes and calls you, too. You have visited someone who has just lost their spouse or, worse, their child. You remember what a nervous wreck you were before the visit. For an entire day, you fretted over the right words to say. You felt so insecure, so incapable of speaking on God’s behalf. And yet, you, like Moses and Rabbi Heschel, were called to speak for God. All that you remember of your visit is that you stumbled terribly, incapable of saying the right words or even the words you had planned to say And yet two weeks later you received a note from the grieving one who said that your presence made all the difference. They wrote, “You were an angel sent from God.”

Yes, Jesus calls each of us. He calls us to deny ourselves and take up our cross and to follow him. That denial, that cross-bearing, often makes us feel ill at ease like rhinoceroses in Antarctica. We may never feel quite adequate to do God’s work in this world but we are all God’s got. Over and over again God calls us and over and over again we utter to God, “Who, me?” And then, if we are lucky, we remember St. Paul’s reminder, “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

God certainly will come to you today or tomorrow and ask you to speak on Gus behalf. Your inclination will be to say, “Who, Me?” But listen to the tumbleweed and you will hear, “Yes you!”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 21, 2011
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 1: 8 – 2:10
"Set Free in the Bulrushes"

We hear of five women in this morning’s reading from Exodus. Two women are named Shiphrah and Puah. Could you have told what their role is before hearing this morning’s reading? Moses’ mother appears in the story, too, and yet her name does not appear. Do you know her name? It is Jochebed. And then there is Moses’ sister peaking from behind the bulrushes. We will learn her name, Miriam, later in Exodus as we continue to tell the story of the Hebrew people, but, for now, her name does not appear. And Pharaoh’s daughter is simply referred to as Pharaoh’s daughter. Five women whom the Bible does not seem to care enough about to get their names straight or to use them at all. And yet, what a story it is and what women these five are.

As I prepared this morning’s sermon, I realized this is the very first Bible story I remember hearing as a child. The picture that appears on this morning’s bulletin cover of baby Moses in the bulrushes is imprinted on my memory from the Sunday School handout I received as a four-year old—that’s why I use it today. And the basket drifting through the bulrushes filled with Moses (look at our astonishing flower arrangement this morning done by Dagmar Miller)—who can forget this story once hearing it?

I would imagine you are like me: you have remembered this story for years. Who can forget Moses’ mother courageously placing him into a basket, putting him into the River Nile, trusting that God would protect her little boy from wicked Pharaoh? Who can forget his sister stealing a glance from behind the bulrushes? And who can forget Pharaoh’s daughter courageously adopting this little one? These women are freedom fighters! They act against mighty and wicked Pharaoh’s orders and spare Moses’ life.

What I find so astonishing about the story of little Moses is the group of women who are never named and who, with perhaps the exception of Pharaoh’s daughter, seem so powerless. We would understand if these women would say, “There is nothing we can do.” But that’s not what they say. They stand up against the evil desires of the most powerful man in the world, Pharaoh.

The people who taught me this marvelous story in Sunday School were women not known by many either. Their names were Mrs. Little, Miss Bartels, Miss Bigler, Mrs. Keister. You had similar women teach you this story, I’m sure. Their names are not written large in the history of my home church or yours; their pictures do not hang prominently on the church social hall walls with all the pastors in their glory. They are obscure women whose names we may not remember this morning and yet who taught us the stories that give us courage to stand up against Pharaoh in our own lives. These women probably did not even know they were equipping us with such a powerful story; for them, it was simply Moses in the bulrushes.

What women. Imagine the image imprinted on a little child’s mind when he or she first hears this story. A tiny baby in a basket, in the great, big Nile River, and a group of heroic women who stand against the wicked king. Once this story is imprinted on our hearts, we will never forget it. In fact, hearing this story, we are changed and bolstered to try in our own ways to stand against all that would defy God.

The picture of Moses could just as easily be that of little Madelyn Storm who is baptized here this morning. Doug and Angie take their precious daughter and place her in the river here. Just like those women who protected Moses, Madelyn’s family and friends protect her against all the wicked plans the evil one might try to hatch as Madelyn grows older. Each of you will “promise to support Madelyn and pray for her in her new life in Christ;” in your promises, you all become freedom fighters, too.

We will stand in defiance of the devil and all the forces that defy God. We will renounce all the powers of this world that rebel against God. Do we realize what a courageous stand we are making? We will promise to “work for justice and peace.” Imagine! Who are we to take such a stand? The powers of this world could make mincemeat of us.

In the ancient baptismal liturgy, as the people stand at the water, the priest shouts to the evil one, “Be under ban!” Priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann says that when we defy Satan, “a war is declared!” To some these ancient liturgical words seem hopelessly quaint, outdated really. And yet, for those with hearts of faith, these words equip us to defy evil in our own day. Sometimes we do not realize the power we invoke and yet, when we hear of five no-named women standing against Pharaoh, we cannot help but have added courage.

Baptism is not only about defiance. It is also about life. After we declare war on Satan, we will turn East where Paradise was once planted. As the ancient liturgy directs us, we will lower our hands and stand in reverence. Alexander Schmemann says that as we stand at the baptismal pool, “we are standing before the water as if facing the whole cosmos on the day of creation.”

As Madelyn is placed in the river, she may cry for, in some way beyond our understanding, she will understand the battle that is about to be waged. Is it any wonder that the ancients anointed not only after baptism but also before? They understood the necessity of oiling down the baptismal candidates, of limbering up their muscles, in their epic battle against Satan. We will all trust that God will not forsake Madelyn and let her drown; rather, God will fill lift her from the waters and she will dance with joy throughout her life, confident that God did not and will never let her sink into the deep, deep river. As Madelyn comes up from the water dripping wet and shedding a few tears, we will sing Alleluia for, once again, God has been victorious for one of God’s little ones just as God was victorious for Moses.

In many ways we are so like those women whose names we have pretty much forgotten. We are not known by many and most of us feel pretty insignificant. But we are the ones who, once again, go to the river, searching for those who are too easily given up to Pharaoh and seeking ways to place them in a basket and spare their lives forever. We are the people claimed by God who take a beautiful little girl to the water, wage war against all that is evil, and trust that God will be with this child, Madelyn, and us forever.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 14, 2011
Nineth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 45: 1-15; Matthew 15: 21-28
"In Praise of Mind Changers"

You have noticed that people these days seem certain of what they believe. The recent wrangling on Capitol Hill is Exhibit A. Democrat, Republican, and Tea Party alike appear to have lost the capacity to listen to differing opinions and to engage in constructive dialogue.

This inability to listen to differing beliefs is not an ailment peculiar to Capitol Hill, however. Watch television or listen to the radio and you are confronted with people who have all the answers to the day’s most difficult and complex questions. Television hosts dare not demonstrate an iota of doubt: they are paid big bucks to express conviction with bombasity and inflexibility regardless of how well informed they are on any given subject.

We admire the courageous ones who stand up for their convictions. The most scathing complaint of President Obama’s leadership of late has been his dreaded “compromising spirit.” We want decisiveness not wishy-washy opinions.

The church adores decisiveness. We love our martyrs who spilled their blood for the sake of their beliefs. We Lutherans are positively giddy about Martin Luther who once said, “Here I stand.” When the pope came for Luther’s neck, he didn’t budge and he certainly didn’t change his mind. We love it!

It should come as no surprise, then, how shocked we are by the behavior of two characters in today’s Bible readings. Each changed his mind, midstream, in how he thought about life.

One mind-changer was Joseph. Joseph had been betrayed by his brothers and given up for slavery and actually, worse yet, to death. He had every reason to want revenge on his brothers. It had been years since Joseph had last seen them. Time in Egypt had only have made his resentments seethe all the more, especially as he became more and more powerful. And yet, when he finally met his brothers, as they came searching for food in the midst of a terrible famine, rather than being hostile, he wept over his brothers who had done him wrong. He missed them. Joseph changed his mind and sought to forgive his brothers and restore the love tragically lost between them.

And then there is that other mind-changer Jesus. You know that Jesus had all the answers—after all, he was the Son of God. When one had a pressing question or a serious illness, all she had to do was go to Jesus and all would be better. Right?

The woman in today’s reading, an outsider and a woman, came screaming to Jesus, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

Instead of helping her, Jesus snubbed the poor woman and didn’t say a word to her. The disciples were even worse: they had made up their minds long ago and taken sides. The disciples said to Jesus, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” Jesus was of the same mind: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

The Canaanite woman didn’t give up though. She didn’t simply sing “Jesus tells me so.” She knelt before Jesus and screamed even louder, “Lord, help me.” Somehow, she trusted Jesus just might change his mind about her being a woman and an outsider.

It was in the face of the Canaanite woman’s pitiable ranting that Jesus most resembled today’s politicians. He said, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Not in a million years do we expect Jesus to hurl such an ethnic slur at someone but he does…Think what dogs today have been labeled undeserving of governmental crumbs in our own day!

The woman, undeterred, screamed even louder at Jesus, “…even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

It was then that Jesus changed his mind. He answered the Canaanite woman, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And the Bible notes that her daughter “was healed instantly.”

While the Bible doesn’t refer to this confrontation with the Canaanite woman as a miracle, I believe it may be Jesus’ greatest miracle— not just because he healed the suffering daughter but because he changed his mind.

In these days when lines are drawn in concrete and everyone knows exactly what they believe, we do well to remember Jesus’ greatest miracle: he changed his mind.

This morning, Grandpa Radatz will baptize little Henry Lee Carter. This baptism is a lot of things: it is the welcoming of Henry into God’s royal commonwealth; it is giving him the new clothes of the righteousness; it is anointing him with the oil of prophets and kings of old; it is calling him to let his little light shine. Just as importantly, though, it is God saying to Henry’s parents, Leah and Doug, and to all Henry’s family and friends, “I reserve the right to change my mind.”

Henry is so cute, and given his cuteness, we hate to ponder Henry’s slipping up from time-to-time in years to come. But, the good news is that God tells us this morning that there will be occasions when God will say, “Henry, now you have done it and yet, because I love you so, I forgive you and love you all the more.” Henry’s parents, grandparents, and brothers and sisters in Christ are called this morning to remind him as he grows older of this astonishing God who changes His mind, siding with love, for him, over and over again.

Right before we receive Holy Communion this morning, we will pray what is known as the “Prayer of Humble Access” (“We are not worthy even to gather up the crumbs under you table, but it is your nature always to have mercy. So feed us with the body and blood of Jesus Christ, your Son.”). As we receive Christ’s blood and blood, we see God changing His mind toward us. Though we are all unworthy—dogs really—God loves us and embraces us.

God calls this community, you and me, to be a people who change our minds toward one another over and over again. May the character of our community be measured, not by how intransient our opinions are, but rather by how willing we are to change our minds toward one another.

Let us now go to the baptismal waters and behold God’s love for Henry Lee Carter. Let us be reminded that this God loves us so much that God dares to change His mind over and over and over again.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 7, 2011
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 37: 1-28; Matthew 14; 22-33
"Schadenfruede"

We just heard about two of the Bible’s most outrageous characters, Joseph from the Old Testament and Peter from the New Testament. Joseph and Peter infuriated those closest to them and, at the same time, filled them with envy.

Joseph’s father, Jacob, who loved him more than all the rest of his boys and gave him a beautiful coat to prove it, nevertheless, criticized his son for his outlandish arrogance. Joseph’s older brothers were so envious of his flamboyant dress and grand dreams that they concocted a plot to kill him.

Peter was just as outrageous as Joseph and offended just as many. When he decided to walk on water in a raging storm, the disciples fumed, “How dare you try to walk on water?” In Peter’s defense, Jesus did invite him to walk by saying, “Come,” but, for two thousand years now, we have joined the disciples in mocking Peter: “You should have asked Jesus where the stones were before you tried to walk on water!”

Dreamers push most of us beyond our comfort level. We prefer business as usual—no elaborate dreams, no outrageous clothing—everything vanilla, please, and make certain everyone is in agreement. We love to take potshots at dreamers and risk-takers, especially when they fail. Those with excitement pumping through their veins and visions dancing in their heads make us envious.

Frederick Buechner defines “envy” as the “consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are.” If you don’t agree, look what happened to our nation’s greatest dreamer. Martin Luther King dreamed there would come a day when “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.” The cautious and apprehensive, liberal and conservative alike, rained on Dr. King’s dream, calling him irresponsible and brash. Today, forty-eight years this month after that dreamy speech at the Lincoln Memorial, many of us pretend that we were there at Dr. King’s side, conveniently forgetting, of course, how cautions we were at the time, urging Martin Luther King to go slowly and not to expect too much, too quickly.

Dreamers always face criticism. The last century’s “Who’s Who List of Dreamers,” Martin King, Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, Harvey Milk of San Francisco, were all killed in cold blood for daring to dream that God’s people, black and white, powerful and weak, rich and poor, Jewish and Christian, gay and straight, could live together in peace.

Do you resent those who take risky and controversial giant steps when you prefer careful and sensible baby steps? If you had been out on the sea with the disciples, would you have cheered on Peter or scolded him for being a show-boater and headline grabber? When he began to sink, would you have wept or giggled?

My favorite German word is schadenfruede. I define schadenfruede as “taking perverse delight in the misfortune of others.” I have recently come up with my best illustration of schadenfruede. While I am embarrassed to admit it, I have taken perverse delight in watching Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral empire sink. I have always thought Dr. Schuller a bit big for his britches and found his remarkably successful Hour of Power a bit too shallow and trite for my tastes. And the Crystal Cathedral—how dare Reverend Schuller build something more extravagant than Joseph’s technicolor coat?

With that said, I cannot begin to tell you how many homebound, elderly members I have visited over the years who have spoken of Dr. Schuller in reverential tones. (Even after this sermon, a number of members spoke to me at the door, in awe of what Robert Schuller has meant to them.) I, ever the envious one, have been quick to judge: “Did Robert Schuller visit you when you were in the hospital? Is Dr. Schuller bringing you Holy Communion today?”

Now that the Crystal Cathedral seems on the verge of plummeting into the Pacific Ocean, I, like the eleven disciples, shout with glee, “That’s what you get, Dr. Schuller, for trying to walk on water!”

Envy—the “consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are.” One thing is for certain: Dr. Schuller has taken risks in his ministry. Lutherans, especially clergy and academics, who have taken potshots at Robert Schuller over the years could learn a thing or two from his daring spirit as we seek to do more effective ministry in the twenty-first century. If only we could harness that daring spirit in service to the lowly and downtrodden!

First Lutheran Church is not the Crystal Cathedral and you have figured out by now that I am not the Reverend Schuller. But, to be fair, we have taken our share of risks over the years. We have advocated for the outcasts whoever they may be. There have been those who have taken potshots at us, too. As most of you know, in recent months, a prosperous developer has threatened to sue us for damages, suggesting that our ministry to the homeless makes it impossible for him to rent his upscale Victorian apartments next door. Others have taken their jabs at us for welcoming our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to the center of our life together. Two years ago when we held a forum with Congresswoman Susan Davis, urging her to champion some form of health care for all God’s children, I received one of the most hateful calls I have ever received from a woman from a neighboring Lutheran congregation; one of you that very night received harsh treatment from the media; and fuming picketers, including the Minutemen—I think it a badge of honor, by the way, to be picketed by the Minutemen—marched at the edge of your beloved church building. Every time we Christians take a risk, someone experiences schadenfruede, delighting in our misfortune and critiquing our arrogance. Better to be vanilla and boring, the majority seems to say, than to risk for the gospel’s sake and God’s little ones.

Joseph and Peter are two biblical figures worth emulating. Both had their detractors, including close friends, family, and colleagues; both slipped up from time-to-time; both were accused of arrogance. And yet, for some reason, God never gave up on them. In fact, you just heard about Jesus pulling Peter out of the turbulent sea as he began to sink. The other disciples were jeering so loudly at Peter’s misfortune that they almost failed to see Jesus pull him from the turbulent sea. It was actually a stroke of luck that, amidst their back-slapping glee, the other disciples were able to see what happened and to proclaim with Peter, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

I pray that you will never fear that part of you that is extraordinary. No matter what voices criticize you and are envious of you, may you dare to dream extravagantly. I pray that this congregation, by God’s grace, will always be a place where boldness and passion trump cowardice and boredom.

It was that beautiful dreamer Dietrich Bonhoeffer who urged us to “sin boldly” even if it means sinking into the drink from time-to-time. Never forget: for all the teasing that Peter has received over the years, other than Jesus, he holds the world record for taking two steps on top of the water. You must admit, taking even one step on the water and sinking beats a lifetime of sitting in the back of the boat moaning and groaning. Why not try a little water-walking in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 31, 2011
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 32: 22-31
"2:43 a.m."

Jacob has captivated us with his outrageous exploits for weeks now. Dagmar and I went on vacation, came back, and you are still talking about Jacob. Seems we cannot get enough of the rascal.

And things have only gotten worse. Jacob is still on the run and he continues to be concerned only about himself.

Being on the run from people who hate your guts eventually gets to you. You know from experience that the longer some dirty deed goes unforgiven, the more miserable you become.

You have not talked with your brother since your mother’s funeral seven years ago. The two of you, right in front of the casket, fought like cats and dogs over your mother’s estate. You knew better but you couldn’t help yourself. Since that unruly and embarrassing morning, there have been no calls, no Christmas cards, not even an invitation to your favorite niece’s wedding. Rather than the wound healing, time has only made matters worse. Whenever you think of your brother, the venom seethes inside you like a rattlesnake. The next time you talk to him will be in court!

That’s how it was for Jacob. Twenty years since he last saw his brother, Esau. Twenty years on the run certain his brother was going to catch him and try to kill him.

Jacob and his family finally decided to come home after twenty years on the run. Jacob got his family as far as the river Jabbok, took them across, and then, for some strange reason, he went back to the other side for the night.

Something was nagging at Jacob. The night at the Jabbok was so still that he could hear the mosquitoes buzzing. Jacob’s mind ran wild like a gazelle on caffeine. It was then that it happened. The same thing has happened to you. You turned off the lights, went to bed, and hoped to fall asleep—but you couldn’t. You tossed and turned. At 2:43 a.m., you had enough and put on your clothes and went for a frenzied walk on the dark and lonely street. You hoped this would calm your jittery nerves. There was only darkness; demons lurked behind every tree. You were a wreck.

Jacob wrestled like that at the Jabbok. This morning’s reading from Genesis says Jacob wrestled with a “man.” Who was that “man?” Was it Jacob’s brother, Esau, who had finally caught up with him? Was it a pesky angel aggravating Jacob just for the sport of it? Was it a nightmare more real than real? Or was it God who jumped Jacob at the Jabbok and finally had God’s say?

Like Jacob, we keep trying to figure out who it was that jumped us in the darkness. As the ancient rabbis advise us, “A dream uninterpreted is like a letter unopened.” And so we try to make sense of that wild and crazy night at the Jabbok because, after all, we were there. Remember?

You awoke from the unsettling dream, heart pounding, sweating, and wondering, “Did that really happen to me?” The dream has stayed with you for years now; it has worked on you from the inside out. The dream has changed you for you believe that God was the one who wrestled with you that terrible night you took the walk on the lonely street.

Now here is what is so important: Jacob was no angel and I doubt you are either--nor am I. That didn’t stop Jacob and it shouldn’t stop you. Jacob was in the wrestling match of his life. He refused to let go of his assailant—God or not. He told the assailant his name but the assailant refused to return the favor. Jacob still would not let go.

I actually hope you have had a night when your prayers were more like wrestling matches, when you finally dared to get down and dirty with God. There is something redemptive about a night like that even though it is pure misery at the time. Your prayers typically are tamer, more mannerly, filled with pious pleasantries than that strange night. But that night was different: you got down and dirty with God just like Jacob did. You told God exactly how you wanted things to be. That, friends, is authentic prayer.

Pay attention to Jacob’s technique. Try it some night when a stranger has hold of you at two-forty three in the morning. Treat whatever is nagging you as if it is God. Don’t be kindly as your fourth grade Sunday School teacher taught you; rather do as Jacob teaches you and tell God exactly what is on your heart—and, by all means, wrestle to beat the band and hold on for dear life.

When Jacob was done wrestling with God, he went away a changed man; his name was no longer Jacob but Israel (he had wrestled with God). However—and note this well: he limped for the rest of his life.

If you have ever wrestled with God, day or night, you likely have a limp to prove it. You had just gone through a terribly messy squabble with someone you love and a good deal of the blame was on you. You kept pinching yourself, warning yourself not to say a word but your blood pressure rose to such dangerous levels that you lashed out and said things you never should have said. You were miserable afterwards. You knew better but you couldn’t help yourself. You sobbed uncontrollably that night. You jumped out of bed at 2:43 a.m. and slammed your fist into the wall. You still have the scars. And yet, even with the scars, you are better for it.

If you haven’t had such a night at the Jabbok, chances are you will—life is like that. When that night comes and you are certain you are losing your mind, for God’s sake, hold on for dear life and know that you are holding on to God because, my dear friends, you are. Limp or no limp, you will be better for it.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 17, 2011
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 28: 10-19a
"Jacob on the Run"

Let’s get right to the point: Jacob was a double-crossing, lowlife scoundrel. Jacob ripped off his elderly father and his twin brother. To know Jacob was to be disgusted by his fraudulent ways!

Though ever the scoundrel, by all worldly standards, Jacob was an amazing success story. From the moment he was born, people said of him, “This kid is someone to be reckoned with!” He was fearless. He grabbed onto his brother’s heal at birth, driven to be #1 from the get-go; he traded his starving brother a bit of soup in exchange for the family birthright and ending up, yet again, on top; masquerading as his older brother, Jacob swindled his feeble and blind father into bestowing his treasured blessing upon him and not on Esau. His adoring mother, Rebekah, supported all this madness as Jacob walked over anyone and everyone who got in his way.

Those who are driven to succeed know how voracious such appetites can be; they can never be satisfied—there is always one more conquest, one more triumph, one more accomplishment necessary. We can never get enough!

Jacob’s nasty stunts finally caught up with him though. His brother, Esau, had had enough. By hook or crook, Esau was going to catch his worthless brother and wring his stinkin’ neck.

Jacob ended up a rogue on the run, constantly looking over his back. His irate brother was on the warpath and catching up with him quickly. Jacob ran faster and faster and yet seemed stuck in quicksand. He was besieged by terror. No place felt safe, no sleep sound. Finally, he stop running because he could not go a step further. He could not keep up the madness a second longer. He was exhausted. He had to sleep and it did not matter where. He was between a rock and a hard place and he chose the rock for his pillow.

[Bil Wright comes near the altar to enact Jacob sleeping and dreaming and waking to a new day.]

There comes a time for many of us when we can run no further. Some of us have achieved amazing success, others have had failures crashing down upon us. It doesn’t seem to matter which: when the time comes, like Jacob, we scream, “Enough!” This often happens at about midlife when the first half of life has been lived and the second half looms before us. We are miserable and we fall down on our rock. Perhaps exhaustion has stopped us, maybe depression, a sordid affair, a ferocious addiction; maybe we cannot find a job; or maybe we have a great job that gives us no pleasure. Whatever, we have been stopped dead in our tracks and we ask the age old questions: “Is this all there is to life? Has it all been worth it? Is there any hope?” We want the final years to be different. “Please, God, please,” we cry.

This can be such a frightening time and yet it can also be a wonderful time filled with profound renewal. It is an opportunity to look back and realize that, left to our own devices, we were like hamsters spinning on the wheel of madness. Quite a few current theologians and psychologists say that unless we come to this point, unless we taste humiliation, unless we see the futility of our successes and failures, we may end up incapable of trying something new and exciting in our life, something, maybe, that we have always wanted to do but never quite had the courage to try.

The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr says that we should all pray for at least one good humiliation a day. Each humiliation presents a profound opportunity for something new. Each humiliation opens us to God. Each humiliation forces us to ask, “What would I like to do for the rest of my life?”

That’s how it happened to Jacob. He was humiliated when he fell asleep at the place called Bethel. He had success but his brother hated him. In his deep sleep, he was no longer in charge. It was then that his life was changed.

Finally, Jacob had stopped conniving, stopped running; he was forced to pause and in the pause God changed his life. As Jacob slept, God told him that his offspring would be like the dust of the earth, spreading east and west, north and south, and his family would experience great blessing. Not in a million years could Jacob have imagined such a thing! Because he had been stopped in his tracks and was humiliated, God finally had a chance. God sent a dream beyond what even Jacob’s crafty imagination could conjure up.

When Jacob awoke from his deep sleep, he wondered, could it possibly be true. Could he be the changed man of his dreams? Could it really be that:
-His shoes, dusty and worn out from fleeing so many shenanigans—could these shoes really have diamonds on their soles, could he finally walk in the ways of God?
-His shirt, sweaty from fear, shredded by disgrace—could this shirt be transformed into a garment woven with God’s dignity?
-And his soul, stranded in his skin and bones—could it be possible that it would once again glow with the spirit of God upon those he had so recently insulted and offended?
-And his hands, clenched tight, grizzled and ugly, holding everything for himself—could these hands open freely and offer others the immense treasures God had promised to come through him?
-And his mouth, lying and slanderous--could it soon open joyously and proclaim to his children and grandchildren that God loved them?
-And the city, wracked by brutality and darkness—could this city once again shine with Eden’s light where the people of God might dance with joy forever?

Jacob remembered that in his dreams, angels ascended and descended God’s heavenly ladder.

[The dance troupe, Twisted Movement enters and dances to U2’s Yahweh]…

[Pastor Miller concludes with dancers in place and bowing.]

May we stop running.
May we lie down and rest our weary bones.
May we dream of angels.
May we hear the voice of God inviting us to dance in Christ today and forever. Amen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 10, 2011
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 25: 19-34
"Quite a Family!"

We have spent the past few weeks talking about the parents of our faith: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah. We have spoken of 100 year old Abraham and 90 year old Sarah having their baby Isaac.

Today, we hear that Isaac is now married to Rebekah. Though they end up having children at an earlier age than Abraham and Sarah, even yet, Rebekah is barren and the future of God’s people is in jeopardy. Quite a family.

As invariably happens, Mommy and Daddy each have a favorite son. Dad (Isaac) is fond of Esau. Esau is the outdoorsy type, happy to traipse through the woods on an autumn day with a shotgun in hand, shooting pheasants and rabbits. Mom (Rebekah) is drawn to Jacob. Jacob is the quiet one, the stay-at-home sort who prefers computer games, books, and weird movies.

Why are Esau and Jacob so different? Same parents but such very different kids.

As the story of Esau and Jacob unfolds, things get worse and worse. With all God’s promises poured out so generously, Esau and Jacob are disasters. God did so much to make things right and yet so much goes wrong. After the barrenness of Sarah and Rebekah, there is a far worse barrenness: moral barrenness.

Every time I hear these Old Testament stories, I am reminded that even God’s family is dysfunctional—and here you thought dysfunction was a modern thing. Author Mary Karr notes, “A dysfunctional family is a family with more than one person in it.”

Most of us, especially those not terribly familiar with the biblical stories, harbor the belief that there are perfect families in the world, especially the ones tightly tied to God. You’ve read the road sign, “The family that prays together stays together.” There are families like that, right? In these families, all the kids, now adults, adore each other. The entire extended family loves to go to the lake in Minnesota, visiting grandma and grandpa. Everyone comes and there are no exceptions. And, yes, all the kids grow up to be successful, sober, and with no criminal records. You toss and turn at night, wondering what has gone wrong with your family. Were you such a terrible parent? And, oh by the way, that dream family—do you really think all is perfect there?

Please get to know the biblical story if you haven’t already. It will make you feel a lot better about yourself and your family. Find out about Isaac and Rebekah and their obnoxious sons, Jacob and Esau. These boys can’t stand each other. Esau could care less about his position in the family, throws away his family standing for a measly piece of bread and some stinking lentil soup. The other son, Jacob, is a conniving twerp; though he is the second born, he is always maneuvering to be #1—#2 just is not good enough. Even before he is born, he is wrangling with his brother in his mom’s womb. And when he finally leaves her belly, he is holding on to his older brother’s heel for dear life. He will be #1 by hook or crook.

Is your family just a little like Isaac and Rebekah’s? Are your kids like Esau and Jacob?

There is hope. Frederick Buechner writes in our Quote for the Day: “Luckily for Jacob, God doesn’t love people because of who they are but because of who he is. It’s on the house is one way of saying it and it’s by grace is another….”

This pathetic, screwed up family is God’s family, all by God’s grace. And, surprise, surprise, it is Jesus’ family, too.

For some reason, God chooses the devious and scoundrel-ridden to be part of God’s family. It is a far cry from “family values.” God never distances from the shenanigans and the failures. God chooses what we would never choose and fondly calls it “family.”

We are often amazed at whom God chooses to be part of the family. For a number of years I served on a synod’s Candidacy Committee which is the group that walks with prospective candidates for ministry and examines them when they have completed seminary and are seeking to become ordained pastors in the church. One of the people under my watch was definitely not the brightest bulb in the chandelier; in fact, at times, I was certain he was blown out! I first contacted him by letter. He wrote me back with oodles of grammatical errors and incomplete sentences; he even misspelled the name of his seminary. I asked the head of our committee what I should do. He said, “Write him and express your concern; tell him that all his letters go into his permanent file.” I did just that. The seminarian fired back a nasty letter and claimed that his internship supervisor thought I was being unusually harsh and excessively picky. Two years later, he handed in his final written exam to our committee and I must confess I was stunned: it was a surprisingly stellar paper. I might have to eat crow after all, I thought. With more careful reading, the entire committee realized the seminarian’s paper eerily resembled certain writings of one of the church’s most brilliant theologians. This seminarian, ever the buffoon, had plagiarized everything. I won’t go into the grizzly details but do you think our committee approved this fool for ordination? Of course we did! The bishop gave a commanding testimony in his support, claiming he could think of eight congregations right off the top of his head that would be delighted to have this harebrained soul leading their congregation, baptizing their children, burying their beloved, and visiting the sick in the hospital.

Amazing, isn’t it, whom God chooses to be part of his family.

What we find over and over again, from Esau and Jacob, to you and me, to our children, to our congregation….We muddle along. We have soaring moments and dismal lows. We have astonishing successes and almost immediately sickening failures. And yet this God of ours, the one who made his very own son part of this outrageous family tree, takes great delight in sticking with us through thick and thin. Never forget that God chooses you. Funny, really, when you think about it. You probably would never choose yourself but God does.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 3, 2011
Third Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-67
"Celebrating the Ordinary"

“I am not religious but I am spiritual.” I hear this all the time and I am never quite certain what it means. I suspect it has something to do with finding God in the New York Times and a tasty cup of Starbuck’s cappuccino on Sunday morning. I also suspect those who say it don’t find God at worship on Sunday morning. I’ll give these folks the benefit of the doubt, however: maybe they long for God’s presence beyond Sunday morning, in the every day places and routines where they live their lives. Is that what they are talking about? If so, I am all for it.

With the exception of pastors and die-hard church junkies, most of you spend, by my inexpert estimation, about four hours a week at church. That means you devote 2½% of your life to churchy events. The other 97½% of your life is spent cleaning the house, preparing meals, tending to the yard, going the doctor’s, working, changing diapers. If being Christian only happens when you are at church, then most of your life is not particularly holy.

Is there another way, though? Is there a way that honors your ordinary routines as somehow imbued with holiness? I hope so—I would hate 97½% of your life to be inconsequential in God’s eyes.

In today’s first reading, we hear of such a way. It is the story of a man and a woman searching for their life’s mate. It is the story of Abraham’s servant returning to the homeland in search of a wife for Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s precious son. This is not a churchy story. No congregation is worshiping, no rabbi preaching, not even a congregational meeting in session—thank God!

This story involves an unnamed guy bearing a gold nose ring (amazing how modern those ancients were!) and two arm bracelets for the wife-to-be and he is searching for water for his ten thirsty camels.

If you know your Bible stories, you know that, whenever you hear of springs of water or wells, you should think of the ancient equivalent of our modern day singles bars. The unnamed servant—an ordinary guy—arrives at The Singles Bar and meets a young, available woman named Rebekah. She has a water jug and agrees to bear water for the visitor’s camels. In the course of watering the camels, the servant identifies the perfect bride for Isaac. He pops the question on everyone’s behalf: “Rebekah, will you accompany me to marry Isaac?”

Whoever wrote this story had the amazing capacity to see God’s hand at work in the ordinary occasions of life: watering animals, welcoming strangers, making marriage proposals.

We moderns prefer 4th of July fireworks to the ordinary. It if doesn’t explode into a myriad of colors and go bang in the night, it can’t be worth much. How can the ordinary be filled with whispers of the holy? we wonder.

What we do here this morning is terribly ordinary. In fact, we call these Sundays after Pentecost “Ordinary Time.” The majority of the church year is spent in “Ordinary Time!” Not until Reformation Sunday on October 30 and All Saints’ Sunday on November 6—four months away—will the ordinary color green give way to spectacular reds and dazzling whites.

Do you find “Ordinary Time” boring? Maybe you have complained that we use the same liturgy every week, confess the same boring creeds, have Communion over and over again. How about some pizzazz? The gigantic churches on television have bands that rival U2; the pastors wear Hawaiian shirts that outdo Lady Gaga’s outfits. Can’t we have spectacles like that?

I fear that we might be losing the capacity to discover God in the whispers of our ordinary routines. We are in trouble because most of can’t get tickets to U2 and our acquaintances surely don’t resemble Lady Gaga. Whether we are just religious or just spiritual, our lives are pretty darn ordinary.

We Lutherans claim that our most supreme moments with Jesus Christ occur in the midst of very ordinary things--camels, nose rings, and arm bracelets, oops, I mean bread and wine and water and the broken words of a blasé preacher. That’s why Garrison Keillor is so funny and why we Lutheran laugh at him. He has the ability to find charm and beauty in green Jell-O with mandarin oranges and white elephant sales with stuff most of us are afraid to touch.

Annie Dillard, in my favorite book, Holy the Firm, describes the challenge of finding God as she purchases the communion wine for her little country church. “There must be a rule for the purchase of communion wine,” she thinks. She goes to the corner store where she always buys her ordinary stuff—eggs, sandpaper, broccoli, wood screws and milk. Can she actually purchase the blood of Christ in the same store? Isn’t there a special consecrated site dedicated solely to the acquisition of sacred Communion wine? After making her purchase, she leaves the corner store with her “a backload of God…Christ with a cork” tucked away in her backpack. It sounds irreverent, I know, but Annie Dillard sees holiness, “Christ with a cork,” nestled amidst broccoli, wood screws, and milk.

Are you able to discover holiness amidst sandpaper and eggs?

Martin Luther King, Jr. offers instruction how to go about finding God in our ordinary routines: "If [you are] called to be a street sweeper, [you] should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. [You] should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." That, my dear friends, is how the ordinary becomes holy.

What are doing this afternoon, tomorrow? When you take your children to the 4th of July parade in their little red wagon with patriotic bunting, act as if you are pulling along Jesus himself. When you throw the burgers on the grill, act as if you are the priest lifting the bread and saying, “This is my body, given for you.” When you write an email to a friend, make every word count as if you are St. Peter preaching to the throngs in Jerusalem on that great getting up morning of Pentecost. This is how the ordinary becomes holy.

When I was still very wet behind the ears, a seasoned pastor told me: “Wilk, every time you go the altar to preside at Holy Communion, treat that occasion as if you are celebrating High Mass at St. Peter’s in Rome. Whether there are twenty or three hundred, know that Christ is present.” Again, suddenly, all of life becomes holy.

Abraham and Rebekah and Isaac discovered God amidst nose rings, arm bracelets, camels, and marriage proposals.

Keep your eyes open the next few moments. Listen to Jesus say, “Drink you all of it. This cup in the New Covenant in my blood given for you.” So ordinary, but oh so breathtaking.

Come to think of it, maybe it is here where we gain the ability to see the New York Times and cups of cappuccinos as imbued with holiness. It really would be wonderful if the other 97½% of our lives were holy.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 26, 2011
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 22: 1-14
"A Ram in the Thicket"

I don’t like today’s first reading one bit. No matter how you cut it, the thought of father Abraham contemplating placing his son, Isaac, on a scorching sacrificial fire at God’s request is terrifying and appalling. (As the story of Abraham and his Son, Isaac, was read by a father at the first service on June 26, he broke down in tears numerous times—it proves a tough lesson for most of us!)

Bob Dylan gets us into the mood, as only dear Bob can, with Highway 61 Revisted:

As we hear of Abraham and his son, Isaac, traveling with a donkey loaded with fire wood, innumerable questions come to mind: What kind of God asks a father to sacrifice his son? Would Abraham really sacrifice his son on the blazing fire? What would you do in such a case?

I hate this passage and I imagine you do, too, and yet it is not the only troubling one in the Bible. I’m sure you can think of other equally disturbing ones. If none are coming to mind, let me suggest a few:

Which of these passages would you choose to erase from Holy Scripture? And if the thought proves presumptuous, remember that dear Martin Luther suggested excising the entire book of James from the Bible!

But back to Abraham and Isaac—and Isaac’s mother Sarah, too…Abraham and Sarah had obeyed God. They had left the land that was so familiar to them and headed to unknown regions, trusting only that God was leading them and guiding them. God pointed to the stars of the sky and told Abraham that his descendants would be more numerous than these. Unfortunately, it wasn’t turning out that way. Abraham and Sarah tried and tried to conceive a child and, for the life of them, they had no luck. You can imagine their prayers, their tears, but to no avail. Abraham did have a child but it was not with Sarah; rather he had Ishmael with Sarah’s servant Hagar. Ishmael proved problematic for Sarah: every time she looked at little Ishmael she was reminded of her inability to have a son.

And so, when Isaac finally was born it was astonishing. Even more astonishing is that Abraham was 100 and Sarah 90. Isaac was the miracle baby, proof that God does provide and proof that the family name would be passed from one generation to the next.

Most babies, whether miracle ones or not, are precious in our sight. Sometimes the biggest problem for parents is letting go of their dear children. We become, as they say, helicopter parents, hovering over them forever. Even when I was 46 and my father was dying, he was still advising me how to save my money, warning me to avoid silly mistakes, in more words or less, telling me not to do anything stupid. He couldn’t help himself—he loved me. I do the same with our two boys—I love them!

Isaac was just as precious to Abraham and Sarah. And, lest we forget, Isaac was precious to God: without Isaac, God’s promises for the Chosen People would come to an end. To take this child’s life was unthinkable.

There are occasions when the Bible makes no sense. The easiest thing to do at such times is to eliminate these troubling passages. We didn’t have to read the story of Abraham and Isaac this morning—but, if we hadn’t, that frankly would be sad. Considering the toughest passages of the Bible is rarely easy but it may be a most life-giving discipline. Our questions force us to travel through territory we would, otherwise, never visit. Tough biblical texts compel us to listen to those who hear things differently than we do, leading us beyond our narrow little self-selecting tribes.

Perhaps the ram in the thicket which appeared miraculously to Abraham is the same ram that appears to us if we dare look beyond ourselves, to others, and to God, for help in understanding Scripture. It’s not easy though. We grew up with Frank Sinatra as our chief theologian, drilling into us that we could do it “My way” and that that way is wonderful. But Ol’ Blue Eyes was wrong. For Christians, we can never go alone; in fact, as they say, it always takes at least two to Gospel, one to speak and one to listen; it takes at least to commune, one to say, “The body of Christ given for you,” and one to eat. There is no way to Gospel except by way of community; and it is this way that we invariably discover a ram in the thicket.

I can think of no better example of finding a ram in the thicket than our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s grappling with the troubling texts regarding homosexuality in recent years. It has not been easy. We have lost 598 ELCA congregations and counting in the process, five right here in San Diego County. And yet, as hard and befuddling as some of these discussions have been, at least from my perspective, no other issue has driven our church to more serious reflection on the Bible. We have studied the tough biblical texts together and we have often found that God provides a ram in the thicket in the midst of our messy discussions and heated disagreements.

The great German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his gorgeous little book, Life Together, noted that every passage in Scripture surpasses our understanding. If he is correct—and I think he is—then it is also true that we cannot survive alone if we are to be Christian people. We must learn and dare to look beyond our individual whims and fancies and our own little interest groups. We must learn to listen to one another, to disagree in love, and to forgive one another. And finally, and most importantly, we must trust God to support us in the journey, to forgive us when we are wrong, give us courage when we are right, and dazzle us with the wisdom to know the difference

Like Abraham, may we trust that God will provide an answer or two when we come up empty-handed in the face of tough biblical texts. What a joy to look up—or over at another person—and to discover a ram in the thicket.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 19, 2011
The Holy Trinity
Genesis 1: 1a, 26-31a; 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13; Matthew 28: 16-20
"Standing on the Train Station Platform and Rendered Speechless"

This is the only day during the church year when we observe and celebrate a doctrine of the church. The doctrine is the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some of you may be bored already by the thought of observing a doctrine; it may feel rigid, cob-webby, calling to mind inflexible words like dogma, creeds, and orthodoxy. Some of you might prefer to be free of such ancient beliefs that feel hopelessly antiquated and terribly restrictive.

You may have read Catcher in the Rye in high school. The reclusive author of that book, J. D. Salinger, died in January. I have been reading his books lately. One is Franny and Zooey. Franny and Zooey starts with a group of Yale students waiting at the New Haven railroad station for their weekend dates to arrive for the big Yale-Harvard game.

Sometimes, I fear, we moderns can be an awfully strident lot, like those Yalies--and I am told Yalies can be a pretty strident lot! We stand on the train station platform and our progressive minds have all the answers to the tough questions about God that, to our sophisticated way of thinking, the ancients bungled and never quite answered to our satisfaction. We will put an end to all their obsolete gibberish once and for all. Like those Yalies on the train station platform, we are the modern ones with clever and unique insights and we will finally decide for the history of the world who exactly God is.

It has not always been so easy for Christians to figure out God. The church through the centuries has struggled mightily with who exactly God is. The historic creeds (Nicene, Apostles’ and Athanasian) are attempts to create faithful thoughts about God in the midst of enormous struggles; they represent fierce dialogues formed in the hot crucible of controversy as people tussled with the sheer magnitude of God.

Believe it or not, the most noble and venerable church traditions are quite uncomfortable when it comes to knowing and explaining exactly who God is. In the historic Communion liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, the priest proclaims these words:

You have perhaps noticed when we sing the “Holy, Holy, Holy” in our liturgy, I bow. This bowing is a way to give reverence to the wonder and incompressible nature of God. You can bow too if you like. Rather than being held hostage in iron tight manacles of obscure belief and modern day gibberish, the Holy Trinity urges us to let our imaginations run wild. When we think of God creating the heavens and the earth, we bow at the majesty and glory of it all which is far beyond our most scientific and sophisticated reasoning; when we think of the virgin birth of Jesus, we bow at the unfathomable wonder that not in a million years could or would we dream up if left to our own devices; when we think of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection to come, we are flabbergasted at God’s creative power to bring life from death.

Is it any wonder that books (become movies) like Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and Harry Potter capture young people’s imaginations? Finally, something, someone, invites our young people—and older ones too!—to live and think in ways beyond our pedestrian and clichéd ways. Finally, life is rich and multivalent again.

When one of you says to me, “Pastor, I don’t understand the Holy Trinity,” I celebrate. I celebrate that God is greater than your small mind--and my small mind too. When you say that the church’s creeds seem incomprehensible, I am delighted that God is bigger than what you or I can possibly fathom. Praise God!

Artists, poets, and musicians have a stunning way of expanding how we think of God. Listen to a bit of the African American poet James Weldon Johnson poem, “The Creation,” from his book, God’s Trombones:

And then God creates you and me:

Poets and artists arouse our imaginations. They invite us to see God in bigger, more splendid ways.

When James Weldon Johnson describes God as being lonely, he describes God who longs for love, for companionship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and, oh yes, with you and me.

Look at this morning’s bulletin cover of the beautiful icon of the Trinity by Russian monk Andrei Rublev and you will see this love through an iconographers eyes. Look at the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s love for one another as they sit around the table. Notice, too, that in the front of the table there is room for you and me. This icon invites us to imagination. As gorgeous and breath-taking as it is, this icon was “prayed” in about 1410 A.D. Is it any wonder that so many people, even non-Orthodox people, are purchasing icons for their homes? Once again we are seeking to be transported beyond our narrow and parochial ways.

Listen to Jared Jacobsen’s postlude this morning, J. S. Bach’s “Trinity,” Fugue in E-flat, S. 552. Again you will be overwhelmed by Bach’s imagination as he musically contemplates the wonder of the Holy Trinity.

Yes, indeed, the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—takes us to places we would never go on our own. Every time we say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are struck yet again by the sheer splendor of God’s love for us. If you don’t quite get the Holy Trinity, be happy and rejoice; know that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remains greater and more wonderful than anything you or I can possibly imagine.

And so on this day of the Holy Trinity, we, too, stand on a train station platform of sorts and are struck speechless. All we can do is bow in awe at the wonder of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 12, 2011
The Day of Pentecost
Acts 2: 1-21
"Have You Ever Experienced Pentecost?"

The followers of Jesus were gathered together in Jerusalem. Jesus had appeared to them a time or two since his death and resurrection. He had now ascended into heaven, and, right before he did, he told them to wait in Jerusalem until their lives were turned upside down with power from on high.

The waiting, though only a few days, seemed to last forever.

The disciples were not the only ones in Jerusalem at Pentecost. Thousands of pilgrims had come to the city of King David with their families to celebrate the Jewish feast of Pentecost which falls fifty days after Passover. They had used up their savings for this trip of a lifetime.

But things got miserable quickly. They had gone to souvenir stands to purchase snow globes with the great Temple inside. They had tried to order lamb sandwiches and even cups of cold goat milk. But none of the concessionaires understood them; they grumbled that these foreigners should have learned the language before coming. Everyone spoke louder. Nasty gestures were the communication of the day. Fights broke out. Nerves were frayed. Ethnic slurs were hurled. Children were hot and screaming. Wives complained to their husbands that coming to the big city was a stupid idea.

It’s frustrating when you can’t communicate and no one cares about you.

I imagine you have had similar experiences—call them Babel experiences. You cannot understand other people and they could care less about you and won’t listen to a word you say.

Oh, how we long for someone to listen us. Teenagers are piercing unimaginable parts of their bodies and tattooing places once reserved for the tattoo man in the visiting carnival. You can hear these young people screaming, “Why won’t anyone take me seriously?”

Senior citizens are turning their hearing aids up until they buzz like little yellow finches. You can hear their silent agony: “Does anyone remember me? Do you even care that I exist?”

Overworked young mothers are numb by eight in the evening, crying themselves to sleep after grueling days at work and then coming home to clean the house, do the wash, cook supper, and put the kids to bed. You can hear their screams, “Please, someone help me.”

Pentecost so often occurs at moments like these when all seems fragile or falling apart. At least, that’s how it happened for Peter. Peter had fallen from grace like so many politicians and bankers seem falling these day. Only weeks earlier Peter had told the young servant girl, in the alleyway, that he had no idea who Jesus was, never met him—Peter claimed this not once but three times.

Jesus hung there on the cross and Peter watched his dearest friend die. Peter, the cowardly lion, sickened himself.

But then Pentecost changed Peter in a flash. A gale force wind began to blow, something like tongues of fire landed on his head and Peter immediately grabbed the other eleven disciples, ran into the streets, and began to preach like none had ever heard.

Cowardly lion Peter and his forlorn friends wondered what had gotten into them. How had they suddenly become so courageous? There were no words to describe the transformation. Whatever was in the air that day blew so strong and hot that Peter and his friends and the world were turned upside down and all for the better.

The Holy Spirit works like that. It comes unpredictably, toppling everything in its wake, sweeping like a wildfire through East County. People knocked down for the count suddenly bounce back to life and become followers of Jesus in ways that surprise even themselves. Is it any wonder that some shouted on that Pentecost in Jerusalem, “They are filled with new wine!” No one had ever seen such a thing.

What happened in Jerusalem on that Pentecost so long ago was the exact opposite of our experiences when we talk and talk and no one listens. On Pentecost, people finally started to listen to one another. Visitors understood the locals, and the locals understood people who had traveled from exotic places like Mesopotamia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia. Everyone felt as if God was speaking to them in a way that made them feel special and wanted. On that very day, thousands of lives were changed for the better because they knew that God was talking to them as if they mattered.

Have you ever experienced Pentecost? I know you have. You stayed away from the church for years because every time you mustered the courage to show up, all you heard was judgment and wrath rained down from the pulpit; you always felt like all that hatred was directed right at you. Disgusted, you just quit going to church. And then, one day, for some reason that you will never know why, you walked into church, maybe here, and it all seemed different. The first person you encountered cared about you, even asked you your name and where you are from. It frightened you in a way how nice the people were at the Passing of the Peace. Your life changed just like that! You felt different, better…My dear friends, that is Pentecost!

Have you ever experienced Pentecost? I know you have. Your life was spiraling out of control. You were living outrageously and then, out of the blue, you, too, were drawn to worship one Sunday morning. Actually, you came via a meeting held in the lounge here or one like it where coffee and cigarettes at the break are the rule of the day. You were working Step 3 of Alcoholics Anonymous (turning your will and your life over to God). You were pretty nervous as you sat here; the preacher seemed to be talking directly to you and for some reason you felt loved not hated. You have been coming here ever since and praying every morning and reading the Psalms before you go to bed. You have no idea what got into you but others tell you it was the Holy Spirit…My dear friends, that is Pentecost!

Pentecost is the church’s way of saying that God is listening to each one of us, searching out our hearts to discover a way to speak to us that will change our lives forever. Pentecost is for bored teenagers, frazzled young mothers, burnt out workers, isolated old people, lonely travelers, and hard livers. Pentecost is the day when God looks each of us in the eye and says a word or two that we are certain is gift wrapped just for us. We are overwhelmed. Pentecost makes us feel like we matter again.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 5, 2011
Ascension Sunday/Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1: 1-11; Luke 24: 44-53
"Stay in the City"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

When you think of heaven, where do you look? Up, of course!

When Jesus ascended into heaven, his stunned disciples stood looking up just like we would have done. Two mysterious men dressed in white said to Jesus’ followers: “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Even with the admonition not to look up into heaven, most of us, like the disciples, cannot help ourselves; we cannot imagine looking anywhere else but up if Jesus is rising into the sky before our very eyes. And, of course, as we look up, we have all those heavenly questions: where is Jesus going, what will heaven be like, and, of course, the biggie, who will end up there with Jesus.

Jesus’ final act before ascending into heaven was blessing his disciples. The amazing thing about Jesus’ blessing is that it was not to give his followers some kind of imaginative dreams about heaven up in the clouds, but rather to give them power to do ministry here on earth. Jesus blesses us in the exact same way: he empowers us to do ministry right here on earth with those who need us most.

I increasingly believe that our task as Christians is not so much to prepare one another for heaven in the sweet by-and-by as it is to help one another discover heavenly delight here on earth. After all, the prayer Jesus taught us says it this way, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven.” The Lord’s Prayer invites us to yearn for heaven here on earth, now— “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Christ came to live among us in order to bring heavenly splendor to earth, into our midst. Jesus loved telling stories with people, sharing meals with them, healing their illnesses, forgiving their sins. In these everyday occurrences, before their very eyes, here on earth, people began to catch a glimpse of what heaven is like.

Our worship here this morning is a heavenly training ground. We are gathered here, now, to learn how to detect heavenly sounds in the words we read and preach, pray and sing. We go to the baptismal river, right here, to see whether we can glimpse heaven touching down upon the waters as the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” are proclaimed. We eat bread bought at Vonn’s and drink wine purchased at CVS and create palates capable of tasting heavenly food in this ordinary stuff. With Christ’s blessing resting upon us, we discover that ordinary words and water and bread and wine can be chockfull of heavenly grandeur. Imagine if we spent more time looking for heavenly grandeur in each person we meet and in every ordinary routine we perform. I’ll bet we would discover heaven is far closer to us than we ever imagined.

I have always thought that the traditional funeral mass helps us see heaven in our midst. I particularly love the part called In Paradisum which comes at the end of the funeral liturgy. Listen to the words:

I am astonished every time I hear these words. The glorious vision of entering heaven is exactly what we encounter here at First Lutheran every time we come by here. The heavenly vision points to a city like our city—not to a gated suburban community, not to an idyllic rural hideaway. The ones who welcome us into heaven are the ones who welcome us here at First Lutheran Church every day of the week, Lazarus and his poor, homeless friends. Surprise, surprise. Who ever imagined heaven is so near? Funny thing what Jesus told his followers, “Stay in the city”—who knows what you might see?

One inner-city pastor in Brooklyn was fond of saying that when we get to heaven, there will be a banner at the Pearly Gates that says, “Brought to you by the same people who brought you New York City.” We could, of course, say, “Brought to you by the same people who brought you 3rd and Ash.” Isn’t it amazing: if we have eyes blessed by the Ascended Lord, heaven is right before us, at our very grasp, here, in the city.

First Lutheran Church has stayed in the city now for 123 years. The people of this congregation have believed over the years that heavenly splendor can be discovered here. Many of you have joined this church recently—you had many other choices, you pass many churches to come here—some far bigger; others of you have been here for ages—you could have taken your families and gone to a place with a bigger Sunday School, nearer to your home, not so rough and tumble. But, each of you, for whatever reason, continue to hear Jesus saying to you, “Stay in the city.”

The beautiful blessing attributed to Saint Teresa of Avila of Spain might capture what the Ascended Lord had in mind for us in this place, in the heart of the city. Join me in praying this prayer of blessing.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 29, 2011
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 17: 22-31
"Stop, Look, and Listen—And Only Then Speak"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

You are not exactly sure why but when someone knocks at your door and the minute you open it, he blurts out, “Are you saved?” you want to slam the door in his face.

As this well-meaning soul walks away, you wonder why you are so riled up. All he asked was “Are you saved?”

This morning’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles might shed some light on why some of us get so riled up. It might also offer a better way to approach one another, especially when we think we have all the answers and know what is best for everyone.

Paul stands at the Areopagus in Athens, Greece, ready to speak. The great philosopher Socrates stood in the same place 450 years earlier. This is a place of culture, learning, and sophistication. The people’s juices run wild with the prospect of a little intellectual jousting with Paul. They smell red meat. They have called Paul a “babbler” even before he begins to speak—they are not amused by the nonsense he has been spouting all around town about some Jewish guy whom God raised from the dead.

Here is what is useful. Before Paul utters a word, he does his homework; he takes the time to know who the people of Athens are. He studies their culture, gazes at their art and architecture, listens to the songs they sing, hears their treasured stories. He knows that his beliefs are far different than theirs and yet he shares a common humanity with his audience and so he listens to the hopes and dreams they have for their children, to their religious yearnings. In short, Paul has the decency to honor the Athenian people before asking anything even remotely similar to “Are you saved?” or telling them the story he loves most of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

Maybe that’s what makes us so irate when someone knocks at our door: we don’t even know their name and they don’t know ours. They don’t know a thing about us nor we about them and yet they immediately supply us with all the necessary answers for our life.

The first words out of Paul’s mouth are not an attack but rather an honoring of the Athenians’ religious desires and their robust urge to worship. Though they worship all manner of exotic gods and a plethora of bizarre idols litter their town, nevertheless, Paul plays to their strength, to their spiritual longings. He even quotes their finest poets.

We can learn a thing or two from Paul as we approach our neighbors. How many of us harbor deep suspicions, even resentments, of our Muslim neighbors? Their dress, accents, mosques--it makes us nervous. But have we taken the time to learn of our Muslim brothers’ and sisters’ deepest longings? Have we read even a bit of the Koran? Do we know that Muslims are a monotheistic religion, believing only in one God, and are actually our kin, children of Abraham?

In July, we will do what Paul did in Athens: we will learn about our neighbors. We will hold a series of classes here at First Lutheran Church to learn more about Islam. I hope you will attend these sessions.

Not for a minute will our study mean that we do not believe in Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, or that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe. What it will mean, I pray, is that we will listen before we speak and think before we judge. We might even end up honoring those who are different from us.

When I lived in Pennsylvania, I was an active member of the Ardmore Rotary Club. It was a bit like Athens, a lively and diverse group that I loved. We had agnostics and atheists, Christian Scientists and Presbyterians, Catholics and Jews. Often times, since I was the only clergy person in the club, I was asked to lead the Easter and Christmas programs. I always agreed with one stipulation. Since we lived in a predominately Jewish community, I insisted that if I were to talk about Easter then Mike Silver would talk about Passover; if I were to talk about Christmas then Mort Gearson would talk about Hanukkah. These were not neutered holiday affairs where the riches of our respective traditions were sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity as we sang insipid songs like “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,” or “In Your Easter Bonnet.” Instead, we learned the best of each other’s tradition. Christians learned of Seders and full moons, of dreidels and Menorahs; Jews learned of Advent wreaths and Mary and her little baby, of 40 days of Lent and Paschal candles. At one meeting, right before High Holy Days, I asked Marty Phillips to blow the shofar before I offered the mealtime prayer. One fellow walked out of that meeting with tears in his eyes, put his arm around my shoulder, and said, “Wilk, I can’t believe you knew this week is Yom Kippur. Thank you for thinking of us Jews. So rarely does this happen to us.” We had listened to one another and we were all better for it.

Paul listens and, after listening, he speaks of what is most important to him. He tells of a God who cares enough to raise his son from the dead so that no one might fear death again. Notice the pattern: first listen to others share their deepest longings and only then share yours.

The French author and philosopher Albert Camus said, “Dialogue is only possible between people who remain what they are, and who speak the truth.”

Perhaps more than ever we need people who listen before they speak. Military arsenals and terrorist capabilities render our world a fragile place. Sharing our faith must be more than knocking at another’s doors with loaded guns and ultimatums decided well in advance. Our world longs, not for people with no convictions, but rather for people with convictions who are willing to listen. We may not agree with one another but God grant us the decency to honor one another as God’s children.

As we gather on this Memorial Day weekend, we are reminded that our cemeteries are crammed with brave and valiant soldiers who all too often went off to war because of leaders and citizens who refused to sit down and listen to one another. Perhaps, on this weekend, we do well to pledge to listen before we speak, pray before we act, and, most importantly, make decisions based not on prejudice, ignorance, and hatred but on love, mutual understanding, and our common humanity.

There will be time, of course there will, for us to proclaim, “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!” If we listen carefully first, perhaps our shouts of “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!” will resonate more clearly and ring more beautifully.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 22, 2011
Fifth Sunday of Easter
"You and I—Do Greater Works Than Jesus!?!?"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Some words of Jesus seem impossible to believe. Take for instance these words: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” Greater works than Jesus? You have got to be kidding me! The very thought fells like heresy!

When I was a pastor in Washington, DC, our Lutheran Bishop Harold Jansen preached at the soaring National Cathedral. He remarked that we are the only Lutherans Washington, DC has. We could just as easily say that we are the only Lutherans downtown San Diego has. There are other churches here for sure—Saint Joseph’s Roman Catholic Cathedral catty-corner to us, First Presbyterian just a few blocks up the street. And, of course, many Christians live downtown. But, we are the only Lutherans called here to 3rd and Ash. First Lutheran is closer to the heart of downtown San Diego than any other congregation that I can think of.

If Jesus was right, “The one who believes in me will do greater works than these,” then we have tall marching orders and quite a bit to live up to here in the heart of the city.

Some of you are aware that a number of us have been consumed in recent weeks with the issue of urination and defecation. I apologize for not putting this more delicately but it is simply the case. We have been dealing with the developer of the Victorian properties next to First Lutheran who has threatened to take us to court if we do not build a fence to prohibit people from using the corner of our property on Ash Street as an unofficial public restroom. Not only has he threatened to take us to court, he has written these incredibly troubling and incendiary words to me: “I assure you that the unsanitary conditions being allowed to occur and constantly subsist on your property as a result of your activities of providing for the homeless is causing us great damage...” To accuse us of the problems of homelessness in downtown San Diego is a troubling accusation.

After all, this church has spent considerable amounts of time and money and energy through the years seeking solutions for homelessness in this city we love. First Lutheran Church has sought to be a good neighbor for 123 years. We are no more pleased with urination and defecation than anyone else. Our custodial staff’s worst job is cleaning up that area on a daily basis. I scream bloody murder every time I see someone relieving themselves on our premises. We keep our restrooms open whenever we are in operation and they are open to all, including to people who work downtown and to senior citizens who need a quick restroom break.

We have even invited our developer friend to join us in the fight to get more bathrooms downtown but, so far, to no avail. We have met with the San Diego police and we have even been to our councilman’s office, pleading for more restroom facilities downtown. Jim Lovell (First Lutheran member and Director of the Third Avenue Charitable Organization) has even organized a group of homeless people who are championing the cause of more bathrooms downtown—believe it or not, our homeless brothers and sisters would like a private, discrete place to go to the bathroom, too. We have placed a motion-detector light above the area in question. We have kept our property spotless and landscaped beautifully. Our Church Council, this past Tuesday evening, voted to purchase a fence for the corner in question at considerable expense to this congregation.

As we face a developer’s ire, we must also never forget that we have other neighbors for whom God holds us accountable. They are God’s dearest friends, the blessed poor. They are the ones with small voices, voices not often listened to because they have no money to wield influence. God calls us to speak words of hope to them and to stand up on their behalf in Christ’s name.

We dare not forget Jesus words, “Blessed are the poor for yours is the kingdom of God.” We must never fear standing up to the principalities and powers who dare to run roughshod over the poorest; we must protect the rights of the most vulnerable of our community. As my former Bishop Jansen would remind us, we are the only Lutherans 3rd and Ash has got.

And so we have prayed and we have struggled and, most of all, we have begged of God, “What would you have us do?” We worked diligently the past two weeks on a letter that we sent to our angry developer friend. I shared our proposed letter with a trusted friend of this congregation, and she wrote back: “I love your letter! I feel proud to know you!” She means you, my brothers and sisters in Christ. While she doesn’t live in our city, she is proud to see what you are doing on her behalf for God’s blessed little ones in this city. I spoke with this professional woman at our synod assembly and she is watching closely to see how we struggle to do what our Risen Savior would have us do.

Each of you, in your our life, faces similarly tough decisions where hardly any answer seems right, but where some answer must be offered. Whether with your children or aging parents or spouse, whether on the job or in your neighborhood, the Risen Savior calls you to bring God’s reign a bit closer to those you are called to love. As our Quote for the Day by John Vannorsdall says, “It is highly unlikely…that we will encounter the hidden God in our present unless we risk doing the things which God requires of us in those situations in which obedience is tested.”

Our obedience is being tested in these days. If our works are to be greater than Jesus’, if we are to risk love, let us not be mesmerized into believing that we will be universally loved and accepted and that our decisions will be neat and easy ones. If we are truly to be the heart of the Risen Christ in the heart of this city, let us not be surprised if the rich and powerful, at least some of the time, despise and reject us. This, according to Jesus, goes with the territory.

We will become battle hardened if we take Jesus seriously. But let us not lose heart and let us not cower: how much more exhilarating and grand life can be if we do more than simply attend to our own bank accounts and care for our own desires. Let us pray that God will always make us a community worthy of name, “the heart of Christ in the heart of the city.”

If God could raise up Jesus from the dead, God can raise us up, too, up from whatever obstacles we face as we seek to love and serve the city on behalf of the Risen Christ.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 15, 2011
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Psalm 23; John 10: 1-10
"Both Shepherd and Lamb"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

“One September evening after the nurse had gone out on an errand, I stood at George’s bedside alone. His face against the pillow had a strange pallor, and all the color was drained from his lips. I knew that the end was near. I felt his hands. They were cold, icy cold, and I held them to my breast, trying to warm them. ‘George, can you hear me, darling?’ I whispered, my lips close to his ear. His eyelids fluttered, and I knew he had heard me. ‘Shall I read to you, darling?’ I asked. I reached for the Bible on his night stand, turned to the Twenty-third Psalm, and began reading aloud, ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…’” (Donita Dyer, Pearl, p. 252).

How many of you have reached for your well worn family Bible, numbly thumbing somewhere in the middle? Your Bible automatically opens to Psalm 23. Your last resort!

You have heard that Psalm 23 was written by King David but it may as well have been written by you. You know how the calm ebbs up inside you every time you read, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

You are not the only one who finds this Psalm a precious treasure. The Jewish people have turned to it for thousands of years. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize Laureate, says, “What makes a Jew a Jew is the inability to quit hoping.” And that hope comes from turning to places like Psalm 23.

Whenever we recite Psalm 23, it is as if the Jewish people have invited us onto holy ground. Whenever we say, “He leads me beside still waters,” we wonder in what occasions the Jews have recited these words to get through a tough stretch.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters present this Psalm to us as their gift to us. They are the experts, after all, at facing enemies and yet trusting that the Lord has prepared a table for them; they are the people who have been hounded all the day long, and yet have believed that they shall fear no evil.

When did you first hear the 23rd Psalm--when you were five or six? Is someone here this morning for whom this is the first time you have heard the wonderful words, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” Together, hand in hand, we hear God speak to us quite unlike any other way.

Every year, on this the Fourth Sunday of Easter, we recite the 23rd Psalm together on this Good Shepherd Sunday. There is no other biblical passage in our three year lectionary cycle used as often as Psalm 23—and this does not include funerals and weddings at which it is so often used.

Psalm 23 reaches deep into our soul. It gathers with us in good times and also in the worst of times. We trust that Psalm 23 will never let us down.

Today, through Easter eyes, we see Psalm 23 in a bit of a different light than do our Jewish brothers and sisters. We see a shepherd who dared to become a lamb. Amazing, really. This shepherd who had it all, God’s only son, risked it all by becoming a tender lamb and going to the slaughter house killing floor for you and me. You can imagine this little lamb named Jesus trudging to his death. You can hear Jesus bleating to himself, “fear no evil, fear no evil, the Lord is with you.”

We are a people who follow a shepherd who became a lamb. We follow this shepherd because we trust in Easter and Easter proclaims that goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life. We dare go places where few others go because we trust that there will be a greener pasture and stiller water. We dare to befriend the poor and broken ones, the ones ridiculed by the rich and powerful; we stand up to the principalities and powers who too easily cast off the lowly and broken ones; we become the shepherds of the people here on our streets of San Diego because Jesus tells us to fear no evil. And, of course, in the process, sometimes we end up being the sheep.

Every Sunday morning as a kid I stared at the stained glass window at Edgwood Lutheran Church, just to the left of where I sat with my Grandma Miller. In brilliant colors, the shepherd stood with a little lamb over his shoulders--was the lamb the one that refused to follow the other ninety-nine, wandered off a cliff, and almost perished? After looking into Grandma’s paten leather pocket book, searching for wintergreen Lifesavers amidst her perfumed lace handkerchief, I almost always stared at that shepherd in the window who refused to let the one out of a hundred plunge to her death. I couldn’t take my eyes off that window. What kind of shepherd drops everything and goes running for me, you? What kind of shepherd invites us to go out and bring other suffering souls safely into the shepherd’s embrace?

This shepherd, you see, calls each of us by name. We are, as the old hymn says, precious in God’s sight. Our shepherd comes running when he hears us whimpering no matter where we may be. This lamb, this shepherd, has journeyed to the very jaws of hell to free us from Satan’s grasp. If God has gone running there, rest assured that God will come running wherever we may be.

This is the good news of Easter: while the lamb was slain, that same lamb was triumphant. It is why we shout during communion, “Alleluia! Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast! Alleluia!”

And so, I pray that you will commit this beloved Psalm 23 to memory and pray it with some regularity. Say it often so that it will be your companion when you end up in those harsh places where life will almost surely take you from time-to-time. As you pray the 23rd Psalm, imagine the Risen Savior carrying you on his shoulders wherever you may go.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 8, 2011
Third Sunday of Easter
Luke 24: 13-35
"Christ’s Presence Amidst the Odor of Melancholy"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Joyce Carol Oates reflects on her husband’s death in her book A Widow’s Story. She recalls the “the odor of melancholy” that pervaded the hospital in those final agonizing hours as she sat at her husband’s side.

“The odor of melancholy” was in the air as Cleopas and his friend made that painful hike from Jerusalem to Emmaus following Jesus’ death. They had heard the women’s reports earlier in the day that Jesus’ body was no longer in the tomb and that he was alive and yet that information seemed too fanciful and did little to ease their pain.

Where exactly the town of Emmaus was, no one knows, other than it was about seven miles from Jerusalem. Who Cleopas and the other person were, we are also uncertain. What we do know is that a mysterious person, the resurrected Christ it turns out, was suddenly accompanying them on the wretched road to nowhere. The three of them talked and talked and talked as most of us do when there is no end in sight to our misery. Seven miles of walking means they likely talked, nonstop, for at least two and a half hours before they arrived at their destination.

Talking is critical when time stands still. We talk and talk and talk, not certain where our conversation is headed or even if it is making sense. We are certain of one thing, though, that if our conversation ever stops, we will suffocate.

This week, when I first heard of Osama bin Laden’s death, I needed someone to talk with. I was confused. Dagmar and I talked. Our younger son Caspar called and we talked. Everywhere I went, there was talk—in the church office, at our weekly pastors’ gathering, on the telephone--trying to make sense of what had happened. Thank heavens there were people willing to listen and to reflect.

Then a thought crossed my mind: we need to talk on Sunday morning, this morning. Just as Cleopas and his friend talked about what had happened to Jesus a few days earlier in Jerusalem, we feel the need to talk about this week’s events, pondering bin Laden’s death. If the church is to be anything, it needs to be that community that knows there is a world beyond our four walls. As Karl Barth once said, we do our theology with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. We trust that we do not live in a vacuum and that the Risen Christ will accompany us in all the challenges our world faces.

I at first wondered whether I should preach on Osama bin Laden’s death this morning. Upon reflection, I thought it a better idea that we talk together, between services. I feel as much a need to listen as I do to talk. I wonder what soldiers and veterans are thinking, you who have been in the line of fire, in the heart of darkness, for whom talk is a luxury. I wonder what young adults are thinking who have lived under the 9/11 ashes since childhood and whose futures seem inextricably linked to the startling shadows of terrorism. I want to listen to you, to hear your hopes and fears, anger and confusion, to see whether, somehow, someway, Christ might join our conversation.

Our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America invites communities like ours to conversation together whenever we face tough issues. Our church calls this “moral deliberation.” We have done that here before on thorny issues like health care and human sexuality. We have listened and I trust that we have learned from one another. Today, we will morally deliberate on Osama bin Laden’s death. I pray our conversation will prove a safe place to listen carefully and to speak without fear of reprisal or ridicule; I also pray that if we are attentive, we will discover Christ walking beside us in our conversation.

Cleopas and his friend had the presence of mind to invite their peculiar traveling companion to stay with them because it was almost evening and the day was almost over. Not in a million years did they expect this fellow to be Jesus. They sat down together at an ordinary meal, broke bread, poured wine, continued talking, and their eyes were opened and they saw the Risen Christ.

We are a peculiar people who believe that Christ will be present with us if we take the time to talk with one another and to gather around a meal together.

John Reid returned to the divinity school campus after his first year in ministry. He was thrilled to tell us, his classmates who had not yet graduated, of the thrills of being a parish pastor. He was serving a tiny congregation in a little village on the coast of Maine. John gathered in my dorm room one night with a number of us. He said: “Can you believe they pay me to do this job? Every morning, I am up at 5:30 a.m. and go to the Hideaway Diner for coffee and eggs with the guys before they head out to sea on their lobster boats. Can you imagine,” he said, “a job that pays you simply to talk?”

John was right: we are a community that places high value on talk. You, by the way, pay me to talk and to listen to talk. You ask if you can meet me in my office. I close the door and you start talking. Having someone listen to us is a rare gift, even rarer is to have someone listen and to expect that in our conversation, Christ will be present.

These moments with one another are precious indeed. Frederick Buechner writes: “Sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only… a garden, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with our being and imagination . . . what we may see is Jesus himself” (The Magnificent Defeat, pp. 87-88).

We will talk and talk and talk with each other between services today and, I’m sure, in the days ahead. Our talk, I pray, will be drenched with holiness. Even with the odor of melancholy in the air, if we listen to one another, we might see Christ here with us.

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 1, 2011
Second Sunday of Easter
Acts 2: 4a, 22-32; John 20: 19-31
"Resurrection Heroes"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

Think for a moment who your favorite hero of the faith is. When you have a person in mind, turn to one or two people near you and share who that person is.

I would imagine one hero who almost certainly came up is Mother Theresa. She served the poorest of the poor in Calcutta with her order, the Missionaries of Charity. The world was quite surprised to learn recently that Mother Theresa had fierce doubts and ferocious struggles with her faith, not for a day or two, but for years and years on end. In a letter to a priest friend soon after she received the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Theresa wrote: “Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.” What a surprise to learn that this giant of the faith had her doubts just like so many of us do.

We tend to think of the giants of faith, our heroes, as people who live life perfectly, with not a doubt in the world. And yet, if we know a thing or two about them, we discover that they were plagued by flaws and struggles similar to ours.

When I thought about my heroes this week, I was surprised that every one of them had a flaw or two that, if it were mine, would worry me to death, making me wonder what kind of Christian I am.

One giant who captivated me, especially during my college days, is the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. It is probably safe to say that Merton was the Godfather of Christian spirituality and prayer in America in the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, is a contemporary spiritual classic. I did an independent study on Merton’s books in college, reading everything I could get my hands on. He made my prayer life come alive in my early twenties like no one else had. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that before entering the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Merton fathered a child and he was not married. Go figure!

Another of my heroes that you have heard me speak often about is William Sloane Coffin. Coffin was the chaplain at Yale University when I was there. He packed the large chapel on Sunday mornings with Christians and Jews, atheists and agnostics. Many credit this compelling preacher and outspoken social activist as the person who brought them to the faith. You might be surprised to learn that Coffin was married three times.

Maybe there is hope for us after all, we who judge ourselves harshly, wondering if God will ever forgive our misdeeds and use us for higher purposes. In seeing whom God uses down through history, we discover that the giants walked in shoes much like ours.

And it isn’t just the modern heroes of the faith. Peter and Thomas who figure prominently in today’s readings had their own flaws and failures. Both were part of Jesus’ inner circle, his disciples, his confidants. In many ways they were sterling examples of faithfulness. We just heard Peter preach one of the most courageous sermons ever heard in our first reading, delivered in Jerusalem’s public square soon after Jesus death and resurrection. 3,000 people were baptized that day because of Peter’s stem-winding and faithful oratory.

And yet, this is the same Peter who, only weeks earlier, had denied ever knowing Jesus when Jesus was on trial and Peter was scared out of his wits. As he walked the dark streets of Jerusalem, demoralized and broken, a young servant girl asked Peter if he knew Jesus. Peter proved the coward and denied, not once, but three times, ever knowing Jesus-- a nauseating failure for sure.

Captivating highs, sickening lows. Heroes of the faith.

Thomas was not terribly different from Peter. So it happened, Thomas wasn’t there the night of the resurrection when Jesus appeared to the other ten disciples. The ten were so excited to tell Thomas that they had seen and heard the Risen Savior, but Thomas would have none of it; he rained on their parade, saying, “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.” Thomas’ response was a natural one really but disheartening nonetheless.

And yet, only a week later when Thomas sees Jesus, he makes the supreme confession of faith, “My Lord and my God.” While our bulletin cover painting, “Doubting Thomas,” by Caravaggio, shows Peter placing his finger into Jesus’ side, the gospel makes no mention of this. Thomas’ confession upon seeing Jesus was extraordinary and immediate!

Up and down, rising and falling, these giants of the faith go. Peter and Thomas are a lot like Mother Theresa and Thomas Merton and William Sloane Coffin. They demonstrate dismal lows and astonishing highs. Come to think of it, they are a lot like us.

To know the giants’ stories is to become a bit more secure in our own story. Suddenly we realize that there are other Christians like us who have fallen and also risen. We often worry ourselves sick with some pathetic collapse in our lives and then, suddenly, we perform some act of authentic wonder that surprises even us. That’s how the life of faith works.

As God raised Jesus from the dead, God will raise us too, raise us from our doubts and cowardice, our foibles and follies, and we will demonstrate an extraordinary fierceness of faith that could only happen by God’s miraculous working in us.

Easter is chock full of surprises. There is the empty tomb; there are Jesus’ amazing appearances to his disciples after his rising; there are those people who become ten times the people they ever were because Jesus rises from the dead and seems to raise them with him; there are you and I—we, too, full of resurrection surprises.

Oh, and by the way, look to your left and to your right; there you see another hero of the faith!

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 24, 2011
The Resurrection of Our Lord, Easter Morning
Matthew 28: 1-10
"Resurrection: Only God's Possibility"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

It has been a nerve-wracking week for me. We preachers are aware that you come here this morning, at least in part, to hear a compelling and entertaining explanation of the astonishing Easter event. Jaroslav Pelikan writes, “If Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, nothing else matters. If Jesus Christ has not been raised from the dead, nothing else matters.” If your life’s meaning hedges on Jesus’ resurrection, doggonit then, I better explain it in a persuasive and winsome fashion.

Please know I have tried my best to be in top form this morning, studying Scripture’s resurrection accounts, pondering noted theologians’ musings, even cheating a bit and reading Easter sermons of preachers far better than I.

And yet, here’s the daunting problem: no one has ever seen a resurrection. Not one of the gospel writers pictures Jesus jumping up from his death bed, wrapping his grave cloths neatly in a little pile, and announcing with trumpet and timpani accompaniment, “Top of the morning! I am risen! Happy Easter to one and all!” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are far more subdued, describing what happened only after God had raised Jesus from the dead.

The mystery of Christ’s empty tomb is an immense one. Preachers have grappled with it going on 2,000 years. Scholars have pored over ancient manuscripts. Archaeological digs of Jerusalem tombs have been done. Burial shrouds have been analyzed with sophisticated scientific equipment.

Many of you have tried to illuminate Jesus’ resurrection, too. You have colored Easter eggs which, to my understanding, have something to do with new life—but, admit it folks, that ain’t exactly the resurrection. You have created dazzling wicker baskets filled with miniature yellow chicks and fuzzy pink bunnies—cute, for sure, but hardly God raising his Son from the dead.

We have, one and all, ended up scratching our heads after we have given it our best shot: what really happened that first Easter morning?

Perhaps the problem is that we have been looking for resurrection answers in all the wrong places. My favorite theologian Douglas John Hall says, “As for death itself—our death, my death, death as universal phenomenon—its resolution is only God's possibility."

Only God’s possibility! Not in a million years could you or I imagine anything as fanciful as what happened that first Easter morning. Jesus’ resurrection is possible only with God’s astonishing imagination.

Is it any wonder then that the angel said to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, “Do not be afraid,” when they had come early in the morning and found the tomb empty? They had never seen such a thing—the earthquake, the rolling away of the stone, the empty tomb, the announcement, “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.” Is it any wonder the women ran from the tomb as fast as their feet could carry them with fear and great joy?

Whether we are church junkies who come to anything the church puts on, including pot luck suppers with green Jell-O and little white marshmallows or we typically only enter the church on days like this, we all are in search of the same thing, that one breathtaking story that only God can create and that will change our lives forever.

You have figured out by now, I’m sure, that if singing “Alleluia” once is a good thing, than singing “Alleluia” one hundred and fifty-three times is divine. And who can get enough of making ourselves fools for Christ by saying to one another, over and over again, “Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed!”

We need an Easter story so astonishing that we are emboldened to go to life’s toughest places and shout with gusto, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!”

I needed God’s resurrection story this past Thursday afternoon--God’s story, mind you, not my flimsy little one. I went to one of life’s tough places where the brightest and best have plied their most brilliant techniques and sometimes have been found wanting. I visited UCSD’s Thornton Hospital where one of our members, beautiful Michelle, is struggling with cancer that has spread to her brain. What words to say to her and her loved ones that are helpful and true? I didn’t go to Michelle to offer my ten cents worth of cheerleading and heart-warming clichés. I went to tell the only words worth her hearing: “Christ is Risen! Alleluia. Death has been destroyed!” And, by the way, I told her we would shout these identical words this morning, with an overflowing sanctuary, on her behalf.

Each of us is invited to take the exhilarating news of the Risen Christ to those places where the Risen Christ is needed most. Each of you knows where that place is and who those people are. Usually they are the people and places that most others shy away from because things feel so hopeless. But you have an ace up your sleeve, the resurrected Christ. God will stand with you and taunt, “Oh death where is your sting and raise his son from the dead.” If God can do it for Jesus, then God can do it for you and those you love.

There is one other place you must go and it might be the toughest place of all. That place is deep within your own soul where all too often there is venomous self-loathing for your failures and disappointments. Go deep down and sing to yourself that God has raised Jesus from the dead so that you might love yourself half as much as you love your neighbors.

Yes, we leave this place bearing a wondrous message, not of our making but of God’s. Nicolaus Steno, the father of geology, notes: “Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend.” Jesus’ resurrection is most beautiful precisely because it is beyond our imagination and only possible with the mighty hands of God.

My dear friends, we are the only ones God has to send to those scary places, kicking up our heels, raising an explosion of joy, and singing, “Glory hallelujah. Christ is Risen.”

And so, I thank you for being here today, for being Easter people, celebrating what only God can do for us and for this world. And, I thank you for being Easter people who will soon leave this place, going to life’s toughest places where people need you most and singing “Glory hallelujah, Christ Is Risen.”

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 23, 2011
The Easter Vigil
"Tell Me One More Story"

There is nothing quite like a good yarn. “Once upon a time” causes us to lean forward a bit further. Like little children frightened by the dark, on this night, we snuggle into God’s arms and plead, “Tell me one more story.”

At no other worship service does the church tell quite so many stories as tonight.

The Easter Vigil has a bad reputation. People say, “That’s the one that lasts two hours!” Even those who come to anything thing the church puts on avoid this service. Of the twenty-four Lutheran congregations in this part of San Diego, I believe First Lutheran and Saint Peter’s gathered here tonight and one other congregation, All Saints, have this service.

Experts, who claim to know what makes churches grow, warn us of attempting services like this. They tell us no worship service should last longer than fifty-eight minutes—maybe you are agreeing with that wisdom about now! CBS, ABC, NBC are the arbiters when it comes to how long we are willing to sit before running to the refrigerator—or leaving a worship service. Fifty-eight minutes is our limit, they say, even when it comes to snuggling up to hear God’s stories.

And yet, you and I persist. Here we are telling God’s stories again.

“Have you heard the one about God creating the heavens and the earth?”

Or the one about Noah and his ark and the two giraffes, two moose, two snails, even two worms, two monkeys.

Such stories make us all big-eyed.

Or the one about Moses and the Israelites running from Pharaoh’s ground troops, the sea parting miraculously, the rag-tag group of slaves running dry shod through the sea, and wicked Pharaoh’s troops being sucked under to their death.

Or how about Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego? “Bring your best punch, you evil one! Fire up the furnace as hot as you can and we will survive!” One of you adults told me, “This is my favorite story.”

Oh, such stories!

And, now, we go to the water. Like those who have gone before us, we go to spit in Satan’s face; we scream, “So death, where is your sting now?!” We become part of the story as we splash in the water and remember our baptisms.

And then we gather at table and eat a heavenly meal.

Old, old stories and some very new ones, too.

Oh to sit in the lap of God and take the time to listen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 22, 2011
Good Friday
John 18: 1 – John 19: 31-42
"Oh, What Wondrous Love"

People often ask me, “When did you decide to become a pastor?” The answer is a bit murky for me though I do recall wanting to be the acolyte who got to extinguish one candle after another on Good Friday evening.

Pastor Leister did not choose me every year because I was an expert candle extinguisher. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he chose me because no other kid planned to be at worship on Good Friday.

I have always cherished this service, gathered with fellow pilgrims at the cross.

As an acolyte, I never paid attention to how many people worshipped on this hallowed night. I simply assumed the sanctuary was packed as Christians observed Jesus’ deepest love. It was not until later, when my salary was linked to how many showed up at worship that I realized how few come to honor Jesus on this day. I do not recall a Good Friday service with more than a handful present. Tonight does not change that.

I recall a Good Friday service with our Episcopalian and Baptist neighbors. We walked the Stations of the Cross through stately Saint Mary’s Church. We paused in front of the clear leaded glass windows, looking out onto a strip mall selling cheap shoes, organic food, and liquor. Father Horner said: “The world doesn’t much care what we do here today. People go their merry way, acquiring necessary supplies for their Easter celebrations.”

Melancholy, not judgment, a certain sadness in the air. Every year the hope, every year the let down.

We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. When we look back through history, we tend to lift up the so-called “Golden Eras,” times that seemed better than all the rest. We might even recall such a time growing up when our home church was packed on Good Friday—maybe, almost certainly not.

What we do know is the crowd’s habits the day Jesus walked to Calvary--that was no “Golden Era.” Notice how those dearest to Jesus abandoned him, ran for their lives as the cross loomed larger. Notice how the crowds diminished as the nails were driven one-by-one.

I suppose we shouldn’t expect crowds tonight. Are we any different from Peter and James, John and Judas? Deep within our souls, deeper within our culture, we shy away from defeat and flee death. We prefer personal success and routs of our enemies.

And yet, it is death for which we come tonight, Jesus’ death. We come not because we are splendid Christians--far from it. We come because, by some strange grace, we are drawn by Jesus’ wondrous love. It is almost impossible to fathom why he loves us so. It is hard to comprehend why our tradition places so much stock on this dismal and pathetic event. And yet we come, puzzled, somber, melancholic.

We come, yet again, to the darkness, to behold the love of our brother Jesus who graciously takes the blows of our nonchalance, the ravages of our anger, the venom of our hatreds, the clamor of our arrogance. He simply hangs there, loving us until lifeless that we might not fear death and that we might taste life forever…Oh, what wondrous love!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 21, 2011
Maundy Thursday
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
"Shoes"

Next to Christmas, Holy Week was my favorite time growing up. Holy Week is when we got Easter shoes. I still remember getting my first pair of Bass Weejun penny loafers when I was thirteen. Those shoes were a stretch in our household where fine clothes and well-crafted shoes were not priority items. I had my eyes on the penny loafers since I was nine. Grandma Smith took me to Crone’s Men’s Store and bought me those special shoes.

There is something about shoes. They speak volumes about our taste and financial well-being. Inner-city kids are ridiculed for not wearing expensive and fashionable Nikes and Addidas. The worst thing a kid from the projects can do is wear $19 sneakers from Kmart--they are simply called “Bo-Bos!” like “Your mother wears Bo-Bos.”

Tonight, we are invited to a ritual involving shoes, this time taking off our shoes.

When Jared and I were planning this service, I suggested we might all leave our shoes outside the sanctuary like Muslims do when entering their mosques. We could show our reverence for God’s house by not coming in our dirty, dusty shoes. Jared steered me clear of this liturgical brainstorm—and you are happy he did!

And yet, in a few moments, we will have the opportunity to take off our shoes and have our feet washed. If you are like me, you have no problem washing other people’s feet; you would happily wash every foot in this house. It is getting your feet washed that is problematic.

We like to be in control--on the giving, not the receiving end. We do a lot of giving here at First Lutheran Church. We have given sacrificial offerings totaling $4,719 during Lent to purchase well pumps for poor communities, help with tsunami relief in Japan, and buy flocks of geese and ducks through the Heifer Project. We become ice-cold, though, when we have to receive. When a homeless person knocks at the church door and says, “Here’s ten dollars. Thanks for all you do here,” our automatic response is, “Oh, I couldn’t.” We are the givers, not the receivers. We want to be in control.

I found that out on my 60th birthday when you were so kind to me. My immediate reaction upon receiving your gifts was, “Oh no. You shouldn’t!” One of you said to me, “Pastor, let us show our appreciation to you. Please.”

Tonight we wash one another’s feet; more importantly, we have our feet washed. As someone washes your feet, know that Jesus is washing them.

So much is given to us tonight. In a few moments, we will confess our sins and God will forgive each and every one of them. Then our feet will be washed, every toe. We will then gather at table where Jesus will say, “Take and Eat…drink you all of it.” We have nothing to give in return—not our goodness, not a matching gift. We are on the receiving end tonight.

And it does not end tonight, for tomorrow we will gather again, and we will stare, speechless. “How could you?” we will ask as Jesus offers us his life.

Tonight, take off your shoes, have your sins forgiven, eat a supper prepared by Jesus. Be out of control and fall into God’s arms.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 17, 2011
Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion
Matthew 26: 14-27: 66
"Never Said A Mumblin' Word"

Notice how few words Jesus says as he draws nearer and nearer to death.

In some congregations I have served, it was customary to have different people read the parts of those involved in the passion of our Lord Jesus. I always found assigning readers a daunting task. Whom to assign the bit parts where the reader only gets to say a few words and not hurt feelings? Pontius Pilate was always a delicate choice: finding someone not easily offended and whom I could slap on the back and say, “How would you like to be Pontius Pilate for a day?” And the part of Jesus: I always wanted the very best reader to be Jesus; after all, he is the chief character in the story.

And then, every year, when we read Jesus’ passion, I was shocked by how few words Jesus says—we could assign his part to the worst reader and it wouldn’t much matter—so few words to utter.

The old African-American spiritual sings of Jesus’ final hours, “Jesus never said a mumblin’ word.” Never a mumblin’ word.

How many words would you utter—what with Judas betraying you, Peter getting all weak-kneed and cowardly and turning his back on you, Pontius Pilate being ever the spineless politician? Add to this cast of clowns, the macho soldiers, the jeering crowds, the nails and spear piercing hands and feet and side, the sour taste of vinegar. Could you remain silent or would you have volumes to say?

The monk John the Ladder of Mount Sinai wrote in the seventh century, “Jesus by his silence shamed Pilate.” Jesus’ few words shame us too, we of many words, many opinions, so easily offended, we who must have the last word on virtually everything.

There is soaring dignity in this man Jesus, especially given the few words he speaks. There is elegance in how he lets his actions speak for him.

During this week, we walk with Jesus yet again. Be attentive to how few words he says. Listen to the silence. Never a mumblin’ word but oh, so much love Jesus has for you.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 10, 2011
Fifth Sunday in Lent
John 11: 1-45
"Death Stinketh"

Our friend Sam suffered an agonizing death. He was 50 years old and lived alone. He had many dear friends, inside and outside the church. They spent hours sitting with him, holding his hand and helping him navigate the valley of the shadow of death. Dying did not come easy for Sam. In fact, he hated it.

Sam’s friends worried that he was not dealing well with his imminent death. I understood their worry. I, too, had read Elizabeth Kubler-Ross influential book, On Death and Dying, and found it enormously helpful. She carefully delineates the five stages we go through when dying; the fifth and final stage is “acceptance.” Sam never did accept death.

I quoted Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” at his funeral:

Oh no, Sam did not accept his death. He loved dressing up for Halloween and giving children loads of candy so he did not go gentle into the night. He loved elaborately decorating the church at Christmas and Easter so he raved at close of day; he loved summer picnics with his friends, with crystal stemware and linen napkins so he raged against the dying of the light. Sam cherished life.

Sam forced me to ponder whether there might be a biblical precedent for his revulsion of death. And it came to me, Saint Paul’s words, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death!” Death is not a friend according to Paul; death is not to be cuddled up to or domesticated. Death is not what God intends!

Russian Orthodox theologian Father Alexander Schmemann writes, “Christianity is not concerned about coming to terms with death, but rather with the victory over it” (Alexander Schmemann, O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?, pg. 28).

Sam’s struggles with death or, perhaps more correctly, his love of life, led me thumbing through Scripture to find an appropriate reading at his funeral; today’s Gospel reading was the one.

Lazarus had been dead for four days by the time Jesus finally arrived at the tomb. Jesus’ heart must have been broken—you know the agony when someone you love dies before you arrive to say your “farewell.” It had been four days since the sisters called Jesus to come quickly. Lazarus’ sister, Martha, said to Jesus, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” I much prefer the King James Version’s words: “Lord, by this time he stinketh.” My friend Sam would have liked King James too: death stinketh!

Death stinketh so bad that day that Jesus wept. These two words, “Jesus wept” (again King James Version), are incredibly important.

We pastors are exceedingly familiar with these two words, “Jesus wept.” Invariably, some confirmation student with raging hormones and backwards ball-cap chooses “Jesus wept” as his memory verse to be recited before mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, and the whole assembled multitude on his confirmation day. I always hope this boy will remember his verse years later. There will come a day when this tiniest of all biblical verses, “Jesus wept,” will be no laughing matter. Maybe recalling these tiny words and feeling as Jesus has given him permission, he will weep freely when his wife of fifty-five years breathes her last. Yes, death stinketh!

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams notes, “Christ will not wipe away our tears until we heave learnt to cry.” You know that. You know how painful it is to mourn a precious spouse, a tiny baby, a grown child, a special friend. You shed tears at the queerest moments: when you see the tulip blooming that your wife so adored; when you smell the trumpet flower whose fragrance always caused the two of you to stop and smell on your evening walks; when you hear Frank Sinatra singing Send in the Clowns that caused you to look happily into each other’s eyes. You loved life together and you still shed a tear or two at love lost even after so many years. These times make you certain that death is the last enemy to be destroyed. Death stinketh!

It would be dreadful, though, if our torrential tears never ebbed. Jesus understands this; that is why he enters our lives and the lives of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. You noticed, I’m sure, that in the midst of the crying, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus didn’t wait until his friends were in heaven to take away the stink of death. He brought the hope of the resurrection to them while they were living. And he brings it to us today, “Take and eat, my fair and lovely one.”

When I was in divinity school, a Benedictine monk, David Stendl-Rast, spoke words that I have not forgotten: “The beginning of resurrection is saying yes to death.” Brother David was not suggesting, I don’t think, that we should accept death; rather he was reminding us that Christ’s promise of resurrection can begin in our lives now, today, as a reminder that death has already been destroyed for us and those we love.

Maybe you are thinking that I am jumping the gun by talking about resurrection this morning, two weeks before Easter. Shouldn’t we wait until Easter morning to pull out the stops and let ‘er rip? Shouldn’t Jesus rise first? The Methodist bishop from Alabama William Willimon writes: “I know this story should have been saved until later…until after Easter, but no, whenever Jesus shows up, corpses rise, life breaks out, death is defeated, and people get unbound.” Even on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, even while we are weeping, we can rejoice.

Don’t wait until Easter to celebrate life. Don’t wait for heaven to celebrate resurrection. Do it now; do it every day of your life. I can assure you, Sam would be proud of you.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 3, 2011
Fourth Sunday in Lent
John 9: 1-41
"From Blaming to Healing"

Please close your eyes like the blind man, listening to this morning’s gospel and being present with Jesus…[John 9: 1-41 is read]

As I listened to the story of Jesus healing the man born blind, I was struck by how many people were blamed for the poor man’s blindness.

The blaming starts as Jesus and the disciples walk by the blind man. The disciples immediately ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Someone must be responsible for this man’s blindness.

The one who is not blamed—though I suspect the disciples thought about it—is God. There is that age old question: why do bad things happen to good people? And God is often blamed.

The blame game happens in our day, too. Following the tsunami in Japan, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara blamed the people, saying the tsunami was “divine punishment” for their egoism.

When something terrible happens, we rush to blame someone. The blame game is deep inside of our DNA.

CBS’s 60 Minutes recently had a segment about unemployed families unable to pay their mortgages and ending up homeless. Among those interviewed were a number of children from these families. These children blamed themselves for their families living in rundown motels. If it weren’t for their basic needs of food and clothing, they said, their parents wouldn’t be homeless; if they hadn’t been born, everything would be fine. These youngsters have already learned the world’s game of finding someone to blame when terrible things happen.

In the story of the man born blind, Jesus changes the focus and the energy from blaming to healing. Rather than expending enormous amounts of energy trying to figure out who is responsible for this man’s blindness, Jesus does his best to restore his eyesight. You would think there would be a celebration for this miraculous healing but not so. Now, the Pharisees blame Jesus. Hadn’t he learned the Ten Commandments while growing up, especially “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy?” How dare Jesus heal the blind man on the Sabbath? The Pharisees want to get everything perfectly right before they act. “Really, Jesus,” they seem to ask, “what would it hurt to wait just a little longer and heal this man on Monday morning. It’s only two days more. The poor guy has been blind all is life; what will another few days matter in the grand scheme of things if you end up obeying God’s commandment by doing no work on the Sabbath?”

The blame game works like that. Perhaps it has happened to you. It is often good religious people who are quick to blame us. You try to help an aging family member. You have no magic solutions but you know something must be done. You worry about your mother. Others provide you with all the “right answers,” but they aren’t willing to lift a finger. Moving your mother from her home breaks your heart, but the other options are far worse. You must act now.

Lent is the occasion when Jesus heals us just like the blind man and invites us to heal others. God errs on the side of mercy every time. I suppose God could withhold mercy from us— after all, it is 100% certain we will foul up again. But God is extravagant with heavenly love and risks letting us taste heavenly grace and mercy over and over again. Once we taste such love, one hopes we will run out and share that love with other suffering people. God willing, we will err on the side of mercy and not worry so much about making a few mistakes in the process. Our greatest desire will be to heal someone in Jesus’ name and to trust that God will look lovingly upon any mistakes we might make in the process.

At a training session here yesterday for those who work with the many ministries of TACO and First Lutheran Church, Jim Lovell reported the most recent statistics of homeless people living in the city of San Diego. The statistics are staggering. More than 3,000 people are currently living on our streets. As the blind man stood before Jesus, our homeless brothers and sisters stand before us. What will we do for them in Jesus’ name?

Let me assure you, there are those who would prefer we do nothing. In fact, some blame us for trying. We were blamed this past week. Two local developers came and blamed us for the urinating and defecating that is occurring around our building. Make no mistake: we are not in favor of public urinating or defecating and whenever we see it occurring, we pitch a fit. We told these developers that we want to be part of the solution. In fact, we have done just that: we have pled with our City Council in a private meeting to have more bathrooms downtown; I have spoken publicly on behalf of the San Diego Organizing Project at City Council meetings, begging city officials to care as much about creating a long-term solutions to chronic homelessness as about building a stadium for the San Diego Chargers. We even keep our bathrooms open to all who come by here at considerable cost to our congregation. And yet, because we dare to care, we are blamed.

Jesus’ healing the blind man is our personal invitation to get involved with suffering people in our own lives. When Jesus heals the blind man, he shows us the beauty of placing another person’s well-being higher than trying to get everything just right before we lift a finger.

I suspect that each of you has a blind person or two in your life waiting for you to come and heal them—maybe an aging parent, an addicted son, a mentally ill neighbor, a sick sister. I urge you to take the risk: go, care for them. If you make a mistake along the way and someone blames you for a wrong you have done, know that you join very good company with Jesus. So in Jesus name, I urge you, go heal somebody.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 27, 2011
Third Sunday in Lent
John 4: 5-42
"Its Beauty Is in Its Length"

Don’t even tell me: I know that was an incredibly long gospel reading. I hope you never forget how long it was. Never forget that it is the longest conversation Jesus had with anyone in the Bible. And one other thing I hope you never forget: this long reading was not with Jesus’ mother, Mary, or one of his disciples; it was with a Samaritan woman.

That Jesus talked with a Samaritan woman should shock you even more than the length of today’s reading. Samaritans were outsiders, impure as far as the Jews were concerned, enemies. Be shocked that Jesus even looked at this woman, let alone asked her for a drink of water. Jesus asking her for a drink of water was tantamount to his saying, “Do you want to go out on a date.”

Honorable women went to the well early in the morning, right after they had gotten their children off to school and swept the house. They gathered to fetch the daily water for their families and to share in a little town gossip. Only a dishonorable woman would come to the well at noon.

You probably are shocked by the woman’s reputation. She had been married five times and was working on husband number six. This promiscuous woman shocked everyone in the village and she has shocked the church for the past twenty one hundred years.

Maybe, though, we shouldn’t be shocked by all her marriages. Just this week, I read something about this woman that has changed how I have viewed her for most of my lifetime. I read an article by a woman biblical scholar (Karoline Lewis of Luther Seminary) who suggests that the Samaritan woman might not have been promiscuous at all; rather she may have been widowed or abandoned by her husbands or they divorced her. Women of her day had no rights and were treated like raw meat. This woman expected people to treat her terribly and this is what makes the length of this morning’s gospel astonishing. Jesus was different. Jesus cared enough for her that he was in no hurry to end their conversation. He could have said, “Have a nice day,” and rushed off with his busy life. Time was of the essence for Jesus: he had only three years to do his entire ministry, to tend to his miracles and all his healings--every minute counted. And yet Jesus took time to be with this woman and to listen to her. She and Jesus talked about her life, her brokenness, her shame, her rejection. They talked about who Jesus was and, believe it or not, she, an outsider and enemy, was the first to hear Jesus say that he was the Messiah and she was the first to tell the people of her village what she had seen and heard—an outsider, an enemy, becomes the first evangelist!

Imagine if we were all a little bit like Jesus--after all, we are his followers. Imagine if we took the time to listen to one another, to those we like, of course, but also to visitors and strangers and odd ducks. Imagine if we treated every occasion with another person as an opportunity to have a conversation on Jesus’ behalf.

We are told that first time visitors to our church will decide within ten minutes whether they will ever return here again. In those ten minutes, no organ has been played, no hymns sung, no lessons read, no sermon preached. How do the visitors decide so quickly? Of course, by whether they feel welcomed. Do we listen to where they are from, how they have come by here? Do we introduce them to one other person before running off and doing something else that seems so important? Do we make sure that no visitor ends up in the corner, alone, feeling out of place and awkward? Ten minutes and they know whether they have been listened to.

You know how edgy you feel when entering a room and not knowing a soul. Imagine if you haven’t been to church for twenty years—you got a divorce, arrested for a DUI, attempted suicide, your pastor discovered you are gay. You have stayed away for a long time and then you finally decide to enter again. It takes courage. You are certain the spotlight is shining directly on you. You are aware of every move you make, every word you speak. When someone talks with you longer than usual, you suddenly feel like matter again.

It must have been like that for the Samaritan woman when she talked with Jesus. She just knew that Jesus cared about her and she began to pour out her soul like she had never done with anyone else before. Suddenly, she felt as if she mattered.

Have you ever done that, poured out your soul, telling someone your deepest, most painful secrets? The ease of telling your story surprised you. There was something about how he looked into your eyes that told you he cared. It was how she listened to you, rephrasing a word here and there, letting you know that she was paying attention. When the conversation ended, you said, “Thank you for the conversation,” but, when you thought about it, what surprised you is that you had done all the talking and all she had done was listen. You felt like the Samaritan woman when she said, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” Could it be that Jesus knew all this about the woman, not by extra sensory perception, some unique miraculous power, or some direct message from heaven, but simply because he took the time to sit with her and listen for a very long time? Maybe a miracle is afoot every time we give one another the time to listen and to care.

I agree with you that today’s gospel reading was awfully long and yet its beauty is in its length. The length of the story is a testament to the dignity Jesus offered to this Samaritan woman.

When you leave here this morning, may you know that God promises to listen to you, too, as long as you wish—just as long as Jesus listened to the Samaritan woman.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Second Sunday in Lent
March 20, 2011
Genesis 12: 1-4a; John 3: 1-17
"That Look of Faith in Your Eyes"

Our congregation celebrated its 123rd birthday on Friday, March 18. Unlike Sarah and Abraham who traveled far from home to serve God, our congregation has never ventured farther than a few city blocks to be God’s servant. And yet, like Sarah and Abraham, over the years, First Lutheran Church has had to leave the security of what is familiar and venture into the unknown, trusting only that God is leading us and guiding us.

God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would become parents of a great nation. So off they went on a journey to a strange, new country. No sooner had they stopped at the first oasis to water the camels than they began to question their sanity. They were old and thirsty and the blazing sun was shriveling their ancient flesh.

Things didn’t go as God had promised. Frederick Buechner notes that instead of getting a Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, Abraham and Sarah ended up with scrub country around Dead Man’s Gulch. To make matters worse, far from being the parents of a great nation, Sarah couldn’t even have babies. And yet, as these strange journeys of faith so often do, as a special present from God on Abraham’s hundredth birthday, God surprised Abraham’s wife, Sarah, with the news that she was going to have a son.

Even at the end of his life when his family hadn’t, by a long shot, become a great nation, Abraham had that “look of faith in his eyes.” He sensed that God would keep the promises and his family would end up being winners--even the losers would be winners. And who knows when, some day, Abraham would talk proudly of his great-great- great grandson, Jesus, the Light of the World. (cf., Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who, pg. 3-5).

As we consider this congregation’s history, you could say it has had, by the grace of God, the “look of faith in its eyes” too. In my six years as your pastor, I have never heard one of you utter the old congregational killer, “We never have done it that way before.” The only times I have ever caught you looking backward is when you wanted to summons the courage to move courageously into the future. You looked backward a few years ago when celebrating thirty years of Bread Day--you looked backwards to motivate you into the future with even better service to the poor and homeless of this community. I caught you peaking backwards in 2009 as we celebrated twenty years as a Reconciling in Christ congregation--you looked back to boost your courage to keep opening our doors wider and wider to all kinds of God’s children.

I have seen that look of faith in your eyes, too, in your personal life. You may not notice that look but I can assure you it is there. You told me about being a stumbling drunk for years and years, losing jobs and alienating family until, out of the blue, you came to believe that a power greater than yourself could restore you to sanity and you haven’t had a drink since--that’s the look of faith in your eyes.

One of you fought like cats and dogs with the one you promised to love for better or worse. There hadn’t been decent word between you for a long time except on the occasion of friends visiting when you wanted to keep up appearances. There was that terrible day when you screamed, “I wish you were dead!” Your callous words scared you silly. You wept and you went to her and said, “We must talk.” That was a frightening step after months and months, years really, of incivility. In the awkward talking, festering wounds began to heal. You embraced and you both began to be made new. It was that look of faith in your eyes yet again.

It is always scary to go to a new land, a place you have never been before. Nicodemus was scared to death that night he went to Jesus in the darkness. Who knows how Nicodemus felt when Jesus invited him to be born again.

Anne Lamott, in her book Traveling Mercies, describes what that frightening feeling at baptism feels like: “Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that’s a little sloppy because at the same time it is also holy, and absurd. It’s about surrender, giving in to all those things we can’t control; it’s a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched.”

It is a good idea to place our fingers deep into the baptismal waters whenever we arrive here and whenever we leave. Dripping wet, we are reminded that being a Christian is almost always scary stuff if we are doing it half right and yet it is also almost always exhilarating.

When I was eight years old, my father wanted me to jump off the high dive at Oglebay Park’s swimming pool. I climbed the twelve steps of the ladder with knocking knees. I tip-toed out to the edge of the board and looked way down below and saw my Dad dog-paddling. He yelled up, “Jump, Wilk, jump. I will get you.” Every bone in my skinny, little body told me that jumping was ill-advised, but, if you are lucky enough to have a daddy you trust, you just close your eyes and do it…What a thrill, jumping and knowing we will be in our heavenly Father’s arms in no time.

It’s hard to know how and where God is calling each of us to jump, and yet we can be certain if we heed God’s call, it will make all the difference in our life and in the world’s. Only you will discover where God calls you to jump. Abraham and Sarah went to an unknown country; Nicodemus only went a few blocks but was so scared it seemed like a million miles; this congregation has jumped countless times and every jump has given new life on this corner of God’s universe; Jesus jumped up onto the cross and was raised from the dead. Every jump is different. And yet when God yells up to us, “I will not let your foot be moved,” we take the leap and, as we end up dripping wet in God’s arms, we all have that “look of faith in our eyes.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 13, 2011
First Sunday in Lent
Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7 Matthew 4: 1-11
"The Church's Middle Passage"

E. L. Doctorow, in his heartbreaking novel, Homer and Langley, writes of two wealthy bachelor brothers who lived in a stately New York mansion on Fifth Avenue. The novel is part fiction and part fact. What is fact is that the Collyer brothers’ bodies were discovered in March 1947 amidst tons of debris, treasure, and trash that they had hoarded inside their home. The police found dozens of pianos, their doctor father's jars of human specimen parts, tens of thousands of newspapers stacked from floor to ceiling, eight feral cats, sewing machine parts, a baby carriage, and, believe it or not, a Model T Ford in the living room, and much, much more. These brothers sadly never felt they had enough.

Even in the Garden of Eden, the most perfect place ever, Adam and Eve felt like Homer and Langley. They simply did not have enough. God had told them, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.” As so often happens when there are restrictions, Adam and Eve forgot about all the other trees in Paradise that were theirs for the taking and instead obsessed over the one tree that belonged to God and not to them.

Jesus faced a similar temptation. After fasting in the desert for forty days and forty nights, he was hungry and weak, susceptible to the devil’s trickery. The devil came to Jesus and told him that he could make the world a far better place if he only bowed ever so slightly in the devil’s direction. Satan always works that way, offering the option of better or best. In exchange for that little bow, Jesus could have everything in the world he wanted, making it a far better place and feeding every hungry person to boot. The question the devil posed to Jesus in three different ways was whether Jesus had enough fame, authority and power to accomplish his ministry.

The devil is crafty. He places the identical question before us that he placed before Homer and Langley, Adam and Eve, and Jesus, “Are you sure you have enough?”

How much is enough? Lack of safe water and sanitation is the world’s single largest cause of illness. 42 per cent of households have no toilets; one in six people have no access to safe water. About 4,500 children die each day from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation facilities.

You would think people living in such miserable conditions would be susceptible to the devil’s trickery and I’m sure some are. After all, they certainly don’t have enough. What is astonishing is that Christianity is on the rise in places where water is as precious as gold. Lutheranism is growing fastest, not in Germany or Sweden or here in America but in Africa where 700,000 joined the church last year. In contrast, Lutheran churches in Europe declined by 400,000 members and by 84,000 in America.

Foreign visitors often return from poor places of Central America and Africa raving about the vibrancy of worship. They are astonished that people stay in church all day, praying and singing songs to God. These people seem to realize through excruciating hunger and thirst--there own desert trial--that the bread of heaven is far more life-giving than what we depend upon in rich nations.

(Please beware however: do not say that poor people are “so happy” as if their so called “happiness” makes up for the misery set before them. I often hear people say how “happy” poor Mexicans seem. We dare not glamorize being hungry unless we first walk in these people’s shoes. A culture’s uplifting worship and happiness with the simple things of life is never a pardon of richer brothers and sisters from assisting to relieve the misery of poverty.)

I have found over in over again in our land that people will only stay in church for so long. I had one person once tell me that it was an offense that worship lasted longer than an hour, even 15 minutes longer. The church growth gurus understand these desires for short worship and counsel that worship never last longer than 55 minutes, the amount of time we typically give to Hawaii 500 or NCIS Los Angeles. How sad that we spend less time with God than we are willing to commit to nonsense like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

There comes a time in many of our lives when we realize that what we have been eating is sucking the life out of our very souls. Many of us have discovered a gapping hole in our heart around midlife. We have spent a lifetime trying to feed that demanding hole with diligent study, hard work, prudent saving, and hard drinking. We are successful by every imaginable standard and yet we are miserable. We are plagued by the haunting question, “Is this all there is to life?”

The psychologist James Hollis refers to this time of life not with the pejorative term “midlife crisis” but rather with the more positive twist of “middle passage.” He believes this frightening time in our lives when we wonder, “Is this all there is?” is also filled with marvelous possibilities of new meaning and discovery if we only quit our terrible habits and devastating ways.

Lent is the church’s middle passage. Lent is the forty days when we repent, when we turn from our ravenous appetites and incessant desires to see whether there might be a more salutary way. Is it any wonder life feels so meaningless when our finest hours are spent watching Charlie Sheen’s life unravel? The seven o’clock hour devoted to television is one of our worst and fiercest addictions. As PBS twists in the gallows, so should ABC, NBC, and CBS for the incessant rubbish they send over our airwaves. Let us fast, if not totally at least some, from the compulsive surfing of “57 channels and nothing on.” Every time we see Charlie Sheen’s face, let us turn off the television and reach for our Bibles and read a Psalm or two. Perhaps when you are tossing and turning at night, turn on the light, reach for your Bible on your bed stand and flip to any Psalm and for the first time perhaps discover someone who knows exactly what you are going through; you will find a new friend--not on Facebook but in the Bible.

Take a break from worrying about your relentless needs and experience the thrill of giving $150 to purchase a well pump in a poor community in Africa. Experience the sense of exhilaration of donating $20 this morning, on the spot, to the ELCA Disaster Relief Fund to help those suffering so badly in Japan. Suddenly life is larger and petty worries that once nagged us don’t seem nearly as consuming.

Homer and Langley Collyer found it impossible to do the necessary spring cleaning in their New York mansion and finally were tragically smothered to death by all their useless stuff. Lent is our rare opportunity to do some spring cleaning of our souls and to make room for the wondrous gifts of the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 9, 2011
Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
"Embracing Our Failures As Our Lenten Discipline "

Every Ash Wednesday I make the identical exhortation to you on behalf of the church down through the ages. It begins this way: “As disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ we are called to struggle against everything that leads us away from love of God and neighbor. Repentance, fasting, prayer, and works of love—the discipline of Lent—helps us to wage spiritual warfare.”

Every year as I say these words, I wonder how many of us take them seriously at all. The words sound so pious and holy but will we repent, fast, pray, and perform works of love? Do we plan to do that?

Jesus gives us advice on how to go about our Lenten discipline. He speaks of giving alms and praying in a manner that does not draw attention to ourselves; he speaks of fasting with joy.

Every year I map out my own Lenten discipline. And every year, at about six or seven days into Lent, I start failing to keep my discipline. I have tried my best. I have tried to read four Psalms every day and I have discovered, even when I do, my mind wanders terribly and I simply read by rote. I have tried to fast once a week and give that money to help the poor and almost always the delicious aromas wafting from In and Out Burger grease get the better of me. This year, I hope to read through Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, a book recommended by a pastor friend for the Lenten journey. But I do wonder whether I will be able to stick to my guns and observe a holy Lent.

Have you been able to be more disciplined than I in your Lenten observance?

Maybe, before embarking on our Lenten journey, we should give serious consideration to those ashes soon to be smudged on our foreheads. Let us contemplate the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” The words and ashes are reminders that, no matter how good our intentions, we will sooner or later fail. Said another way: we will all certainly die—remember that you are dust!

I have come to believe that failing to keep our Lenten discipline may not be a particularly bad thing; in fact, it might be a good thing. I am not suggesting that we not try to keep a holy Lent. Of course I hope we enhance our prayer life, increase our Bible reading, attend worship faithfully, and participate in our wonderful midweek Lenten program, “Wade in the Water.” I pray that we will skip a meal or two along the way and give that money to our Lutheran World Relief well project. If we come close to doing some of this, our Lent will almost certainly be a bright and joyful one.

And yet if we fail come day five or eight or fourteen days in, let us not be disheartened. That is all part of our dustness—remembering that we are dust. When our best intentions to keep a faithful Lent go awry, we shouldn’t throw up our hands in disgust; we may be on to something very good. Could it be that when we fail, we do better than we ever imagine in reminding ourselves, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Perhaps we can all weave our Lenten failures into the fabric of our Lenten discipline. Every time we stumble—forgetting to pray, failing to fast, not showing mercy to a brother or sister in Christ—let us turn to the Lord our God yet again and be reminded of just how gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love our God is.

Whether we keep our Lenten discipline or fail miserably, remember: the point of Lent is not to prove how good we are but rather to return to the Lord our God. If we fail, let us realize how much we need God; if we succeed, let us give thanks that God is with us every step of the way.

And so, once again, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lenten Exhortation:

“Brothers and sisters: God created us to experience joy in communion with him, to love all humanity, and to live in harmony with all of his creation. But sin separates us from God, our neighbors, and creation, and so we do not enjoy the life our Creator intended for us. Also, by our sin we grieve our Father, who does not desire us to come under his judgment, but to turn to him and live.

“As disciples of the Lord Jesus we are called to struggle against everything that leads us away from love of God and neighbor. Repentance, fasting, prayer, and works of love—the discipline of Lent—help us to wage our spiritual warfare. I invite you, therefore, to commit yourselves to this struggle and confess your sins, asking our Father for strength to persevere in your Lenten discipline.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
The Transfiguration of Our Lord
March 6, 2011
Matthew 17: 1-9
"The Teeter-Totter of Life and Ministry"

“Jesus face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.” Add to that astonishing vision, Peter, James, and John seeing Jesus talk with Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop and you have quite a day. Call it Transfiguration Day.

If you had been there with Peter, James, and John, how would you tell the story once you came down from the mountain? I have a hunch I would have been tight-lipped. When someone knocks on the church door and claims to have seen Moses, Elijah, and Jesus out on 3rd Avenue, well….

I doubt Peter, James on John told a soul. I’ll bet, though, they wondered for a lifetime whether it really was God they had heard who said from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” It is these moments, crammed with mystery, that sustain us through some pretty tough times and yet rarely are there words to describe them.

Have you ever had such a moment? Even if you have words for it, you dare not tell a soul for fear of what they might think.

The deepest beliefs of our church are formed by these mysteries too deep for words. Take for instance God coming to Bethlehem as a baby—how to explain? Or God dying on the cross—you said God? Or Jesus being raised from the dead—whatever happened that day changed the world.

We tend to domesticate these impenetrable mysteries, taming their wonder, making them as sweet as little kitties and as toothless as elderly lions. We bring them down to our level of understanding and emasculate the wonder. We are suspicious of uncommon occurrences and yet it is these very rare moments, too marvelous for words, that sustain us when we come down from the mountain and the going gets tough.

I had one of those mountaintop moments right here, last Sunday morning. Never did I imagine you would honor me on my 60th birthday. When Pastor Jim Hallerberg came forward towards the end of worship with a little bag, I had no idea what was going on or that the bag was filled with your kind greetings and gifts. Jim’s thoughtful words, your singing of “Now Thank We All Our God,” the delicious cakes and delightful piñata--I was speechless.

When we got home, Dagmar handed me the bag of cards and said, “Why don’t you open them.” I slowly opened one card after another. Your generosity washed over me quite unlike anything I can remember.

It might sound strange, but in those hours, I beheld a mystery. It was such a rare occasion, a blessing from heaven really. I had no words for what occurred. I kept wondering about my emotions: had I demonstrated sufficient appreciation to you on Sunday morning? Whatever grace it was, please know how deeply you moved me and how grateful I am.

And yet, I must come down from that 60th birthday mountain. You might even be saying to yourself, “You are right, pastor: enough of the 60th birthday stuff; now, on with ministry.”

The disciples experienced life similarly. Only six days before climbing the mountain, Jesus had a memorable conversation with them. Like so many conversations, it was a teeter- tooter affair, up and down. Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus exclaimed, “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church!” That was a mountaintop experience for Peter.

And yet, hardly any time had passed before Jesus shared the startling news of his impending death. Peter said to Jesus, “This shall never happen to you.” Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” That was a valley for Peter.

Peter’s life is our life, up and down, stirring exhilaration and untold heartache, joyous celebrations and crushing defeats.

The church year replicates these peaks and valleys. For the past two months we have celebrated the birth of Jesus and the surprising ways that God has been revealed through his son, Jesus, here on earth. We have had the wreath of lights up since Christmas, reminding us of the light of Christ. In a few days, the church will go down the hill to Ash Wednesday. For 40 days and 40 nights, we will not sing the word Alleluia even once. The colors of our worship will be subdued. For some, it will feel depressing. We will eagerly await Easter with the splendid flowers and the uplifting Alleluias. What we will face in weeks to come is the teeter-tottering of the church’s worship life, the up and down.

Our lives are like that the church year. Teeter-totter. We need to go to the mountain with Jesus, to have brilliant moments that are indescribable and that will bolster us. And yet we also must leave worship behind, to come back down to a world crying for our attention.

I love that about our church, First Lutheran. I told another pastor a few days ago that we worship the best we are able, with no apologies, and then we go out into the world and tackle the toughest issues that our world faces, all with considerable dignity and grace. Up and down--that’s what our ministry at First Lutheran Church is in a nutshell.

I pray that each of you will have a few of those inexplicable moments like the disciples had, high up on the mountain with Jesus. Those moments, though rare, will make your eyes go wide open. Who knows when and how those moments will come. One came for Bill and Martha Radatz this week as they celebrated the birth of their new grandson, Henry. Such a moment might come as you travel to the desert in the coming days and see springtime cacti blossoms arising from what seems death itself. One might come in a few moments when eight new members gather here at the river to join our church: you longtime members will be thrilled, trusting that your commitment to this place over the years has all been worth it; and you new members will be delighted as you have found a place like this. Rare moments and yet filled with grace. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton called these moments “kisses from God.”

May you all have a few kisses from God and may those kisses sustain you as you go down the mountain to embrace a suffering world.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 27, 2011
Eight Sunday after Epiphany
Matthew 6: 24-34
"What's A Care?"

“Do not worry about your life.” Hearing Jesus speak these words causes our tight muscles to relax, our clenched fists to open, and our labored breathing to lighten.

Worrying is second nature to most of us. Is there anyone here this morning not nagged by a worry?

I heard Adele Stiles Resmer, the then professor of preaching at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, preach a sermon that has stuck with me for eleven years now. She told of swinging on her backyard hammock with her five year old nephew, Carson. She said it this way: “His arm was casually thrown up behind his head, a relaxed, summer look on his face. And I couldn’t help but say, ‘Carson, you look like you don’t have a care in the world.’ He looked at me rather quizzically for a moment and then he said, ‘Aunt Adele, what’s a care?’”

“Can you imagine?’ she went on. “Can you remember back far enough or was there ever a time in your life that you did not know what a care was? If there ever was such a time it is a distant memory for most of us. We are all too familiar with ‘what a care is.’”

We pastors could answer little Carson’s question. We worry about a myriad of things from disgruntled members to decreased offerings to shrinking memberships to leaky roofs. A recent study found that 69% of pastors in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are overweight, 64% have high blood pressure, 13% take antidepressants; not to mention failed marriages, addictions, and quitting the ministry. Oh, yes, we pastors know what a care is. And we are not the only ones.

Jesus had a care or two. From before he was born, angels were already propping up his mother and father. “Do not be afraid,” said the angels to Mary and Joseph. When the baby Jesus was born, things only got scarier. Loving enemies, siding with underdogs, calling the rich and powerful to treat the poor and oppressed with compassion, seeing the cross looming—a host of cares. When finally nailed to that cross, Jesus uttered the greatest of all cares, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

But I don’t need to tell you: you know what a care is.

Is it any wonder that Jesus tells us, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” He is trying to lighten our load, not make us more miserable.

You have noticed, I’m sure, how we worry about things that don’t amount to a hill of beans. We worry about our possessions--here today and gone tomorrow. We know we should not worry about such silly stuff, and yet it has a creepy way of getting under our skin and staying there. We worry about people stealing our stuff; we worry about losing our stuff; we worry about having enough stuff when we grow older; we worry about whether anyone will relish our stuff when we die. Oh yes, you understand cares.

When my mother moved from her country home to a smaller condominium after my father died, Dagmar and I told her we would come and help her pack with one condition: she would have to have a dumpster awaiting when we arrived. Our recommendation made my mom angrier than a hornet but, in her inimitable way, she tried not to show it. All the stuff destined for a dumpster was so precious to her. She had remembrances of nearly fifty years of marriage, beautiful things from her mother and father’s home, sentimental relics from the family business dating back to 1909. Mom cherished those treasures and my how she worried about them.

What should she save, what should she toss? The old musty camping equipment was easy—toss! The gigantic safe from the Wheeling Realty Company—sell— too colossal to toss! She had tenderly banded together every letter I had written dad and her when I was in college and divinity school—give them to me and I will secretly toss them when I get home. The beautiful antique vase—of course, Dagmar will find flowers for it.

You get the picture: you have done the merciless reckoning. You have saved and saved and then the awful moment arrives when letting go of dear memories makes your tummy churn as if on a roller-coaster ride gone bad.

What is a care?

Jesus wants us to clean the messy cabinets of our souls so we can once again sleep like a baby. He wants us to make room for the things that are truly priceless which moth and rust can never destroy. He wants us to make space for the precious keepsakes of the kingdom lavishly offered by God and which will be with us for eternity.

We gather here this morning to reassure one another that God will fill the recesses of our hearts with treasures from heaven. We come here week after week to tell one another about the time we lost everything and survived. Your house burnt down, you lost your marriage, your dear husband or wife died—all seemed lost. Remember? And yet, thankfully, Jesus was with you. You didn’t realize his presence immediately--that took time, maybe a month, even a year. You cried, you screamed, you drank too much, but, then, presto, Jesus touched your shoulder and, for the first time maybe ever, you felt like a bird soaring in the sky.

That’s how we share the gospel: do not be afraid, we tell one another. That’s what the Simon’s Walk volunteers do whom we commission this morning. Michelle Matson and Marge Hersom join a cadre of volunteers who accompany people who are dying on our streets. Imagine how our homeless brothers and sisters must feel in their final months. Does anyone care? Does God care? These wonderful volunteers assure these blessed dying ones that God, whose eye is on the sparrow, is certainly on them, precious children of God that they are.

The wonder of Christian communities like this is that someone sings the songs of Jesus’ love to us when we are filled with cares and are unable to sing ourselves. God willing, though, there will come a time when, finally, we will catch ourselves singing, too, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” This is God’s music, God’s treasure. With these words ringing in our ears, what’s a care—or even two?

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 20, 2011
Matthew 5: 38-48
"The Badwater 135"

Dagmar and I had a wonderful vacation this past week, celebrating my 60th birthday. I have a few traditions I observe before leaving for vacation: one is cleaning off my office desk and making it spotless—actually dumping everything into a central drawer; another is choosing the books I will read when away (this time around, My Reading Life by Pat Conroy and Barefoot Disciple by Stephen Cherry, a book on humility, recommended for Lent 2011 by the Archbishop of Canterbury).

Dagmar and I found solace in the fierce landscape of Death Valley. We hiked dramatic trails, swam in hot springs, explored a ghost town, and took a 27 mile off road journey in Dagmar’s truck.

My greatest joy, though, was seeing the Badwater ultramarathon course that I have dreamed of running for many years. Badwater is a 135 mile race run in the 120 degree heat of July. The race begins at the lowest point in the United States, Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level; it finishes near the highest point in continental U.S., the portal to Mount Whitney. I ran three of the 135 miles on the flattest part of the course with the temperature 50 degrees cooler than when the race is run. I wept the entire way out of sheer joy.

Unfortunately, I was unable to complete one of my other pre-vacation rituals before hitting the road. I had every intention of finishing this morning’s sermon before leaving for Death Valley; however, Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount got the better of me and proved tougher than finishing the Badwater 135. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other as well” and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” pounded me like the bright sun and blowing sand of Death Valley for our entire vacation.

I can honestly say that these words of Jesus have pounded me most of my life. I find no others in the Bible nearly as challenging or quite so haunting.

When I was in college, I minored in “Peace Studies.” My intention was to better understand Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies. I thought I could get it right with sufficient study. I studied the teachings of the historic peace churches like the Quakers and Mennonites who take Jesus at his word, refusing to bear arms in military service. I pondered Saint Augustine’s “Just War Theory” devised 1700 years ago which sets standards to determine whether a war will be just--one requirements is that innocent civilians’ lives not be endangered, another is that all war is lamentable. I contemplated Martin Luther’s Two Kingdoms Theory which states that it is legitimate to bear arms against an enemy only when our neighbor’s life is at risk. I studied different governments’ approaches to conflict down through history.

With all that studying, I ended up more baffled than ever by Jesus’ words. I discovered that faithful Christians have pretty much had opposing ideas about how best to love one’s enemies from the beginning. We need not look beyond this congregation to understand this: we have opposing views about our nation’s participation in Iraq and Afghanistan and I dare say we all feel our opinion is the most Christian.

Like so many matters that confront us Christians daily, simple answers are not readily available. We have to think and pray and discuss with one another to have any comprehension of what Jesus would have us do. Sometimes, we seem incapable of getting things right!

(Note by the way that this particular issue of war and peace and love of enemy about which Jesus had so much to say has not been nearly as divisive to our ELCA as have been issues of human sexuality. One wonders, actually, why those who want to take the Bible “seriously” do not begin with the words of Jesus on loving one’s enemy rather than with the issue of homosexuality about which Jesus said nothing. If one wishes to be literal about “what the Bible says,” such literalism, it seems to me, should start first with turning the other cheek and loving ones enemies. If one can be literal there, then move on. If not, at least admit how tough it is to take the Bible literally.)

We find it so hard to love our families, our church, and our nation let alone our enemies. For that reason alone, it is probably a good thing that we never get too comfortable with Jesus’ words. As Jesus’ words stayed with me throughout my vacation, maybe his words should stay with us until there is war no more and peace on earth.

Some of our greatest leaders have been pressed severely by the cost of hate for enemy. General Dwight Eisenhower, a month after victory in Europe in World War II said in London, “Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.” President Abraham Lincoln, when asked whether God was on the Union’s side against the Confederacy, said: “That is not the question. The question is whether we are on God’s side.” And one old veteran asked, “Was there ever a truly heroic veteran who liked to tell his war stories?”

Those who have tasted the bitterness of battle know the horror that accompanies the failure to love one’s enemies. Those brave ones have witnessed the butchery of innocent women and helpless children and the slaughter of courageous young warriors. Dare we ever not be hounded by Jesus’ invitation to love our enemies?

God blesses communities like ours here at First Lutheran with the opportunity to gather together and seek the mind of Christ in the face of monstrously difficult questions. When we seek answers to tough questions together as the people of God, we will almost certainly lose our tempers from time to time--that is the price of truth-seeking. The mark of the Christian community is not always getting things right or even never bickering with one another; rather the mark of the Christian community is learning the discipline of grappling with hard questions together, forgiving one another when our tempers get the better of us, and trying repeatedly to turn the other cheek and to love our enemies.

Maybe it is not so bad that Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies,” constantly disturb us. Until there is peace in our families, in our church, in our nation, and peace on earth, we do well to return to God over and over again, begging for forgiveness and longing for the grace to love one another better than we have before.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 6, 2011
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Matthew 5: 13-20
"Epiphany Light Boxes"

It’s getting lighter out in the evening and we San Diegans love it. Those of you who join us this morning from places like Minnesota and Indiana and Illinois and flee the ice and snow and wind, we pray that you will find a bit of warmth and light in our fair city and in this place this morning.

Farewell, deep dark days of December and January; welcome brighter days of February. The increasing light makes our spirits soar; surfing and gardening, jogging and barbecuing beckon us. It is good to be alive.

We crave the light. Studies indicate that people who live in northern countries where darkness lingers longest are far more prone to suffer depression than those living in brighter places. Perhaps you suffer from what is called seasonal affective disorder, those bouts of depression that come like clockwork each year during the dark days of fall and winter and magically disappear as soon as the light returns.

The Mayo Clinic recommends that people suffering from seasonal affective disorder get what is called a light box. This box gives off bright light and mimics natural outdoor light. If you sit near it, you begin to feel better.

The season of Epiphany is the church’s light box. We gather together during the winter darkness and bathe ourselves in Christ’s glorious light. We sing of it, celebrate it, tell stories about it--Christ our dear light and blessed salvation.

On the day we were baptized, we were handed a candle and our brothers and sisters in Christ urged us, “Let you light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Watch closely at baptism; you will see the little baby reach for the light, instinctively celebrating the wonder of Christ’s light coming into her life. Deep down in each of our souls, just like the baby, we yearn for God’s light whether we know it or not.

Oh, how we yearn for the light. I called Dr. Pat Lindquist this week; she is a psychotherapist and the wife of First Lutheran’s former Pastor Jack Lindquist. I once heard that babies determine how the world will treat them by the time they are six weeks old. I found this a bit suspicious and asked Pat whether it is true. She stopped me midsentence: “No, no, no, Wilk. You are wrong.” I thought she was going to tell me there is no way babies know whether they are loved or neglected at such an early age. Instead, Pat told me babies are determining how the world will treat them the moment they come out of their mothers’ womb. They are smelling mommy’s milk and reaching for protection and comfort; neurons are being set off in their tiny brains, stimulated by mommy’s loving gaze. Pat told me that if children do not receive affection early on, and repeatedly, they begin to die emotionally.

How devastating when people are not loved. We have heard quite a bit lately about the disastrous consequences of bullying. The Center for Disease Control says that the third leading cause of death among young people is suicide. What is more frightening is that bully victims are far more likely to consider suicide than those who have not been bullied.

Someone recently asked me, “Pastor, why do you speak about homosexuality from the pulpit?” I told him one reason I do so is because the church has blood on its hands: far too many pastors have bullied gay and lesbian teens from pulpits like this, telling them how terrible they are.

And it is not just teens who are bullied by the church. I recently heard of a woman dying of cancer in a nearby San Diego hospital. The family called for a priest to anoint her. When the priest entered the hospital room and saw her loving partner gathered at her side, he refused to anoint her. He told her that because she was a lesbian, she was going to rot in hell.

Our Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson recently urged the church to speak out against bullying. He said, “Our silence causes pain.” We know that bullying is not reserved only for the GLBT community. African Americans and Mexicans, mentally and physically challenged people, poor people with no health care and sitting in the emergency room critically ill--all have been victims of devastating harassment for years and years.

First Lutheran is called to be an “Epiphany Light Box,” to tell all those who wonder whether anyone loves them that we do and God does. On Thursday, I had the honor of introducing Pastor Mark Trotter, the retired pastor of First United Methodist Church-- Mission Valley, who spoke at our synod’s “Day of Theological Education.” In his introductory remarks, Pastor Trotter commended this congregation’s decision to remain in the city as other congregations fled urban blight and moved to greener pastures. He called this congregation “a light in the city that cannot be hidden.” He said that First Lutheran’s ministry belongs to the entire church, to all Christians everywhere. I was moved to tears for I know how many of you stayed here over the years so that we might be a light box to all who come by here.

We are called to take our light boxes beyond these church walls, to our homes, our spouses, our children. We are called to take our light boxes to people who feel as if they can’t bear life another minute. We are called to take our light boxes to dark and scary places--intensive care units, prisons, homeless encampments, city hall meetings where issues are hot and controversial, cemeteries where tears prevail. We take our light boxes to those who fear the dark and tell them that Christ’s light will never be extinguished no matter how fiercely the winds blow.

I love to come into our sanctuary late in the evening when all is dark and still. The beautiful stained glass windows are lifeless, almost nonexistent and yet I am reminded that in the morning when light shines through them, they will once again dance in splendor. We are identical to these windows. When Christ’s light does not shine through us, we become dreary and bitter and lose our saltiness; but when Christ’s light shines through us, our words become beautiful, our actions stunning, and our smiles radiant.

God invites us be the light of the world, to tell one and all, tiny babies and bullied teens, forgotten senior citizens and poor people trying to pay their bills, that God loves them and will never forget them. May God give us grace to let our little light boxes shine everywhere we go.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 30, 2011
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
1 Corinthians 1: 18-31; Matthew 5: 1-12
"The Cross at the Intersection of 3rd and Ash"

I read a story this week that touched my heart deeply. It is about a brilliant student at the top of his seminary class. One of his professors urged him not to become a pastor but rather to get a doctorate in theology or biblical studies. The professor felt this student would end up squandering his God given talents if he ended up serving some struggling congregation in the middle of nowhere. The student did not heed his professor’s advice; instead, he answered the first call he received from a congregation to be its pastor. The professor describes the church this way: “From the airport I drove three hours through the countryside—and got lost more than once before I found the church address that MapQuest had overlooked.”

Why would such a gifted student go to such a forlorn place? The professor describes what he saw as he preached at his student’s ordination: “I looked out at the congregation of worried farmers, worn-out homemakers and bored teenagers. A yellowed fluorescent light hummed its way through the service. The microphone on the pulpit squealed when the speaker got to close. The radiators banged as the hot water rushed through them. It seemed as if even the laments of the building were part of a sacred conversation between congregation, God, and the new pastor.”

Many of you know such a congregation, a place that appears so foolish and so weak by the world’s standards, pathetic really, a place with boring sermons, plastic flowers collecting dust at the altar, an out of tune piano, and sparse attendance on the best of days. However, for many of you, it was in just such a place where you first heard that God loves you very, very much.

The church where that young pastor went seemed a dismal spot, a dead end, to so many people. And yet, the longer the professor spent there that ordination day, the deeper he fell in love with the pastor and the people as he detected God’s overwhelming presence in that tiny, forgotten place. The professor writes: “My former student has no strategic plan for ‘turning this church around.’ His only ambition is to be the next in a long line of faithfully anonymous pastors who never move on to prestigious positions.” But then he adds: “But he isn’t anonymous to these people who know his name…I saw how many of his parishioners just wanted to touch him… One man had tears in his eyes…A new pastor had come, and the congregation took it as a sign that God knew how to find them. The holiness of the room was so apparent that I almost took off my shoes. No one wanted to leave.” (M. Craig Barnes, “Clear Call,” The Christian Century, January 25, 2011)

In many ways, we here at First Lutheran aren’t terribly different from that country church except we are located here in downtown San Diego. We are pretty small but, surprisingly, we aren’t as small as we sometimes think: the majority of churches in the in the United States have fewer worshipers on Sunday morning that we do; in fact, 59% of congregations in our land average less than 100 at worship on Sunday morning. God knows, we face our challenges--almost every day. And yet, for most of us, the first moment we set foot on this place, we had an urge to take off our shoes; we sensed that this little corner of God’s universe is saturated with holiness and that a sacred bush might burst forth any moment.

Lest you or I get puffed up, the truth is we can only discover holiness here if God provides us with graceful eyes. Without God, we are sunk. There are days on my way to the church when my stomach churns. As I exit the 5 freeway and turn from 4th Avenue onto Ash Street, I sometimes feel like turning around and going home. The stench of urine often greets me and serves as the incense lifting my morning prayers to heaven. Some irate neighbor complaining of feces and toilet paper leads my morning devotions. And, the first person to announce to me, “The Lord be with you,” is inevitably a disheveled soul drinking his breakfast from a paper bag.

We who believe this congregation to be “the heart of Christ in the heart of the city” must turn to God repeatedly to discover holiness here. St. Paul’s words must accompany us and it will do us well to return to those words over and over again, like a mantra, “God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise…God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise…God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise.” We dare not forget these words for, if we do, we will quickly become disillusioned with this place and soon go in search for God in greener and grander pastures where things are bigger and brighter and all appears far more successful.

Only graceful eyes can possibly discover the truth of the gospel in this place. That truth can only be discovered in the cross of Christ where the odors of urine and feces prevail and where the human beings huddling around our doors have been too easily discarded by politer company.

On this day of our congregational meeting when we lift up our ministry and thank God for calling us here for the past 123 years, let us pray to God to fill us with an even deeper love for this place, with as much love as that young pastor had for his little country parish. God has placed us here to announce blessings upon the world’s foolish ones--the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek ones, the persecuted and reviled ones—and to behold them as God’s holy children.

If you look closely, you will notice as Ash Street intersects 3rd Avenue, the sign of the cross (+) is formed and First Lutheran Church is placed right in the center by God. This my dear friends is very holy ground; this is “the heart of Christ in the heart of the city;” this is where we God invites us to survey the wondrous cross and to taste and see his love.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 23, 2011
Third Sunday after Epiphany
Matthew 4: 12-23
"Twiterpated"

As you just listened to Jesus calling his first four disciples, did anything strike you as strange? What struck me as strange was how direct Jesus invitation was: “Follow me.” No subtle window dressing, no refinement, no gentle explanation. Simply, “Follow me.”

I was also struck by the disciples’ response. Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John followed Jesus immediately. No pondering the future, no counting the cost. They dropped their nets, left their boats bobbing in the Sea of Galilee, stranded their poor father to pick up the pieces, and followed immediately.

My parents taught me to make decisions differently. They taught me to make informed decisions. Before I bought a Duncan yo-yo at the corner drug store, I was taught to examine every, single yo-yo to make certain the one I bought was perfect for me. When buying a car, I learned to read Consumer Reports and then to confirm that information by consulting other automotive experts. Such research takes months and months and yet I learned early on that I would be far happier and my investment much safer if I made an informed decision.

I suppose that’s why Jesus’ call of the disciples puzzles me. Great professional football coaches never build teams the way Jesus did. Super Bowl contenders choose each player with the utmost care. Coaches spend sleepless nights evaluating prospects, watching college game films, measuring how high players can jump, how fast they can run, how much they can lift; they even test their intellectual abilities.

You would think Jesus would have done at least as much choosing his disciple as a football coach does choosing his players. After all, Jesus’ choices were about spreading the news of the kingdom of heaven not creating a competitive NFL football team. Jesus had twelve choices and each better count.

You noticed, I’m sure, that Jesus’ first four picks were fishermen. Not exactly the nucleus of a disciple dream team. They understood fishing conditions, mending nets, and choosing the right bait, but you would think they would have a tough time proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven with any degree of pizzazz.

In spite of their apparent pathetic qualifications, Jesus made a spur-of-the-moment decision and made the four fishermen his first disciples. Did you ever make a similar decision that made no sense to anyone but you? I was twenty-four years old and doing clinical training at the Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn as part of my required preparation to become a Lutheran pastor when I made such a decision. I was eating lunch one day in the hospital cafeteria when I spotted a beautiful woman sitting a few tables over from me. I quickly inquired as to who she was and discovered she was a German medical student. As those situations tend, one thing led to another: we had our first kiss under the Verrazano Bridge, spent an evening riding with New York’s finest patrolling the seedier areas of the Lower East Side— what a first date, and ate very hot spaghetti at an alleged Mafioso hangout.

Dagmar and I knew each other for a mere eight weeks when she returned back to Germany. We were not to be stopped. That Christmas, I went to her little village of Barnstorf and proposed. We had been together a total of seven-seven days when we were married.

You are sensing that I didn’t heed my father’s advice when it came to my future bride. Lest you think you are the only one scratching your head, you should have heard my future father-in-law when I did the gentlemanly and traditional thing of asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage after Dagmar pushed me into his wood-working shop, urged me to “ask him,” and slammed the door shut. After a bit of stuttering and stammering, I asked the big question. “I will have to think about it,” he muttered. He was not amused that his daughter was about to marry some long-haired Bible thumper from West Virginia that she hardly knew.

Whether this made sense was never the question for Dagmar and me. As Thumper said of Bambi, we were twiterpated. And as often is the case for twiterpated people, an informed decision made as much sense to us at the time as a dial telephone does to today’s teenagers.

Jesus’ calling of his first disciples was filled with twiterpation too. He said, “Follow me;” they followed immediately. It seemed like love at first sight.

And by the way, Jesus comes to you, too, and says, “Follow me.” You might question Jesus’ judgment. You know yourself better than anyone and perhaps judge yourself more harshly than anyone else—at least that’s what your therapist tells you. She keeps asking you, “Why are you so hard on yourself?”

You wonder, why me, Jesus? You say: I don’t know a thing about the Bible; I don’t pray too much and when I do I am clueless. Shouldn’t followers of Jesus be churchy types? Martin Luther said that answering Jesus invitation to “follow me” doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a pastor or making Jell-O salad with mandarin oranges for church banquets. For Luther, our ordination is our baptism as we all become priests of the kingdom of God. “Follow me” can mean bathing your aging and ailing father when it feels like both of you are losing your dignity fast; it can mean baking a pie for your neighbor who just lost her beloved husband of sixty years and needs a shoulder to cry on; “follow me” can mean cherishing the folks in your AA meeting and attending regularly; it can mean playing Scrabble with friends and laughing a whole lot; it can mean picking up the trash that litters your morning walk and beautifying God’s creation along the way. Sometimes our calls are doing very ordinary things as if they made all the difference in the world.

The story is told of a traveler who came from a great distance to study under a revered Hasidic rabbi in Poland. When he arrived in town, the people excitedly asked if he would like to hear their renowned rabbi read Torah or listen to him pray. The visitor said, no, he only wanted to watch the rabbi tie his shoes and cut his bread (Belden Lane, Landscapes of the Holy, pg. 68). This traveler knew a calling when he saw one—doing ordinary things that made all the difference in the world.

Imagine if our calling were loving the world so much that every word we spoke to one another was treated as if it would bring an end to all war; imagine if our calling was treating that person who drives us to distraction as if he were Jesus. Imagine if we treated everything and everyone as callings from God with whom we are in love. That is what it means to “follow me.”

Jesus calls each of us to be one of his disciples. His first four were fishermen. Now he chooses you. I hope you will follow him immediately; so does Jesus. You see, he is twiterpated with you.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Baptism of Our Lord (transferred)
January 16, 2011
Matthew 3: 13-17
"Let the Splish-Splashing Begin"

Perhaps you, like so many in the early church, wonder why Jesus had to be baptized by John the Baptist. You may even be embarrassed like the early church at his presence at the Jordan River. Wasn’t Jesus pure and spotless?

Sara Miles writes this of Jesus’ baptism: “The river Jordan was not even slightly picturesque: it was a muddy stream, right by the side of a public road, and John told people to walk into it, all kinds of men and women together, with no respect for order.

“This common water is where Jesus chooses to be baptized. This profane setting, outside the majestic temple doors, is where God chooses to reveal his love for his son and daughters” (Sara Miles, Jesus Freak, pgs 5,6).

You might also be wondering why God was so proud of his son for jumping in with the riff-raff. As soon as John dunked Jesus in the Jordan, God proclaimed, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” You would think our heavenly Father would have warned his son in advance, “Beware of the company you keep.” Instead, God was pleased as punch by what his son did. The Holy Spirit got in on the act too, dive bombing like a dove from heaven right into Jesus’ midst. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were celebrating together as God’s son joined the hoi-polloi here on earth.

Astonishing, really! This is not the kind of thing parents tend to be proud of. You got the Christmas cards this year; you know how parents brag about their children. All kinds of reports on soccer goals made, elite colleges gotten into, National Honor Society awards received. Not a peep about young Johnny getting caught in the men’s room smoking dope, about Mary’s disgusting string of D’s and F’s, or of that very embarrassing pregnancy. Apparently all our family and friends’ children are perfect angels--or maybe the cards you received were different than ours.

God seems so different than “normal” parents. As Jesus splish-splashed in the Jordan with all those lowlife losers like you and me, God slapped the Holy Spirit on the back and shouted for the entire universe to hear, “Hip-hip-hooray! That’s my boy!”

We could learn a thing or two from what happened that day at the Jordan. Once again, we are up to our dirty tricks in this nation, judging who is the most patriotic, who is the most Christian, who is the toughest on crime, who is the most civil and decent. In times like this, we forget that Jesus identified with all the people at the Jordan and in Tucson, with Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and Jared Loughner, with Christina Taylor Greene and the Glock pistol salesman, with President Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. We would love it if Jesus had taken sides--it would be so much easier to distinguish the good from the bad, the heroes from the villains; instead, Jesus jumps in with every last one of us and invites us all to let the splish-splashing begin.

But let us not stop there at the splish-splashing though. Let us not say that God joins the riff-raff as if our behavior no longer matters. Far from it. When Jesus dove into the Jordan, all God’s creation suddenly mattered anew: creation was restored as on those first wonderful days; water recaptured the splendor of creation; and every human regained the grandeur of Adam and Eve when they first walked in the Garden of Eden.

You understand, I know you do. I watch you every Sunday as you enter the sanctuary and gently dip your fingers into our river here at the baptismal pool. I love seeing you make the sign of the cross and remember your baptism. You, too, are suddenly refreshed, a renewed person. Senior citizens and tiny children alike splish-splash at the water; Jesus makes you pure and spotless yet again.

If only we could remember that Jesus joins us all at the water. Remembering that could make such a difference. If only we could remember that Jesus splish-splashes with all of us as we stand in line at the grocery store talking with a stranger. If only we could remember as a teenager cuts in front of us on the freeway in a low-riser. If only our nation could remember in these days.

This weekend our nation honors a man who believed that all God’s children can be restored to holiness. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. loved the racists who bombed his church, the angry policemen who turned fire hoses and snarling dogs on peaceful protestors, and the madmen who killed innocent little African-American girls. How could Reverend King love them so, knowing that almost surely bigots like them would kill him, too? Why of course, he believed that our Savior jumped into the Jordan River with murders and racists, Klansmen and vicious cops. Reverend King dreamed that holiness could actually sprout from evil. Remember? “I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.”

This nation, once again, needs to dream of holiness sprouting from evil, of disparate people walking hand-in-hand. Far more important than whether the Mount Soledad cross stands or comes down is whether this nation will dare to dream that God cherishes every human being. That cross on Mount Soledad, if it is anything, should be a reminder that Jesus loved his enemies and those who follow him are invited to do the same thing.

On this day, let us remember that our God congratulated his Son for getting into the muddy river, giving his life to love the wrong crowd. May we dream of the day when conservatives and liberals, Republicans, Democrats and Tea Partiers, Christians, Jews and Muslims, will join hands together and give thanks to God as we splish-splash away... After all, that’s exactly what Jesus did.

Let us now go to the river and begin the splish-splashing.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
The Epiphany of Our Lord (transferred)
January 9, 2011
Isaiah 60: 1-6; Matthew 2: 1-12
"Who Would You Have Been?"

The wonderful story of the wise men presents a varied cast of characters. I often wonder which of the characters I would have been if I had been there. Maybe you do too.

First there is King Herod. Before you say, “I would never have been him,” let’s give old Herod a fighting chance. Scholars say that it is almost impossible to evaluate King Herod’s reign. Original sources both vilify and extol him. He is described as a consummate politician by some and a clumsy and ineffective leader by others. Some viewed him as incredibly skillful in his use of power while others saw him as vicious and cruel. Herod’s personality and behavior are, for sure, a curious mixture of love and hate, strength and weakness, grandiose plans, and petty concerns. Like all politicians, and most of us for that matter, Herod was loved by some and detested by others. In all fairness to King Herod, his leadership and policies offered his Jewish brothers and sisters protection from the occupying Roman authorities, something that many leaders down through history have been unable to guarantee the often harassed Jewish people. He was able to rule with the Pax Romana, offering some semblance of peace to his constituency.

Admit it: no political figure is ever universally loved. Yesterday’s vicious murders and attempted murders in Arizona reveal just how tough elected leadership is. My favorite sports writer Tom Boswell of the Washington Post notes, “The higher the monkey climbs, the more the monkey exposes.” Almost all politicians are certain to have 45% of the people out for their necks the day they are elected. I often think that elected leadership is a lot like buying a new boat: the best days are the day you buy it and the day you sell it, the day you are elected and the day you step down from office. The price of leadership, whether in church, family, or nation, is that there will inevitably be supporters and there will most assuredly be detractors.

Herod had a tough go at it, especially when the followers of the baby Jesus proclaimed him king. Having two kings in one nation is not prudent government; in fact, having two kings is anarchy. Herod had to say, “There is only one king and I am the one, not Jesus.” This was the only way to maintain tranquility in Judea.

Would any of you have chosen to be Herod?

Then there are the chief priests and scribes. Down through history, religious leaders have often been afforded the opportunity to cozy up to the powerful. Whether at White House prayer breakfasts or offering invocations at civic affairs, clergy can speak a decisive word or two about issues which affect countless people. The chief priests and scribes had such an opportunity to draw close to Herod. They advised him on important religious matters, and, in the case of the Christ Child, where he might be found according to their sacred scriptures. Cozying up to political leaders has its negative consequences as well, but, if you want to make a difference in this world, sometimes, as a good friend of mine once reminded me, you must be willing to sacrifice your soul for the greater good.

Other than me, would any of you have chosen to be a chief priest or scribe?

And finally there are the Wise Men. If a poll were taken among us right now, it is highly likely that most of us would have liked to have been a wise man or wise woman. Tradition has given these mysterious and exotic characters from the East the wonderful names of Melchior, Caspar, and Baltazar. Who wouldn’t want to ride a camel into town, bearing exquisite gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for God’s son?

Think again, though, whether you really would want to be a Wise Man. They were weirdoes of the first order. They followed stars to get their answers; they didn’t come with Bibles in hand in search for the truth—they left such theologically sound and orthodox approaches to the scribes and chief priests. They searched for the truth in tea leaves and Tarot cards and stars. They were seekers of sort who would seemingly blend in well today on our California beaches, at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, or at some fortune teller’s booth. These strange fellows seemed willing to try about anything in order to find the one who would change their lives forever.

Maybe we would like to be Wise Men and maybe not.

At least for me, there are days when I would prefer to nestle up to powerful figures at City Hall where real decisions are made; there are other days when all I want is to be a pastor offering you support and searching for answers to life’s toughest questions; and then there are frankly days when I would I would love more than anything to be free as a bird, open to the crazy winds of the Spirit, just like the Wise Men.

And you? Can’t you imagine, at one time or another, having been Herod or the religious leaders or the wise men?

The Christ Child comes to kings and priests and Magi, to people like you and me, conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats and Tea Partiers, Baptists and Lutherans, Bible thumpers and those who are “spiritual and not religious.” The Holy Baby comes, not when all is perfect in our lives and when we all agree how governments should rule and churches should act. As Saint Matthew notes in his gospel, Jesus came not in a perfect golden era but in the time of King Herod.

We all have mixed up motives, imperfect politics, and flawed religious beliefs, and yet none of that stops the Christ Child from coming to us today. I pray that whoever we might be in the story, God will lead us to bow before the Christ Child, offering our gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 2, 2011
Second Sunday after Christmas
John 1: 10-18 "Stuttering Words Come Alive"

I have a movie recommendation for you in the New Year: The King’s Speech. This movie is about King George VI who became king of the United Kingdom when his brother, Edward, abdicated the throne because he wanted to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson who was twice divorced.

King George VI was painfully shy and stuttered terribly. As England moved closer to World War II, it needed a king who could lift the nation with spell-binging speeches, someone with rhetorical flair like Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill or even vicious enemies Adolph Hitler or Josef Stalin. King George could barely get a word out of his mouth. Like many people who prefer death to public speaking, King George froze as he faced crowds eager to hear him speak. He struggled mightily to make the spoken word come alive for his nation.

Through the unorthodox techniques of an eccentric speech therapist from Australia, the King gradually became able to give flesh to spoken words. On September 3, 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany, King George addressed millions of people on a live radio broadcast aired around the world. His speech was a somber, yet stirring call to patriotism and courage; it was one of the best speeches he ever made.

As Dagmar and I watched The King’s Speech at the Hillcrest Cinema, as King George VI struggled to make his words come alive, I had chills running down my spine; I often found myself breathless and wiping away tears from my cheek.

As we gather on this Second Sunday after Christmas, the first Sunday of 2011, we have just heard perhaps the most stirring words in all sacred Scripture if not in all of literature. Saint John writes, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

God’s word was astonishing indeed. God’s word brought all creation into existence at the beginning; God’s word toppled fierce enemies and made strapping men cower; God’s word made the hummingbird’s wings flap fifty times a second and made the rose a thing of beauty. And yet, no matter how astonishing God’s word was, God somehow seemed incapable of getting it across to people like you and me. For some sad reason, we seem incapable of comprehending God’s love for us. But God never gave up trying nor does God up trying now.

The towering words, “The word became flesh and lived among us,” have a different meaning in Greek. In Greek, they mean something rather pedestrian like, “God pitched a tent in our midst.” A tent. How fitting that First Lutheran Church/TACO gave 250 tents away to our patio parishioners this Christmas Eve. If you look around the neighborhood, you will see the word made flesh, tents flapping in the wind.

God had the brilliant idea of pitching a tent in our midst and in that tent was a tiny, vulnerable baby who loved us so much that even when we turned our backs on him, he loved us to his death on the cross.

God not only pitched a tent at Bethlehem, God also pitches His tent among us today, inviting us to proclaim the heavenly, life-giving word to one another. If the truth be told, we are a lot like King George VI. We stutter, stammer, and sputter as we try to make our words come at all close to resembling God’s word; often times our words are ugly and vindictive, causing more harm than healing, more sadness than joy. And yet, God never tires of making his word come alive in our lives.

I saw this occur last week. I was putting the finishing touches on my Christmas Eve sermon when someone tapped on my office window and asked to have a few words with me. This person had some of the harshest words for me when I began my ministry here at First Lutheran and when he ate regularly on our patio.

He came into my office, sat down, and didn’t waste a second. He said: “Pastor, I know your church has struggled to make ends meet recently, and I know it hasn’t been easy. I want to thank you for everything your church has done for me.” There were no other words. He stood up to leave. I went to him and gave him a big hug—like a lot of guys, he is not a hugger--and he quickly headed for the door. I said to him, “Your words are a gift I will not forget. I know how hard they were for you to say.”

Whether he realized it or not, his words were birthed by God. It has taken time, like it took time for King George VI to quit stuttering; and yet with patience and prayer, with forgiveness and love, he now speaks words of grace time and time again to those of us who know him. Those words are “the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us.” Encouraging one another to speak such words is what our ministry here is all about.

God has pitched a tent here and has not grown tired of planting his word in our hearts and souls. We are God’s people. In this coming year, I pray that you and I will find ways to make God’s word become flesh in the words we use with one another. I pray that we will all choose our words well and carefully. May we take the time to craft emails and letters that thank others for a particular gift given. May we ask someone out for a cup of coffee and beg them for forgiveness or offer forgiveness to them. May our ministry rise above stammering and stuttering and sputtering and may all our words be Christ’s words.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 26, 2010
First Sunday after Christmas
"O, Those Wonderful Carols and Stories"

A very merry and happy Christmas to you all.

And, really, how merry and happy these days are. In spite of what happens in our personal lives, in the church, and around the world, we are given the treasure of lessons and carols to sustain us. Nestled amidst the lessons and carols are memories of God doing wondrous things in our midst.

Who can hear a Christmas carol and not be captured by some memory? I hope that the words “Silent Night” bring back a memory or two of some Christmases past.

And who can hear, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus,” and not remember the place where you heard those words for the first time?

Following the biblical readings in the Evening Prayer Vesper liturgy, these words are said: “In many and various ways God has spoken to his people of old by the prophets and now in these last days God has spoken to us through his son.”

Not only do we recall old memories but we believe that God speaks to us this morning and creates new memories for a lifetime.

In the past week, I have had two such memories created that I imagine I will treasure for a very long time. One of those memories was born when twenty of us from First Lutheran went Christmas caroling last Sunday evening to our homebound members. One of the visits we made was to beloved Marian Setmire who has served this congregation so well over the years (her first husband, Pastor Milus Bonker, was this congregation’s pastor from 1956-1967 until he died). Since a nasty fall in November, Marian has been living with her daughter Noreen. As we entered Noreen and Colleen’s home, it was as if we entered a nineteenth century Victorian Christmas wonderland. Christmas decorations adorned the house. We were ushered into the living room where a fire brightly burned, neighbors sat on the couch with the family dogs, Christmas goodies were spread out on the coffee table where the little singers quickly scampered, and Marian beamed with joy as we sang “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Joy to the Word.” She heard the Christmas Gospel read as she has for ninety years now. Marian wept tears of joy and expressed her deep love for her church, First Lutheran, before we left. I doubt any of us will forget that night so rich with Christmas blessing.

And then, this past Tuesday evening, I took Holy Communion to Dorothy Magdich who lost her husband of sixty-eight years only weeks ago on Thanksgiving night. When I was finished, I went out into the deluge—I should have read the story of Noah and not the Nativity story—got into my car, and realized I had forgotten to turn off the lights; the battery was dead. I didn’t want to alarm Dorothy so I went to a neighbor’s house. When she opened the door, she was very hesitant to help me. Even though I had my clerical collar on, I think she thought I was the Geezer Bandit Pastor: I was a stranger and it was so dark and rainy. After a little discussion and good Lutheran cajoling, she agreed to get her car, even though her husband wasn’t home, and to try to jump me but to no avail. Then, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a neighbor dressed in dirty overalls, Teva sandals, and no socks, bounding across a river flowing down Pomona Street. He said, “I’m a redneck and I love this sort of thing.” He ran back to his house, got his trusty powerful pick-up and returned with his trusty powerful jumper cables. As he jumped my car, the woman went back into her house, not to find safety, but rather to get each of us a beautiful plate of Christmas cookies…Here I had gone to tell the story of the Christ Child to a grieving widow and, as grace so often does, two people gave me a gift I will never forget.

We gather together this morning, to sing and share stories of grace that have sustained our loved ones for thousands of years. As we hear, “Once upon a time in the city of Bethlehem,” we will lean in a little closer; as we sing, “What Child Is This?” we will be filled with joy.

On these days of Christmas, God comes into our midst as a tiny baby and becomes the salvation of the world. Keep your eyes and ears open for surely God will come to you when you least expect it, as you sing a carol, as you get into a car with a dead battery on a rainy night, as you gather with good friends to sing “Silent Night.” In these occasions of telling stories and singing carols, your life will be changed. God has come to be with you this morning.

May you have a blessed and merry Christmas.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 24, 2010
Christmas Eve
Matthew 1: 1-17; Luke 2: 1-20
"The Long, Crooked Line of Christmas"

You are wondering, I’m sure, “Why in the world did we had to endure that long, boring list of names from Matthew’s gospel on Christmas Eve?” You deserve an answer.

First of all, I honestly do love the list known as the genealogy of Jesus Christ and, being the preacher, I get to choose the readings. In all fairness, though, the church frowns on reading this list tonight for fear that none of you will ever return again; in fact, the church never appoints Matthew 1: 1-17 to be read at any of its worship services throughout the year.

Think of this list as Jesus’ family tree--it might make it less painful. I know, no matter how you think of it, it is still painful. I know that to be the case: I watched you as the names were read. You looked as if visions of sugar plums were dancing in your heads. One of you pulled out your iPhone and texted a friend, “Susie, you are totally not going to believe this wacko preacher. I so wish I were not here.”

Now, just in case you are looking for a speedy getaway, let me cut to the chase and tell you why I love this list of names.

Maybe you noticed that only five women are mentioned (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba—actually called Uriah’s wife, and Mary—Jesus’ mother). This is family night so you’ve got to trust me on this: the five women all have questionable reputations, including a street walker, a much too young mommy, and a few women old enough to know better.

Most of you are clueless as to who these people are and certainly glad you don’t have to pronounce their names. Sure, you can identify and pronounce Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David but Jehoshaphat, Eliakim, and Eliud? We don’t know them, can’t pronounce their names and, in all honesty, even if we could, we would still prefer not to have to endure the relentless barrage of weird names on Christmas Eve.

What amazes me about this long list of names is that, with the exception of Jesus, it includes a bunch of sad sacks, scoundrels, and bamboozlers, all who are Jesus’ great-great-great grandmas and grandpas.

It has been said that God writes the divine story with crooked lines. The crooked lines dizzily zigzag down through history, beginning with Father Abraham and extending all the way to the baby Jesus at Bethlehem.

You are still wondering: why this impenetrable group of liars, muggers and thieves on Christmas Eve? Wouldn’t July 17 be a better time to read it?

Let me give this one more shot. You are here tonight for a million and one reasons. Some of you hope that you will hear something about the Child of Bethlehem that will lift your spirits and even change your lives. Others have showed up because you love to sing the Christmas carols in candlelight and to hear the preferable reading from Luke’s gospel with shepherds and angels and little sheepies adoring the baby Jesus. Some of you wonder if you belong here at all and hope that no one knows your true story.

The gift of Christmas, my dear friends, is that God welcomes all of us, broken, mixed-up people that we are. God’s family tree is one old-fashioned dysfunctional family and we are invited to join the happy company this Christmas Eve.

If you think I am making this up, hearken back to that Bethlehem evening 2,000 years ago. Remember how Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem and Mary was, as the King James Version of the Bible charmingly puts it, “great with child.” Mary needed to get off her feet fast. You would think God would have set up the travel plans in advance, making certain that Mary and Joseph met the “good people” and received a choice suite in the Bethlehem Hilton. But no one seemed to be waiting when they arrived. We want to scream, “Open the door!” And yet, every door was slammed shut. Who were these people anyway?

Finally, so goes the story, Mary and Joseph ended up in a stable, ripe with the odors of manure and wet straw, cobwebs hanging from the rafters filled with dead flies, and little mice scampering under the manger. It was there, in the most unimaginable of places, with the most unlikely cast of characters, that God’s son was born.

One of the toughest things about Christmas Eve is that it rarely measures up to how we imagine that first Christmas to have been. That’s why we must tell the truth about Jesus’ family. The first Christmas was far from perfect and will never measure up to the lovely manger scenes on our mantles and the beautiful carols we so adore. And this Christmas is no different: we are not particularly churchy people; we are lonely; we seethe with anger; we wonder why everyone else seems so happy. And yet, surprise, surprise, yet again, God comes to us tonight, and says, “Join the family!”

That’s what’s so wonderful about the long, boring list of Jesus’ family tree: it tells the truth about God’s family on earth, not some idealized Christmas fantasy where “all the Christmases are bright and white.” If we listen to the story at all, we discover that in our own peculiar ways, we, too, are part of the long crooked line that leads to and from the manger in Bethlehem.

Christmas glory is that God comes to redneck shepherds and cantankerous innkeepers, a simple maiden and a befuddled carpenter, to you and me and those we love.

So, when you leave here tonight, please don’t badmouth me too badly. Say something kind like: “I went to this church where they read a bunch of l-o-n-g, b-o-r-i-n-g, b-i-z-a-r-r-e names. And then suddenly and surprisingly, it was if God had come to San Diego and there I was, standing at the manger, adoring the Christ Child, and singing with the angels, ‘Glory to God on high.’”

Maybe that’s why we should hear the genealogy of Jesus Christ read on Christmas Eve at least once in our lifetime--not more than once, oh please, please, but at least once. As we hear those weird and mysterious names, suddenly it strikes us, they are our names and we have been invited by God to adore the Christ Child on this Christmas Night.

A blessed and happy Christmas to you all. Amen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 19, 2010
"Joseph, the Righteous Man"

When Joseph got the news that Mary was having a baby and he wasn’t the daddy, well, you know how humiliated he was. No matter how delicately Matthew tries to tell the story, even we feel the agony of Joseph’s broken dreams and heartbreaking disgrace.

Poet Maya Angelou says that “you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.''  She could add a fourth thing to her list: how a person handles the news that his fiancée is pregnant and he isn’t the daddy.

To be sure, Joseph had options how to deal with Mary’s pregnancy. He could have asked the guys at the Saturday morning Men’s Bible Study what they would do. You know that at least one pious gent would suggest, “Joseph, simply do what the Bible says.” You might even agree with his suggestion: after all, you were taught that the Bible offers all the answers to life’s deepest troubles. There is only one slight problem, however, with “the Bible told me so” solution. Deuteronomy, the biblical book that tells would-be daddies what to do if they actually aren’t the real daddies, instructs the men of the town to stone the fiancée to death if there is no proof of her virginity (Deuteronomy 22: 20,21).

Joseph chose not to follow Deuteronomy’s instructions and to have Mary killed; instead he decided to walk away quietly from the whole mess. He would spare Mary her life and allow the little Christ Child to be born. Thank God!

How many of you have faced similar embarrassment and shame in your life? How many of you have opted for Joseph’s solution of walking away quietly?

It happens more than we ever know. Every once-in-a-while, someone says to me, “I haven’t seen Joe Smith in ages. He used to come to worship every Sunday. Where’s he been?”

Earlier in my ministry, when someone asked me where Joe Smith was, I immediately judged myself. I figured I must have done something wrong and driven Joe away--maybe I preached a sermon that got his hackles up or maybe I asked him to read the Sunday lesson, forgetting to forewarn him that it included those maddening names of Shealtiel, Jeconiah, and Jehoshaphat.

Who knows why someone quits coming to church. I have discovered that when people leave a church, the deeper reasons can be pretty hard to discover. Sometimes people leave because they are like Joe; they leave so quietly that we never know what happened. Maybe Joe’s wife Mary was drinking herself to death and he didn’t want to embarrass us when we asked, “Where has Jane been lately?” Maybe John left when he received his 2011 pledge card and, though he desperately wanted to pledge as he had done for the past twenty years, he couldn’t bear write 45 cents a week on his card so he walked away quietly.

Joseph decided to do something similar. He didn’t want to embarrass Mary. Being a down-to-earth carpenter, he didn’t have the foggiest idea how to respond to the guys at Bible study who said he should stone Mary to death. All he knew was that he could never do what the Bible commanded and still love Mary and himself and God. So, being a righteous man, Joseph decided to walk away quietly.

You know the rest of the story. God would have none of Joseph’s walking away. As God does in these dreadful situations, he sent an angel to Joseph in a dream who said: “Do not be afraid to make Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

I get a lump in my throat every time I hear the angel say, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife;” you probably do too. Doesn’t it feel like the angel is talking to you? Countless people have come to my office, closed the door, begun to weep, and said, “Pastor, if you only knew.” I have said that a time or two myself, to a bishop or fellow pastor. We all need someone to tell us, “Do not be afraid.”

I suppose that’s why I so love children’s Christmas pageants. They would not be half as wonderful if they were perfect. I love the ornery shepherd picking his nose, the tiny angel wandering off midplay into grandma’s arms, the thrilled parents taking the hundredth picture, the cattle screaming, “I want Mommy.” God must love these pageants too for they are so similar to that first Christmas when Joseph and Mary had that little baby boy.

I have no idea what the coming days have in store for you. I imagine, though, that some of you will celebrate some recent success while others will lament a crushing failure; some of you will rejoice that your name is in lights, while others have never experienced that and only wish you could; some of you are too lonely to admit it to anyone while others wish you could simply be alone. Whatever these days hold, remember that God invites you to be on center stage. In a few moments, you will cup your hands, one over the other, and receive a chunk of bread as the words “Take and eat, this is the Christ Child given for you” are spoken to you. You, my friends, with Joseph and Mary, will be front and center with the Babe of Bethlehem. Knowing that news alone, may you experience great blessing in the coming days of Christmas.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 12, 2010
Matthew 11: 2-11
"The Drip, Drip, Drip of God’s Mercy"

This morning’s Bible reading is a little weird, especially when read two weeks before Christmas. We expect something that will lift our spirits during these magical days; we prefer not to have some bedraggled lunatic screaming his fool head off in prison, “Are you the one or should we wait for another?”

This weird question is John’s, of course it is, but it is ours too. You and I have invested considerably in Jesus being the Messiah, the one who can save the world and us. And yet, we are plagued by John’s nagging question, “Are you the one?” You have given generously of your hard earned money to the ministry of the church over the years; you calculate all that you have given to Christ’s ministry over the years and you do wonder from time-to-time, “Is it all worth it?” You offer your precious volunteer time in so many ways, preparing the altar for worship, singing in the choir, serving as an usher or greeter, attending Bible study, cleaning the property on Saturday morning, and you ask, “In the grand scheme of things, does it really make any difference?”

When John’s question arrived to Jesus, he said, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” And what was it they saw and heard? Why, certainly, the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised, and the poor had good news brought to them.

This was all well and good, but why then was John stuck in jail waiting to die? You can imagine his frustration as he cried, “Are you the one?”

We, like John, expect stunning pyrotechnics from our Messiah not whimpering duds. We want the oppressors toppled from their thrones, the nighttime muggers locked up in jail, the terrorists stopped; and just for the fun of it, a few days free of aches and pains and worries of what will happen tomorrow.

When Jesus tells us that he is the one for whom we have waited, we expect a torrential downpour of goodness not a drip, drip of mercy going pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

Some people see God’s mercy in the pitter-patter while others are, frankly, not amused. When John’s shout “The kingdom of heaven has come near” echoed through the desert, many seemed so hopeful. He called people to repent, to change their crooked lives, and the masses stood in line. And yet, the truth is, those who ended up following Jesus were a peculiar assortment of drunkards, crooks, kooks, and painted street walkers. Is it any wonder that John scratched his head and wondered, “Are you the one?”

I can never hear of John the Baptist in prison without thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German martyr, who was hung in the final days of World War II for attempting to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Bonhoeffer did not need to be in prison. He had a cushy job at Union Theological Seminary in New York, one of the world’s finest seminaries. He could have remained in the ivory towers but he returned to his beloved Germany to bear Christ’s love amidst one of the most awful times in human history.

I have been reading the new 2010 edition of Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, a gift from the book’s editor to our congregation, as my Advent devotions. In the book’s introduction, she writes: “I should add a special note of gratitude to First Lutheran Church, San Diego, who graciously provided room in their church for the translation team and editors to meet.” What an honor for our congregation to be honored in this great book even in this small way. I have always been stunned by Bonhoeffer’s dazzling hope in such dark days, particularly as expressed in a letter he wrote to his parents on December 17, 1943, only days before Christmas: “Most likely many of those here in this [prison] will celebrate a more meaningful and authentic Christmas than in places where it is celebrated in name only. That misery, sorrow, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God than according to human judgment; that God turns toward the very places from which humans turn away; that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn--a prisoner grasps this better than others, and for him this is truly good news…On Christmas Eve I will have you all in my thoughts, and I want you to believe that I too will have a couple of truly beautiful hours and that the distress will certainly not overpower me” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2010, pgs. 225, 226). Somehow, Bonhoeffer was able to celebrate the pitter-patter, the drip, drip, drip of God’s mercy with his fellow prisoners as he, like John the Baptist, waited to die.

There will be ample opportunity for us to discover God’s mercy in the days ahead if only we tune our ears to the pitter-patter. Next Sunday morning, our children will perform their Christmas pageant; I pray that you will see the Christ Child in their eager faces and nervous hearts. That same evening, we will gather with our homebound members and sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” If you join us, you will have the opportunity to sing with the very angels who serenaded Jesus in the manger so long ago. And then on Christmas Eve morn, our homeless patio parishioners will gather here to receive their annual Christmas gifts from us. There is no better way to behold the wonder of Christmas than to watch these broken, lonely, bedraggled “shepherds of the street” come to Bethlehem’s manger right here at First Lutheran as they have come now for thirty-five years now. May we hear the pitter-patter of God’s mercy, drip, drip, drip, in all these occasions.

And, let us not stop there. Let us look deep into ourselves where melancholy can so often prevail and sadness become so magnified; may we see the Christ Child wrapped in swaddling clothes, nestled right in our hearts. That, my dear friends, is what it means to be Advent people.

As we gather at our congregational meeting today, let us give thanks for the many ways that God’s grace has dripped upon this place for 122 years and let us attune our ears to the countless opportunities to welcome the Christ Child here as we listen for the pitter-patter of God’s mercy…drip, drip, drip.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
The Memorial Service for Emil "Mac" Magdich
December 11, 2010
"Just One Last Story"

As soon as your dear husband and loving father breathed his last early in the morning of November 26, you were flooded with memories. A few days later, we planned for this afternoon. I scribbled furiously as you shared one story after another of Emil “Mac” Magdich.

In the face of death, we are blessed with the precious gift of story-telling. Thank God, you have those stories, stories created from a marriage of sixty-eight years, stories of a loving father who treated you like a princess.

There is a price to be paid for stories created from long-lasting love born in the rhythms of “sickness and health, joy and sorrow, for better and for worse, as long as you both shall live.” The price, of course, is that one of you will be left telling the stories when the other is gone. Is it any wonder there are tears and sleepless nights in these days? Think of your tears as a precious gift, beautiful reminders of those many years God gave you to live together.

So many memories, many before you, Dorothy, knew “Mac” or before you, Barbara, were born. There are memories of his growing up in Cuyuna, Minnesota, running free with his dog Jack, snowshoeing through the countryside, fishing and canoeing on the Mississippi just like Huck Finn.

There are stories of his brother getting him a ticket to come here to San Diego where he attended Ryan School of Aeronautics just next to Lindbergh Airport. “Mac” worked at Ryan for forty years as an aeronautical manufacturing engineer. He adored that vocation. He got together with his buddies from Ryan every month at the El Cajon Elks Club until he died.

Oh the memories…Dorothy arrived in “America’s Finest City” in 1942. Dorothy and “Mac” got reacquainted and married in 1943. To that union came two wonderful children, Barbara Jeanne and Barry Jacob.

For fifty years, at your home in La Mesa, memories were created and dreams crafted. “Mac” loved the outdoors, building walls and decks, tending to his garden. He was a terrific dancer, too, doing the jitterbug with his dear Dorothy and leading his little angel, Barbara Jeanne, around the living room as she danced on Daddy’s toes.

As memories almost always tend, there is at least one bad one. You put lots of dreams into your son, Barry. Daddy couldn’t wait to teach him to play baseball and football; he eagerly anticipated that day when the two of them would golf and bowl together. Those dreams were never fulfilled. Barry died tragically at the age of six from complications of appendicitis and his father’s world was rocked. This should never happen to any parent: Barry should be here today, with his sister and mother, giving thanks to God for his father’s life. Sadly, stories go like that, too.

On and on we could go. Stories of laughter, stories with tears.

Dorothy, I know you are getting antsy. When we talked about this morning, you asked me point blank: “Pastor, what kind of funeral sermon do you preach?” What could I say? Thank heavens, you spared me the embarrassment by asking me a leading question, “Do you preach one of those sermons where all you do is talk about Maggie or do you preach about Jesus and the resurrection?”

Every pastor dreams of that question and yet, in 33 ½ years of ministry, I can never remember anyone asking it until you did. Many people, when planning funerals, want to make certain that everyone gets a chance to tell their story and, if anything, just a tad about Jesus. Dorothy and Barbara, you have asked for something different. Deep in your souls, you know there must be another story told this afternoon.

It has been said that we crave for nothing less than the perfect story (Reynolds Price). We have craved for that story since childhood. “If you’ve ever told a child a bedtime story, you know that what you actually tell is a series of stories, usually in the same order. And as you begin to wind down as a storyteller, the child invariably asks, “Just one last story,” knowing that the last story will be the true story and the one that will secure [his] place in the [story].” (Richard Lischer, The End of Words, pg. 101)

We lean forward now for that one last story that will secure “Mac’s” place in God’s story. This story better be true and it better be a humdinger! This story better make our imaginations run wild.

Dorothy, you have invested a lifetime making certain this story is told. You worked at Bethesda Lutheran and First Lutheran and for Methodist Metro Ministries. Your life’s work has been to ensure that people down on their luck know that one last story that God will never forget them.

Pastor Lindquist (First Lutheran’s pastor from 1975-1983 and now the Canon for Biblical Studies at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral) just read stories that have been our refuge and hope in times like this.

Isaiah’s story tells of that day when a beautiful flowered garland will be placed on our shoulders, when we will be anointed with the perfume of gladness and dance the jitterbug in heaven forever. All this instead of crying and mourning!

Is there any vision more familiar than the 23rd Psalm? We pray Psalm 23 whenever we are down on our luck, whenever we toss and turn in the middle of the night, when we come here today. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil; for thou are with me.”

Then that astonishing story Jesus told the night before he died. It was his night of tears, the final time he gathered with his friends before he headed off to Calvary. It was a night of uncertainty like that Thanksgiving evening when “Mac” died. Oh, how we need one more story.

If this place, First Lutheran, is anything, it is the place that gets the honor of telling Jesus’ story today. It is the only story that must be told. It is the only reason this church has been here for122 years. “Do not be troubled. I go and prepare a place for you, and I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” This story proclaims that though Jesus dies, death will be conquered by God and Jesus will return to bring us all to his Father’s house forever. Once we have heard this story, like little children, we can fall asleep in peace.

As you tell stories of your husband and father and friend, let the final story you tell be a confident story that goes something like this: “Receive him, O God, into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light.”

May the final story we tell today be told on God’s behalf. And may it say “that because Christ has been raised from the dead, so shall Mac rise into God’s glory forever and ever and ever.”

My dear friends, stories don’t get any better. And yes, Dorothy, this is exactly what we should preach today.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 5, 2010
The Second Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 11: 1-10; Matthew 3: 1-12
"People Get Ready, There's a Train A Comin'"

John yelled out, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near!”

Most of us can’t stand the word “repent.” We like it even less when preachers use it. The word feels so gloomy, so fuddy-duddy, so judgmental, so yesterday.

For those of you who hate the word “repent,” I am sorry to inform you that the church around the world is using it again today.

If you detest the word “repent,” I urge you to listen carefully to how John the Baptist uses it: “The kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe the good news!”

“Good news,” he says. We usually don’t think of “repentance” as bearing good news. Perhaps the problem is that we don’t understand what it means.

For too long, we in the church have treated things like repentance as Cod Liver Oil: anything that tastes so bad must be very good for us.

The Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder offers a better way to understand the word “repent”: “To repent is not to feel bad but to think differently.”

When “repent” is used in the Bible, its intent is not to make us feel bad or even guilty; rather, it is meant to turn us around, to make us think differently, to point us in God’s direction so that we can celebrate God’s presence in our lives

Singer/songwriter Curtis Mayfield came out with the hit Super Fly in 1972. He wrote another song that offers a superb definition of repentance:

The train is coming! If we are lolly-gagging around and don’t show an iota’s sense of urgency, we are likely to miss the train. Repentance is getting a move on it so we get to the station on time.

In our family, when we need to get to the station on time, the summons is as subtle as a jackhammer. Calm words of restraint simply will not do. The clarion call sounds like this, “Wilk, come quick…now…fast!” These words are shocking: is there a fire, has our cat Doesty escaped soon to become coyote chowder, has Dagmar’s garden mysteriously lost one plant, doth the toilet runneth over? I shout back, “What is it, Dagmar? What do you want? Calm down!” Dagmar remains ever urgent, “Just come! Quick! You are going to miss it!” No subtly, no nuance: now is the time to come running. When I get there, there it is through our picture window: a gorgeous full orange harvest moon rising over the eastern mountains. Thank God, Dagmar’s call was insistent.

John the Baptist knew what was at stake. He had not a second to worry about haberdashery habits or culinary delights. The Bible says, “Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” “There’s a train a comin’,” John seemed to cry. “Now is the time to get on board.”

I fear we church people often miss the sense of urgency. We forget John’s words, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” We forget that the time is now. Jesus is nearing the station, here at 3rd and Ash, in our homes, and at our jobs.

We can be so afraid that our words are too forceful when we invite someone to meet Jesus at the station that we end up saying little or nothing at all. In our fear of offending, we easily err by not making our invitation bear the urgency that the kingdom is coming near on Sunday morning in the gifts of Word and Sacrament. “Come quick, now! You’re going to miss it!” can almost be lost entirely. Perhaps the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes was on to something when he said, “He who never offended anyone, never did anyone any good.”

People often ask me how we are going to make our church grow. The experts tell us that the number one way, by far, is for you to invite someone to worship. When did you last do that? We can discuss ad infinitum ways for the church to grow, and yet the number one way, we are told, is for you and me to invite someone to church.

I have attended far too many meetings in my 33 ½ years of ministry that have either forgotten altogether or never heard that “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” You have been to those meetings. We have acted as if the kingdom is further away than distant planet Neptune. We have lolly-gagged to our heart’s content, discussing how the altar flowers should be arranged, what the choir robes should look like, whether the women’s restroom should be green or pink. All the while John the Baptist is screaming to get our attention, “Come quick! The kingdom of heaven has come near!”

John Lennon of Beatles fame reminds me of John the Baptist. Can you believe he was murdered thirty years ago this week, December 8, 1980? Lennon wrote a prophetic tour de force:

You may quibble with Lennon’s vision saying it’s naïve and silly but dreamers are used to that; that’s what distinguishes them from naysayers. Dreamers act on fanciful visions as others create task forces; dreamers risk as others ponder liability; dreamers move forward boldly as others take votes and wait until everyone is on board.

These days call for vigorous dreamers. They call for people who will try just about anything to get people to get to the train on time. The kingdom’s coming. The only question is whether we and our friends will be there when Jesus arrives.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to run to the train station. That is repentance and it isn’t a bad word. It means, “Come quick, now, fast!” We may make a few mistakes along the way, our judgment may even be in error, but God is calling us, “Come now, come quickly, the train is arriving.” So let us pray fervently for God to stir us up to prepare the way for Jesus. “Let’s sound the trumpet! Tell the message: Christ, the savior King, is come!”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 28, 2010
First Sunday in Advent
Matthew 24: 36-44
"The Way of the Unanswered Question"

Once in a while, it is a good to run into some word of Jesus that bewilders us to the very core. It is good every so often not to have ready made answers to life’s toughest questions.

When we hear Jesus say something that totally bewilders us, we have a tendency to tame it like a cute little pussy cat. We shrink Jesus’ words to conform to our narrow insights and harebrained opinions and, in the process, sacrifice the power and glory of God in our lives.

Today’s Bible reading contains some of Jesus’ most bewildering words. Jesus talks about the end of time and how it will come. These words make no sense to most of us. What, for instance, does Jesus mean when he says, “Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left behind” or “Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left behind?” While we are clueless what these words mean, most of us, at one time or another, have ventured some ludicrous thought about how and when the end will come. Few of us have the guts to say, “I don’t have a clue what Jesus is talking about.” Somewhere along the way we were taught that faithful people should offer answers to life’s tough questions.

After all, we expect answers from experts. If we suffer from a devastating illness, we want our doctor to cure us--she is the expert! We don’t want our doctor to say, “I have no clue what is going to happen to you. There is nothing more I can do.” There is no expertise in that.

We expect Jesus to have answers, too. We have seen it said on many bumper stickers, “Jesus is the answer.” If those bumper stickers are true, then we pray and pray and pray to Jesus. Why do young people get killed in war, why do two year olds get leukemia, why am I plagued with mental illness--Jesus, give me an answer now, I want to know and I know you know!

As you just listened to this morning’s gospel reading, you might have been thrown for a loop as was I when I read Jesus’ words while preparing for this sermon. Listen again: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Did we hear Jesus correctly? Did he really say that no one knows, not even the Son?

What is Jesus trying to tell us when he says, “No one knows, not even the Son.” Might he be urging us to be content to live in the midst of question marks, trusting that God will finally provide the answers?

Jesus’ honesty about not having all the answers seems to me, at least, a call for us to be more modest when it comes to offering preposterous answers to life’s thorniest questions. Maybe Jesus is telling us, “If I don’t have an answer, you certainly don’t have to have one either. Hush, my dear friends, hush.”

William Sloane Coffin once said, “The worst thing we can do with a dilemma is to resolve it prematurely because we haven’t the courage to live with uncertainty.”

Our modern age conditions us to leave no question unanswered. We fancy ourselves as being so very smart. Strange though, the last century, the one with the most brilliant answers and the most ingenious discoveries, was also the most violent in all of human history. One wonders if we should have been more content to live with question marks and less eager to offer solutions that ended up soaked in blood. Maybe we should have had the courage to live with the questions longer and forgotten, at least for a while, about the exclamation points of certainty.

The truth is that none of us is rarely as smart as we think. If you need proof of this, listen to talk radio. The commentators offer answers to the controversial issues of the day, answers to affordable health care, terrorism, abortion, and violent crime. Over and over again they play fast and lose with the facts; over and over again their conclusions are dead wrong. This doesn’t bridle their arrogance one bit. Their foolish opinions, racist rhetoric, and vicious lies continue to stir up the masses. Reckless answers seem preferable to letting some questions go unanswered—if nothing else, such rhetoric sells advertising time. Oh how our suffering world yearns for at least a few questions left unanswered.

Jesus calls us to the way of unanswered questions. He calls us to say “I don’t know” when we don’t know. I witnessed the way of the unanswered question at a pastors’ conference I recently attended. The presenter spoke about the numerical decline of every major church body in America. Whether Roman Catholic or California megachurch, Southern Baptist or Episcopalian, Methodist or Mormon, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, all are declining. He said, “No one has an answer to why every church body has been declining since the year 2000.” I expected him to provide an answer to the church’s decline--he was, after all, the expert. If we had an adult forum following this service and began with the question, “Why do you think churches are declining?” my hunch is that everyone would have an answer and we probably would have a tough time stopping the conversation. The presenter at that conference left me a gift by saying, “No one knows,” a gift, I say, because his honesty was refreshing and, if I might say so, felt very holy. The presenter directed us beyond his neat little opinions to God from whence comes all our strength and hope; he reminded me of Jesus’ words today, “Only the Father knows.”

Today is the First Sunday in Advent, the beginning of a new church year. Like children on the first day of school, we are filled with anticipation. We, the people of God, come with clean slates, sharp pencils, and clean notebooks.

The invitation Jesus extends to us at the beginning of this new church year is an invitation to modesty, modesty in our conversations with one another, modesty as we do ministry in our community, modesty as we wait hand-in-hand for heavenly answers in the face of heartache, rejection, and death. As we accept Jesus’ invitation to modesty, we pray, “O Come, O Come, Emanuel.” We pray for God to turn us from our worn out opinions and angry certainties and to point us toward God. When we wait for God to answer our deepest Advent question, “When are you coming?” our life together is filled with hope.

My hunch is that if we dare to be a community that does not have all the answers but rather waits patiently for God to enter into our midst, then others will say of this place, “Surely God is present there.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 21, 2010
Christ the King
Luke 23: 33-43
"Christ the King, the Clown of Sorrows"

As you stare at this morning’s bulletin cover, Albrecht Durer’s painting, Christ As the Man of Sorrows, don’t you wonder what you would have done if you had been there the day Jesus was nailed to the cross. I know what I wish I would have done; I imagine you do too. I wish I would have stood in the way of the government’s well-oiled killing machine, committing some valiant act of civil disobedience to bring Jesus down from the cross. At the very least, I wish I would have wept.

But who really knows? Courage, commitment, and compassion are not always our partners when injustice, cruelty, and scarcity cry out for us to act. Sometimes, we just stand there watching, perhaps hoping someone else will do something.

Martin Niemöller was a German Lutheran pastor during Hitler’s rise to power. Just after the conclusion of World War II, he spoke of the temptation to stand idly by doing nothing as evil did its dirty work:

That’s apparently what most of those basically good people did the afternoon Jesus died: they simply stood by watching.

There were those, of course, who did more than watch. Some cast lots to divide Jesus’ clothes.

The leaders, the powerful ones, hissed and booed: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” They had had enough of the raucous parades, the stinking donkey manure in the streets, the rotting palms left behind, the discarded coats clogging the gutters. They grew exhausted from trying to control the filthy riff-raff who followed this “King of the Jews,” screaming, “Hosanna.”

And there were the soldiers. The heat of battle can cause decent people to do some pretty appalling things. The soldiers slapped their knees in glee as they offered thirsty, dying Jesus a sip of sour wine. Jesus claimed to be king and they had taken an oath of allegiance to stand up for the true king, Emperor Caesar. They were simply doing their duty.

Even one of the criminals hanging at Jesus’ side got into the act, deriding him: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

And, yes, there was that other thief hanging beside Jesus who somehow caught sight of his savior by twisting his head ever so slightly. He pleaded with Jesus for just one more chance, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

What do you think you would have done?

After 2,000 years, it is still all a bit embarrassing. The ministry we do here at First Lutheran is done in the name of this king who died such a shameful death. During these days of stewardship, each of us is asked to make a financial commitment so that King Jesus might be known in this place.

Making a pledge isn’t exactly a call to stand up against powerful authorities or to spill our blood like the martyrs did for Christ’s sake, but it is a call nonetheless, a call to do something so that Jesus’ love might be seen and heard here.

It is not always easy. This king, this man of sorrows, sometimes makes us wonder if it is at all worth it. He is unlike any other king or queen or ruler this world knows. He seems so weak, so pathetic. He reaches out to his enemies and embraces them even when they reject him or stand idly by watching. We do expect more bang for our buck. And, in truth, there are others with far more money than I; what do my fifty cents or dollar matter in the grand scheme of things; and, really, I have never pledged anyway—is it necessary?

The hymn we will sing following the sermon (words by Brian Wren) might capture some our feelings about this king:

A scarecrow lifted high, a clown of sorrows. If we are going to offer our hard earned money to make a serious commitment, we do expect a tad more. Sometimes Christ’s ministry in the world, in this church here at First Lutheran, feels like a clown of sorrows. We are such a little congregation in the grand scheme of things. How can what we—I?—make a difference?

The earliest followers of Jesus must have wondered that too. Was it worth it? After all, those in power knew that Emperor Caesar was king. And yet, in the face of the world’s power and insistence that Caesar was king, those vulnerable Christians insisted, “appearances to the contrary, the one who is really in charge of the course of this world is not the fantastically bedecked and exalted emperor, surrounded by all the symbols and weapons of power that the world can devise, but one whose sovereignty expresses itself in readiness to serve, to the point of laying down his life for his friends.” (Douglas John Hall, Professing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context, pg. 438, 439).

There are sadly those times when we do not rise to the occasion. Our cowardice sickens us, our lack of commitment embarrasses us, and, of course, we hope no one will notice, and yet, we seem incapable of doing anything other than sitting by and watching.

In spite of it all, this peculiar king loves us. Maybe this is why he is the man of sorrows. Who else would give his life for us? No matter how noble or scrawny our commitment, whether we shout crucify him or stand up for Jesus, for some reason beyond our comprehension, he loves us all just the same.

Look at Albrecht Durer’s painting one more time. This time, do not ask what you would have done for Jesus the Man of Sorrows, but rather stand in awe at what he has done for you…And, that of course, is why we call him Christ the King.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 14, 2010
Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 65: 17-25; Psalm 98; Luke 21: 5-19
"Those Contrarian Christians"

The first reading we heard this morning was from the book of Isaiah. It is a peculiar reading for these days of November when leaves are falling and darkness comes too early. This reading is also used on the springiest of all days, Easter morning.

It seems like a more somber reading should have been chosen for today. And yet, we haven’t done too well matching lessons with somber November. Even Psalm 98, which we just sang, has a spring in its step and feels out of place on these dark days as the shadows lengthen—“O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things.”

Some Christians choose chillier biblical passages than the ones we have opted for. They resort to scare tactics as the days grow darker, nations are at war, and natural disasters seem so prevalent. Pastors have sold millions of books scaring the pants off people, predicting that the final days are just around the corner. They warn that some of the lucky few will gloriously be swept into heaven while the other poor slobs will end up on the scrap heap of hell or left behind here on earth forever.

You might be surprised to know that Jesus frowns on such scare tactics. He says, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.” He goes on: “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”

Jesus doesn’t try to scare the pants off of people in the midst of melancholy; rather he offers words of comfort: “Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

In my mind, Christians are at their best when declaring that “not a hair of your head will perish.” As others thirst for war, we long for peace. When others become stingier, we become more generous. When others are more hateful, we become more loving.

Warren Buffet, in addition to being one of the world’s wealthiest people, is also one of its most successful investors. He is called a contrarian investor. That means, if I understand it correctly, that when most investors think they have found tremendous deals in the rising stock market and are pouring in their fortunes to buy inflated stocks, Buffet is pulling his money out as fast as he can. And, when things look dreariest to investors and everyone is fleeing the stock market like rats from a sinking ship, Buffet is sinking in billions. It is called contrarian investing, doing what others are afraid to do.

Christians are called to a similar mindset. We are called to be contrarian Christians. When everyone else is crying that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, we are called to be imaginative and to quote Jesus even more, “Not a hair of your head will perish.” Conversely, when others fear losing their power and wealth, Christians, at the very same time, launch a full scale onslaught to comfort the fearful.

The prophet Isaiah was a contrarian prophet. When the people of his land had tasted humiliation and defeat from foreign powers for years and years, Isaiah could easily have jumped on the cranky bandwagon. He could have looked at the way things were and said, things are a mess. But he didn’t pile on. Isaiah was a contrarian. His message was one of the most uplifting in the entire Bible; it has offered solace to millions throughout the years. Isaiah talked of new heavens and a new earth when others wondered whether tomorrow would even come; he called people to rejoice and be glad when most were depressed beyond belief; he spoke of a day when there would be no more weeping, when stores were running out of Kleenex; he even envisioned a day when the gentle lamb and the vicious wolf would eat together when most everyone else was rattling their sabers and stock-piling weapons--talk about kooky.

Yes, most people thought Isaiah was nuts! Couldn’t he see what was happening? Didn’t he have an ounce of common sense? And yet, Isaiah dared imagine a new day that only God could achieve; he dared proclaim it to anyone who would listen. He was one of the contrarian ones. We are all called to be just like Isaiah, to trust that God can and will do a new thing and to shout it to from this city’s rooftops.

Our congregation, First Lutheran, is in the midst of our annual stewardship season. We are inviting one another to make a generous commitment to the ministry of this congregation for the upcoming year. This invitation is contrarian as Christian stewardship always is. It is an invitation that bids us share the gifts God has given us for the sake of Christ’s ministry in the world. Not only do we commit to sharing what is ours for Christ’s sake but we do it with joy. As the psalmist says, we sing a new song unto the Lord.

I am delighted to announce that thirty-five people have already made advanced pledges totaling nearly $116,000. This is amazing. These pledges are in advance of next Sunday’s offering of pledges which I hope each one of you will do.

I would like to share one other note of your contrarian Christian spirit. As I think you know, we had anticipated a deficit this year due to the economy. We figured and announced that at this point in the year we would likely be $31,000 in the hole. We even held a special congregational meeting in July to discuss our impending deficit. Now do you want to hear a new song? Not only do we not have a deficit of $31,000, more astonishingly, we actually have received $1,000 more than we have spent so far this year. Miraculous! My dear friends in Christ, yours is a contrarian spirit of generosity indeed.

We are contrarians because we have been touched by an astonishing message. It is a message of brilliant light in the darkest of days. It is a message of hope when so many are throwing in the towel to despair. It is the message that a small community of people, trusting in the Lord, can make a huge difference, striving to be the heart of Christ in the heart of the city.

Joyce Thompson (whom we remember at this morning’s 11 a.m. service) did a new thing throughout her life. She saw a lot as a youngster that could have made her bitter for a lifetime. When she was a little girl of seven, she hid behind a wash basin in their farmhouse near Brawley, California, as her father hauled away by the FBI and sheriff to a Japanese-American relocation camp. She recalled her mother walking after them a few steps and calling, “Papa, be a good American!” For some reason, Joyce was not bitter.

There was something about Joyce’s spirit that was contrarian. Maybe it was born on that dusty day as hope seemed to fade. Joyce always seemed the contrarian one, always able to discover joy, always with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, always that wonderful laugh. I would think if she were here this morning, she could help us find hope, help us trust that God will prevail like she did as a seven year old in Brawley so long ago.

At the end of this service, we will process to the chapel where we will commit Joyce Thompson’s ashes to their final resting place in our columbarium. The final words we will say over Joyce’s ashes are, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you, the Lord look upon you with favor and keep you peace.” These are contrarian words for sure. We will boldly announce that death will not be the final word for Joyce Thompson but rather God’s blessing. Even as Joyce’s beloved Rex sheds tears of loneliness and we do too, we will assure one another that there will come a day when death will be no more. In spite of what is seen, we will be contrarian and say, “Not a hair of Joyce’s head will perish.” We dare imagine, like Isaiah, that what God has in store for Joyce Thompson is far greater than we can even articulate.

As we entrust her ashes to its little niche in our chapel, we will pray the beloved prayer of the night: “O Lord, support us all the day long of this troubled life, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then, in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

This is a contrarian prayer. We pray that God will watch over us even as the shadows lengthen and the evening comes. Is it any wonder that this prayer is prayed at Compline, the final service of the day for Christians? We pray it as we close our eyes, knowing that one day we will close our eyes the final time and yet we trust that whenever we close our eyes that final time, God will bring us to a new day beyond our imagining.

That is our ministry here at First Lutheran Church. We go to those who shudder from the cold winter of the soul and the cold winter of these city streets, urging them to sing a new song to the Lord. If they can’t sing a new song by themselves, we will sing it for them or with them. Yes, we will lift up one another, urging one another to sing a new song, not any song mind you, but the Lord’s song. We will sing because we trust that the Lord will prevail. After all, you see, we are contrarians. How wonderful it is to announce to one another that God will watch over us, those we love, and this city, and not a hair of our heads will perish.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 7, 2010
All Saints' Sunday
Luke 6: 17-31
"The Wal-Mart Saints"

The gospel according to Luke, the sixth chapter…

Coming down off the mountain with them, he stood on a plain surrounded by disciples, and was soon joined by a huge congregation from all over Judea and Jerusalem, even from the seaside towns of Tyre and Sidon. They had come both to hear him and to be cured of their ailments. Those disturbed by evil spirits were healed. Everyone was trying to touch him—so much energy surging from him, so many people healed! Then he spoke:

"Here is a simple rule of thumb for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them!” (from Eugene Peterson’s The Message)

You just heard Jesus’ beatitudes read from Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation of the Bible. The language is down to earth and certainly not highfalutin; it makes us smile. Jesus’ sermon is a street talking sermon. It is for people down on their luck, searching for a break and longing for a few words they can understand and that will change their lives.

How many of you call this text the Sermon on the Mount? Surprisingly, Jesus doesn’t speak what you just heard from a mountain. Now, don’t feel biblically ignorant: Jesus did speak his beatitudes from the mountain but that’s in Matthew’s gospel not in today’s gospel from Luke.

Whenever “mountain” appears in the Bible, prepare for something spectacular, often an intimate conversation between God and somebody. But, as I said, Jesus’ sermon today doesn’t come from a mountain; it occurs way down at ground level where ordinary folks congregate. The action is with the common people, the downtrodden, people like you and me, in a place just like this.

When Jesus starts identifying the blessed ones, we fall off our chairs. How can you be blessed if you are flat broke, crying buckets of tears, and having your name smeared in the mud? These are not qualities we associate with saints.

Say the word “saint” and qualities like confidence, boldness, compassion, piety, and eloquence come to mind. Whom do you immediately think of when you think of saints? I imagine people like Mother Theresa, Saint Paul, Saint Mary, Martin Luther King, and the other Martin Luther. Wonderful people, for sure, and yet we have never rubbed shoulders with a single one of them.

As you just listened to Jesus’ street-talking beatitudes, you might have thought, “Wait just a cotton-picking minute. I know these people and I never thought of them as saints.”

Today, we merge two religious festivals into one, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. These days traditionally were separate festivals on the church calendar, All Saints’ on November 1 and All Souls’ on November 2. The saints historically lifted up on All Saints’ Day were an exclusive guild of Christian superstars, ones who appear in stained glass windows, who hold up bird baths, and whose plastic statues stand attention on Cadillac dashboards. These saints have always convinced us that we and most of the folks we have known are not saints.

And then there are the All Souls’ Day saints. They are the ones we know. They are the bowling alley variety Christians, the Wal-Mart saints if you will, the people we know like the back of our hands. They are the ones whose pictures we have lovingly placed at the altar this morning. We still cry when we look at their pictures. They are the saints who have held our hands and we theirs. They scurried to our bedrooms when we screamed in the night, courageously chasing away the dust-ball ghosts from under our beds; then, maybe the very next night, they came home stumbling drunk and turned our idyllic little worlds upside down. They are the ones who called us princess and then forgot our birthdays. They taught us to throw a baseball and yet told us, too, that we would never amount to a hill of beans. They did their best to love us, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so well. You know these saints, don’t you?

As we look at their pictures and remember them, there are so many stories. Sainthood mysteriously permeates these stories through and through.

Now here’s the deal: saints are not holier than anyone else. Sometimes, they are far less holy. Sainthood—at least in the Lutheran view of things—is conferred upon us not because we have accomplished three unbelievable and certifiable miracles but because we have been baptized at the river and God has said to us, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” That’s when we all became saints.

You know as well as I that the church’s detractors ridicule us for being nothing more than a bunch of sinners. Our detractors are right, of course they are, but only partially so. The part they probably don’t know is that, in addition to being a bunch of sinners, we are also a rag-tag bunch of saints, impossible as that may seem to them and as unlikely as at might seem to us.

Oh yes, we are insufferable quarrelers and cowardly lions, self-righteous prigs and decadent misfits and yet, remarkably, we are often generous to a fault and willing to do just about anything for anyone. Here, this morning, we are given godly eyes to discover this saintliness in those we know and love, people whom we miss more than we ever thought possible, people who, from time-to-time, made us angrier than hornets. All saints and, by the way, all of us.

This morning’s gathering is called “the communion of saints.” The “communion of saints” is you and I, those whose names we will chant in a bit, those we have loved and who have loved us, and many we have never known. This gathering is made holy not by what we have so heroically accomplished in our lives—we know better than that. This gathering is made holy because God invites us here and calls us all saints.

We who gather here this morning are invited to look at these pictures and to discover saintliness in ordinary people that only God can confer. That, my dear friends, is why Jesus came down from the mountain, so he could look at us face-to-face and call us and those we love “saints.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 31, 2010
Reformation Day
Jeremiah 31: 31-34; John 8: 31-36
"A Tattooist Worthy of Tattooery"

When I was eleven years old, I played third base for the Pike Cubs. My coach, Joe Wheeler, had an entire gallery of intriguing tattoos. The one that enthralled me most was the one of the scantily clad woman on the inside of his forearm. I’m sure the tattoo seemed a brilliant idea the night he got it. One wonders, though, what he thought of it on his wedding day, when he had children, and as little leaguers gawked at it.

Since those little league days, I have wondered whether I should get a tattoo. One of my Lutheran pastor colleagues just got a colorful one of the ELCA logo. And, of course, there are those stunning tattoos that cover the entire arm--sleeves, my sons tell me they are called—replete with scenes from the South American Rain Forest. Wouldn’t that look cool on your pastor as his alb crept slightly up his arms during Holy Communion?

But I do worry about getting a tattoo. I have more or less navigated past midlife crisis by now. What’s left of any muscle tone is pitiable; a colorful parrot might not look like much more than a blotch of runny colors. My biggest concern, though, is whether I would pick the right artist. What if my tattoo ended up off center or, worse yet, misspelled--“Lutheran” and “evangelical” can be tricky words. If I get a tattoo, I want it to stand the test of time.

I have found the prophet Jeremiah’s advice on indelible artistry most informative: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Now there’s a tattoo worthy of tattooery--right on the heart, and forever!

I am afraid that when it comes to religion, our tattoos—not the ones on our arms and legs, but the ones on our hearts—don’t stand the test of time well. So often our beliefs fade or change or cause us embarrassment; rarely, are our beliefs on target or do they meet the test of time.

493 years ago today, thirty-four year old Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther knew that the church would be jammed with worshippers the next day, All Saints’ Day, so he placed his debating points where all would see them. Luther thought the church’s vision had gone haywire. People were buying indulgences with hopes of purchasing their way into heaven. Luther was bent on reforming the church he loved so that its message would once again proclaim loud and clear that Jesus Christ died for our sins free of charge. Nothing else would do.

We Lutherans weep in our beer with glee over Luther‘s bravado. Here was a fellow who risked his life for Christ’s truth. Those in charge at the time viewed Luther’s complaints as the rants of a sniveling little twit. The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Charles V asked Luther to defend his case and Luther proclaimed: “It is neither safe nor honest to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

Now, for a moment, let’s get back to tattoos. We Lutherans would probably get a tattoo of Martin Luther like the one on our bulletin cover today where he is disguised as Junker Jorg so that he could spare his neck as his opponents tried to kill him.

Or, we might get a tattoo that proclaims, “Here I Stand,” especially if we trust our tattoo artist to spell it correctly. And yet, that really isn’t the message we are called to proclaim. We are called to proclaim Jesus Christ not Martin Luther.

Herein is the Reformation Day problem. We Lutherans have traditionally loved this day. We have painted our churches red with banners, flowers, and vestments. We have beaten our breasts, gleefully sung Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress” and even shed a few tears in the process. When I was growing up, the Lutherans of our city gathered every year to celebrate Reformation Day. Inevitably the preacher for the day was some revered Lutheran pastor from far off with booming voice and impressive white mane. To the congregation’s delight, the preacher almost always castigated our Roman Catholic neighbors as destined for hell; we Lutherans, by claiming the name “Lutheran” alone, simply assumed we were going to receive honorary seats in heaven just because we followed Martin Luther.

It would all be funny if it weren’t so darn sad. Think of the bloody wars that have been waged and the lives lost over who is right, Catholic or Protestant. Think of the families--perhaps yours included--ripped apart when the lovely Lutheran daughter, Hannah Jacobsen, announced her engagement to the handsome Catholic quarterback, Johnny O’Reilly, from St. Bartholomew’s. Families never worshipped together again; some never spoke to each other again. Sad!

We used to say that we celebrated Reformation Day. I hope such rhetoric has been permanently discarded on the scrap heap of deceitful phrases. How can we celebrate the division of Christ’s body? How can we take pride in Christ’s body rent asunder as if we are nailing him to the cross once again by our bloody divisions? At best, we should observe the Reformation. We might even consider repenting on this day. If anything, the Reformation demonstrates what a short distance we have come and what a far way we have to go, Lutheran and Catholic, in discovering the heart of Jesus Christ and his love for all people.

In our own family of Lutheranism here in the United States, we should grieve our own current division and confusion. The body of Christ is divided this time over human sexuality. Once again we are demonstrating our tragic inability to live together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Yet again, we want the wrong message tattooed on us for all the world to see. Rather than letting the world see that Christ’s loves us all, we have lifted up our own shoddy thoughts and opinions. Rather than lifting up sola scriptura, sola gratia, or sola fides, we have connived to lift up sola sexualia as the message on which the church rises or falls! We don’t seem close to replicating that tattoo of which Jeremiah spoke that would imprint God’s name on our hearts forever. In these days, we must pray that our divisions cease and that Christ will imprint his name on our hearts forever.

There is only one name that should be tattooed on our hearts; that is the name of Christ our Lord--not Lutheran, not Protestant, not liberal, not conservative, not even American. There is only one artist who can be trusted to do this correctly and that, of course, is God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This artist’s work will never fade. God’s glory will provide striking and vivid color for our lives forever. So, when seeking a tattoo for eternity, ask God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to do your art work. Ask God to imprint his love on your heart forever. That tattoo will be just right and beautiful to boot.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 24, 2010
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 18: 9-14
"Who Is Best?"

As you listened to this morning’s Gospel reading, who did you like more, the Pharisee or the tax-collector? Be honest. I have a hunch that most of us gravitated toward the tax-collector, the guy sitting as far back in the sanctuary as possible without falling out the door. There is something about his cry, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” that feels so real. And, of course, we know we should like him best—we have been taught to do just that.

We know better than to side with the Pharisee. He is the smug one, the holier than thou bore. And yet, if truth be told, most churches would be dead ducks without him. He fasts twice a week, gives a tenth of his income to the church, and does anything the pastor asks him.

While I want to like the tax collector more than the Pharisee, I can guarantee which I would choose to serve on First Lutheran’s Church Council every, single time. I can put up with a little pious arrogance in exchange for generous weekly giving, hard work, and faithful worship attendance.

Whom do your prefer, the Pharisee or the tax-collector?

Now that you have chosen, let me simply say that this parable has nothing to do with who is the best. Oh, of course, we are programmed to decide who is best. We make such judgments almost daily. We judge ourselves, too, whether we are faithful enough, generous enough, moral enough. In our rush to decide who is best, we miss the entire point of this parable: God loves us all.

If you have ever watched good parents, you know they have the marvelous ability to love all their children equally, no matter how rambunctious, how conniving, how naughty. Good parents rarely get caught in the fatal trap of declaring which of their children is their favorite.

We spend a lot of time worrying about who is the favorite child. Am I the favorite? Are you? Is she? We do the same thing in the church. I bet each of us has a dream as to what kind of members we need to make this the best community it can be.

The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hung at Hitler’s gallows only days before World War II ended, wrote a lovely little book, Life Together. In this book, Bonhoeffer reflects on how we might best live together as brothers and sisters in Christ. One thing Bonhoeffer warns against is creating dreams for what our community should be like. Listen to Bonhoeffer:

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams…

“A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive…

“The [person] who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself…When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.”

Bonhoeffer urges us to be satisfied with our communities as they are, to live together as odd collections of Pharisees and tax-collectors, all embraced by God’s love. He urges us to surrender our scant visions of what our communities should be like and, instead, to frolic together amidst God’s grace just as we now are.

And yet, we all have our dreams of what our community should be. Some insist that everyone make a pledge for 2011 and become tithers to boot—I like that vision; others wish that every person here were committed to social justice; some urge that we let people come as they are and make no demands on anyone; others long for a place where all the members read their Bibles daily and pray unceasingly. Dreams for the community, all. What is your dream for First Lutheran Church?

It’s hard not to long for the perfect community. We all do it. The current confusion in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as some congregations leave our denomination in search of pure truth is in no small part caused by a longing for communities where everyone will think, act, pray, and believe alike. Such utopian dreams are repeated over and over again in history and such dreams consistently are relegated to the scrap heap of Christian history and to tiny footnotes in church history tomes.

There is something quite wonderful about a community that has the poise and courage and gracefulness to let the good and bad, the saint and sinner, live together in God’s lap of love.

In our Quote of the Day, Sara Miles paints this picture of her Christian community, Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco (from her book Jesus Freak): “But Jesus is right here with me and the crazy guy—the lowly and unprepared, as the prophets foretold. Among the weak, faithless, and doubting, as his disciples proved, then and now. He doesn’t look for the most religious, the most doctrinally correct, or, for that matter, the smartest of his beloved people to build his kingdom, but hands over authority to anyone willing to suspend self-doubt and simply trust Jesus’ faith in us.”

Jesus is here with you and me, the Pharisee and tax collector. It is hard to believe, I know, but God loves us all and refuses to judge who is the best among us.

I am glad this parable is about a God who loves us all, whether we sit way in the back of the church or in the very front row. At least for me, as one who stumbles and bumbles through most of my days, this is very good news indeed. I hope it is good news for you too.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 17, 2010
The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 32: 22-31
"Jacob Jumped at the Jabbok"

We have been there with Jacob, almost safely home but not quite. All he had to do was cross the rascally Jabbok River. He had fled from home twenty years ago after his brother Esau had had enough of his shenanigans and wanted his neck. Now he was returning.

While he was away, he had gotten married, become a successful business owner, and had a wonderful family. Nevertheless, Jacob had a ton of skeletons in his closet.

He started accumulating skeletons the moment he came out of his mother’s womb. Trailing his twin brother Esau by a tad, he grabbed onto his heel for all he was worth and ended up appearing to be the first born. It was Jacob’s first of many scams. He wasn’t named Jacob for nothing: his name meant trickster, over-reacher, supplanter. He was a fraud.

As Jacob grew older, he continued the trickery. He forced his starving brother to give him his birthright for a bit of porridge just to keep him alive. Later on, Jacob tricked his blind and ailing father into blessing him instead of the rightful recipient, the older brother Esau. Not only did he con his father and brother, he conned his father-in-law, using every trick in the book to increase his flock at his father-in-law’s expense.

Jacob was all smoke and mirrors, a sneak, a cheat, a scoundrel.

As he stood on the bank of the Jabbok, his life finally caught up with him. Like a Wall Street billionaire whose financial schemes come home to roost, Jacob was on the brink of disaster. He received reports that his brother, Esau, was on his way to get him with 400 men at his side.

Jacob sent his family across the Jabbok to safety. For some strange reason, he decided to spend the night alone on the wrong side of the river.

And then it happened. Jacob was jumped at the Jabbok by a mysterious assailant. Was it his brother, the devil, God? Jacob could not make out his assailant but was scared out of his wits. “What is your name?” he cried, but there was no answer.

Maybe he could hatch a clever plan like he had always done when in a pinch.

As Jacob wrestled at the Jabbok, you wonder whether it was all a nightmare. It could have been. You have had those nights, tossing and turning, a million thoughts racing through your mind. Were you awake or sleeping? Either way, dread and uncertainty flooded your soul and you couldn’t wait for the morning light to come.

As you tossed and turned, you wrestled with God knows whom and with what unsettling thoughts.

You prayed like you have never prayed before. Your life had finally caught up with you—the cowardly failures, the sickening lies told, the cheap hurts inflicted on others. Like Jacob wrestling at the Jabbok, you begged God to make things easier, to bring you to a new morning safe and sound. You promised to turn your life around if only the morning would come.

As the night wore on for Jacob, suddenly God spoke to him, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Jacob’s new name, Israel, meant God rules, God preserves, God protects. Jacob had taken God seriously enough to wrestle the night away and for that he received a new name, a name bestowed by God. You, too, have spent nights like that, hour after hour, wrestling with God. And, in spite of the misery, you have ended up feeling closer to God.

And yet, Jacob’s new name came with a price--as new names do. In the struggle, his hip was knocked out of the socket and Jacob never quite walked the same again. This time, he was formed, not by success, but by an assault from God. He limped for the rest of his life but, far more importantly, he was now God’s man.

It is a most puzzling and confusing story unless, of course, you, too, have battled the night and come away limping. It has been said that God comes to us through our wounds. I am sure you have noticed. When you are wounded by God, suddenly the rough edges of your arrogance are rubbed smooth—it hurts but somehow you are better for it; the cockiness turns to mellowness—it us painful and yet people like you more. People notice your limp; they comment that you are more graceful, more understanding, more relaxed, less quick to judge, not so bitter; no longer are you the one with all the answers to every thorny question. They say to you, “You seem better these days. What happened?” You have an aching limp but you smile because you have wrestled with God and are better for the skirmish.

I have discovered that the people who have helped me most in life are not the ones with all the answers to life’s most excruciating questions nor are they the ones who are always victorious no matter what the challenge. They certainly are not the ones who judge everyone but themselves. Rather, the people who have touched me inevitably have had a limp in their step. Sometimes they have been broken, but they have taught me to look for God’s grace. Sometimes they have had no answers—not a word, but they have taught me patience and how to listen for God. They have radiated perseverance and nobility as if a gift from heaven.

We all limp. We have all been jumped at the Jabbok at time or two. We have awakened teary eyed and restless, hearts pounding. And yet through that night, like no other night, we have clung to God. And that has made all the difference.

Jesus limped too, remember? He limped as the cross weighed heavy upon his shoulders; he limped as he rose from the tomb on Easter morning, the wounds still fresh in his hands and feet and side. Jesus, the resurrected limping one, now gathers us limpers. He walks with us safely into this morning, across the Jabbok, into the Promised Land.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 3, 2010
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Habakkuk 1: 1-4, 2: 1-4
"Habakkukians"

Can you spell Habakkuk? Do you know where to find Habakkuk in the Bible? Just in case you don’t, it is the fifth to last book in the Old Testament, about 1,300 pages in from Genesis, give or take a few. Habakkuk’s message in its entirety is approximately four pages long.

I bet you know more about Habakkuk than you realize even though this so-called minor prophet lived 2,600 years ago. His question is your question: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?”

The Message Bible translates Habakkuk’s question this way: “How many times do I have to yell, ‘Help! Murder! Police!’ before you come to my rescue? Why do you force me to look at evil, stare trouble in the face day after day?”

Habakkuk is sick and tired of being sick and tired. He tells God exactly that. He doesn’t say things the way he thinks God wants to hear them. He says exactly what’s on his mind.

Things are bad in Habakkuk’s day. A foreign enemy is about to trounce the royal city, Jerusalem. This is not just any enemy: this is, using recent political jargon, “the evil empire” (actually Babylon is modern day Iraq). Add insult to injury, God says to Habakkuk: “Something’s about to take place and you’re going to find it hard to believe. I’m about to raise up Babylonians to punish you, Babylonians, fierce and ferocious.” Yes, Babylon the enemy.

This is not how we like to think of God. We like our God to be loving, gentle, touchy-feely. And, as Bob Dylan sings, we definitely like God on our side. If God raises a cruel finger that finger better be raised against our hated enemy and certainly never against us. How dare God use the despicable enemy to destroy God’s country? Habakkuk is steamed!

I love Habakkuk. I love his honesty. I love his guts when asking hard questions of God. Said in a modern way, Habakkuk is not passive-aggressive. Only straight talk will do for him.

We can learn a lot from Habakkuk in how to shape our own prayers. When burdens weigh heavy on our hearts, when we are desperately ill and no remedies are in sight, when our lives are in a tailspin and we feel helpless, Habakkuk urges us to go straight to God and tell God exactly what we want God to do about it. Habakkuk insists we not hedge our bets.

Now there is a rub in Habakkuk’s prayer formula: once he registers his fiercest complaint to God, his prayer is only half complete. There is still an enormous part of his prayer remaining; now he must shut up and let God answer. T. S. Eliot asks God, “Teach us to sit still” (Ash Wednesday). This is the most grueling part of prayer. We like to tell God what to do. We want God to work on our time table. God should answer our prayers today, tomorrow, or, at the very latest, next week, and, most certainly, in our lifetime.

Princeton preaching professor Cleophus LaRue writes: “One of life’s most difficult lessons is learning how to wait on God through a dry and difficult season…Some people wait out a difficult season in a spirit of rebellion. They go through life angry and disheartened, and they make their displeasure known to any and all who will listen. Some wait out a difficult season in a spirit of resignation. Life for them loses all purpose and perspective, so they become cynical about life, and they trudge forward with a dull and listless spirit. Of God’s guiding hand and tender mercies they sarcastically proclaim, ‘What will be, will be.’”

LaRue goes on: “There is, however, a third way to wait on God through our own dry and difficult seasons, and it is the wait of anticipation. Habakkuk suggests that this is the way the righteous wait...Their stand is one of tip-toe anticipation. They wait in the fervent hope of a brighter tomorrow morning when night with all its shadows will be passed away.”

Is the guarantee that God will act enough for you? Are you willing to wait like Habakkuk did? Saint Paul loved Habakkuk’s announcement, “The righteous live by faith.” Martin Luther made this phrase, “The righteous live by faith,” the cornerstone of what it means to be a Christian. In fact, we Lutherans might consider a change to our name and call ourselves Habakkukians. The righteous wait, trusting that God will answer our prayers better than even we know how to ask. This is the essence of faith.

It is so hard to wait, though. The German biblical scholar Gerhard Von Rad writes: “God’s sovereignty in history is hidden; it mocks the most clever and profound human criteria and confronts humanity with impenetrable riddles…Much in history contradicts God’s will, but God comes to establish God’s kingdom.”

Habakkuk’s prayer does not go unanswered. It is not the answer he expects, but, far more importantly, it is God’s answer. God says this to Habakkuk: “Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.” Eventually Habakkuk’s people will return to Jerusalem but on God’s clock, not Habakkuk’s.

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador knew about waiting for the Lord. He was assassinated in 1980 while at the altar celebrating mass. His murder came only one day after he called on his country’s Salvadoran soldiers to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. Listen to part of his poem of waiting (“A Future Not Our Own”):

This, my dear friends, is a prayer of waiting faith, a prayer trusting that God will act. May our prayer be a similar one. Let us ask God for exactly what we want and then let us sit still and wait patiently for God’s answer our prayers. As Habakkuk trusted that God will come to town, may we trust too.

And, oh by the way, Habakkuk is spelled H-A-B-A-K-K-U-K.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 26, 2010
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 16: 19-31
"Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet"

Honestly friends, what chance do I have of speaking an ounce of truth regarding this morning parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus? Really? I have never worried about where my next meal will come from and I have never been hungry—even for a day; I always went to the schools I wanted to attend; I have always had a roof over my head and a warm shower in the morning. Pure and simple, I am a person of privilege. How can I be trusted to deal with this parable with any sense of integrity and honesty? Take for instance Father Abraham’s words in heaven, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here and you are in agony”--do you think I have the guts to say what Jesus really meant by all this or even have the intellectual honesty to cut close to the bone?

What I know about this parable is quite simple: Jesus described two men who couldn’t have been more different. The rich man dressed in splendor, in purple and fine linen; every meal he ate was a delicious one. The poor man, Lazarus, lay at the city gate; he was covered with oozing sores and was satisfied to eat a few crumbs that had fallen from the rich man’s table.

You probably noticed that the rich man was in control of his life. Even when he was in hell, he thought that poor Lazarus should serve him by dipping his fingers into the water and cooling his tongue. The rich man, like many a preacher, me included by the way, thought that, in the end, he would be the one who would determine the good guys and bad guys, the saved and unsaved, who would end up in heaven and who would end up in hell.

As I said, I don’t think I am a good person to preach on this morning’s parable of poor Lazarus and the rich man (who, by the way, is traditionally named Dives which is not his name but simply the Latin word for rich man).

Rather than offering you my hopelessly biased opinion, I invite you to join me this morning in looking and listening to those who are far more qualified than I to tell us what this parable is all about.

Look at the picture on this morning’s bulletin cover for instance. This shopping cart was photographed on the First Lutheran parking lot, only steps from this sanctuary. It belongs to one of our patio parishioners, Joe, and contains all his earthly possessions. What might Joe have to say about rich and poor? Look at the sign on his cart: GOD HASN’T GIVEN UP ON US. If you knew him, you might find his brief sermon rather far-fetched. Joe has had a tough life and yet he is preaching to us that GOD HASN’T GIVEN UP ON US. Maybe Joe is our modern day Lazarus.

As you receive the body and blood of Christ at Holy Communion this morning, listen as Jared Jacobsen plays the beautiful In Paradisum from Faure’s Requiem. In Paradisum is sung at the end of the funeral mass. It is a most amazing vision. Listen to the words:

I love this vision of heaven. In this vision, we pray that when we arrive in heaven, the angels will lead us through the pearly gates and the martyrs will lead us into the heavenly city Jerusalem. And then, what is even more incredible and surprising is that there waiting for us in heaven is Lazarus and, surprise, surprise, Lazarus is poor no more. Who would ever have imagined it—Lazarus on the heavenly greeting committee?

When you leave here this morning, pay attention to our little corner of God’s universe here at 3rd and Ash; look at the large encampment of people directly across the street. Are they a nuisance or are they the very people who will be welcoming us along with the martyrs and the angels when we arrive in heaven? Right here at First Lutheran, we are offered an astonishing glimpse of heaven as our homeless brothers and sisters train us to be ready for Lazarus welcoming us when we arrive at the gates of heaven. What a gift!

We need not glamorize Lazarus or his homeless brothers and sisters. Whether we live indoors or outdoors on city streets, we all have our shortfalls, our infuriating behavior, our addictions, our selfishness, our insecurities. And yet there was something about Lazarus that was special to Jesus. In fact, Lazarus was the only person Jesus called by name in any of his parables. Lazarus! I doubt whether it was because Lazarus was so much sweeter or so much more loving than anyone else--Jesus doesn’t say that about Lazarus. I wonder if Jesus is pointing us all to the sheer grace that awaits us all if only we have eyes to see it and open hands to receive it.

Yes, sometimes people like me should listen rather than pontificate. We all do better listening to voices that are hauntingly beautiful and that point us beyond ourselves to the sheer grace of God. The story of Lazarus teaches us to do that.

A number of years ago, a homeless man living on the streets of a very rough area of London was heard singing a simple song. That song was caught on tape. Ever since I first heard this song, I have been haunted by it. I imagine that if Lazarus liked to sing, this is how he sounded. I catch myself singing this little song often. Listen:

Perhaps you will be humming this song throughout the day, maybe even singing “Jesus blood never failed me yet.”

All that we hear are the simple, haunting, beautiful words, “Jesus blood never failed me yet.” I have a hunch that in some mysterious way this is exactly what the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is all about. We can have homes and cars and educations and yet completely miss out on the glorious message that Jesus’ blood will never fail us yet.

Maybe it is people like Lazarus and Joe who owns the shopping cart on our bulletin who do our best preaching this morning. All our stuff can so easily get in the way. But when you have nothing, like Lazarus and Joe and the singer under the bridge, you might be in the best position to realize that Jesus blood will never fail you yet.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 19, 2010
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 16: 1-13
"Razzle-Dazzle"

So tell me: is today’s parable the most maddening one you have heard Jesus tell? Were your Christian sensibilities insulted as you listened to Jesus extolling the rotten scoundrel’s behavior?

Admit it: we are disgusted by such behavior, especially these days. The Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, the reckless subprime loaners, the mean-spirited BP Oil executives--how can Jesus commend someone almost identical to these jokers?

Let me assure you: you are not the first to be offended. Way back in the fourth century, Saint Augustine said, “I can’t believe that this story came from the lips of our Lord.”

When the boss receives word of his employee’s outrageous behavior, we expect an old fashioned tongue lashing, a reprimand regarding hard work, or, at the very minimum, a call for satisfactory accounting practices. After all, this good for nothing scoundrel has been cooking the books, trying to placate the boss by covering up his own irresponsibility. He has been lowering what people owe on their bills just to get something in return and, as a result, costing the firm a small fortune. Jesus doesn’t prettify this guy. He even has the rascal admit, “I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.” He’s a bum!

And yet, surprise, surprise, Jesus commends this shrewd operator, saying, “For the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

You have got to admit, this parable has gotten your brain percolating. At last week’s adult Bible study, we were at odds with one another about what this parable means. When I offered my own brilliant interpretation, one participant opined, “Pastor, you offer that cockamamie interpretation next Sunday and I will stand up and scream out loud in disagreement.”

Parables work that way: they get us thinking. You might tell someone after today’s sermon, “I didn’t agree with a word the pastor said.” If you do disagree, please let me know at the door… Let the conversation begin! That’s what parables are meant to do.

So, here I go. I am going to tell you what I think this parable is about. You, of course, will have the opportunity to agree or disagree with me. For my money, I believe Jesus is highlighting the steward’s shrewdness, not his dishonesty; he is praising his creativity, not his unreliability; he is commending his daring, not his crookedness. Give him his due: he is a clever scalawag. Time is short. He has to act quickly or else.

I often worry that we Christians do not sense the urgency of the conditions. Maybe that’s why we have so much trouble with this parable. We can be so afraid of making mistakes that we end up doing nothing at all. In the process of living life safely, we lose our zest for life. It has been said that there is little danger of Christians in the United States dying of martyrdom; our greatest danger is dying from boredom.

When I was growing up, one of my pastors proudly and repeatedly proclaimed, “We have no burning issues in our church.” I was eighteen or so at the time and longed for a church with a few burning issues. It took an amazing college chaplain to help me see that the church can be a place where people actually take risks for the sake of the Gospel. His risking-taking eventually got him canned by the college president--I have admired that chaplain ever since.

For my money, this morning’s parable is Jesus’ invitation to forget about business as usual and to put a little zest into our lives. The hymn we sang at the beginning of worship, “Earth and All Stars,” does exactly that. I remember the first time I heard Herb Brokering’s words. I thought them a tad nutty but my were they ever fun. Engines and steal, loud pounding hammers, classrooms and labs, loud boiling test tubes, athlete and band, loud cheering people—I loved the razzle-dazzle of that hymn. Everything we do in life is an opportunity to praise God with a new song! No boredom here.

The challenge for the church in every age is to muster the courage to sing a new song in praise of God. I believe First Lutheran Church is doing exactly that in these days. As you know, we have a structural deficit built into this year’s budget (to the tune of $37,000). We could moan and groan and easily find someone to blame. Instead, we have acted decisively. We have virtually stopped air-conditioning except on the hottest of days, when our clinics are operating, and while we are here at worship on Sunday morning. This is not a bad thing; it is a good thing! There is more money for ministry, it is good for the environment, and it decreases our deficit. We received word from SDGE this week that our bill for the past month is the lowest it has been in ages. (Thank your staff for putting up with a little extra heat!) Dagmar is arranging our flowers; look at how stunning they are. Yesterday, a group did the church’s landscaping. Our grounds are beautiful, we have saved a small fortune the past few years, and we are working together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

The wonderful news is that none of these changes has negatively affected our ministry; if anything, they have enhanced our ministry. Our worship attendance is currently the highest since 2002. Our benevolence giving to the Pacifica Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the seventh highest of any congregation in our synod and we are certainly not the seventh largest congregation. We could easily say that we spend more than enough money here at 3rd and Ash serving God’s blessed poor and that is our fair share; instead, we have chosen to be a good partner in ministry beyond our doors. You are being incredibly generous, too: forty-one households have “Adopted a Bill” totaling over $9,000. We are creatively dealing with these painful economic times just like that scoundrel did whom Jesus commended so long ago.

A few days ago a friend sent me the Rosh Hashanah sermon of Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Reflecting on his on-going struggle with cancer, he told his congregation: “We allow things to slip away, or through our hands, thinking that we have all the time in the world to do what we intend to do rather than acting today to use our days wisely to do what we should do and to act on our dreams.”

Rabbi Weinblatt went on: “Whatever it may be--that trip to Israel you told me you are going to take one day, that course you have always thought about taking, the hobby you want to learn, spending more time with your children, setting aside time to study, learning a new skill, doing some volunteer work, or even the desire to start attending services more regularly one day, whatever it may be – don’t keep putting it off.”

I love the rabbi’s invitation-don’t keep putting it off, do it today. It is quite similar to another rabbi’s invitation so long ago, the rabbi who commended the shrewd scoundrel for acting decisively, now.

Jesus tells us that today is our time to act as a church, at work, and in our personal lives. Today. There is no guarantee that we will be around tomorrow. Do what you need to do and do it today.

Of course this parable drives us nuts; it is a little too messy for our refined sensibilities. But, God willing, it will prod us to ACT TODAY. It might even lead us to live lives filled with razzle- dazzle.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 12, 2010
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 15: 1-10
"Love's Obsession"

Unless you have lost something very precious, you may not appreciate this morning’s gospel reading. If you have lost something precious, however, and then found it again, this story is unlike any other in the entire Bible.

I once feared that I had lost one of the most precious people in my life. It was our youngest son Caspar. He was five years old at the time and we were traveling from our home in Washington, D.C., to visit my parents in West Virginia. As we loved to do, we drove on Interstate 68 in Western Maryland. One stretch of that highway goes straight through a massive man made cut in the stunning Appalachian Mountains. There was a visitors’ center there that chronicled this engineering remarkable achievement and the geological history of the area. After we went through the visitors’ center, I hid behind a tree to play a little hide and seek with Caspar. Unfortunately, Caspar didn’t see Dagmar or me and got scared. He started running across a walking bridge spanning the interstate. When he got to the other side, he sped down the hill as fast as his little legs could carry him. The next thing we saw was our dear Caspar running across the six lanes of 70 mile an hour traffic zooming around a particularly wicked curve. Dagmar and I took off running, our hearts in our throats. Caspar, thank God, made it safely to the other side. You can imagine our joy when Caspar was safely in our embrace again.

Is there any part of the Bible more beloved than the fifteenth chapter of Luke? Other than the Good Samaritan and the Christmas Gospel, we know this chapter best. It includes the parable of the shepherd who leaves his flock of ninety-nine to find one measly lost sheep, the parable of the woman who drops everything to search frantically for her one lost silver coin out of ten; and, while we did not read it this morning, the grand finale is the Prodigal Son. At the heart of each of these parables is one person’s obsession for something cherished and lost and the joy that is felt when it has been found.

Obsession is the perfect word to describe all three parables. You do not have to be a sheep farmer to know that leaving ninety-nine sheep behind in search of one lost sheep is no way to run a sheep ranch. What if the other ninety-nine had gotten lost and wandered off a cliff? Then, ninety-nine would have been lost and only one found. Today’s parables make no sense in any way, unless, of course, you are in love.

I always believe the church is at its best when it is in love, when it drops everything and goes running for the lost, never even thinking to count the cost. Such actions make no sense, they are not rational in the least, they are certainly not cost effective. Shouldn’t we care for those who are committed, good, and holy, those who carry the load?

One group that is particularly good at welcoming the lost into the center of the fold is Alcoholics Anonymous. One person speaks fondly of coming late to an AA meeting and worrying that the group might judge him harshly. But, without exception, there was relief, even joy. The one who was feared lost was alive and sober, with them. This person laments the many churches which can be so judgmental when people arrive late at worship, not showing an iota of joy that the person is once again secure in God’s house. We have oodles to learn from our twelve step brothers and sisters who are all about welcoming the lost safely back home.

Sometimes we discover our love for the lost one when it is almost too late. This happens at funerals. No matter how rotten a person might have been, at funerals, we always seem capable of discovering God’s love for the hundredth sheep. I have never attended a funeral where the deceased was not spoken of with tenderness and esteem.

The African American writer James Baldwin writes of his father’s funeral: “The minister who preached my father’s funeral sermon was one of the few my father had still been seeing as he neared his end. He presented to us in his sermon a man whom none of us had ever seen—a man thoughtful, patient, and forbearing, a Christian inspiration to all who knew him, and a model for his children. And no doubt the children in their disturbed and guilty state, were almost ready to believe this….Every man in the chapel hoped that when his hour came he, too, would be eulogized, which is to say forgiven, and that all of his lapses, greeds, errors, and strayings from the truth would be invested with coherence and looked upon with charity. This was perhaps the last thing human beings could give each other and it was what they demanded, after all, of the Lord. Only the Lord saw the midnight tears…”

Don’t we all hope that, at the end, we will be remembered well? And isn’t that the churches task, to remember and honor people not only when they have died but while they are still living? I promise you, if you are buried from this church, you will be honored as one of God’s very special and cherished ones. No matter how lost you might feel, this church, God willing, will always risk leaving the ninety-nine in order to hunt for the hundredth tiny lamb.

We conclude every funeral with these words: “Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him/her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.”

What this means is that the church at its very best never gives up, even in death. Never! As the southern preacher Fred Craddock says, “There is no giving up in [these parables].” May God grant that there be no giving up in this community. May we risk everything to search for the lost one. After all, inevitably, that lost one is us.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 11, 2010
Bishop’s Gathering of West San Diego and Sonshine Conferences
“Bread and Wine and Water and a Bible”

“Sell everything you own and give it away to the poor. You will have riches in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

It sounds almost unbelievable, at least to me. Have you sold all that you have? Maybe not and then again maybe.

How many of us have had what we hold dear snatched from us? Our retirement savings plans have dropped precipitously in recent years, our homes have become worth less and less, some of us have lost our jobs.

Our churches, too, have been forced to reckon with Jesus’ words to sell all that we have whether we want to or not. Here at First Lutheran hardly a council meeting goes by—actually, none that I can recollect in recent months—that doesn’t talk about finances. And I know it is not just here. At every church meeting that I have attended in the past year, whether conference, synod, or national, there inevitably has been talk about financial struggles.

We cannot get away from it. Along with our morning coffee and cereal, we are bombarded in the paper and on the radio and television with our shaky economy. And then we come to our beloved church and hear about financial struggles in the place we love. Programs ended or cut back, plans for leaner ministry in the coming year—you know how it goes. Are you numb hearing and talking about economic hardship?

We don’t usually think of Jesus’ words, “Sell everything you own and give it away to the poor,” as Gospel or good news. In fact, Jesus’ words sound like the harshest of commands. And yet there is that little sentence that follows, “You will have riches in heaven.”

As we gather as leaders of our churches this morning, we may want to lament about how tough it is in the church today, to tell war stories about our struggles. But, perhaps Jesus is inviting us to tell a different story, to tell a story that discovers more to our ministries than our possessions.

We church people have a dangerous practice of measuring success by numbers and dollars. We pastors ask one another all the time, “How many did you have at worship on Sunday?” Lay people get into the act too, “How many members does your church have; how big is your budget?” Go the ELCA website and you will discover the answers to these questions for every one of our congregations.

I pray that somehow, by the grace of God, these tough and lean times will deliver us to what it truly means to be the church and to what is most essential for ministry.

Thirty four years ago or so, I attended the installation of a pastor on the Lower East Side of New York City. The congregation to which he had been called met in a decrepit row house in the middle of the block of other decrepit row houses. Their original church building had been condemned and torn down because they couldn’t afford the necessary repairs. The installation service was held in a neighboring Roman Catholic Church. The preacher looked at the new pastor and the members of Trinity Church and said, “My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you have unimaginable riches for wonderful ministry here on the Lower East Side.” The new pastor grimaced, the people squirmed. They were dumbfounded and puzzled. “Unimaginable riches?” They knew better. Theirs was a hell hole. The preacher went on, “You don’t have a fancy physical plant or a gorgeous sanctuary, but you have more than you will ever need for ministry. As far as I can tell, there is no shortage of water, bread and wine, and a Bible in these parts. That’s all you need for vibrant ministry.”

Does your church have bread and wine and water and a Bible? That is all you need. Maybe this economy, in a bizarre way, calls us away from extravagance and fluff, to the very basics of our faith.

Jesus told us, “You will have riches in heaven.” And so, in these days that sometimes feel as if we are in the worst of times, perhaps, with bread and wine and water and the Bible we are actually in the best times imaginable.

Jesus said, “Sell everything you own and give it away to the poor. You will have riches in heaven.” Perhaps we should give it a try!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 5, 2010
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 14: 25-33
"Why All the Shouting?"

I must immediately make a full disclosure: I did not choose this morning’s Gospel reading--nor did Jared Jacobsen our Director of Music. What we just heard is the appointed Gospel reading for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost. With fourteen members joining the church this morning and the baptism of little Cole Huntley Munroe, if it had been up to us, we would have chosen far nicer readings. For instance—“Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barns, and yet God feels them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” or “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.” or “Make a joyful noise to the Lord.” It wouldn’t have been hard to pick something more celebrative on this glorious day.

Admit it: Jesus’ counsel to hate our family, to carry the cross, and to give up all our possessions puts a damper on our celebration. If Jesus’ demands were not so outrageous, they would likely bother us more, but we have grown use to them and simply smile and move on without paying them much mind. Hate of family, bearing the cross, giving away our possessions—we know this is no way to be a Christian and certainly no way to run a church.

I recently tried to read a book suggested by a Lutheran church official--not Bishop Finck, by the way. It is entitled Applebee’s America. I muddled through the first two chapters before succumbing to total nausea. The book’s thesis is that if you want to be successful in this world, you must understand your target audience. Bill Clinton and George Bush apparently shared this ability: they rose from political ashes by doing successful market analysis and both won second terms against fairly steep odds. According to the book, there is a pastor just a few miles up the road from here who is every bit as successful as our past two presidents. Before he started his church, he, too, did a market analysis. His church is purpose driven and booming because he has discovered what the people want.

Jesus didn’t do a market analysis. In fact, when the adoring crowds came swarming around him, he had the audacity to talk about the cross, rearranging familial priorities in an ugly sort of way, and selling possessions. Jesus needed Meg Whitman and her $100 million to help him with his campaign.

We probably should have done a market analysis before we decided to use this morning’s Gospel reading as we welcome our new members and baptize Cole. He is so cute! His family has traveled here from Toronto and Minnesota. A crowd has gathered. A party is in the offing. There is considerable excitement in the air and we will soon throw water on the whole affair. We will take off Cole’s old clothes--diaper and all! We will thrust him into cold water--not heated water in case you are wondering; we will talk about his sins and we will wash them away. You can almost hear the proud grandparents grumbling, “Sin…not our precious Cole!”

And I’ll lay you 70-30 odds that Cole will scream his head off when his Grandpa lovingly puts him under the water. No matter how gentle Grandpa tries to be, a lot of cold water and a big crowd watching will not be a pretty picture for little Cole. Cole will figure out quickly that this is about life and death, a battle between Satan and God. Just listen to him scream his head off--oh yes, he knows what’s up.

We have tried and tried to make the following of Jesus sweeter and prettier. We have tried to market him so that churches will grow and prosper. This week, Dagmar and I vacationed in Las Vegas. In addition to going to the Carlos Santana concert at The Joint at the Hark Rock Hotel and Casino, we did a lot of window shopping. We looked at Rolex watches and necklaces that made me keep asking Dagmar, “Where could you possibly wear something like that twice in a year without feeling a bit foolish?” What struck me, though, were the gold crosses made of exquisite diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. Do you think Jesus ever imagined that his followers would wear such stuff in his honor when all he had to say about such things was, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” To this day, the church and even Vegas is trying to help Jesus market his message and make it better and brighter.

And yet, some of us persist with a damper message. Methodist Bishop William Willimon says: “When you join the Rotary they give you a handshake and a lapel pin. When you join the church we throw you in the water and half drown you. Ponder that. Whatever signing on with Jesus means, it means that we will not do just as we are, that change is demanded daily, sometimes painful turning that does not come naturally.”

When Cole comes up out of the water this morning, longing to get dry quick, the first thing he will see is the cross looming over him. The cross, my dear friends, not a mobile of giraffes and butterflies and teddy bears. As he gasps for air and gazes at the cross, we will sing with joy, “Alleluia.” Deep down, we will understand that this tiny fellow, with Jesus at his side, will have battled Satan and won. There is nothing that will come in his life that will be worse that this battle with the evil one. Nothing!

His parents, Stephen and Amy—you will tell him of this day for years to come. There will almost certainly be tough days in his life as there are tough days in all our lives. It will be up to you and to his grandparents, aunts and uncles, and brothers and sisters in Christ to tell him over and over again that God will not forget him and that God will prevail no matter how dark and deep the water might get. That’s what all the shouting is about this morning.

Every person here needs to know what Cole needs to know. At those times when we battle with Satan and wonder whether Jesus is on our side, we need friends to tell us that he indeed is on our side and that he certainly will prevail.

Jesus knew that there was something much more important than family and possessions. Money cannot buy us the love of God. It all starts at the waters where God beats Satan in an epic battle. We all came up once, gasping for air, screaming, fists flailing. In those moments we were told that God is with us forever.

That’s why we shout today. This church simply tells the truth. Life will not always be easy for Cole or any of us if we follow Jesus, but life will be well worth living. We must tell that to one another over and over again.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 29, 2010
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
"Eating in the Smoking Section"

Watch how people eat and you will learn a lot about them. Watch who they eat with and you will learn even more.

There was once an exclusive English men’s club that gathered regularly for fine cuisine and scholarly banter. The club maintained rigorous standards when it came to manners and intellect. They had a demanding selection process. The entire club dined with prospective candidates before voting. They gathered around a massive mahogany dining table. At the conclusion of the main course, the club members placed their linen napkins in sterling silver holders and lit up cigars. Then one of the waiters brought the nervous aspirant a bowl filled with cherries that had not been pitted; only the prospective member got the cherries. The members simply watched the candidate carefully to see how he would dispose of the pits.

As I said, you can learn a lot about a group of people by observing how they eat.

You can learn a lot about Jesus, too. As I think you know, Jesus was constantly in trouble when it came to how he ate. Jesus was crucified, in no small part, due to his shoddy eating practices and second-rate eating companions.

You heard some of Jesus’ thoughts on dinner etiquette in this morning’s gospel: “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.’”

Jesus goes on with his instructions: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.” Who to invite? Jesus says, “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”

We gather in this room every Sunday for a meal with Jesus. Who eats here speaks volumes about what kind of meal-keeping community we are.

Pastor Martin Copenhaver tells of his congregation’s meal-keeping habits. One of the people who attended worship at his church was a fellow by the name of Bernie. Bernie was well-educated and played beautiful Beethoven sonatas on the sanctuary piano. Bernie was homeless. Bernie had Tourette’s Syndrome, a rare disease that causes its sufferers to burst forth with involuntary exclamations, sometimes obscenities, and often at the most inopportune times. In Bernie’s case, he barked like a dog during worship. “…the first time you heard him, you might think, ‘Did he just bark?’”

The first time Bernie put on a choir robe and processed down the aisle, Pastor Copenhaver’s first thought was not, “Thank you, Jesus.” And yet, as time wore on, Copenhaver the pastor realized that Jesus had given their community ample tools for how to deal with Bernie, some of the same tools we heard Jesus discuss in today’s gospel reading.

Copenhaver tells of one Sunday when visitors came to worship and heard Bernie’s barking for the first time. They looked around at the congregation and noticed that the members didn’t seem the least bit bothered. The visitors had that look on their faces that said, “What kind of strange place is this I’ve wandered into?’” (Lillian Daniel and Martin B. Copenhaver, This Odd and Wondrous Calling, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009, pgs. 97-98).

I have always believed that if a community of Christians is worth its salt, then, almost necessarily, it will cause some to ask, “What kind of place is this I’ve wandered into?” In fact, such a question should be a medal of honor for all churches.

Gordon Lathrop writes that it is the work of the Christian community to welcome the unclean because, after all, we are all unclean and Jesus made himself unclean by eating with us. Lathrop writes, “The assembly should have an open door…an accessibility to the surrounding world, a marked hospitality.” Lathrop has had a profound influence on me. That’s why, on many a Sunday, I will tell our greeters and ushers to make sure that both doors are open to the patio. We cannot be miserly about how we welcome the world.

The church’s work, however, is more than just keeping our doors and tables open to all. Sara Miles, in her pesky book, Jesus Freak, writes: “We’ll be lonely if we think we can only share fellowship with the right people” (Sara Miles, Jesus Freak, Joseey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010, pg. 26). Not only do the doors have to be open, but they must be open to ALL! When any person feels unwelcome, the church, then, has failed miserably.

Whenever we try to get rid of the “Barking Bernies” of the world, while we may not realize it, we really are saying that we don’t belong either. I have often found those people who are the most judgmental of others in a community, are often the most judgmental of themselves, too.

I remember such a person. He became infuriated when kids entered the sanctuary with baseball caps on. He would rage at me almost every Sunday when leaving church, upset about some perceived impropriety that he deemed an inexcusable breach of etiquette. One Sunday he was spitting mad because a woman had brought her dog into the sanctuary—it didn’t matter to him that it was a seeing eye dog. He was so lonely, so impoverished, so drained of life’s joy.

A friend gave Sara Miles advice regarding how to deal with those people in her congregation that are so challenging to her: “Sara, if you want to see God, sometimes you have to sit in the smoking section.”

It always amazes me that one of the last things Jesus did on this earth was to eat a meal with his dear friends. He could easily have judged them unworthy of his company and thrown them from the table. You remember: the people who gathered for that last supper with Jesus would soon betray him and deny ever knowing him. What kind of eating club was Jesus operating anyway? Over and over again, he told us this is precisely the kind of dinner table we should operate.

Maybe Jesus knew that we all, in one way or another, are the folks in the smoking section. We are the ones who don’t deserve being here and yet, in a few moments, Jesus will invite us to come up higher to receive his body and blood.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 22, 2010
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 13: 10-17
"Bent Over No More"

That woman had been bent over for eighteen long and painful years. Her body was as twisted as a pretzel.

The Bible doesn’t say why she was so bent over. Perhaps she had scrubbed floors on her hands and knees since she was a teenager. Maybe osteoporosis created endless and excruciating pain. She certainly carried herself like a victim of abuse, no longer able to stand straight with dignity, not bold enough to share her dreadful life’s story with another person. She seemed so terribly lonely. Who knows why she was so bent over?

One thing we do know: few adults wanted to bend down low enough to catch her gaze and she was too embarrassed to look up their way.

In spite of it all, she was at worship every week. People knew her only by sight; for the life of them, they couldn’t remember her name. Everyone simply called her “The Bent Over Woman;” no one took the time to know her better than that. She was so easy to pass by.

She sat in the same seat at every worship service, way back in the corner, as far back as she could go without falling out of the sanctuary. People rarely talked to her and when they did, the conversations were agonizingly awkward. The only thing the other person wanted to do was to get away from her as soon as possible. It wasn’t unusual for people to walk away from her in the middle of a conversation, rudely excusing themselves because they had someone more important to talk with. She came to expect this. She was so bent over. It was all so bad.

Think of who that bent over person is in your life…in this church…Are you bent over this morning?

While you may not sit way back in the corner, no matter where you sit, you feel out of the mix of things. You never really feel part of this community here at First Lutheran. You have tried but all your efforts seem to fail; you feel like a loner in the middle of nowhere. Oh sure, you smile real nice and pretty and you always dress up neat and clean. When someone asks, “How are you?” you always say, “I’m wonderful--couldn’t be better. Every day is perfect in San Diego.” But, if truth be told, your pain is almost too much to bear. You work hard to keep that smile on your face but the burdens of your world are crippling your soul: you aren’t sleeping at all and, when you do manage a wink or two, you inevitably wake up with sweat running down your spine and demons dancing at your side. If others only knew how life’s torments are crippling you. Sometimes, you just want to stand up in the middle of worship and scream!

Are you bent over? Isn’t that why you have come here this morning? No one will notice you before you quietly slink out at the end of today’s service, but you need to be here. You long for someone, just one person, to call you by name, to engage you in conversation. In spite of it all, you keep coming back because this place is a refuge in the midst of some horrific storms.

You are so frightened, so lonely, so depressed. You silently weep every Sunday during the prayers; one time, you almost cried out, “Oh Jesus, do not leave me alone.”

Bent over, almost all of us, if we dare admit it. Sometimes we hardly know why we are here and yet we heard someplace or another that if we come by here, our soul might be shielded from the tempest. And so here we are once again, pleading to Jesus, “Hide me, O my Savior, hide me, till the storm of life is past.”

[Soloist Arnessa Rickett sings the first part of “Jesus Lover of My Soul”.]

Oh, how that bent over woman wept. And then, out of the blue, Jesus called her over. How did he ever notice her since she was sitting so far back? And yet Jesus called her and she came up higher, step-by-painful step, stumbling a bit, scared out of her wits. But she came. And Jesus said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Just like that.

And then, the most amazing thing happened: Jesus touched her. Jesus touched her. She hadn’t dared ask him for healing; she never would have thought herself deserving of such attention. No one had touched her for the last eighteen years. When Jesus laid his hands on her, she shivered with joy and stood up straight. Not in her wildest dreams did she ever imagine a man, let alone Jesus, touching her so gently and lovingly. As Jesus touched her, he called her the most beautiful name she had ever heard or been called, “A Daughter of Abraham.” Abraham—the father of her people. And now she, “A Daughter of Abraham.” No longer “Bent Over Woman” but “A Daughter of Abraham.” Her precious Lord took her by the hand, he straightened her up, and she began to praise God.

She never sang in church, never--she didn’t think her voice pretty enough. No one in the synagogue had ever heard her sing either or, come to think of it, heard her say more than a few words. But that day, when Jesus touched her, she sang up a storm. Her beautiful voice stunned the congregation as if they were listening to a Metropolitan Opera diva.

Are you bent over by the burdens of the world? Do you come here, not expecting much, but, then again, hoping that someone, most especially Jesus, will touch you like you have never been touched before? Do you hope that Jesus will call you by name and tell you to stand up straight and proud?

Oh, how I hope you will sing today. In a few moments, if your bent over soul can look up just a bit, you will hear Jesus invite you forward, to the very heart of this sanctuary. As Jesus touched that daughter of Abraham, he will touch you: “Take and eat; this is my body given for you.” I pray that this will make you rise up. Like that woman, may you praise God, rejoicing in Jesus the lover of your soul.

[Arnessa Rickett concludes “Jesus Lover of My Soul.”]

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 15, 2010
Twelth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 1: 46-55
"The Gear and Tackle and Trim of Ministry"
On the Occasion of Welcoming the Rev. James Hallerberg onto the Clergy Roster of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)

How many of you did a double take when you received your bulletin from the usher this morning? What’s the Virgin Mary doing on the cover? You thought this was a Lutheran church not a Roman Catholic church. And what is the business about Mary, Mother of Our Lord?

We Lutherans get fidgety when we see Mary at anytime except around Christmas. We have always been fearful of elevating her to the status of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Mary.

As you know, Mary was a teenage girl from Nazareth. For some reason, beyond our comprehension, God chose her to be the mother of his child, Jesus.

I suspect that all the fancy church dogma that some traditions have created regarding Mary--all the devotions to her, all the claims of her curative powers--have been the church’s way to make her more than she was: we have found it almost unfathomable over the years that a simple girl from Nazareth could possibly be the Mother of Jesus. Doesn’t there have to be more? And so we have given her all kinds of extraordinary qualities to make her more fitting for her part in God’s divine drama on earth.

I suppose we have similar questions about ourselves: who are we to bear God’s grace? Don’t we have to be someone very special, more than we are?

I am particularly fond of literature in which unsavory characters become the unlikely bearers of God’s grace. My favorite such character is the hapless whiskey priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. This good for nothing drunken priest trudges through pitiable, godforsaken villages in Mexico and almost unconsciously reveals God’s glory. He bears God’s gifts to poor peasants who, without him, would never taste God’s glory in the bread and wine nor see their children baptized. This priest does it all while as tipsy as a carnival ride and stinking like a Kentucky bourbon distillery. Such characters stir us from complacency, they expand what is possible with God.

We prefer our Christian heroes to be sweet and pious, however. While we have never met even one such holy character, we, nevertheless, hold the belief that, in the end, God only has dealings with the righteously squeaky clean to advance the plan of God’s kingdom.

We do the same thing with Mary. We want Mary to be more, too. We want her to be sinless, childless except for Jesus, even assumed bodily into heaven at the time of her death. I think it has something to do with our inferiority complex as human beings: who are we or Mary for that matter to have dealings with God?

We seem to have a similar inferiority complex when it comes to the church. Why does God have dealings with the church? We know the church--the sexual abuse among clergy, the embezzlement of millions by trusted lay people, the fire and brimstone righteous preachers caught slinking out of sleazy motels, the ugly squabbles in churches to which we have all belonged. We wonder whether God was having a bad hair day when concocting how salvation would come to earth. If it had been up to us, we would certainly have done a far better job.

When God selected teenage Mary to be the mother of his child, she sang that beloved song, “My soul proclaims the greatest of the Lord. You have looked with favor upon your lowly servant.” She knew what a big deal it was to be the Mother of God.

We all are lowly servants lifted by God. Most of us, beyond our families and coworkers, are virtually unknowns. And yet, God calls us to go to hospital rooms, cemeteries, and friends’ homes late at night to tell suffering people in the best way we can that God loves them. We are a band of “ordinary and needy people” (Gordon Lathrop, The Pastor) who bear ordinary gifts to a needy world.

Pastor Jim Hallerberg is one of that band, like Mary, called by God to proclaim love to a needy world. Today, Jim, at the ripe young age of 70, you are welcomed into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as a pastor of Word and Sacraments. Now, Jim, honestly, how many times over the years have you walked into a hospital with a little black box and a Bible? You have seen the doctors in their white lab coats, stethoscopes hanging around their necks, nurses and interns following them from room to room. Have you ever envied them and their adoring entourages just a little bit? All you have come with for forty-five years now is a little piece of bread and a tiny sip of wine and a few dusty stories of Jesus and his love. You have discovered, though, that when the doctors have done their best and left these blessed dying ones to their final wheezing breaths this side of the kingdom come, it has been up to you to say a final word that, God willing, will defy death and make all the difference in the world.

Jim, you like Mary, have been called to proclaim God’s love when the more powerful and the more respected have plied their bag of tricks and departed. Broken words and dusty stories are what you have come bearing. Tears and hugs have often been your best gift when appropriate words have seemed missing. Sometimes not even you have known what to say: you have felt abandoned, bereft, as if you were dying a small death yourself; you could only trust that, somehow, someway, God would make things better. Gerard Manley Hopkins called the things we bear in these times the “gear and tackle and trim” of ministry. A little bread, a sip of wine, a dab of water, a few broken words—that’s all you have ever had and all you will have here in the ELCA (cf. Gordon Lathrop’s The Pastor for a wonderful treatment of the pastoral craft).

Jim, you should know better. You are a big boy now. We who know you, know that you are a really smart guy—Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German. You know better than most, that this church, often called the Bride of Christ, is more often than not the whore of Babylon. And yet, there is something about her you love. There is something about her that your wife, Ginger, loves. Jim, you have persevered in this church you love, often goading her, often calling her to higher ground; you have been a thorn in your colleagues flesh at times, badgering them, calling them beyond certainty to faithfulness. You and your wife have faced some sleepless nights, all because of your love for your church, the very church loved for so long by those you have loved and who are now asleep in Jesus. But, Jim, you have always had a smile, always a bounce in your step. You know that God comes calling in the midst of it all, even now.

In his gorgeous book, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees, Garret Keizer writes of a man who could easily be you, dear Pastor Jim Halleberg. The man, with many years under his pastoral belt, said “that although his church was as corrupt as the Mafia, he would gladly die for that church.” Keizer adds, “I would die for [the church], too, not because I am so brave or the church is so needy, but because without it I could no longer say what living meant.”

Jim, you understand that. You understand that we are all God’s got and God is all we’ve got. And that’s why you refuse to throw in the towel. When quite a few pastors and congregations are currently leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America because it has dared to open her doors wider, you come running to her through those doors. There is something about this church you adore, something about this crazy church that believes that God sees fit to have dealings with all sorts of people like Mary, something you love about this church that does not have all the thorny questions neatly wrapped and tied with a perfect theological bow and answer. Far from being pessimistic, Jim, you celebrate this day as one of the finest in your life. And, of course, your becoming one of us makes it one of our finest, too.

We are all such ordinary peasants, just like that young girl Mary. God turned the world upside down by calling her to be the Mother of God. God turns the world upside down by bringing you, Jim, onto the clergy roster of the ELCA. And all of you here today--God turns the world upside down by calling you to bear Christ’s light in this sometimes very dark world of ours. Let our souls proclaim the greatness of the Lord!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 8, 2010
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 12: 32-40
"Do Not Be Afraid"

I am embarrassed to tell you what my biggest worry was this past week. Given the immensity of the world’s problems, you will certainly think my worry a silly one indeed.

As I think you know, I attended a meeting on Thursday and Friday at our ELCA Churchwide offices in Chicago. This meeting was a gathering of fifty bishops, pastors, seminary and college professors, Churchwide staff, and administrators of social ministry organizations. I did not want to appear the country bumpkin so I worried considerably about how I should dress for this meeting. I know this seems awfully vain, but I thought my dress would give some indication of how seriously I took my invitation. I thought about wearing a black suit and clerical collar— this, by the way, is how I used to dress every, single day before moving to San Diego—but I thought this might seem too austere and even presumptuous. I could wear a suit and tie—this would make me look properly respectful without appearing too overtly priestly—but my lack of a good tie selection ruled this option out. I thought about wearing blue jeans, a Hawaiian shirt (I now own six), and flip-flops, demonstrating Southern California devotion and yet I feared this might make me appear quite the buffoon. Or—and this is what I chose—I could wear a button down shirt with nice pants—not too dressy and not too terribly self-important.

I am embarrassed to admit this dilemma to you. You would think I have more important things on my mind and to discuss this morning than my haberdashery worries.

And yet, please give me a bit of a break: Jesus talks repeatedly about things just as mundane as what clothes to wear in order to prove his points. He talks about how birds feed themselves during the day and how the lilies of the field are more beautiful than all King Solomon’s glory. Jesus gets it. He understands how ordinary things, like what we wear and what we eat, have an uncanny way of getting under our skin and causing us enormous worries and fears.

Over and over again, Jesus tells us, “Do not be afraid.” Jesus does his best to calm our fears. He knows that we are a bunch of worry-warts. “Do not worry,” he pleads with us. Our worries cause us to take anti-anxiety medication, to make frequent trips to the therapist’s office, and to drink way too much alcohol. Amazingly, when you think about it, some of our greatest worries are about some pretty insignificant things.

Think of your worries. How much time do you spend worrying about what others think of you? How many of you worry about how you look? I know some people who refuse to come to church because their clothes are not good enough—and I get that.

What is most amazing is that Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,” and then, in almost the same breath, urges us to sell our possessions and give alms. You would think doing this would make us worry more than ever. We cannot imagine selling our possessions. In fact, one of our biggest worries is not having enough possessions. We worry that we will not have enough when we retire, not enough even tomorrow morning.

Not only does Jesus tell us to sell our possessions and give alms, he adds, “for where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.” Where is your treasure, by the way? One way to think about your treasure—or at least where you would like your treasure to be—is to consider how you would like to be remembered at your funeral. Imagine that the best your eulogist could say of you is that you had a huge television in your den with a whopping cable television package with 100 channels and movies on demand to boot; or you had a marvelous collection of clothing that rivaled that of Imelda Marcos; or you had the most sophisticated cell phone anyone had ever seen and texted all day long. When thinking of your treasures this way, you quickly realize that there is more to life than what you eat or what you wear. You realize that when you get rid of your possessions, or at least some of them, and give alms, suddenly life becomes far richer and, interestingly, you stop worrying quite so much.

Many of you, by the grace of God, are doing your best to sell your possessions and to give alms. You may not even realize you are doing so. Already ten First Lutheran households have committed nearly $4,807.56 to our Adopt a Bill campaign. Those who have given are quite varied. One of our newest and youngest families has given $1,100 to help pay our mortgage. One of our oldest members on a fixed income has contributed $1,100. A number of you give amazingly generously throughout the year and, while you don’t make a big deal of it, I have watched you and I think I know how you afford to give so generously to the ministry of this church. You quite literally have sold your possessions; you have chosen to live more simply so that you can give more to Christ’s ministry in this place. You have no cable television precisely so you can give more to your church; one of you decided not to purchase a new car so you could give more to your church. I can tell just by watching you that such generosity, far from bringing anxiety and fear into your life, has actually brought increased calm and joy and fulfillment. You have made a place at your table so that when the master arrives in your house, your lamps will be lit.

Jesus says that true joy comes, not in worrying about a million and one little things, like what clothes to wear to meetings, but instead, by streamlining our lives to make room for the time when Jesus comes to us and wishes to serve us dinner. When you think of Jesus serving you dinner, you realize you have the greatest treasure you can ever imagine. So, oh dear little flock, do not be afraid.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 1, 2010
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 12: 13-21
"How is Your Life?"

“You fool!”…That woke you up, didn’t it? And when God shouts, “You fool,” it wakes you up even more.

Notice that it is actually Jesus who says, “You fool!” on behalf of God in today’s Gospel reading. He does this in the midst of telling his parable about the rich man. You know the parable but let me review it quickly. There is a rich man who has a magnificent farm with lots and lots of crops. He runs into problems when he runs out of room in his barns to store his banner harvest. So, what to do? Of course, he tears down his minuscule barns and builds gigantic ones.

With these mammoth edifices erected, he kicks back, pours three fingers of Jack Daniels on the rocks, lights a fine Cuban cigar, and gazes proudly onto his magnificent estate. So proud; so proud, in fact, that he starts talking to himself: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” It is precisely when he kicks back, thinking all is well, savoring his hard work over the years, that Jesus quotes God to him, “You Fool!”

Why “you fool?” Maybe you grew up the way I did. My parents, who had watched their parents navigate the turbulent waters of the Great Depression, wanted to make certain that I lived a good life and faced no such obstacles. I was thirteen when I got a paper route that paid me two pennies for every paper I threw and banged against someone’s screen door and a nickel for every huge Sunday morning News Register I lugged through the snowy streets of Wheeling. Far from wanting me to be a fool, my dad taught me how to be astute when it came to money matters. He taught me how to keep accurate financial records in a ledger book of the money I collected and did not collect. He instructed me how to keep my money in order, making certain that all the dollar bills were facing the exact same direction. He even sent me, alone, to the stock broker to invest my first $132 in six shares of Pacific Gas and Electric Company stock. Dad was teaching me how to plan for the future so that when I got to be about sixty, I, like the guy with the big barns, could relax, eat, drink, and be merry.

How dare God say to me and my dear dad, “You fool!”

For almost every one of us here this morning, except for the few of us born prior to 1929, we have never quite experienced the tough financial times we are currently facing. Even if you are ninety, you were only about ten when the Great Depression hit. We have the skills and advanced degrees and are willing to work and still there are no jobs. I have heard a number of you say you feel down right poor. When God says, “You fool!” you resent that remark.

Even First Lutheran Church resents it. How dare God say, “You fool!” to us. We have stripped things to the bones here without sacrificing ministry. We continue to care for God’s blessed poor with no questions asked; our staff received no raises this year. We have tried hard to get our barn here at 3rd and Ash stored to the rafters. We even held a special congregational meeting last Sunday to look at our financial picture. We have asked the Church Council for a plan to get our deficit under control. Don’t you dare call us fools!

Many are struggling in this tough financial climate. This coming Wednesday, I will travel to our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America headquarters in Chicago where I will gather with fifty people from across our church to discuss how our church is doing. In preparation for that meeting, I have received three articles on giving patterns within our church and within charitable organizations in general. The articles discuss which churches are growing in giving and which are declining; said more concretely --and I have got to say it—which churches have the biggest barns and which have the tiniest barns.

Whether we are individuals, nations, congregations or national churches, we are wondering if we have enough stored up in our barns to survive. Deep down, we believe that faithful people are the ones who can kick back, relax, eat, drink, be merry.

When you say, “Life is good,” don’t you mean that you don’t have a care in the world, that, like the guy with the barns, you can relax, eat, drink, and be merry? When you say, “Life is good,” don’t you mean the mortgage is paid, the 401 K is stable, the kids are happy, and your church pledge is up to date? Conversely, when you feel really poor, aren’t you are convinced God is delivering you a rotten deal?

“You fool!” God says. And the very next words God says are ones to help us through these vicious times: “This very night your life is being demanded of you.”

This very night! Apparently, God is not concerned about how big our barns are or how much savings our congregation has in the bank. God says, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” Forget about the barns; get rich toward God.

Are you rich toward God? Is our church rich toward God? Funny, when we say, “Life is good,” rarely do we say, “I read my Bible every day and God’s word nourishes me and gives me great joy. I am able to attend worship every Sunday and taste the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.” And yet, according to God, that is precisely when life is good, in fact, at its best.

So, my dear friends, how is your life?

On Friday, Doris Shimizu, Barbara Hagen, Geri Engelke, and I visited a number of our homebound members. You could say that life has been stripped to the bare essentials for those we visited. You might even say that life is not so good for them as their health declines. Nevertheless, we gathered around little, dusty tables with a few wafers, a tiny cup of wine, and a little Bible. God says that when we do this, we are rich. Forget about the barns. We gathered around a little bread and a little wine and heard God invite us, “Lift up your eyes to the hills--from where you help comes. Your help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” Life doesn’t get any better than that.

So, my dear friends, how is your life? Rich or poor, do you know that heaven’s treasures are at your finger tips? Please, do a proper accounting the way God would have you do: count among your riches, bread and wine and God’s word. With these gifts, you are richer than you ever imagined, no longer fools but now blessed as angels serve you the gifts of heaven.

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 Dieg