Sermons Archive 2005-2009

We, the people of God, are called to tell the truth about life and death to one another as my pastor friend told me the truth. Of course, we are to tell of the joys of birth, of love, of life fully lived; we are also to tell of the deep sadness that accompanies the death of those we have loved and whom we are left to mourn. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love….The dearer and richer our memories, the more difficult the separation.” Isn’t Bonhoeffer correct? And how sad we are if we have not loved deeply and have no tears to shed. How sad.

You who gather here this morning on All Saints’ Day know this, I’m certain. You have just written the names of mothers and fathers, spouses, and friends in Christ in the Book of Memory. You will call out their names at the Prayers of the People, including our sister, Delores Praefke, who meant so much to this congregation and who died earlier this year. So, too, Lisa Miller who was known by only a few of you and yet, most importantly, was known by God; she was homeless and ministered to by our “Going Home” volunteers (a hospice of sorts for homeless people); she is now buried in our columbarium with other saints of this congregation.

So much of our world makes believe in the face of death that nothing bad has happened at all. I have heard it said more times than I care to admit of our beloved dead in caskets, “My, does she ever look beautiful;” I think, how can this be, she is dead! Our newspapers participate in the masquerade, referring to deaths as “passages” as if the people have not done much more than gone on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. We use the euphemism, “He passed away,” fearful to utter the truth, “He has died.” Could it the world has nothing better to offer than make believe in the face of death?

We Christians have something far better to offer in the face of death. As we gather here on All Saints’ Day, we the people of God are called to demonstrate what a seminary professor of mine describes as a “steady honesty about death” (Gordon Lathrop in his book, The Pastor). The poet Dylan Thomas urges a steady honesty of death:

I think he is right. We Christians should rage against death. We dare not get cozy with death as if death is our friend. St. Paul reminds us, “Death is the last thing to be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26). We know that. Let us, then, weep.

And yet, my dear friends, if all we have is tears in the face of death, what a pathetic lot we are. Of course, we must weep. We Christians should be the chief mourners. And yet there is so much more.

I particularly love the words from the ancient graveside liturgy, “Even at the grave we sing “Alleluia!” We are a people who weep and sing songs of joy at the very same time. Though we weep, we trust that Jesus Christ will take those we love and one day gather us together with them in the eternal arms of God.

Even as tears stream down our cheeks, we sing Isaiah’s promise: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts…will destroy…the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Lord god will wipe away the tears from all faces…” (Isaiah 25: 6-8).

Even as we weep, we dream with St. John of Patmos: “See, God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be not more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more…”(Revelation 21: 3,4).

And so we gather here today. We weep for the saints we love--why of course we do. We sing a song of joy for them, too, “Alleluia.” We trust that there will come a day when all our tears will be wiped away and death will be no more for us and those we love.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 25, 2009
Reformation Sunday
Romans 3: 19-28; John 8: 31-36
"Defining Grace"

My seminary preaching professor, Mr. Muehl, was not fond of his students using religious words in sermons. He discouraged the use of words like “faith,” “love,” “gospel,” and “salvation.” It wasn’t that he was opposed to these perfectly good words; rather, he felt they are so overused by preachers that they become clichés that leave listeners baffled and, worse yet, bored. He urged us to agonize over our sermons, seeking illustrations that make religious words and phrases come alive in our listeners’ ears.

I remember Mr. Muehl stopping a student mid-sermon. The student had made the unforgivable blunder of saying, “We are all saved by grace.” Sitting in the last pew of Marquand Chapel, Mr. Muehl jumped from his pew and blurted out: “Stop! What in the world will people think, Miller, when you say, ‘We are all saved by grace?’” Since that day, in Mr. Muehl’s honor, I have struggled to explain what I mean whenever I say, “we are all saved by grace.”

While I was taking Mr. Muehl’s preaching course, I was also doing field work at the Masonic Home and Hospital in Wallingford, Connecticut. One resident I was particularly fond of was 89 year old Ernie Tosca. Ernie was an irascible sort who preferred not taking his prisoners alive. He had worked as a welder in the New London shipyards. He saved his union wages without fail, knowing there would come a day when, as only Ernie could say, “I’ll end up in once of those retirement dumps with no men and lots of women looking for my money.”

One day Ernie was sitting outside the snack bar, smoking his pipe. He called me over: “Chaplain, have I told you yet that I pay my way to live here? Between you and me, not many of the bums in this place pay their way. Reverend, they are a bunch of freeloaders.”

I remember asking Father Mahoney, the chaplain in charge, how many people were actually paying their way. He said that, while lots of the residents thought they were making the financial grade, most had long since outlived their meager savings. Many, he noted, were recipients of the home’s free grace or, said another way, of its Masonic largesse.

Now that’s how Mr. Muehl wanted us to describe “grace:” grace is being saved by someone else’s generosity when you are unable to pay your own way.

Martin Luther was a lot like Ernie Tosca. Both were irascible and Luther, like Ernie, assumed that if he worked hard enough, he could pay, in his case, pay his way into heaven. And save Luther did. He described his savings plan this way: “In the monastery I did not think about women, money, or possessions; instead my heart trembled and fidgeted about whether God would bestow his grace on me” (Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, pg. 133). Luther prayed regularly, went to church daily, and performed all manner of severe penance for his sins. If he performed enough good works, Luther thought, he might just earn his way into heaven.

Luther’s problem was that he never felt that he had saved enough. Like people who die in dilapidated trailer homes with millions under their mattresses, Luther had amassed a fortune of good works to his name and yet still feared that these were not enough and that God might not love him into eternity.

Luther’s life changed dramatically when he read Paul’s letter to the Romans, the one we just heard: “For there is no distinction, 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…” Out of the blue, Luther felt as if God were speaking to him: “Martin, you are justified by grace as a gift.” Imagine the freedom Luther felt. He was going to heaven!

The Reformation began on October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. He wanted to debate with the church leaders his belief that God loves us all no matter what we have done in our lives. Luther risked his life and the anger of the church he loved in order to proclaim that God’s love is free of charge. Luther believed that the church’s only task is to announce to every person in a way that they are able to hear that God loves them.

Ernest Hemingway starts his short story, “The Capitol of the World” this way: “Madrid is full of boys named Paco, which is diminutive of the name Francisco, and there is a Madrid joke about a father who came to Madrid and inserted an advertisement in the personal columns of El Liberal which said: PACO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA and how a squadron of Guardia Civil had to be called out to disperse the eight hundred young men who answered the advertisement.”

We all are Paco longing to hear our heavenly Father say, “All is forgiven.” That is why we are here this morning. We have come yet again with hopes of hearing that God loves us regardless of how messy our lives have become--and, I assure you, our lives are messy!

Those who join our community of faith this morning shared movingly how God called them to our community, First Lutheran. If we had time, I would stop my sermon this second and invite our new members to tell their honest stories of how God’s amazing grace called them here this morning. Each would describe God calling them by name as if they each were Paco.

I urge you to introduce yourselves to our new members at the reception in their honor following this service. Ask them to tell you their stories of how God called them here. You will surely hear a story that Mr. Muehl would say poignantly defines God’s grace.

For now, let us go to the waters of baptism. As we gather at the river, let us watch God’s grace washes over Cooper and Nate and as they hear God say to them--as God has said to us all--“I love you.” Watch, my dear friends, and you will see grace defined at its very best.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
Sermon Preached at Semiannual Gathering of San Diego ELCA and LCMS Clergy
October 19, 2009
“My Broken Body for You”

Producer Barry Levinson produced three movies that take place in Baltimore, Maryland (Diner, Tin Men, and Avalon). Avalon is about the Krichinsky family. The extended Krichinsky family gathers together every Thanksgiving for its Thanksgiving meal. As these occasions are wont to do, this meal is steeped in tradition. Uncle Gabriel and his wife arrive late every year and everyone waits patiently for their arrival. Once everyone takes their seat around the large dining room table, the steaming toikey is ceremoniously brought to the table where Uncle Gabriel carves it with almost religious fanfare. On one fateful Thanksgiving the family makes the decision to start the festivities without Uncle Gabriel--they have waited long enough. When he and his wife finally enter the dining room and discover that the meal has begun without them, Uncle Gabriel explodes and storms out of the house with his wife. The meal continues and yet the Thanksgiving meal is drastically different without Uncle Gabriel.

I must confess that this worship service always feels to me like the Krichinksy Thanksgiving dinner. Here we are ELCA’ers and a smattering of LCMS’ers gathered for the thanksgiving meal of Christ’s body and blood. Part of our family has decided it cannot eat with us. This is always a somber occasion for me.

Luther described the meal we are about to share as the “sacrament of real fellowship.” We all know that this morning’s fellowship meal is tragically broken.

I believe we must lament our brokenness and mourn the absence of our LCMS colleagues. We cannot take pride in our being present or in their staying away. We must search our hearts and ponder what part we play in the brokenness of Christ’s very body.

I have a dream for this service. I have shared this dream with the deans and circuit counselors who plan these semi-annual gatherings. My dream comes from a worship service I have imagined is held at Taize, the ecumenical monastic community in France. In my dream the monks gather together for worship and listen to God’s word; when it comes time for Holy Communion, this close knit community sadly divides, Protestants going to one altar and Roman Catholics to another. The most astonishing think in this dream is that Christ welcomes all the broken ones, Protestants and Roman Catholics alike, to taste the gifts of heaven.

I contacted a classmate of mine who was a monk at Taize and now teaches worship at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul. I shared my dream with him and asked him if it is even close to reality. He told me that my dream isn’t quite true. The monks do not go to separate altars. They do gather together for the service of the Word and yet, when it comes time to receive Communion, Protestant and Roman Catholic receive the sacrament reserved from their respective traditions’ previous celebrations. Dirk pointed out that the monks confess and lament their brokenness. They do not create false solutions for age-old divisions and or pious fabrications for current misunderstandings; rather, they gather as broken Christians in a broken church longing for God to heal them and the church they love.

We gather this morning as a Reformation church. While we give thanks to God for the truth of the Gospel, we should also lament our brokenness. I cannot think of a more apt illustration to confirm Luther’s explanation of the third article of the Apostles’ Creed than our gathering here this morning: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.” No matter how hard we try, we are incapable of mending the fracture of Christ’s body either by our liturgical ingenuity or theological gimmicks.

One might wonder then, what is the hope? Where is there a word of Gospel this morning? Hear again Saint Paul’s words: “For there is no distinction, 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, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”

Father Timothy Radcliffe, a British Roman Catholic priest, in his book Why Go to Church, says it this way: “Any engagement with the word of God opens us beyond our narrow ecclesiastic tribes. It subverts our temptations towards sectarian superiority; it demolishes the battlements that we erect around our tradition” (pg. 58).

The Gospel touches us here this morning and it mysteriously touches those who have stayed away at least for now. We, a Reformation people, trust that God will prevail and mend this broken body. Until then, we give thanks that God sees fit to persevere and that, yet again, we hear the words, “Take and eat, this is my broken body for you.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 18, 2009
St. Luke, Evangelist and Physician
II Timothy 4: 5-11; Luke 1: 1-4; 24: 44-53
"Be Healed!"

I don’t know it for a fact but I have got to believe the reason there are so many malpractice suits filed against physicians is because many of us have the crazy notion that our doctors are God. We believe that doctors should be able to cure our every ailment and, if they don’t, we will sue them for not being God. Doctors should be able to cure cancer, relieve aching joints, find remedies for baldness, and restore our vision to 20-20. If they cannot get our diminishing bodies back in order, they have failed us and we will sue.

Tradition has it that Saint Luke, whose memory we honor this day, not only wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts but was also a physician. I would imagine that many people in his day treated Luke like God. He probably visited his patients’ homes, knelt at their besides, and tried every procedure under the sun to restore their health. And they, in turn, probably expected him to heal their every ill.

While Saint Luke was prescribing herbs and ordering up smelling salts for his ailing patients, he also was inviting them to listen to stories about Jesus in the Gospel he wrote. He not only healed patients’ physical ailments, he also healed their souls. Luke brings that identical healing to us this morning.

Without Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts, our spiritual lives would be in poor health. Luke gives us that beautiful song of Mary that she sang upon receiving the news that she was going to be the mother of Jesus--“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” Luke teaches us the Nunc Dimittis, the words Simeon proclaimed upon beholding the Messiah, the baby Jesus, after waiting for his arrival for years and years—“Now let your servant go in peace…for my eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepare in the sight of every nation.” If it were not for Luke’s gorgeous imagination, we would not hear of shepherds watching over their flocks by night on Christmas Eve. Luke’s story-telling gives us the beloved parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Doctor Luke brings us healing and salvation for eternity.

Today we are about to do something that hasn’t been done here at First Lutheran in a number of years, something some of you may never have done in your lifetime. Today we have a healing service. In a few moments you will be invited forward to be anointed with the oils of healing. The oils were blessed by our Bishop Murray Finck and Episcopal Bishop James Mathes of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego at the annual Holy Week service at Saint Paul’s Cathedral just up the street, when we pastors renew our ordination vows and receive these blessed oils for this very ministry of healing.

I must be honest with you: healing services give me the heebie-jeebies. Maybe it has something to do with my West Virginia roots where country preachers set up their tents and claim to perform miraculous healings for all manner of infirmities. My hunch is that a number of you, upon being invited forward to “receive a sign of healing and wholeness in the name of the Triune God,” will think of those television evangelists laying their hands on people with crutches and screaming, “In the name of Jesus, be healed, throw down your crutches and walk!” How many of you are struggling this very moment, “Should I go forward or not?” Deep down, you wonder whether any significant healing can happen here this morning or if this is simply a pious hoax?

A number of years ago when I served Augustana Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C., our congregation held the official healing service in conjunction with the unveiling of the massive AIDS Quilt on the Washington Mall. I will never forget that Sunday morning. Our church was packed. A young man, skin and bones and sores, was pushed forward in a wheel chair by his weeping mother. We prayed to God that his deathly illness might flee him. 300 people came forward that morning in solidarity with that young man who had been treated like a leper by so many; they came forward, too, to be healed of their own invisible ailments. What joy we all felt. Healing happens mysteriously for those with eyes of faith.

I remember another healing. 103 year-old Geneva Bailey was breathing her last breaths this side of the kingdom come. I gathered at her bedside at the National Lutheran Home along with her daughter, Naomi. I anointed Geneva’s head with the oil of healing and announced the identical blessing I had for the young man with AIDS. I will never forget Geneva suddenly joining her daughter and me as we sang “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” She died moments later. Though she could not remember her own name, she remembered God’s name as she sang her last song on earth. Have you ever seen such a healing?

Neither of these healings was what we expected. Is it possible that God gave that young man and Geneva the healing they needed most, the healing we could never imagine and which only God can give?

Luke tells similar stories over and over again in his Gospel and the Book of Acts. Just when people give up hope, suddenly God concocts miraculous surprises. Just when people lose their imaginations, Jesus does the unimaginable.

What will happen when you come forward to be anointed this morning? It may be exactly what you expect or it may be far more wondrous than anything you are imagining. I urge you to keep you eyes and hearts open. Who knows, you might throw down crutches you never knew you had.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 11, 2009
Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 10: 17-31
"Priceless"

You have heard the commercial: “Some things are priceless; for everything else there is Master Card.”

The rich man who came to Jesus agreed with the Master Card commercial with one slight exception. He believed nothing was priceless: as long as he had money--and he had lots of it--and as long as he led a good life--and he was as good as they come-- nothing was out of his reach. Everything, in his mind, had a price and he had money to pay for it.

The rich man was a very good man as I have noted. He had kept all the commandments: he had murdered no one, had never committed adultery--maybe even hadn’t lusted in his heart like Jimmy Carter, had defrauded no one--he was no Bernie Madoff; and he still loved his mother and father even though they drove him half crazy at times. Not only was he a very good man, he was rich to boot. He was accustomed to getting what he wanted, when he wanted, no matter what the price--the finest aged liquors, the most exotic cars, the luxury box at Qualcomm Stadium, the one hundred foot yacht complete with helicopter, the stunning vacation homes in Tahiti and Monaco. It was in that vein that he asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is the kind of question people with lots of money are used to asking: “How much does it cost? No problemo.” These kind of people don’t haggle to round off the price to the nearest hundred thousand dollar. You name the price and they are happy to pay the going rate--squabbling over thousands of dollars takes time and energy and the well know, of course, time is money. Is it any wonder, then, that the rich young man asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Then Jesus’ stunning answer: “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” You know the rest, I’m sure…“The rich man was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

Jesus didn’t dislike the rich man; in fact, the Bible says, “He loved him.” As Jesus watched him walk away with tears in his eyes and his head hanging low, Jesus was saddened for him. Here the rich man thought he had to buy God’s love, never imagining for a second that for the first time in his life, something so exquisite, so perfect, was absolutely free.

Jesus watched him walk away. He knew that it was going to be impossible for that poor rich man and so many like him to enter the kingdom of heaven. The rich man simply couldn’t purchase eternal life. Buying eternal life is not like buying a Ferrari. The rich man’s attempt to buy eternal life was so pathetic that Jesus compared it to a camel trying to thread itself through the eye of a needle.

And yet, the story doesn’t end there. It was impossible for the rich man to buy eternal life, but it wasn’t impossible for God to give it to him without charge, freely. And then these wonderful words--and never forget them, never: “For God all things are possible.”

Before we get down on the rich man and a lot of people like him, let us exercise caution. This Gospel reading is not just about wealth. Each one of us has something which we find impossible to give up for a greater good. That one thing we won’t give up is our most cherished possession or, in another word, our idol. It is the one thing we would die for--our nation, our children, our job. Jesus tells us that we must be willing to let go of our most prized possession if we want eternal life! Perhaps this is what happens when we feel like we have lost everything and we cry, “What will I ever do now? I have lost everything.” No, Jesus says, you haven’t lost everything. You still have the most priceless gift, the promise of eternal life. Maybe when all seems lost, when there seems like no tomorrow, maybe then we are closest to having free hands to receive the most exquisite gift of all, the priceless gift of eternal life.

Abraham Lincoln said it a different way: “A person becomes what he or she thinks about all day.” What do you think about all day? Do you worry what other people think of you--sell it! Do you worry about how much money you will have in retirement--sell it! Do you agonize that people don’t think you are important enough--sell it! Jesus has an uncanny way of discovering what that one thing is that blocks us from receiving that priceless gift of eternal life--and he says, “Sell it. Make room for my love.” We may not have the rich man’s riches, but each of us has that something that gets between God and us. Figure out what it is and sell it.

Jesus was very sad about this rich man because he was running scared. Rich as he was, he was missing out on the joy of God’s love, of what someone else, in this case God, could do for him. He couldn’t live life without worrying about what the stock market was going to do tomorrow. “Sell all you have and give it to the poor”--Jesus wanted to teach him how to love life, and most importantly, to recognize for the first time that God would love him even if he didn’t have a nickel to his name.

God loves you too. This whole morning has been free of charge--the words of forgiveness for all the sins you have committed, known and unknown, have been declared to you for free; the meal soon to follow is the best free lunch the world knows. You are here at a royal banquet with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and it doesn’t cost you a dime. This is priceless my friends, absolutely priceless.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 4, 2009
Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Psalm 8
"The Creation Symphony"

Today’s Bible readings are absolutely maddening. The book of Job can leave you breathless as you try to figure out why God lets such terrible things happen to Job and his family. The reading about divorce from Mark’s Gospel makes you sit back and wait in anticipation or fidget in fear: “What will the preacher dare say this morning?” Frankly, I am not up to the challenge of Job or divorce. Thankfully, as Jared and I brainstormed about today’s worship service, it popped into my mind that today is Saint Francis Day. Like a gift from heaven, I had the topic for this morning’s sermon.

Today’s Psalm is Psalm 8 so please don’t accuse me of disregarding this morning’s lessons totally. Psalm 8 is a delightful celebration of creation and of our lofty place in God’s glorious universe. Listen to the Psalmist as he stares into the night sky: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

Saint Francis loved those starry nights, too.

There is something astonishing about looking up into starry skies. It is easy to ask the Psalmist’s question, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” When you look at all those stars, you do wonder, don’t you, why God has made us the governors of creation or, as the Psalmist says, “A let little lower than God” crowned us with God’s glory and honor or, as the 60’s rock group the Jefferson Airplane would have, “We are the crown of creation.” Why us? Why has God chosen us to be almost co-creators?

If I were ever to become a Presbyterian, the chief reason I would do so is because of my love for the first question and answer in their Westminster Catechism. The first question: “What is the chief end of humanity?” The answer: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever!” I love that!

The chief end of humanity is to glorify God. We could say that God has appointed us to be conductors of the Creation Symphony. You and I have the capacity to look to the eastern sky as the full moon rises over the mountain and to look to the west as the sun sets into the Pacific and have our jaws drop; we become absolutely silent except for the occasional oohs and ahs. Unlike any other creature in the universe, we can feel wonder, we can sense magnificence. And with that wonder and sense of the magnificent, we can sing praises to God.

The difficulty arises whenever we forget that we are the conductors of the Creation Symphony. It is up to us to protect every bit of the universe’s splendor so God’s praises can be sung with every one of creation’s instruments.

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is the “first among equals” in the Orthodox Church. Patriarch Bartholomew, known as the “the green Patriarch,” has said: “For human beings to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the Earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or by destroying its wetlands; for human beings to injure other human beings with disease by contaminating the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life, with poisonous substances--all of these are sins before God, humanity, and the world.” The Orthodox Church, one of the more conservative Christian traditions, understands that if we are to sing God’s praises fully, we must protect creation; anything short of that is sin.

Saint Francis understood this as well though he lived 800 years ago. The son of rich cloth merchant in Assisi, Italy, Francis gave away all his earthly possessions. He had no need of earthly possessions when he had creation’s beauty at his fingertips.

There is a story told about Saint Francis walking along the road with a number of his religious brothers and talking about religious things when, out of the blue, Francis seemed distracted and went over to a tree and began to preach to the birds. Suddenly, he began to teach the birds to pray. Listen to his words: “My brother birds, you should praise your very Creator very much and always love him; he gave you feathers to clothe you, wings so that you can fly, and whatever else was necessary for you. God made you noble among his creatures, and he gave you a home in the purity of the air; though you neither sow nor reap, he nevertheless protects and governs you without any solicitude on your part.”

Saint Francis delighted in the simple pleasures. I know that many of you are like Saint Francis. You find great delight in your dogs and cats. Just a few months ago, we had to put our beloved Persian cat Emma to sleep. She was a tiny little fur ball of a thing whom we had found almost dead, at curbside, on a scorching Philadelphia afternoon. She brought us astonishing joy. Every night when we went to bed, Emma was soon to follow—I think she thought she was a dog! I would say to Dagmar every night once we were tucked in, “Count to 10 and guess who will be on your pillow.” Like clock work, Emma would jump up on the bed, leaping as high as she possible could, walk right over my face, push Dagmar around until she found the perfect sleeping position on her pillow, and then, always, she would shake her head from her night’s last drink as water flew all over our faces. We loved this evening shower. It was how we concluded the day, praising God with our cuddly little Emma, wet and remembering our baptisms for all the dangers that lurked in the night.

If you are fortunate, you have similar stories of your beloved pets. You know the peculiar phenomenon of crying for your pets when they die like you have rarely cried for another human being. When we dug the hole and placed Emma in our backyard on her favorite pillow, I cried like a baby and didn’t go to work that day. Who knows why? Perhaps it was as George Eliot once said, “Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.” Or, as the needle point picture my mother gave me and that hangs in my office reminds me, “God, help me be the person my dog things I am.” We know that these animals, in their own delightful fuzzy way, help us glorify God like nothing else can.

And, of course, you don’t need a dog or cat to praise God. We are blessed to live in one of the world’s stunning cities. Quite a few years ago, on a gorgeous spring day in Washington, D.C., I asked a parishioner who had traveled the world, what place has gorgeous spring days year round. He said, if there is such a city, San Diego comes close. Isn’t he right? I still catch myself, after 4 ½ years, walking up to strangers and saying, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” They look at me strangely as if to say, “You fool, every day is beautiful. This is San Diego!”

When we say that we believe in God, we say that we believe in Jesus Christ the redeemer and the Holy Spirit the sanctifier; we also say that we believe in the Father the creator. We need to give more airplay to God the creator. In seeing the wonder of creation, we are led to see the glory of God. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The miracle is not to walk on water but on the earth.” The miracle is to walk on the earth! The miracle is to see this earth singing its own beautiful melody to God.

And so I pray that you might find great delight in your pets and in this beautiful city of San Diego. May sun and moon, dogs and cats, crashing waves and soaring mountains--may they all help you magnify your God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 27, 2009
Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
Esther 7: 1-6, 9-10; 9: 20-22
"What an Amazing Beauty Queen!"

This is a first for me. Today will be the first time in my ministry that I preach a sermon on the book of Esther. I have spent the week brushing up on this obscure Old Testament book. How many of you know or can tell the story of Esther?

Esther is a most peculiar book. Like her Old Testament kin Song of Solomon, Esther never mentions God once. To add insult to injury, the book is filled with sexism and brutality, mayhem and treachery.

Esther is one of the more controversial books in the Bible. Rabbis and Martin Luther alike questioned its placement in Sacred Writ. In our day, this is one of the few biblical books not to appear in any of our assigned readings over a three year period. The other books never scheduled for use in our worship are Ezra, Obadiah, Nahum, and Haggai in the Old Testament and John’s Second letter in the New Testament. The only reason we read Esther this morning is because we have been using alternative Old Testament readings for the past few months.

I have a question for you: who among you ever imagined that a beauty pageant winner would become an important player in the life of God’s chosen people? That’s exactly what Esther was, a beauty queen. She grew up with her older cousin Mordecai in the enemy nation of Persia which is today’s Iran. When King Xerxes tossed his wife Vashti out of the castle for refusing to kowtow at the snap of his fingers and parade her beautiful body at a “men’s only” party, he went looking for a new queen. He held a beauty pageant to determine his next bride. And the winner was Esther. As politicians do occasionally, Xerxes apparently didn’t vet Esther thoroughly enough. When he chose her to be his bride and mighty Persia’s queen, he missed one stunning detail: she was a Jew; she was the enemy.

Once Esther got into the royal palace, she caught wind of a terrible plot about to occur. One of her husband’s wicked cabinet members, Haman, was hatching a plan to hang her cousin Mordecai because he refused to pay homage to him. Haman hated the Jews as many have hated the Jews through the ages. Haman asked King Xerxes permission to build a seventy foot gallows from which to hang Mordecai. Xerxes liked the plan. “Hang him,” he cried! To make matters worse, as weak leaders are inclined to do, Xerxes became convinced the best solution for the entire “Jewish problem” was to kill them all…Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Esther had a choice to make: acquiesce to her husband the king or come out of the closet and tell him she, too, was a Jew. The only question remained: would Esther risk her neck for the sake of her people? She chose the courageous option: she told the king she was Jewish and pled with him to spare Mordecai and all the Jews whom Haman intended to butcher.

Lo and behold, Xerxes heeded Esther’s request; not only did he spare Mordecai and all the Jewish people but, in a strange twist of fate, bizarrely, he sent his trusted advisor, Haman, to the seventy foot gallows to die instead. To put a cherry on top of the sundae, Esther persuaded her husband to give Haman’s vacated governmental position to her cousin, that Jewish guy Mordecai.

The Jewish people have celebrated this miraculous event every year on the festival of Purim which typically falls in the month of March. On this day, they read the book of Esther. Purim comes from the word pur which means “lot.” Haman, the king's advisor, drew lots to determine the exact time when to kill the Jews. Esther saved the Jewish people from Haman's "lot" by revealing the plot to King Xerxes. It is fitting that we read about Esther during this holy time for the Jewish people as they observe their most sacred day tomorrow, Yom Kippur.

This Jewish festival of Purim is apparently quite a riotous affair, filled with raucous merry-making. The celebration is so joyous, in fact, that it is said that the rabbis have actually commanded adults to get drunk on the holiday of Purim.

We Christians are often not so good at celebrating, of giving thanks for good health or being spared disaster. We easily forget to thank God for saving us from our own personal gallows. I remember when my sister and I were little, following Communion, as the older people processed back from the altar, my sister, seeing the sour faces asked my parents, “Aren’t you allowed to smile after getting Communion?” Our Jewish brothers and sisters have something to teach us: they know brutality and yet, in the face of horrible hatred directed their way over the years, they have also known how to celebrate when God prevails. Listen to their merry-making, “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat, drink and be merry!”

In addition to teaching us how to celebrate, Esther might encourage each one of us to be more than we ever imagined we could be. Esther had a lot going for her: she was beautiful and married to a king. This was not enough for her though. She saw her people suffering and she felt compelled to stop the madness. There was more to life for Esther than being beautiful and powerful and comfortable.

In his lovely new book, South of Broad, southern writer Pat Conroy writes about “proper society” in Charleston, South Carolina. One character he writes of is young Molly, a true Southern belle. He describes her this way: “She was a Southern girl born to please rather than to think, to charm rather than to issue calls to arms.” Esther was destined to be just like Molly except Esther used the gift of her beauty and charm for a greater end. She challenged the brutality of her adopted land and persuaded the ruler, her husband, to shower compassion on God’s children.

Esther is an important model for us all. Sometimes we measure our lives by how good things are for us individually. And yet there almost always comes a time when, if we are to be fully human, we realize that there is more to life than simply caring for our own needs and desires.

Psychologist James Hollis expresses it this way in his book, What Matters Most: “My experience of working with people…is that the human psyche continues to ask us to grow, to develop, to explore, to be curious. Boredom is the pathology of the depressed, or the unimaginative. Ceasing to grow is a failure of nerve, because it is not what our psyche demands.”

Esther did not suffer from a failure of nerve! She had to grow and in order to grow she had to ask, “What matters most?” The answer she discovered was wrapped up in risking her neck for the people she loved. She was summoned to be something far greater than a beauty queen, to do something far more satisfying than to wear the queen’s tiara. She was called to save God’s chosen people, the Jews.

I sometimes worry about people whose biggest concern in life is their own happiness and their own personnel salvation. I am not saying that your happiness and personal salvation are unimportant. What I am saying is that your relationship with your suffering brothers and sisters in this world is just as important if not more so. Do you care whether God’s children have food on their table this morning? Do you care whether God’s children live in peace in the Middle East? Do you care whether a little child suffers illness because she has no access to health care? Esther cared for far more than herself. And for that reason alone, this book deserves to be in the Bible.

The book of Esther is a story of deliverance and courage. The book of Esther is a book worth reading. Now, in a song (“Open Your Ears, O Faithful People”) filled with the spirit of Esther’s Jewish family, let us celebrate all those in this world who, by God’s grace, find the courage to stand up for all who suffer in this world and let us celebrate God‘s goodness for all people.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 20, 2009
Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 9: 30-37
"Oh, Those Kids!"

When I was a kid, I stared at an oil painting just above the baptismal font every Sunday morning. The painting was called “Christ and the Children of the Nations.” I looked at that picture a thousand times as a child and at my confirmation, ordination, and my loved ones’ funerals. In it, Jesus gathers the children into his arms and onto his lap. There is a blond haired girl in dress and petticoat and patent leather shoes, an Indian girl in a lovely sari, a grass skirted Hawaiian girl with a lei and flowers in her hair, a Chinese boy in exotic costume, and an African boy in a loin cloth. This picture spoke volumes to me as a kid and still does today. It is a vision of what is most important to Jesus.

We typically don’t view Jesus’ hanging around with kids as the vital part of his ministry--the disciples certainly don’t! They have more important things on their minds. Immediately after Jesus tells the disciples what is ahead for him--his betrayal, death, and resurrection three days later--they begin to squabble over who among them is the greatest. They don’t seem capable of fathoming the depth of Jesus ministry, especially the part with the kids. They are expending their energy quarrelling over which of them is the greatest.

Let’s not be too harsh on the disciples. Our claims to greatness may not be quite as bold-faced as Muhammad Ali’s “I am the greatest” or John Lennon’s that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ and yet we all long for greatness--at least I do. I want First Lutheran to be known as the church with wonderful worship, amazing outreach, and prophetic ministry. Maybe you are not quite so arrogant; maybe your greatness coming more subtly, you know like “I am the most humble person in the whole world.”

We preachers yearn for greatness. One pastor was on his way home from services one Sunday, pleased as punch with the stem-winder sermon he had just delivered. In his mind, it ranked as one of the finest in his long and distinguished career. Fishing for a compliment, he asked his wife, “I wonder how many great preachers there are in the world.” She replied, “I have no idea, but I am sure it is one less than you think!”

Our deep-seated longings for greatness come, in no small part, because we fear that we aren’t worth much and will not be remembered after we die. We spend the better part of a lifetime trying to prove ourselves, constructing flattering images that others can adore. As the disciples hunger for greatness, Jesus tells them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Immediately following these words, Jesus does a most peculiar thing. He welcomes a child into his arms and tells his friends, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Jesus turns the world upside down. He tells us the best place to discover him is in a snot-nosed, screaming kid.

So, what’s the secret in kids? Jesus can’t possibly think that children are innocent little angels-- every parent knows better than that. The second a child springs from her mother’s womb, she screams bloody murder, putting the world on notice that she is now the center of the universe.

What possibly could Jesus see in children? Children have no importance on their own merit—they do not work for a living, they have no worldly wisdom or vision, and, unless of noble birth, they certainly are not famous. Children depend on others for their survival. Maybe that’s what Jesus sees in them.

If there is one thing I love about our Lutheran tradition, it is that we baptize infants. This practice scandalizes quite a few of our brothers and sisters from other Christian traditions. They wonder how we can possibly baptize babies when there is not a ghost of a chance that they can believe in Jesus or have the slightest inkling what is happening. These traditions urge us to take our time, to wait until our children accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior before we baptize them. But we Lutherans, ever the contrarian ones, keep baptizing one precious child after another. What better way to give God the glory, we ask, than to baptize those whose only claim is having been thrust into the frightening and chilly waters of baptism and come up gasping for air? Maybe that’s why Jesus was so enthralled by helpless little children. Their very helplessness points to what a wondrous God we have.

Jean Vanier is the founder of L’Arche, a community whose followers commit to live with severely mentally and physically challenged people. He tells the story of a little boy making his first Communion. At the reception following worship, the boy’s uncle went over to the mother and said, “Wasn’t worship beautiful? It’s too bad he doesn’t realize that happened.” The little boy heard his uncle’s comment and with tears in his eyes said, “Don’t worry, Mummy, Jesus loves me as I am” (Stanley Hauerwas & Jean Vanier, Living Gently in a Violent World, IVP Press Books, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2008, pg. 72).

When I take Communion to First Lutheran’s oldest members, they receive the gifts of bread and wine with similar gratitude to that little boy’s. Sister Joan Chittister speaks of how the appreciation for simple pleasures grows with the years: “As young people, we worried about being popular or bright or accepted. In the middle years, we worried about getting it all, having it all, enjoying it all. But there is no doubt about it: whatever we have become at sixty, we are. The game clock has ended. Now we can just enjoy the interminable feeling of having finally survived the climb, of being free of the unceasing competition, of the unending demands for self-sacrifice. Now life is just life and no more” (Joan Chittister, The Gift of Years: Growing Old Gently, Bluebrige, New York, 2008, pg. 113). I sense this very spirit when our oldest members receive Communion. They celebrate simple gifts of bread and wine, Jesus’ body and blood. These gifts are enough.

I hate to disappoint you who gather here this morning but not one of you is great by worldly standards. The beauty of today’s Gospel is found as Jesus’ urges us not to worry and to stop striving for greatness. It is enough, Jesus seems to say, simply to be children of God. As I look out at you this morning, I see a picture similar to the one I gazed upon as a little boy. This time the picture is of you in Jesus’ arms. He appears to say, “Take and eat, this is my body for you.” My dear little ones, being in Jesus’ arms and on his lap is the greatest thing that can happen to you. You see, Jesus loves you just as you are.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 13, 2009
Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 8: 27-38
"Is There Anything Worth Dying For?"

Of all the quotes I have saved in my files over the years, one of my favorites is this morning’s “Quote of the Day” from the former president of Union Theological Seminary in New York (Donald Shriver). He quotes an eminent psychiatrist: “The greatest secret of mental health comes down to us in the words, ‘Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life…will save it’”

At first blush, these words of Jesus, “Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whose loses his life wills save it,“ run counter to everything we were ever taught growing up: the worst thing, it would seem, is to go out and lose our lives.

This past Thursday, our Bishop Murray Finck read this morning’s Gospel at our deans’ meeting: “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.” He then asked how we reacted to these words. I said, “Strangely, these words sound like good news to me.”

In truth, as the bishop read this morning’s gospel, other words came to mind, words of Allan Boesak, a South African pastor who fought fiercely to end apartheid in his native land. You may remember how blacks were imprisoned, tortured, and killed in South Africa during this time. In the midst of the struggle, Allan Boesak said: “We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask us, ‘Where are your wounds?’ And we will say, ‘We have no wounds.’  And God will ask, ‘Was nothing worth fighting for?’”

“Was nothing worth fighting for?” We could ask the question another way, “Is there anything in our lives worth dying for?” Is there anything that means so much to us that we would give up everything, including our lives, for its sake?

When I was a kid, I loved reading books from the Landmark Books series; perhaps some of you enjoyed these too. I remember reading The Winter at Valley Forge, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, The U.S. Frogmen of World War II, and Daniel Boone-The Opening of the Wilderness. My favorite Landmark Book was The Story of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer was born in 1875 in a village of Alsace, then part of Germany. I was mesmerized by this man. He was a genius. He was successful at everything he tried: an internationally recognized organist, a noted physician, a highly respected biblical theologian whose books are still read today. What touched me most about Albert Schweitzer--at ten years old, I had never heard of anyone like him--was that he made the decision to lose his life; he seemed to throw away his mastery of so many disciplines as he and his wife headed off to French Equatorial Africa to start a hospital. It was in that hospital where more than 500 patients were often treated at a time that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. Schweitzer once said: “Do something for somebody everyday for which you do not get paid.” Schweitzer found something worth dying for and in so doing gained a life worth living.

There are those people--perhaps you are fortunate enough to know some personally--who do the most amazing thing; they lose their lives for the sake of Jesus and they end up all the better for it.

I once asked one of my dearest friends who is the abbot of a Greek Orthodox monastery: “Are you happy being in a monastery with no money, no family, and no church to lead?” He quickly corrected me: “Wilk, it is not important whether I am happy. The question is, am I following Jesus?”

In each of our lives, we face the moment when we must decide: “Who do you say that I am?” The disciple Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” That was a terrific answer and for it, Peter received a gold star from Jesus. And yet, Jesus’ follow-up question as to whether Peter was willing to die for the answer was far more difficult.

Jesus led the way in answering this question. Jesus didn’t ask us to go first. He went first. As he had his discussion with Peter and the disciples, he was already making the decisive turn to Jerusalem and looking to his death at Calvary. Jesus offered his life for those he loved.

One way to discover what you really believe is to find out what you are most passionate about. Is the essence of your life reclining in a Lazy Boy, watching college football, listening to talk radio, drinking beer, and eating peanuts and popcorn? Or is there more? Do you have a passion worth dying for? Asked another way, how do you want to be remembered in your obituary?

One of my favorite books is Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. It is about an archbishop whose ministry occurs in the remotest and most desperate desert places around New Mexico. As he nears death, a priest, his friend and colleague, gathers at his bedside. The archbishop tells his friend, “I shall not die of a cold, my son, I shall die of having lived.” I shall die of having lived. I suppose each of us must finally ask ourselves whether we shall die of a cold or of having lived.

From time to time, people ask me, “What kind of pastor are you?” When I tell them I am a Lutheran pastor, they often respond: “I’m not a Lutheran. I don’t go to church. But, it really doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe.” I always think to myself: what would have happened if Jesus had thought that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe? Would he have died for you and me if it didn’t really matter what he believed?

I’m never too sure that taking up our cross and following Jesus will make us the happiest people in this world. What I do believe, though, is that it will make us a more committed people, a more profound people, a people whose lives truly matter. Typically, people who bear the cross for others have lives worth living, lives that are deep and wonderful. You can tell just by watching them.

My prayer for each of you this morning is that you will discover something in your life worth dying for. I would imagine that if you do, you will also find that life is well worth living.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 6, 2009
Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Proverbs 22: 1-3, 8-9, 22-23; James 2: 1-10, 14-17, Mark 7: 24-37
"Getting on with Ministry"

Our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is embroiled in controversy. The controversy focuses on our national church’s recent decision in Minneapolis to allow gay and lesbian people in committed monogamous relationships to become pastors in our church. Some of you are tired of hearing about this. At our weekly pastors’ gathering on Wednesday, a number of my colleagues expressed similar sentiment: “Let’s get on with ministry.” I suppose in one way or another, almost all of us are tired of talking about human sexuality.

The plea, “Let’s get on with ministry,” longs for business to be back as usual--Sunday School, worship services, and picnics.

But here’s the deal…Being Christian in this world means, if we are faithful, we rarely get to choose the challenges of ministry. As soon as one challenge subsides, another raises its pesky head. Perhaps you have noticed. We typically are not afforded the luxury of picking and choosing how we will do ministry; more often than not, we are thrown into the fray with arms flailing.

If “let’s get on with ministry” means let’s do away with controversy, my hunch is that, short of the kingdom of God, this will never occur. There will always be bending and stretching, always disagreement and new opportunities. We hear about such bending and stretching in today’s gospel as the Syrophoenician comes to Jesus and begs him to heal her daughter. Apparently, even Jesus’ initial response was, “Let’s get on with ministry.” The woman was a Gentile and who was she to come to Jesus. And yet, it was through bending and stretching that remarkably new ground-breaking ministry occurred. Listen to this morning’s other two Bible readings if you don’t believe me that the Bible bends and stretches us.

• From Proverbs: “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail. Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate.”

• And from James' epistle: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor.”

These readings on this particular Sunday challenge the church to be more than it ever imagined it could be. These readings call God’s people to treat the poor with justice and goodness. Not always a comfortable challenge. Taking these readings seriously might get quite a few of us grumping, “Let’s get on with ministry.”

When the epistle of James was written, apparently the Sunday morning ushers were falling all over themselves to find the best seats in the sanctuary for those dressed in Armani suits and Chanel dresses. James criticized his community for coddling the well-scrubbed and paying little or no attention to the poor. I’ll bet those early Christians simply wanted their life together to be status quo. I’ll bet they chaffed under James’ concern for the poor. I’ll bet they complained, “Let’s get on with ministry.”

There are a number of congregations in our synod and throughout the country threatening or planning to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Not one of them is leaving because of how the Lutheran church does or does not treat the poor. You do know, don’t you, that there are far more passages in the Bible regarding how we treat the poor than there are on homosexuality. What a refreshing breeze if the pastors who claim to take the Bible literally on sexuality called their churches to another literalism, to sell their buildings and property and, along with their savings, give it all to the poor. If they did that, I would take their concerns about the literal interpretation of Scripture far more seriously.

It’s hard to take the Bible seriously when it comes to lifting up the poor and challenging the well-to-do. In a congregation I served, the president of the congregation came knocking at my office door, red-faced and trembling. The congregation was about to decide whether to have Holy Communion every week. He said to me, “Pastor, you may be right about our Lutheran Confessions calling for weekly Communion but we have an influential couple who is threatening to leave our church if we institute such a policy. And worse yet,” he added, “they are our highest givers!” Even though the epistle of James warns against such preferential treatment for the rich, this president understood quite well who pays the bills.

In one of my favorite books, Telling Secrets, preacher/writer Frederick Buechner makes this observation about the church: “I believe that the church has an enormous amount to learn from [twelve step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous]. 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 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, Harpers, San Francisco, 1991, pg. 93).

James must have had similar yearnings when he made the famous biblical statement: “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” He longed for a church that was left with God and each other.

What if our faith were like a game of charades? What if all we had here was God and ourselves and the only way people knew of our faith was by watching how we treat one another and, as today’s lessons suggests, how we treat the poor? Saint Francis is reported to have said, “Proclaim the Gospel and, if you must, use words.” How might people know our church if our actions were our only words?

I must tell you, I like how you struggle with this issue of rich and poor and as you have struggled for years and years here at First Lutheran. We are far from perfect, of course! But I think we understand the task of treating the rich and poor similarly even though it is awfully challenging and maddening at times and we slip up repeatedly. When people ask me what First Lutheran Church is like, I often describe it as “Alcoholics Anonymous at worship on Sunday morning.” And that, my friends, is a good thing. We come here with our brokenness, with our imperfections; we come with our longings for a community that welcomes us with open arms. Maybe that’s why the Passing of the Peace takes so long here: we are so delighted to see each other here and alive, so glad that we are able to worship together yet again on Sunday morning. I think we get what James meant when he said so long ago that “faith without works is dead.”

And so, I agree with my colleagues who say, “Let’s get on with ministry.” But, to tell you the truth, that’s what I thought we had been doing all along…Oh well…

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 30, 2009
Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Song of Solomon 2: 8-13
"A Hugging and Kissing Love"

The church has always seemed uncomfortable with hugging and kissing love. We certainly hear about love in our prayers, hymns, and sermons and yet that love is typically a love we feel as brothers and sisters in Christ, we might call it “Christian love.” We in the church are careful to distinguish Christian love from hugging and kissing love.

I am convinced that our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s monumental struggles with human sexuality are due, in no small part, to the discomfort we Christians feel when it comes to talking about hugging and kissing. Most of us were never taught healthy examples of hugging and kissing love, if we were taught at all. What we learned likely came from high school gym teachers, Hugh Hefner circulations, and backseats of 57’ Chevy’s. How many of us learned about kissing and hugging in Sunday School or even from our parents? About the best we could say growing up is, “Ooh, my parents would never do that!”

It should come as no surprise, then, that the church has always been uncomfortable with the Old Testament book Song of Songs. Listen to a few words to refresh yourself:

The language is lush and erotic, language not typically heard in Scripture or at worship. Trying to mute this racy love, the church has often said that Song of Songs is not about the host of wonderful experiences two people have with one another but rather about something allegorical, seemingly more “holy.” It has been suggested that Song of Songs is a dialogue between God and Israel or Christ and the church or Christ and our individual souls--certainly not words between two people in love!

If you go home and read Song of Songs in its entirety, you will discover that it is the only book in the Bible that does not include the word “God.” Not once! Some have wondered why this book was included in the Bible in the first place. First century rabbis fiercely debated its inclusion; some considered it not much more than a rowdy drinking song.

I had a seminary professor, Brevard Childs, who finished every lecture on a particular book in the Old Testament with this question: “So why was this book included in the canon?” Remember, many books didn’t make the cut for entrance into the Bible. So, what about Song of Songs? If I were taking Dr. Child’s Old Testament survey course and he asked, “So, why is Song of Songs in the Bible?” I would guess the reason to be that we desperately need healthy models of love. You have noticed, I’m sure, that we aren’t too good when it comes to love--talking about it or living it. Is it any wonder that divorce rates hover around 50%, spousal abuse is epidemic, pornography is spreading like wild fire on the internet, and most Main Line denominations are rent asunder by human sexuality issues?

We have left the celebration of love to others, to musicians, poets, and artists. We shouldn’t be too critical of them when they give it their best shot at expressing love. Love really is pretty cool. I recently bought a CD of Leonard Cohen’s live concert in London. It is filled with love songs, both gorgeous and bittersweet. One of his songs is “Ain’t No Cure for Love.” I wonder why the church hasn’t gotten in on this marvelously delightful and delicious act.

Thankfully, the church increasingly is coming around. We actually are starting to believe that the Song of Songs is exactly what it sounds like, a poem celebrating love between two people. Song of Songs invites us to celebrate being fully alive, fully human. It bids us rejoice in God’s wonderful gift of hugging and kissing, of sharing everything we have with another person—including our bodies.

It is time we in the church do our love work better. Maybe we need to start talking to each other about the joys of love. Did anyone ever do that with you--your parents, Sunday School teachers, pastors?

I fear the church likes its categories neatly divided like sacred and profane, body and soul. An example of an attempt to make such a division was in evidence here at First Lutheran on Wednesday evening. Twenty-five member congregations of the San Diego Organizing Project gathered together with our Congresswoman Susan Davis. It was standing room only as protestors lined the streets shouting slanderous comments on bullhorns throughout the night. When I was asked by the media why the church is concerned with health care, I answered because God created us to be healthy. One newsman asked me, “Reverend, don’t you believe in the separation of church and state?” He, too, was tempted to make neat categories of division, separating what happens here on Sunday morning from what happens in our lives the rest of the week. The church dare not let this happen! I told the newsman that throughout the Bible, God shows deep concern for the health of God’s people. The prophet Jeremiah screamed to Israel, “Why is there no balm in Gilead?” or, in modern parlance, “Why is there no doctor in the house?” You don’t have to know much about Jesus to know that he went about the countryside healing his brothers and sisters on a regular basis. Pure and simple, God is concerned with all manner of life, including hugging and kissing and healthy bodies!

That is precisely what we are doing here at First Lutheran Church. Our medical clinics are over-flowing with people who cannot afford health care. Our budget is as tight as tight can be. We are seeing 30% more patients this year than last year and turning away potential patients because of the crowds. This church longs to take care of people’s bodies as well as their souls. This church puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to health care! We want people to know that God loves them in every way.

All that to say, the poetry of Song of Songs invites us to celebrate all of life, the physical as well as the spiritual, the body as well as the soul.

Poets are typically so much better at speaking about hugging and kissing love than are preachers so let me conclude with a poetic blessing for love…

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 23, 2009
Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
John 6: 56-69
"That God's Table May Be Open to All"

Let us pray…And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O God, my strength and my redeemer. Amen.

I made the mistake of taking my vacation this past week. I say “mistake” because our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Churchwide Assembly was live on the internet at the same time. I found it hard to get away from my computer. I was transfixed by the discussions in Minneapolis, especially the ones dealing with human sexuality and, in particular, whether our national church would approve allowing gay and lesbian people in committed relationships to serve as clergy in our church.

I’m sure that many of you watched the proceedings or awaited the assembly’s decision with bated breath. You prayed fervently for our church to finally open its doors widely for you and those you love.

I would like to stop here and let the celebration begin, going out to the patio and letting off fireworks but I cannot. When Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson announced the positive results of the vote on Friday, I was surprised by my reaction. I had thought I would dance for joy and click my heals. As happy as I was--and am--by the decision, I am aware that our national church is divided and many are in pain. Some have said that if the ELCA allows gay and lesbian people to be ordained, they will leave the church. When a family is divided, it is never cause simply for celebration. Mixed with jubilation is the sober reality that there are those who are deeply hurt. When even one brother or sister is offended and feels uninvited at the banquet table, we the baptized must pray for the Holy Spirit to bring peace and understanding.

It is fitting that we conclude five weeks of Jesus the Bread of Life texts from John’s Gospel this morning. Five weeks has seemed a long time to consider only one chapter in the Bible. (No other single chapter of Scripture receives the continuous Sunday morning airplay that John 6 does.) There is a reason why we have heard these texts over and over again. We need to hear them. We need to know that eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood brings us into his presence now and for eternity. We need these words during these days. These are the only words that can possibly unite our beloved Lutheran church amidst our differences.

It was clear that no matter what decisions our church made regarding human sexuality, someone was going to be deeply hurt. I worried most of the week what I would say to you this morning if the various human sexuality issues failed to pass; it brought a certain sadness just thinking about the possibility. Now, not for a minute do I regret the decision that was made in Minneapolis by the voting members. I know for many people--including a number of you here this morning--you have felt like outsiders in the church for far too long, for as long as some of you can remember; you have wondered whether there would ever be an equal place for you at Christ’s table. In spite of the rejection and the negative words spoken to you and about you for a lifetime, you have persevered and remained committed. You love your church. This morning, perhaps for the first time in your life, you are welcome in a way that you have never known until this very moment. This is astonishing and cause for great celebration and for that, we do well to thank God! We owe a great bow to you, our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters, for your faithfulness, commitment, leadership and generosity to your church. While you could have left, you didn’t. You stayed. You loved and love your church regardless of the pain you were forced to bear. You are a great testament to a church that may end up divided that one can hang in amidst the pain and anguish and not leave.

At the same time, however, we would not be a church true to our heritage that claims to welcome all people if we didn’t sense the profound pain some are feeling this morning. In the movie, Avalon, a family holds its annual Thanksgiving dinner. Like so many families, this family has gathered together on Thanksgiving for years and years and, with those years, have come many traditions. One of the traditions is that one of the uncles (I forget his name) always comes late for dinner--always! The family has patiently awaited his arrival, always, for years and years, until this year. The family decides to begin the meal without the uncle. When he finally arrives and discovers that his family has started without him, he is furious and storms out of the house. Of course, the meal isn’t the same now that the uncle has left. Even though they celebrate, there is a certain pall over the gathering.

It is probably fair to say that our ELCA national church family comes to a broken meal this morning. Amidst the celebration there is also a pall. When someone does not feel welcome, even when many of us are celebrating, we do well to pray for Christ’s guidance that we might all be one.

I sense that is why Jesus the Bread of Life texts have gone on for five weeks straight. Jesus wants us to know without a doubt that he, the Bread of Life, is present with us even when we have profound disagreements with one another. That is the one truth we must get right as a church and we dare not sacrifice no matter how strongly we disagree on other matters!

We are an imperfect church and what is amazing, at least to me, is that God calls us to be his body in the world. Why us? Sometimes, by God’s grace, we get things right and that is astonishing and we dance for joy; other times, however, we stumble and bumble and squabble with one another, and we must desperately grasp for God’s forgiveness, love, and wisdom. It is at these times when we so need to hear Jesus say to us, “I am the bread of life for you.” For whatever reason, God loves us, all of us, and he loves the church no matter how we stumble and bumble.

And so, let us rejoice with those of you who rejoice on this day. It is a wonderful day! And let us feel sadness with those who are not of one mind. May our deepest prayer be that the church may finally be one for, after all, this was Jesus’ most profound prayer to his Father in heaven, that we be one body, his body, the church.

Please stand and bow your heads as we pray the beautiful prayer that is said at the end of the day in the church’s Vesper liturgy…“Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ [the living bread from heaven]. Amen.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 16, 2009
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
John 6: 51-58
"Consecrating All Life"

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven...The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” These words have baffled church insiders and outsiders from the moment Jesus spoke them. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” we ask.

Outsiders have found these words outrageous. Some accused early Christians of being cannibals for claiming that they gathered on the Lord’s Day to eat the body and blood of Jesus.

Jesus’ claim that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” has caused one of the most ferocious and long-running debates in all of church history.

How exactly does the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus? When you come forward in a few minutes to receive these gifts from heaven, what do you receive? Some have asserted that we don’t really receive the body and blood; rather Christ is present spiritually. Others have suggested that Holy Communion is a memorial meal, kind of like a family reunion in which we gather at a picnic to remember Uncle Dave, only we remember our dear brother Jesus. Others have claimed that the bread and wine turn to the body and blood of Jesus and when you think you are seeing bread and wine that is an accident, a figment of the imagination. And what about Lutherans? We, always being denser and less sophisticated sorts, for the life of us cannot figure out the mystery of Christ’s body and blood. We say that we will take Jesus at his word: if he says, “Take and eat, this is my body and blood given for you,” well, by golly, if Jesus says it, then we will believe it.

If you think you have figured out this whole business about Jesus being the living bread from heaven, then answer this: when exactly does the bread and wine become the body and blood? We Christians have fought over this, too, like cats and dogs. Does the bread and wine become the body and blood when we say the Words of Institution (“In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread…”); or does the bread and wine become the body and blood when we pray the epiclesis, the fancy Greek word for when we say, “Pour your spirit upon these gifts of bread and wine…; or does the bread and wine become the body and blood when we eat it? Have I confused you yet?

I can never quite fathom these arguments. What I do know is that Jesus asks us to feast so fully on his body and blood that we actually become his body for the life of the world.

My favorite description of what occurs at Holy Communion comes from Father Alexander Schmemann, the late Russian Orthodox theologian who taught at Saint Vladimir’s Seminary in New York. Father Schmemann said that the process of the bread becoming Christ’s body begins far earlier than when it is put on the altar on Sunday morning and a few holy words are uttered. The consecration begins when the farmer plants the seed in the field; the process continues as the farmer harvests the wheat; and then there is that holy act when the woman, at home--her sanctuary of sorts!--kneads the dough and places it in the oven; the sacred act continues as the children joyfully bring the bread to church on Sunday morning. Father Schmemann said that every act on the way to receiving Jesus’ body and blood is an act of holiness, of consecration. Suddenly everything we do, our daily labor, our cooking, our walking to church--all of life is holy, or as Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

How might you and I become Christ’s body in the world? I have been deeply troubled of late by two discussions that I have been involved in: one is the discussion of human sexuality, and in particular the ordination of gay and lesbian people in our church, and the other the issue of health care in our country. What deeply troubles me is not that people disagree; rather I am troubled by the vitriolic rhetoric between opposing sides. The name calling, the nasty innuendos, the vicious attacks--so poisonous!

What if we see all life as holy? What if all we do in life has something to do with Holy Communion, Christ’s body and blood? How might that change how we treat one another?

The first Presiding Bishop of the ELCA Herbert Chilstrom in the conclusion of a recent letter to a person who opposes his position on human sexuality writes these words about the ELCA Churchwide Assembly beginning tomorrow: “One of us will be disappointed by the outcome on the sexuality votes. But, as you have stated in public forums, you have no more intention of leaving the ELCA if the vote goes against your wishes than you would leave your wife if you had a disagreement with her. Nor would I. We both have given our lives to this church as pastors and teachers. I am confident that others feel exactly as we do. They will stay, no matter the outcome.”

Bishop Chilstrom’s words are consecratory words. I pray that all who speak at our national assembly will use similar words as if lifting bread and wine and saying, “In the night in which he was betrayed…” I pray that we the people of God can live in tension and disagree in love. If we can, this will be our greatest gift to a world that seems to take such delight in viciously attacking one another.

On Tuesday at a San Diego Organizing Project press conference on health care, before I spoke, I was interviewed by one of the major network reporters. She asked me why I was speaking out on health care. I told her, “Because the Bible tells me so” and because the prophet Jeremiah asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” Then she asked me whether there were any protestors present. When I told her I didn’t think so, she said: “That’s too bad, that’s why we are here.” Viciousness draws audiences. Watch television personalities Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann feud with each other. Their childishness sells television. People spend their lives intoxicated by this venomous blather!

We have no idea what the outcome will be at our Churchwide Assembly regarding human sexuality or what Congress will decide on health care. But I do know that you and I can play an important part in how we speak about these issues.

Let our every word and every action be as if we are standing at the altar and saying, “In the night in which he was betrayed our Lord Jesus took bread and gave thanks…” May we abide in Christ and may Christ abide in us. That’s a wonderful start to perceiving what exactly happens when we break the bread on Sunday morning.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 9, 2009
Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33
"A Troubled Family"

You will never forget King David’s cry the day he received word of his son’s death: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!” It is one of the most haunting moments in all of Scripture. You get a lump in your throat as you hear the wail: “Would I have died instead of you, O Absalom, my son!” David’s regrets are your regrets—the might have beens, the shattered dreams, a family gone terribly wrong. Even though Absalom had caused his father countless sleepless nights, trying his best to wrest the kingdom from his father’s control by military and political maneuvering, nevertheless, Absalom was still David’s son.

There was enough blame to go around a thousand times, blame for the father, blame for the son. As he wept for his beautiful son, King David mourned his sins that helped cause his son’s tragic death. David did about everything wrong a father could do. Absalom dishonored his father time and again too. And yet, in spite of it all, no father should have to bury his son.

Three thousand years later, the scene could easily have been David and Absalom. Father and son sat face-to-face in the therapist’s office, knees touching knees. They were sharing prepared “love letter” with one another. Each letter filled in sentences: “You make me angry when…” “I love it when…” “I am afraid when you…” “You make me sad when…” I am sorry that I…”

The father worked on his letter for days. He wanted to get the words right, perfect if possible. His son was in a rehab for narcotics addiction. The father read first. Before he uttered a word, he began to weep uncontrollably. Surprisingly, the letter was as much about the father’s failings as his son’s addiction. Not in a million years would the father choose for his son to undergo such agony—withdrawal, the embarrassment, the lost dreams. As he gazed into his son’s eyes, the father wondered how much of his son’s pain he had caused--the long hours away from home and the missed opportunities to say “Once upon a time” and “Now I lay me down to sleep” at bedtime; the family dinners punctuated with his selfish monologues about difficulties at work, all about his fear of failure and rejection; the countless little league games missed for what, at the time, seemed such crucial work. You can hear the father wail, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!”

You have been there too, I know you have. You have tasted the ashes of your failures. Your dear child has fallen much too hard; you would not wish such pain upon your worst enemy. You would change places in a heartbeat if only you could.

I once thought there was such a thing as a perfect family, a family with no vicious divorces, no devastating nervous breakdowns, no unmarried pregnant children, no abuse from drunken tirades. Can you think of any family free of such wreckage? One person asked her therapist, “Why are there so many problems in my family?” The therapist replied, “Because there are so many people in it.”

We have spent the past month hearing stories of King David and his family. Coupled with David’s enormous gifts and stellar achievements were his sickening unfaithfulness, conniving double-crossing, and ingenious lies. His life careened out of control following his repugnant adultery with Bathsheba; this led to Absalom being killed by one of David’s soldiers.

I frankly can’t remember a time in my ministry, like the past few weeks, when so many of you have commented on the Sunday morning readings: “Why didn’t you preach on David today?” and “Why did we read this story of David and Bathsheba in church when all the children were here?” The questions have gone on and on. These stories kick us in the mouth and the taste of blood lingers. They are as much about us as they are about David: David’s politics of self-interest and arrogance are the politics of today; David’s beleaguered family is like so many we know; David’s failings in the face of so much opportunity—you get the picture, I’m sure.

David did not wake up one morning and say, “I will have one of my army’s leaders kill my son for his attempts to overthrow me as king of Israel.” Tragic things happen in unexpected ways, out of the blue, in ways we never see coming.

How many times has your phone rung late at night and your stomach has sunk? No matter how irascible or quarrelsome the loved one, you still love them dearly and you weep for how difficult things have been between you in recent years. You wonder what you might have done differently. You cry, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!”

If you study David’s family tree, you might be surprised to find that the branches eventually lead to Jesus. If any family had a chance for perfection, it was Jesus’. And yet, his family tree is rife with murder and mayhem, mischievousness and unfaithfulness, intrigue and incest. And, as Jesus’ family tree spreads its branches from him to our church today, my oh my, look how we squabble!

We come here this morning, a family filled pain. We gather here with King David and his son Absalom, with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah, with our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America scared to death that it might be rent asunder at our national assembly beginning next Monday. Tears and ashes all. Our lives shouldn’t end up like this. We are here because we are helpless and yet we are here, too, because we are hopeful. We have heard that a story or two will be told here that will mend our broken lives and give us hope forever.

David’s cry, “Would I have died instead of you,” is our cry. The story we hear in this place is the story of the only person who can possibly die for our sake and the sake of those we love. Jesus brings us hope. With a chunk of bread in our hands, we hear, “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” These words are for fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, for dear friends, for Absalom and David, for our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for all who have tasted the harsh food of brokenness and now are offered the delightful food of eternity. Here we taste a story that calms our pains and mends our brokenness. And so, my dear brothers and sisters taste the living bread of heaven. May this sweet refreshment awaken you to a brand new day.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 2, 2009
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
2 Samuel 11: 26- 12: 13a; John 6: 24-35
"All Bread is Holy"

When it comes to buying bread, there are so many choices. Remember the good old days when the only bread was white bread and the most sophisticated opted for Wonder Bread? Things have changed. Now there is rye, pumpernickel, tortilla, pita, whole wheat, whole grain, sourdough, and, of course, venerable white bread. Which to buy?

We just heard Jesus say, “I am the bread of life.” At first glance, the choice of which bread is right seems a simple one: do we want Jesus or don’t we? And yet, I suspect in pulpits around the world this morning, preachers will exhort their parishioners to host of different breads, all making claims that their particular choice is really Jesus the “bread of life.”

Preachers will declare that the true “bread of life” is God’s Word and Sacraments. Such a claim puts these preachers on good footing. We have all heard that one does not live by bread alone, but by the living bread from heaven that nourishes for eternity. Said crudely, there is more to life than filled bellies. I can think of countless times when I have visited the hospital and you have longed for this “bread of life.” The minute I enter the hospital, I always pull out my pocket Bible and search for a Bible passage that will feed your deepest hunger and most alarming fears. You don’t want me to bring pizza or Coke; rather you long for me to deliver delicious Bible passages that will provide you calm and joy in a tough situation. This morning’s “Quote of the Day” expresses this well: “Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive” (Barry Lopez).

We have all been in valleys of darkness when the only words we could hear were simple bread words, “Take and eat, this is my body given for you.” All other words bored us and sounded like drivel. We needed the bread of heaven.

My pastoral colleagues will pound their pulpits this morning and proclaim that this “bread of life” is spiritual food only. Do not mix politics and religion, talk about the spiritual and not the physical. They will urge their parishioners—most who have full bellies, by the way—not to strive for the food which perishes but for that food which endures for eternity. There is no question that many people need to hear this. King David needed to hear it. Like many of us today, King David had everything and yet he needed more, more weapons, more territory, more power, and, as we have heard the past two Sundays, at least one more women by the name of Bathsheba, the one who was his “soul mate.”

Many of David’s desires were foolish ones. It took the courageous prophet Nathan to tell King David in no uncertain terms that his relationship with Bathsheba was sinful or, in his words, “David, you are the man.”

It can be so difficult to hear such corrective words and to call them the “bread of life,” especially when our sins feel so good. We don’t like others telling us to change our ways and assuming they know what is best for us, even if our ways are ruining our lives and the lives of others. Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that the prophet’s pitch is always an octave too high for most of society to hear. Courageous people offer us the very best “bread of life” available and we need to receive these loving words of correction no matter how painful they sometimes are at first to hear.

There is one other kind of bread that I hope will be mentioned from pulpits this morning. It is the plain ol’ bread that keeps us alive. Perhaps you remember that right before Jesus called himself the “bread of life,” he fed 5,000 people. Jesus knew that first things come first. Mahatma Gandhi, though not a Christian, said it this way: “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” At their best, Lutherans have always understood this. We have a proud history of starting hospitals, universities, and social service agencies. In fact, next to Catholic Charities, Lutherans are the largest social service provider in the United States. Sometimes people need food in their bellies, balm on their wounds, ideas in their minds before they are ready to receive the more substantial food of eternity.

First Lutheran understands this too. Read this congregation’s 121 history and you will discover a people that has always sought to provide physical as well as spiritual food for people. This congregation has refused to pit one type of food against another. Luther Tower, next door, stands as a testament to First Lutheran’s desire to provide the bread of life to senior citizens. Bread Day (feeding the homeless at First Lutheran on Friday morning) started thirty-four years ago and has given out bread every Friday morning since then; this small program has grown substantially and become the Third Avenue Charitable Organization (TACO), providing the nourishing bread of free medical, dental, acupuncture, legal and social services to God’s weary ones. Our church’s partnership with the San Diego Organizing Project is the bread of our cries to government officials to make certain that health care is provided for all God’s blessed poor.

So which bread is the “bread of life?” Rabbi Hugo Gryn, one of Great Britain’s most respected rabbis, tells of when he was a boy and he and his family were imprisoned at Auschwitz. They were Orthodox, and even though it meant even greater danger to them, Hugo’s father insisted they observe the Sabbath and the festivals. Hugo remembered until the day he died a time when, to observe the Sabbath, his father took a piece of string and put it in a bit of butter and lit it to make a Shabbat candle. Hugo was furious and protested, ‘Father, that is all the butter we have!’

“His father said, ‘Without food we can live for two weeks. But we cannot live for a minute without hope’” (Tom Long, Preaching from Memory to Hope, pg. 132).

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we need, too, to discern which food at what time in a person’s life will let them live two weeks and which will feed them forever. And yet, we dare not act as if one is more important than the other. All food is holy, all food comes from God. One of my favorite professors, when asked how many sacraments Lutheran have, loves to say, “Not two sacraments but thousands of sacraments.” And isn’t he right. Isn’t every meal holy whether donuts and warm soup on the patio, bread and wine at the altar, or pork chops and baked beans at your dining room table?

May we see every occasion where bread is present as an opportunity to share with one another the holiness of Jesus Christ, “the living bread of life.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 26, 2009
Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
John 6: 1-21
"Gorgeous Extravagance"

Admit it, the Feeding of the 5,000 is an astonishing story. This fanciful tale is an exquisite gift for all who hear it. If it isn’t the first Bible story we heard as children, it certainly has stayed with us the longest. We remember the throngs coming from far and wide to see Jesus. We remember their starving faces on the stained glass windows of our childhood churches. We remember that the disciples were clueless what to do. Not even six months’ salary could feed this crowd, Philip supposed. Andrew barely gave a second thought to the boy with five barely loaves and two fish--who would have, given the piddling amount of food and such a humongous crowd. We remember, too, that the disciples had lost their imagination.

The first congregation I served was down on its luck. For the life of them, the members of Calvary could not picture how their poor little church could survive. The church did not have a penny to its name and lived on sizeable grants from the national church. Sixty four people gathered for worship on a good day. The neighborhood was broken down and getting worse by the minute. I wondered, too, whether there was an ounce of hope for this congregation’s future.

For some reason, soon after I arrived, I got the crazy notion to author a weekly newsletter called “The Good New of Calvary.” True to its name, it contained exclusively good news. I wrote and printed the “Good News” every week of my ministry, often finishing at two o’clock on Sunday morning as I smelled the ink fumes from the mimeograph machine. I still get a kick out of reading those newsletters. (My parents bound all those newsletters and gave them to me as a Christmas gift.) I wrote things like: “Last Sunday was wonderful with 50 people at worship, 6 more than the week before, a whopping 12 % increase!” and “Congratulations on last week’s giving, totaling $100, a 10% increase from the week before.” There wasn’t a lot of good news but I always eked out enough for two sides of an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper. I still marvel at my imagination during those days. As forlorn as the place was, I actually believed--or was arrogant or stupid enough to believe--that Calvary was the center of the ecclesiastical universe. One of my friends urged me, “Whenever you look out on the thirty-seven people assemble on a steamy, unairconditioned, inner-city, July morning, act as if you are the Pope entertaining thousands of pilgrims at St. Peter’s Square.” I did just that! For some reason, this outlandish imagination began to catch on and worship at that African American church doubled in almost no time!

Maybe that’s why I particularly love the story of the Feeding of the 5,000. Its audaciousness births hope in almost every hearer no matter how desperate. As a kid, didn’t this story stir your imagination unlike any other? Didn’t you believe that anything was possible since one time, long ago, Jesus fed 5,000 with five barley loaves and two fish?

Sadly, as we grow older, we put away our childish ways; we become “wiser,” more “realistic.” Said another way, we lose our capacity for radical amazement. Armed with the so-called “wisdom,” “realism,” and fancy-dancy biblical exegesis, we emasculate the magic of the Feeding of the 5,000 all but explaining it away. We say things like: everyone took just a little piece of bread and, in not hoarding the food, made certain that there was enough for everyone. Such an explanation might speak eloquently to not hoarding one’s resources, but it doesn’t come close to painting the beauty of God’s gorgeous extravagance. Or we suggest that everyone pulled out whatever they had previously hidden in their picnic baskets and, in forsaking miserliness, helped feed the crowd. Such an explanation, I suppose, says a thing or two about sharing our possessions but not in a million years would we imagine the Feeding to be about God’s astounding generosity for this hungry world.

Peter Gomes, the chaplain at Harvard writes: “The question to be put about a miracle is not ‘Is it true?’ or ‘How can this be?’ but rather, ‘What does this say?’” (Peter Gomes, Sermons, Pg, 139). And I think he is right: what does the Feeding of the 5,000 say and especially what does it say about God?

While I have never quite grasped the Feeding of the 5,000, nevertheless, unlike any other Bible story, I have experienced in its very telling a swelling of confidence for forlorn people who, until hearing it, had all but given up the ghost. I first heard this story when I was three or four and the audacity of God’s goodness still rattles around my little brain after all these years. Think of the countless times this story has bolstered your spirits when you had all but given up hope for tomorrow. What a God!

I pray that the telling of the five barley loaves and two fish will make us all courageous in these lean financial times. Consider First’s meager resources. We don’t have much in the bank, almost nothing in fact! I know a host of churches far wealthier than ours who would cower from doing what we are doing for fear of ending up awash in the red ink of no fish and no barley loaves. Even though we are running a deficit this year, I haven’t heard one of you suggest we cut back on ministry to the poor nor has the Council made a peep about curtailing ministry to our community. Maybe extravagant ministry to God’s poor and oppressed in the face of meager financial times is a sacramental reminder for us all that God indeed will provide. As we do ministry for God’s blessed poor, we find that when the hungry ones are fed for yet another night at Third and Ash, amazingly, there still are twelve baskets full.

As you come forward in a few moments to taste the barley loaves and fish, you will receive more than you ever imagined or needed. Who can possibly explain God’s mercy to us? Perhaps, once-in-a-while, it is best to bow our heads and be bathed in the wonder of God’s extravagance. So, let us do just that as we pray...

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 19, 2009
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 6: 30-34; 53-56
"Rest Awhile"

Jesus said, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.” I love these words. Listen again: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.”

How many of you long for such a place, all by yourself, to rest awhile?

The disciples were so excited about the ministry they were doing. You can sense their enthusiasm as they gathered around Jesus to tell him about all that they have done that day. Each disciple wanted to talk before the other was finished. They longed for Jesus’ affirmation. While they were excited, they were also dead tired. It had been a long day.

Jesus could see how much the disciples cared about other people, their compassionate enthusiasm was oozing from their hearts. And yet, he sensed their exhaustion too. Compassion has its price. Those of you who care deeply for others are often touched by their pain as if it is your very own. This can wear you out. This is precisely why Jesus suggested, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.”

I doubt whether there is one person here today who doesn’t show compassion to someone. You care so much for your aging parents; you wouldn’t think of putting them in a nursing home and yet those daily trips to the house and the weekly jaunts to the doctor’s office take their toll--it is called compassion fatigue. You love your child dearly and yet her drug use has you at wits end as you open the door every time she comes stumbling home; you probably should and yet couldn’t in a million years say “You aren’t coming home this time”--compassion fatigue. You marched proudly yesterday with the large contingent from First Lutheran in San Diego’s Pride Parade and made a powerful and incredible evangelical witness to those who our national church is still not sure whether to welcome. Your beautiful float was a classy sign of hope for many who lined the parade route as they called out to thank you for your witness. Thousands were touched that a church would dare be present; in fact, one twenty year old man said, “I was baptized Lutheran but never knew that there was a church that would welcome me”—that comment alone was worth being in the parade! And yet, you grow tired, don’t you, tired of waiting simply to be treated as an equal in God’s family--call it compassion fatigue. You advocate for health care for poor children and senior citizens, spending countless hours studying the issues and formulating your opinions and you wonder how many others besides you care--absolutely, compassion fatigue. Whatever your passion, eventually, if you care enough for the underdog, the lonely struggle and the adversity will take its toll and you will want to go to a deserted place all by yourself and rest awhile.

We all need to get away and yet we are so bad at doing it. How many of you, right now, have a cell phone with you? I hope you remembered to turn it off on your way into the sanctuary—I don’t want to embarrass you unnecessarily. I am concerned though. You can’t get away. It used to be that you could drive just a few miles from your home and no one could get hold of you. No more. Now, you are reachable any hour, day or night, even in the silence of worship. It is almost impossible to be in a deserted place just with God.

We all know that we need those precious deserted places because, if we care for others, sooner rather than later we will be called right back into the fray. We need to rest, we must rest when we have the chance.

I just finished reading Italian Shoes by the Swedish author Henning Mankel. It is a touching story of a lonely man who lives on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden. Every morning, he goes to the frozen lake in front of his cottage, cuts a hole, and takes a morning dip. He is a former surgeon who was disciplined for accidentally cutting off the wrong arm of an aspiring competitive swimmer. Rather than continue his practice, he went into exile until, one day, he sees a frail, old woman coming across the ice with a walker. This is the very woman whom he abandoned years ago and has come back to the one man she has loved all her adult life. As the book unfolds, this lonely man is drawn back into the world from his deserted island. He can’t help himself. Every person he sees tugs at his deep compassion: the cancer-riddled mother of the child he never knew he had is welcomed with astonishing grace; a young girl deep in the throes of excruciating emotional problems ends up at his doorstep and is treated as if she is his daughter; every cat and dog that comes his way is welcomed into his house with tenderness. He has rested long enough; now it is time to care for the world again.

I have a hunch that most of you are like this man. There are days when you want to be left alone in the worst way and yet a desperate cast of characters comes your way and you find it impossible to say “no.” Compassion works that way: we end up helping those who have been rejected by everyone else; we embrace their problems as if they are our own; somehow, someway, deep down in these suffering souls, we see the face of Christ.

That’s the way it was for Jesus and his disciples. No sooner had they set off to that deserted place than the crowds followed them and beat them there. Those needy people knew where to turn for help. And, of course, Jesus helped them.

First Lutheran is a bit like that. Needy people know where to find us. Give this church a suffering person or a trampled group of people and watch us come running. There are those times, though, aren’t there, when we just need to rest.

That’s why I cherish these moments together. Any church that dares care for the downtrodden and disenfranchised better have worship at the center of its life and it better be the best worship that it can muster or that church and her people will burn out quickly. We come here to bathe in God’s grace. Where else can we get away quite like Sunday morning? Where else are there no computers, please no cell phones, no one knocking at our door, oh yes, and no televisions? Here is where we find rest in Jesus’ lap.

And so, I beg you, like the disciples before you, take this time to tell Jesus about all that you have done during this week and ask him for the strength to go back into the world with joy and passion. The quiet rest here will do you well. It will do amazing things for the hungry and abused and hurt as well for when we are refreshed by God’s love, we are strengthened to bear God’s compassionate love to every hurting soul. So rest awhile please, rest.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 12, 2009
Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
"The Dance of Life"

There are two dances in this world, the dance of life and the dance of death. Each of us must decide throughout our lives which dance we will choose.

In this morning’s two readings, we hear of both kinds of dances. In the Old Testament reading, the Ark of the Covenant is brought into Jerusalem with great fanfare. This is a crowning moment for God’s chosen people as they celebrate God’s presence in the capitol city of their united Israel. King David is ecstatic and dances like a whirling dervish or drunken sailor that embarrasses his wife beyond belief. And yet, David is right in demonstrating such reckless abandon in the presence of God. As a seminary professor of worship instructed us, when you are in the presence of God, you “pull out the stops and let ‘er rip!”

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear of another kind of dance, a tragic dance of death. It is the story of John the Baptist who has the audacity to speak truth to power to King Herod, telling him that his marital situation is sinful and awful; it is inappropriate for the king to be married to his own brother’s wife.

Problems arise when Herod’s step-daughter or niece--you choose what to call her--dances at Herod’s birthday party. It is a dance filled with sexual innuendo and seduction, of political ambition and scandal. And yet, Herod and the other big boys present are pleased as punch by this young girl’s erotic show, so pleased, in fact, that Herod offers to give her anything she wants, including half of his kingdom. That’s not what the dancing girl Salome wants however. She wants John the Baptist’s head for his criticism of her mother’s dalliance with the king. And she gets exactly what she wants. Funny how the powerful dance!

The most famous dance of death in the twentieth century, maybe in the history of the world, was Adolph Hitler’s. His death dance offered a demoralized people hope after a crushing loss in World War 1 and in the face of a depressing economy. The Jewish people were convenient scapegoats as a way to energize and revitalize a nation. (Note well how, in crises, scapegoats are almost always found to shoulder the blame.) One who joined Hitler’s death dance was Adolph Eichmann, sometimes referred to as the “architect of the holocaust.” In his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Eichmann made the famous claim, “I was only following orders.” And, of course, he was. Hitler invited him to join in and Eichmann the coward said, yes, rather than opting for the courageous dance of life.

There was another dance in the twentieth century that was not as well known, but was a stunning dance of life. It required enormous courage and creativity on the part of the dancers known as the “Mothers of the Disappeared.” These Chilean women regularly assembled in the town square and danced in quiet protest with their beloved invisible ones. They danced as if their fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers were in their hands, those dear ones who had been tortured and murdered at the hands of the Herod look-alike, military dictator and thug Augusto Pinochet.

I have always loved the rock star Sting’s song of these astonishing and courageous women. Listen:

Each of us, many times, day after day, faces the decision whether to opt for the dance of death or the dance of life. Some decisions are seemingly small and others very large. It was three years ago this very weekend that I was in Grossmont Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit fighting for my life. Quite a few of you suggested to me that this experience would be life-changing and you were so right. During those days, as I tasted how short life can be, I prayed to God that, if I lived, I would become a more courageous person, taking stands, even if unpopular, for the outcast and rejected ones, in other words, God willing, I would choose the dance of life.

Which dance to choose is never easy. The invitations to the death dance are everywhere and they are compelling. They promise success, popularity, lack of conflict—all things that are wildly inviting. The dance of life, on the other hand, if nothing else, is the wondrous opportunity to dance with God, to whirl round and round with the likes of King David, for what really matters in this world.

So, which dance to choose? A recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that a majority of white evangelical Christians and white Catholics believe that torture can be justified in certain situations. What is surprising about this poll is that the general public finds torture less acceptable than do many Christians. I don’t know how you feel about this issue. The choice for many appears not an easy one, especially if torture means the possibility of ending terrorist attacks on our country. I do wonder though how Jesus would have answered the poll regarding torture of enemies, especially given his command to love one’s enemies and to turn the other cheek. One thing torture is not is a lovely dance of life.

One other thing I remember when I was sick is the very prayer that we will use during communion this morning and that we used the Sunday before I ended up in the hospital. In particular, I remember the words calling Jesus’ sacrifice for us a “fragrant offering.” For some strange reason, those words, a “fragrant offering,” became my rallying cry. Hour by hour I prayed to Jesus, my dear “fragrant offering.” I imagine that I will pray that way for the rest of my life. Jesus was asking me to dance even though I was very, very sick. I believe that the “fragrant offering” of Jesus’ death and resurrection renders all the repulsive dances of death passé and, frankly, ridiculous, and gives us the courage and hope to dance always for life.

And so, by the grace of God, let us be the courageous ones, let us pull out all the stops and let ’er rip with the likes of King David and the Martyrs and the Mothers of the Disappeared. When God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit comes and asks, “May I have this dance with you?” may we accept the invitation with downright glee and dance with reckless abandon.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 5, 2009
Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Independence Day Weekend
"Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies"

If you have never taken a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, you owe yourself the joy. As you cross over from Staten Island to Manhattan, you will gaze upon the Statue of Liberty and most certainly think of the words etched on her base:

I doubt whether any of us who are citizens of these United States can see Lady Liberty without having chills run up and down our spines.

We gather here this morning and thank God for this nation of ours, the United States of America. We pray that we might indeed be citizens worthy of this great nation’s proud heritage.

There is something about patriotism, of course, that makes the heart beat faster. That was the case for the Israelites as well. Whenever they thought of their great King David, they grew so very proud. King David did for Israel what President Barack Obama does for so many of us today.

David was a complex and captivating figure. Most of us learned about him as children: as a little boy, he was a harp player who sang his beautiful Psalms to King Saul and he killed the giant Goliath with only a stone and a sling. We probably learned too that, in later life, King David was a powerful man, a warrior, skilled in speech, and mighty handsome to boot, and that he defended the cause of the poor and delivered the needy, all as a witness to God.

All these fine attributes do not tell the whole story of David, though. We need to learn more. As we are wont to do when it comes to nationalistic pride, we learn only part of the story and airbrush out the seedier parts of our leaders and our nation’s story. When I was a child in school, I never heard of our nation’s treatment of Native Americans or the interment camps for U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. Even in the Bible there are places where David’s political intrigue, personal conflicts, brutish murders, embarrassing affair, and ugly wars are given short shrift. We can easily forget that King David was ruthless to his foes as well as a liar, deceiver, and traitor. If we are truly to honor King David as a human being called by God to govern Israel, it is it only appropriate that we tell the whole truth about his life, warts and all.

You see, the people of God are called to tell the whole truth about our heroes and our leaders. That doesn’t mean that we do not honor them, whether King David, President Bush, or President Obama. What it does mean is that we talk about their failures as well as their victories. We call them to be all that they can be. We never make believe that any leader, whether Democrat or Republican--and no matter what the nation--is perfect or beyond reproach.

It seems to me that we have a tendency to idolize our leaders, and even more dangerous, we idolize our nation. When Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,” he was not suggesting a “my country right or wrong” attitude; rather, Jesus was calling us to understand that we must never equate our nation--no matter how much we may love it--with God. The nation plays a significant and crucial part in our lives, of course, but no nation is perfect and no nation is God!

On this day when our Bible reading calls us to remember King David and our nation calls us to celebrate our independence, we do well to have a lover’s quarrel with our leaders and our nation. When their vision slips, we, the people of God, bid them climb higher. The writer William Faulkner wrote, “We [are] free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.” And part of that practice, my dear friends, is a critique that loves our nation enough to call it to its founding principles and prod it to its highest ideals and never be satisfied with anything less.

Friday morning, right before we prayed and served the meal here on our patio, I asked those homeless people gathered at the tables and standing in line, “How many of you are veterans?” It seemed to me that the majority raised their hands. Lady Liberty standing in New York Harbor weeps at this sight; “Send me your homeless,” she begs us. And what about the children in our nation whose health care is threatened by tightening state and federal government budgets? The beautiful woman in New York Harbor urges, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.”

If you have never done it, go to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery; watch the honor guard keep its solemn vigil. As you stand there, silently repeat these words to yourself: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator, by certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Can any of us with a beating heart not shed a tear as we think of the countless soldiers who have offered their lives for the noble truths that this might be a land of liberty and justice for all? And if they gave their lives for these ideals, is it not our duty as citizens of this nation to call our leaders to protect these truths and to make certain these rights are offered to all people, friend and foe alike, and certainly, homeless veterans and poor children?

I pray that as we sing “Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies,” we will get chills. I pray that as we hear this melody, each of us, as God’s people, will rededicate ourselves to being faithful citizens of this great land, calling one another to the highest ideals of freedom and honoring every person who calls this land home and those who long to come here one day. It has been said that freedom demands more of her citizens than any other government. Isn’t that true? We are called by God to love our country and yet always to speak up when the rights of our citizens or even our enemies are unnecessarily trampled upon. Abraham Lincoln said it this way: “To sin by silence when [we] should protest makes cowards of human beings.”

And so, on this weekend, let us thank God for our nation and let us pray that it may be a land of liberty, justice, and freedom for all God’s children.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 28, 2009
The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 5: 21-43
"Kicking Down the Door"

All that I can say is this morning’s Gospel reading is messy. After reading it countless times, I have found that it gets more confusing with each successive reading. It confuses how I think of things religious--of holiness, of Jesus, of healing, of prayer. These two stories wrapped up into one are messy.

The first story is of a high-ranking synagogue official. He was well connected, a seminary board member, brilliant beyond belief with diplomas lining his walls, highly sought after as a graduation speaker, and the local Rotary president. Strangely, in today’s reading, he seemed to forget who he was. His rank and title lost their importance. You see, his daughter was very sick, in fact, she was near death. When our children are sick, we quickly forget about everything else in our lives except making them well.

I served as a chaplain one summer at Lutheran Medical in Brooklyn, New York. Late one Saturday night, I was on call in the emergency room. Inner-city emergency rooms are hectic places; add an unbearably sweltering weekend and a full moon and chaos is brewing. One drunken man, shot in the leg, was triaged back in the corner; he was feeling no pain and was more than happy to wait his turn. A Puerto Rican mother cradled her child in her arms in the waiting room; her little girl was very sick. Whether you are an important religious official or a poor Puerto Rican mother, when your little girl is sick, all bets are off as to how you will behave. Your precious one is dying and you want action—and you want it NOW!

The synagogue leader fell down at Jesus’ feet, screaming, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well.” He cried these words to Jesus over and over and over again and all on bended knees. And the Puerto Rican mother—she tried to kick the door down. If your child has ever taken ill, you understand the behavior, I’m sure.

It was a messy day for Jesus, pretty much like an inner-city emergency room. Everyone seemed sick and people swarmed in on him from every direction. There was one woman in particular who was sick and tired of being sick and tired. She had been bleeding for twelve years and no end was in sight. She had tried everything in town--secret potions, quacks, miracle workers, Scientologists. Nothing worked and she was broke. When she saw Jesus, she went into action just like the Puerto Rican woman: she burst through the crowd and touched him. No unmarried, ritually unclean woman would dare think of touching a man in public, let alone a Jewish holy man and yet she had no other choice. I did say “messy,” didn’t I? You have noticed, I’m certain, when you are sick, the first thing thrown out the window is etiquette books and the emergency room protocol signs. That woman wanted healing and she sensed Jesus was her one and only hope.

You can feel the good rabbi’s anxiety rising as he stood there watching. His daughter was dying and every minute was bringing her closer to death. Standing between Jesus and his daughter’s healing was an unclean woman whose unclean touch was defiling the very person whose holy and pure hands could make his daughter well. What a mess!

Mess or no mess, Jesus stopped the woman’s bleeding. No sooner had the crowd begun to celebrate this astonishing miracle than word arrived that the Jewish leader’s daughter had died. The father must have been irate: if only Jesus had kept going rather than stopping to heal that unclean woman. And yet Jesus didn’t seem worried in the least. “The child is not dead but sleeping” he said. You can hear the crowd’s laughter. Only sleeping? Makes me laugh, too.

Well, you know how things turned out. Jesus arrived at the house, touched the little girl, and she immediately got up. As good as it sounds, even this was messy. Jesus broke yet another Old Testament law in bringing that little girl back to life: he touched a dead body.

You can catch a glimpse of what’s most important to Jesus as he went about his ministry that day. He threw long held religious notions of holiness out the window in order to restore the lives of God’s little ones. When that woman was bleeding a slow death, there was not one word about Levitical cleanliness codes so clearly articulated in the Bible. What we hear instead is Jesus breaking down the emergency room door to heal the woman. When the little girl was dead or nearly dead, we hear not a peep about the biblical warning against touching dead bodies. The health of the bleeding woman and the life of that dying little girl trumped obeying Old Testament laws every time.

I suppose I love today’s stories because they are messy. Rule books were thrown out the window; prayers came from the gut. You see, these people wanted healing not perfection, life not nirvana; they wanted God’s help not a proper prayer life. They did whatever they thought necessary to bring about healing for themselves and those they loved; and they knew that Jesus was the one to heal them and the ones they loved.

How do you act when you or someone you love is really hurting, when things are desperate? Do you worry about getting everything just right like you learned in Sunday School and as your pastor has taught you or do you kick down the emergency room door?

Don’t you think, more than anything else in the world, today’s stories are about how much God wants you to be well? I urge you, if not all the time, at least when you desperately need Jesus by your side: throw out the rule book about proper approaches to God and simply kick down the door. At least, according to today’s Gospel reading, this technique works with God every time.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 21, 2009
The Third Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 4: 35-41
"Sailing on Stormy Seas"

Unless you have been living in a cave in the middle of the Anza-Borrego Desert, you have heard quite a bit of talk lately about the “perfect storm.” There are storms everywhere you look.

The original “perfect storm” struck in October 1991. It was created by a number of fierce weather patterns that collided in the Atlantic Ocean. Sebastian Junger, in his book, The Perfect Storm, describes what happened to the fishing boat, the Andrea Gale, as it ran head-on into that storm’s destructive path. The ill fated boat capsized and sank and the entire crew perished.

Perhaps you feel like you are a crew member aboard the Andrea Gale. Fierce waves are crashing over you, threatening your home, business, and retirement savings. You might be beating yourself up, wondering what kind of fool you were to head out into such stormy seas in the first place.

If you are desperately trying to weather this fierce storm, I cannot imagine a better Scripture reading for you than this morning’s in which Jesus and his disciples are battered about by a violent storm on the Sea of Galilee. Every time I hear this Gospel, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry: the disciples are scared out of their wits, certain that they are going to die, and, all the while, Jesus is sleeping like a baby in the stern of the boat. There is no other incident in the Bible where Jesus sleeps quite so soundly.

Of course, the disciples are scared to death: to be human is to fear death. What distinguishes humans from all other animals is that we are smart enough to fear death when it comes near. Our fear begins the moment we come out of our mother’s womb and are bombarded by bright lights and dreadful noises. Fear is present the day we are baptized. There is something in those waters that scares the devil out of us. (I always wonder if my pastor-parishioner relationships are ruined the moment I thrust cheerful babies into those turbulent waters and they come out screaming bloody murder.)

The disciples are thrust into similar waters during that brutal Galilean storm. Jesus urges them to trust in God, the same God, by the way, who brought order out of chaos at creation, tamed the great sea monsters lurking off La Jolla Shores, separated the Red Sea so that the Israelites could escape Pharaoh’s elite military troops, and, yes, the same God who brought each of us safely out of the baptismal waters. Jesus faces down each of these storms and demands, “Peace! Be still!” With that command, the winds cease, the waters still, and there is absolute calm. Jesus then asks, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Jesus reminds us all that God will always do something about the severe weather and take care of us every time we are caught in the middle of one of life’s horrendous tempests.

And yet, you have likely discovered that faithful people are a peculiar sort who often steer directly into the path of the world’s howling winds, battling evil and injustice toe-to-toe every step of the way. Faithful people trust that God is leading them and guiding them.

There are others, of course, who avoid risks at all costs; they are the ones, at least for my money, who lead boring lives, who seem to have no passion about much of anything that matters; they often make me wonder whether there is anything in their lives worth dying for or even fighting for.

Explorer Sir Francis Drake says it this way in a prayer:

Disturb us Lord when
We are too well pleased with ourselves
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to shore.

If you have never felt out of control, it is likely that you have stayed too close to shore, not testing the limits of your humanity or finding something worth dying for. If you have never felt out of control, it is also likely that you have never experienced the wonder of relying totally on God’s grace as you have doggedly stuck with your paltry little bag of lackluster tricks.

You can easily sense those who have sailed dangerous seas toward lands unknown: they are the vibrant ones, the ones with wonderful stories to tell of how Jesus stood by them as the winds howled and the boat rocked.

Such a story is told in the book, The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiesen. He tells of his “silly” passion to see the rare Snow Leopard that roams the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet. “After a long and perilous journey requiring great discipline, suffering, and hardship, hearing reports of sightings here and there, tracking the elusive creature, missing him by hours, he finally returns back. When asked by others, ‘Did you see the snow leopard?’ he replies, ‘No--isn’t that wonderful?’”

Psychologist James Hollis writes of Matthiesen‘s journey, “Only a person who has truly been on the road can say of such a ‘failure,’ ‘No, isn’t it wonderful?’” By then, [Matthiesen] had learned that the task is not to find the object but to live the journey, with passion, and risk, and commitment, and danger.” (James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life, Gotham Books, 2009, pgs. 246, 247)

The disciples go on such a journey with Jesus. They risk everything. They set sail onto dark seas with storm clouds gathering and sea monsters lurking, and, worse yet, they have no idea what they will confront on the other side. All they know is that there is ministry to be done in a strange Gentile land and Jesus is by their side. They live life to the fullest!

Maybe you are facing a storm in your life because you have dared sail far from shore. Perhaps you said those risky words “I do” at the altar, not knowing exactly where the promise might lead and now your marriage is a bit rocky from time-to-time; perhaps you began a business with hopes of supporting your family well into the future and the sour economy has made your dreams seem preposterous; perhaps you are a member of First Lutheran Church, a place that often finds itself on turbulent seas with society’s vulnerable ones and this makes you feel a bit queasy, wondering whether we have sailed too far from shore.

Whatever stormy sea you are on, give thanks to God that, like the disciples, you have dared to risk and set sail. Setting sail is the important part. As the wicked winds howl, more than ever, may you discover the mysterious blessing of leaning totally on the everlasting arms of God.

I think Jesus wants us to discover what his disciples discovered on that stormy night long ago. Jesus wants us to know there is no storm too fierce for God to quiet. Jesus bids us set sail out onto our own raging seas. To go on such a voyage, my dear friends, is not to be ludicrous or reckless; rather it is to be noble, to be faithful, and, most of all, to be fully human.

So keep on sailing and trust that Jesus will stand by your side.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 14, 2009
Second Sunday After Pentecost
Mark 4: 26-34
"Just a Shrub"

Jesus’ parables stretch our imaginations. They are odd little stories that evoke in us possibilities of how the kingdom of God might be discovered in our lives today. Take the parable we hear today of the scatterer of seeds. We hear nothing of preparing the ground, plowing, picking weeds, or removing rocks. The planting process is just plain ol’ scattering seeds. Once the seeds are scattered, all that we hear is that the scatterer of the seeds gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night. Oh yes, and once the seeds have grown, she goes out and cuts down the crop. That’s all folks.

A peculiar parable really. You don’t have to know much about horticulture to know that successful gardening is labor intensive: roto-tilling the hard ground, removing the rocks that strangely keep growing in Southern California, planting seeds, watering, fertilizing, watering, weeding, watering, tying up the stocks. Doesn’t Jesus know this?

I love the way Jesus tells this parable: toss in the seeds, get a good book, stretch out on a nice lawn chair, take a dip in the pool, glance at the plants over the hill if you want. If there are birds or weeds, not to worry. This is my vision of gardening--ask Dagmar.

When I was a pastor at St. Paul’s in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, we had a men’s Bible study that met every Saturday morning. We began at 8 and concluded promptly at 9:15. We met early so we could get back home to aerate, cut, trim, edge, fertilize, and tidy up our lawns. We knew that good lawns require hard work--that is in the Bible, isn’t it?

Our most memorable Bible study occurred when one member suggested that we stop cutting grass and raking leaves. It’s nonsense, he said. He urged us to let the grass grow until it goes to seed and the leaves to fall without ever touching them. Frank’s suggestion created heated discussion that unnerved these wonderful and faithful type-A lawyers and doctors, bond-traders and professors.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus tells his parables. They unnerve us. They change our lives if we are “given the secret of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4: 11) and start to see the world in a new way.

In today’s parable, for instance, Jesus seems to say, “For God’s sake, don’t take yourselves so seriously. Take it easy!” Jesus’ parable counters the world’s wisdom that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Right after the parable of the seed-scatterer comes the parable of the little seed. You know this one. You learned it in Sunday School. Your teacher gave you a mustard seed in a cellophane packet and told you it is the smallest of all the earth’s seeds. Jesus says that this tiny seed will grow up and become the greatest of all shrubs. Note well: the mustard seed does not become the stateliest or largest tree on the boulevard let alone the noble cedar of Lebanon—though that’s how we hear the story. Jesus says that the mustard seed becomes the greatest shrub. That’s it, the greatest shrub.

Once again, we need to know the secret of the kingdom to appreciate this turned upside down world of Jesus where shrubs are celebrated as somehow majestic. Jesus’ view of things is counter to everything we have learned about bigger being better. Imagine raising our children to become the most significant shrub on the block. We want our kids to be the greatest, the biggest, the most powerful, the richest--and in the world not on the block. A shrub?

I believe that any church worth its salt teaches its members to tell its “congregational story.” What I mean is that each of us should be equipped to tell the First Lutheran story when visitors ask, “Can you tell me about your church?” We probably all tell the story similarly: First is the second oldest congregation in the Pacifica Synod and the oldest in Southern California; we have been in this community since 1888; we have wonderful worship and keep our tables open to all God’s children no matter whether the meal is served here at the altar or outside on the patio. Is that about how you tell the story?

Lately, I have told the story a bit differently. I have been adding, “We are a tiny little place.” Inevitably, the reaction is, “Oh.” There is part of me that flinches, too, every time I say “a tiny little place.” I keep pushing myself, though, to say “a tiny little place.” Some of you have counseled me that we really aren’t that small--there are plenty of Lutheran congregations smaller than we are and we are certainly bigger than our numbers would indicate, you urge me to say. We sense that being a “tiny little place” ain’t so good, that bigger is better and that someday, by God’s grace, we will grow up.

What if God doesn’t want us to grow up? What if God is pleased as punch with us being a nice shrub where birds come and make their nests in the shade?

How many vulnerable little birds do you think have come by here this week searching simply for a nest in a shady shrub? Just a shrub. Hundreds of hungry little birds flew onto our patio this week searching for a mommy bird with juicy worms; some bedraggled birds came with broken wings needing mending in our clinics; countless gasping birds gathered under the warm wing of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Al Anon, and CODA, seeking protection from the blazing sun and safety from that deadly next drink; some momma birds dared venture out from this shrub, speaking out on behalf of their little ones who might loose their health care in this state of California if our governor gets his way; other birds labored away yesterday morning, tending to all the green shrubs here, making them inviting for all who long to nest for a while in this place; and, as shrubs are wont to do, you, in your own quiet way, have nursed vulnerable birdies in your homes and neighborhoods, in wondrous ways unbeknownst to us that will never appear in a sermon.

And all of you, you dear little birds, you tired and thirsty ones, you have flown here this morning, chirping away with your little mouths wide open, longing for mommy bird to fill you with Jesus’ body and blood.

Oh that we might be given eyes to see the secrets of the Kingdom in seeds growing as we rest and in insignificant shrubs that become the greatest.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
June 7, 2009
The Feast of the Holy Trinity
Isaiah 6: 1-8; Romans 8: 12-17; John 3: 1-17
"The Grandeur of God Draws Close"

Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity. This is the only day in the church year when we celebrate a doctrine of the church. Smart preachers are on vacation this morning, avoiding the unenviable task of struggling to explain Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I spent the past few days fretting over this sermon. Yesterday, at 3:35 in the afternoon, after Summer Bird won the Belmont Stakes, I had nothing to occupy my time except computer Solitaire. I wondered why I was finding it so hard to write today’s sermon. And then it struck me. I remembered Martin Luther’s words that many of us learned in confirmation class: “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.” Suddenly I felt better: if Luther thought it impossible to believe in God on his own, who am I not to struggle with a sermon on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

There is something that makes most of us believe that in order to be a good Christian, we must be able to explain and believe in God perfectly. We want to resemble the little girl who was busy drawing a picture in Sunday School. The Sunday school teacher asked her what she was drawing. “I am drawing a picture of God,” she said. The teacher gently said to her, “But, my dear, nobody knows what God looks like.” To which the little girl replied without stopping her strokes, “They will when I am finished.” (Peter Gomes, Sermons, pg. 103). Like that little girl, shouldn’t we all be able to offer profound insights about God in a flash?

Over and over again in the Bible, we see the giants of the faith struggle to describe God. Remember Moses on the mountaintop? The best he could manage was to see the backside of God. How could he possibly describe God from such a vantage point? In fact we are told, if Moses had seen God face-to-face, he would have died. So much for perfect drawings of God!

Maybe the best we can do is adore the mystery of God like Isaiah did in the Temple. Perhaps you have noticed that during the communion liturgy, when we sing Isaiah’s “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I bow. This tradition of bowing gives physical expression to the awe we feel at being in the presence of Almighty God. There is something about the glory of God that is too much for our eyes to behold or our minds to grasp.

And yet, strangely, we dare not stop trying to fathom the wonder and mystery of God. To say that we cannot know God would be to deny the power of the Holy Spirit leading us to see God more clearly, to behold the God who “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.”

Here is another conundrum to solve: how could God become human? Try explaining that! Countless people do not believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit precisely because God became human. For some, it is outrageous and the height of irrationality to believe that God would come to earth to live among us. No other religion holds such an outrageous view of the grandeur of God drawing close. Think of 9/11 when people asked, “Where was God when the buildings came tumbling down?” This question assumes God is always up in heaven, far away on high, never with the people whom God created. The God we confess this morning is the God who was in those burning towers, suffering and dying with countless other folks. How can God possibly suffer and die?

One of the great twentieth century theologians Paul Tillich wrote: “One of Luther’s most profound insights was that God made Himself small for us in Christ…He showed us His Heart, so that our hearts could be won.”

Southern novelist Reynolds Price says it another way: “There is one sentence all humankind craves to hear: ‘The Maker of all things loves and wants me.’”

If the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is anything, it is about a Creator who loves and wants you and me so badly that God will come to earth, live among us, and die with us to show us that love.

For some of us--maybe more precisely for all of us--there will come a time or two when we find it almost impossible to believe in the immensity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Often times in new members’ classes, people ask, “How much of this stuff do I have to believe in order to join First Lutheran Church.” I always say that we have no faith test: you don’t have to score 70% in faith to become a member of First Lutheran Church. In fact, you have likely noticed that when we say the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed, we say it together--kind of like peaking on our neighbor’s test paper: we know that we could never pass the test of faith alone. This morning, for instance, some of us might be feeling quite confident in our faith while others may be finding it hard to believe. We confess that the Holy Spirit works in and through this community so that we might help one another believe: when one of us is down on our faith, others are up and doing the heavy lifting. We help each other in the test of faith.

When I was a kid, I hated--HATED--the time in worship when we recited the Apostles’ Creed and, worse yet, the long Nicene Creed. Over time, I have come to treasure these creedal words. These words have provided me strength when I have been down on my luck. I needed these words three years ago when my family and I and you wondered whether I would pull through that terrifying night in July. I don’t remember reciting the words of the Creed in the intensive care unit at Grossmont Hospital that night but the blessed assurances of the Creed were deep in my heart where soothing came mysteriously even without my trying. The words of faith have been deep inside me ever since I was a little boy at worship when my Grandma Miller pointed out the words of the Creed for me in the hymnal, word-by-boring-word.

We all have had terrifying nights when we have needed to know that God loves and wants us. The doctrine of the Trinity, overflowing in the Creeds, comforts us with the knowledge that God will never forget us.

And so, here we are again, gathered together as Christians have gathered together countless times over the centuries. We will sing the Apostles’ Creed this morning. No matter how much or how little of it we might be able to believe, we sense that in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is life for us and those we love. Maybe that’s why we have kept singing these words for so long and urging our children to do the same. Sometimes the words come off as humdrum and sometimes they stir our very soul. Somewhere in the midst of this astonishing mystery of words is a God who loves us and wants us today and forever.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 31, 2009
Feast of Pentecost
Acts 2: 1-21
"No Longer L-O-U-D-E-R AND S-L-O-W-E-R"

Have you ever become really irritated when someone doesn’t speak your language? Perhaps you have been in a foreign country, ready to order lunch and the waiter doesn’t speak English. Shouldn’t everyone in the world speak English? When the waiter doesn’t understand you, what do you do? You continue speaking English, only L-O-U-D-E-R and S-L-O-W-E-R: I want the CURRIED GOAT WITH BOILED POTATOES.

We tend not to trust people who don’t speak our language. I remember taking our church basketball team from West Philadelphia, the Calvary Cavaliers, to play the Holy Cross Hornets from North Philly. You would think these inner city kids from West and North Philly all spoke the same language, after all, they were all familiar with the tough goings-on of the city streets. As we got closer to North Philly, our kids rolled up the car windows and slunk down into their seats. Apparently, North Philadelphiaese was different from West Philadelphiaese. “Reverend Mills, this place is nasty,” they said. “Let’s get a move on it or we are dead meat! Look at those wicked dudes.” Funny what makes us uncomfortable.

When the Holy Spirit came down on those gathered together in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Festival of Pentecost, you would think everyone would have celebrated as they heard the disciples speaking to them in their very own language. Apparently this was not the case. Remember what some said: “These people are filled with new wine.” Even though they heard God’s language being spoken to them in their own language, some preferred the old way, their way, rather than God’s way. They preferred not having their world rocked and rolled even if the Holy Spirit was doing the rocking and rolling.

Albert Einstein viewed such inflexibly as “insanity.” He said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. How often do we do precisely that: we speak our own language, our own thoughts, our own beliefs, our own opinions, all LOUDER AND SLOWER, and expect divine results. And, of course, nothing happens except that we are awfully pleased with ourselves in the midst of the growing chaos.

Pentecost is about a new language being spoken, God’s language. Pentecost is the call to stop the insanity of listening to our own voices as if they are the holiest ones imaginable. Pentecost is the invitation to listen attentively for the Holy Spirit’s voice and trust that that voice is the only one that can change us, those we love, and the world around us.

It is hard, though, to listen to a new language even if it is God’s language. An old Pentecostal woman entered a Lutheran church in the middle of worship. Unlike the good Lutherans who were sitting toward the back, she walked to the very front pew. As the preacher droned on, she started shouting, “Amen. Thank you, Jesus.” She hoped she could stir up the church with the Holy Spirit. Her vigorous interjections only rattled the preacher. He started stuttering and this convinced the woman more than ever that the preacher needed help from the Holy Spirit and so she shouted all the more, “Preach it, brother. Praise God. Yes, Jesus.” The congregation began to squirm. She didn’t notice at all. She got more and more filled with the Spirit. Hoping to rouse the sedate Lutherans, she finally stood up and waved her hands, shouting to God and trying her best to fill the place with the Pentecost Spirit. The head usher had enough. He went up to her, leaned over and whispered, “Ma’am, is there a problem?” “Nothing is wrong” she said. “I just have the Spirit.” “Well,” he said, “you certainly didn’t get it here.”

When the Holy Spirit moves in our midst, our world is inevitably rocked and rolled. We squirm. We feel threatened and out of control. The Holy Spirit stretches our monotone beliefs in ways that make us mighty uncomfortable. We prefer the wisdom that we are convinced is written somewhere in the Bible: “We’ve never done it this way!”

We come here this morning speaking a host of languages and yet we pray for the power to set aside our selfish jabberings with hopes that we might hear and speak God’s language above all others. We come speaking English and Spanish and German and Portuguese and Swahili and Chinese and Korean and Japanese and French. We also come speaking other languages—languages of human sexuality, languages about how best to achieve health care for all people, languages of whether we should torture our enemies for security’s sake, languages of who should be the next justice on the Supreme Court, languages of Republican and Democrat. And yet, in spite of all those differences, we gather here with hopes to hear the one language, the language of the Holy Spirit, the language that can set us free.

Pentecost proclaims that LOUDER AND SLOWER does not work anymore and, in fact, never has. Pentecost senses something new in the air. Pentecost is people suddenly speaking God’s language as their primary language. Pentecost is the belief that Jesus is standing here talking to us just as he has promised. When we hear God’s language, Babel is forgotten, that place of maddeningly mixed up voices and of people mistrusting one another. When we hear God’s language, we sense that the dead, dry bones of thousands of valleys can rattle together making music of new life. Pentecost finally enables all people to have a common language, the language of God.

Pentecost invites individuals and families, nations and churches to a glorious party where the music of rushing wind and tongues of fire can once again sing the same heavenly melody on earth. Pentecost invites people who have been divided far too long by a host of harsh languages and oppressive ideologies to come and rejoice around God’s melodic music of love.

Yes, today is the Rock and Roll Marathon in San Diego. It is fitting that we gather here to get in on the act. It is time we rock and roll with the Holy Spirit, that we dance to divine music that can rock the world. It is time we listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit leading our singing. You can bet, if we let God’s voice lead the Pentecost party, then as Louis Armstrong once sang, what a wonderful world. So let us dare sing the music of the rock and rolling Holy Spirit.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 24, 2009
Seventh Sunday in Easter
Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26; John 17: 6-19
"Still Easter After All These Weeks"

So, have you had enough of my Easter cheerleading? Honestly, who other than us is still blabbering “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen?” That was six weeks ago; it’s old news. And what’s the deal about shouting “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen” three times? Honestly, Pastor, does any other church engage in such nonsense? What will the visitors think? Give it a rest, Pastor. Give it a rest.

But I must tell you: there are days when I need “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen”--maybe you have those days, too. There are mornings when I arrive here at the church and wish I could turn around and go home. I walk down the steps and know I am going to be confronted by people sleeping on the patio whom I have asked not to do that a million times, wanting a bite to eat, needing a bus pass to get somewhere. Some are belligerent, others not so happy to see me; some call me names my mother would think people quit calling me when I was ordained.

A few weeks ago I reflected on this and realized this is precisely why we are called to be here—we find our greatest joy doing ministry right here in the city. Other churches, of course, don’t find their joy being in the middle of one of our nation’s largest cities; that is why there are so few churches in downtown San Diego and why one of the largest churches left the city to go to greener passages a number of years ago: it became too hard, day-after-day, to arrive at work and worship, to face forlorn and drunken bodies on the sidewalks, human waste in bushes, repeated knocks on the door. Is it possible they could no longer hear the words “Alleluia? Christ Is Risen?”

I wonder if this is why Jesus told his disciples in the book of Acts, right before he ascended into heaven, to stay in the city of Jerusalem until they were clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus knew they would need help. Maybe it is why, the night before he died, Jesus prayed to God, “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Jesus knew we would face days when we all we want to do is run from the city and head for greener pastures.

In my first year as a pastor in inner-city Philadelphia, the guru of all Philadelphia pastors was a little elf of a man by the name of Pastor Bob Neumeyer. He smoked Captain Black pipe tobacco in garish enamel pipes and wore hideous pastel green leisure suits with clergy shirts the color of which Fortress should have been embarrassed to make and repented for ever trying to sell. We loved him, though, as if he were our father; in many ways he was. When he was stricken with cancer, we all went to say our final goodbyes to the man we loved. He had cajoled each of us to move with our young families into the deepest inner-cities of Philadelphia, too live and work in places that, for most of us, were like foreign countries. As Pastor Neumeyer lay dying, he pulled each of us close and whispered, “Stay here in the city.”

Things were tough. Not a single pastor was without a hair-raising story. We always joked that a requisite for doing ministry in Philadelphia was having a good “gun story.” We had been held up at gun point, shot at, had our lives threatened, been scared out of our wits. We gathered together regularly with our families to tell our stories, to laugh, to cry, to encourage one other with Jesus’ words, “Stay here in the city.”

There is a tendency for all of us to want to leave the city when the going gets tough. We all have some kind of cities in our lives. We long to go to newer places, form different relationships, try other churches. Jesus knew this would happen. He knew that we would want to escape the cities of our lives where things are not always easy and when we feel out of control. On his last night, Jesus prayed to his Father in heaven, “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”

Maybe that’s why we must keep saying, “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!” So that we won’t run! Jesus wants us right where we live, with our families and friends, at our jobs, here at our church, in the daily grind--that is where we discover God most powerfully.

The past few days Martha and Pastor Bill Radatz, Jim Lovell, and I were voting members at the Pacifica Synod Assembly in Riverside. As I think you know, the hot topic was the proposed ELCA Human Sexuality Study and the recommendations regarding whether or not gay and lesbian people in monogamous relationships may become ordained pastors in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You could feel the tension. The first night, I could barely sleep. I had written two of the primary resolutions to be considered. I tossed and turned, praying to God that I might say the right thing the next morning. As the debate began, more than a few people threatened that if the proposals did not go their way, they would leave the Lutheran church and seek a more perfect church. When the resolution that I had authored seemed like it might be in doubt, my stomach tightened; I wondered how I would break the news to you, how might I react? I prayed “Oh Lord, grant us the strength to stay in the city.” Now that the assembly has concluded, in my mind, it was the best I have ever attended. We were all forced to turn to God from whence comes our strength and not run, to seek God’s word in tough going, to join hands and pray for some common ground.

My dear friends, isn’t that what we are called to do in every area of our life? Rather than leave our cities whatever and wherever they may be--family, friends or church--aren’t we called to stay and wait until we are clothed with the power of God? I think that is exactly why I have been making fools of you for all these weeks. I so long that we will know that the Risen and Ascended Christ is always with us. I so long that we will never forget that Jesus will clothe us with the power to live in the cities of our lives forever.

So one more time, so we don’t forget during the rest of the year and so that I know that you are still able to humor me…“Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 17, 2009
Sixth Sunday in Easter
Acts 10: 44-48; John 15: 9-17
"Swoopings of the Spirit"

Whenever the Holy Spirit swoops down to invite new people into the Christian community, there is inevitably an outcry of protest. Amazingly, this outcry almost always comes from the heart of the community, from the most committed Christians. Perhaps you have noticed.

In this morning’s first reading from Acts, there is such a protest. The Holy Spirit swoops down to invite a Gentile by the name of Cornelius into the young Christian community. At first blush, you would think the small and young church would have been delighted to welcome a new member. For most of us--maybe all of us here this morning—the way the Spirit invited Cornelius to become a Christian is the same way that it happened to us: like Cornelius, we are Gentile Christians, not Jewish Christians. It makes sense to us. We say, “What’s the big deal about Cornelius becoming a Christian? Aren’t we all like Cornelius?” Let us not forget, however, that the first Christians were Jews and not Gentiles; in order for “our kind” to be included into the church, quite a bit of Holy Scripture had to be disregarded. The Holy Spirit had to swoop!

When the Spirit informed Peter through a vision that a Gentile was about to enter the Christian community, he was flabbergasted. How could this be? Not only was Peter being encouraged to eat swine and lobster with Gentiles--something, by the way, strictly forbidden by Scripture, Peter was also being asked to welcome an uncircumcised man into the heart of the community--something unthinkable as far as Scripture was concerned. The thought of Cornelius entering the Christian community initially angered Peter and many others in the early church (cf., the first part of Acts 10 and the reaction of the church in Jerusalem in Acts 11). How could they disregard Scripture even if doing so meant welcoming Cornelius and his kind into the community?

My experience in the church suggests that we almost always struggle when the Holy Spirit swoops down to invite a new group of people into the church’s doors. It is almost always unnerving, at least to some. I served a congregation where all the white people left the minute African Americans started joining; when I arrived on the scene as the pastor, the church had become 100% black almost overnight. How could “they” join “us” was the question. I served a congregation that had services in Swedish and English—always did and still does today; and yet, when it came time to decide whether to offer worship in Spanish to people who, just like their Swedish ancestors did not speak English as their primary language, the community hotly debated the possibility. And here at First Lutheran, we are part of a denomination that, in four days at our synod assembly in Riverside, will wrestle with whether to include gay and lesbian people fully into the life of the church.

Whenever the Holy Spirit swoops down to welcome a new group of people into the church’s life, inevitably, there are Christians who will articulate a host of biblical and theological reasons why this should not happen. I am currently reading a book entitled Betrayal. This book is about the church in Germany during the time Adolph Hitler rose to power. You would think that Hitler’s crazed ideas would have been a slam dunk “no” for Christians. It is astonishing to note, however, that some of the brightest and best religious minds of the day came up with biblical and theological reasons why the Jewish people were not really the chosen ones of God and why Hitler’s insanity actually made sense.

Every age in church history has been forced to grapple with the swoopings of the Spirit, whether to open its doors or to slam them shut.

If we seem to repeat ourselves in struggling with this issue of inclusion, how might we Christians, who are so often threatened by new people, discover a better way to welcome those wishing to enter our community? Would it not make sense to turn to Jesus to guide all our thinking and acting? What if, for instance, the words Jesus spoke to his disciples the night before he died, “love one another as I have loved you,” become the principle by which we measure our every action as the people of God? I wonder if that’s exactly what saved Peter as he struggled with whether to include Cornelius into the Christian community. Maybe Jesus’ words, “love one another,” rang in Peter’s ears as he finally welcomed Cornelius with open arms.

A year ago, in this sanctuary, the Slevcove family and their brothers and sisters in Christ gathered together for the baptism of beautiful little Allena. Those of you who were here know what a celebration it was. It was one of the memorable events in my ministry. Everyone got involved in the action: children stirred up the baptismal waters with their hands; we sang until the roof shook off; every pastor in sight laid hands on Allena, begging for the Spirit’s presence; grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles and friends prayed for their new sister in Christ. There we were, Christians of every stripe, Russian Molokans, Presbyterians, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Baptists, even a smattering of Lutherans. It was so much fun. Didn’t we sense the Holy Spirit breaking down the very religious barriers that so often make us such a bunch of sour pusses? Wasn’t it a joy to lay our differences aside and baptize a new sister in Christ?

Well, here we are again, this time to baptize handsome little Akian. Who knows how the Spirit will behave today? As soon as Beth and Joe announced their pregnancy, I sensed the Spirit swooping. These days have been so much fun as Beth and Joe have called me almost daily--yesterday, my day off, early in the morning while I was still in bed!--wondering how best to include as many people as possible in this baptismal celebration. It is fitting that Akian means “ocean” in Russian. This name holds enormous significance to the Russian segment of Akian’s family as well as to the California surfing segment. And what Akian means for all of us here today is that God is soon going to trouble the waters. We are going to sing and pray and dance until the Spirit swoops and stirs up the waters.

I’ll bet that we will remember this day for years to come as we celebrate Jesus’ words, “love one another as I have loved you.” What a joy it is when the Spirit swoops down and surprises us in unimaginable ways and when we come to worship together--all of us, Russian Molokans, Presbyterians, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Baptists, and yes, even a smattering of Lutherans. Who knows, if someone entered here this morning and knew nothing about us, they might actually know we are Christians by our love! Wouldn’t that be something!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
May 10, 2009
Fifth Sunday of Easter/Mother's Day
John 15: 1-8
"Words Chosen Carefully and Lovingly"

If we are about to die, God willing, we will choose the final words we speak with incredible care.

My favorite writer Annie Dillard, in her book The Writing Life, urges authors to treat every word they write as if it is the last one they will write before they die.

The day my mother died, right before she was rushed to the operating room for an extremely dangerous surgery, she called me from the hospital. I remember trying to choose each word I spoke as carefully as possible. I know she did the same. These were our last words.

The words we just heard are Jesus’ final words to his disciples the night before he dies. He chooses his words carefully. Jesus’ deepest desire is for his disciples to abide in the light of his love even after he dies. Hear Jesus’ words again: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. Abide in me as I abide in you.” Even 2,000 years later, we cherish these words. We pass them down like fine jewels, to each succeeding generation, hoping that they will bring comfort and joy.

Those of you who have ever hiked in the desert on a hot, sunny day have heard the deadly warnings: take lots of water and drink it often. Said another way, you cannot survive on your own: you need a source of water other than yourself. That is what Jesus tells his disciples on the last evening of his life: keep connected to me, abide in me so that you might be nourished by God throughout your life.

On this Mother’s Day, we give thanks for our mothers. Mothers are the source of words that sustain us. If we are fortunate, our mothers have carefully chosen the words they have spoken to us over the years. My hunch is that good mothers have almost always second guessed themselves when speaking to us: they have agonized over many of their words. What mother hasn’t stood at the school door, sending her little tot off to nursery school for the first time? There is that deep fear--while never uttered of course--that this just might be the last word ever spoken between the two of them. That’s why it is so hard to say that first “goodbye”—it might be the last “goodbye.” And of course, sometime, maybe that day or in fifty years, that final word will be spoken between mother and child. And so good mothers treat every word as though it might be the last word.

Whenever I tend to our yard--which, I must tell you is as rarely as possible--I have little patience and am far from careful. I take my weed-whacker and go to town; if a plant is in the way, it is soon going to be a dead one! Dagmar knows this about me. Before I am allowed to arm myself with my trusty weed-whacker, she takes me by the hand and points out every single plant in the garden. I am instructed where to cut and where to steer clear. As many of you know, Dagmar has never met a flower she doesn’t like. Every flower receives her utmost attention; no flower misses her deepest care.

Jesus never meets a person he doesn’t like. Just as the disciples are entrusted with Jesus’ words the last night of his life, we, too, are entrusted with those identical words of Jesus this morning. Our community here places an enormously high value on the speaking of these words. These words are how we care for one another. What other place can you think of that allows a person like me the privilege of standing up in front of you for fifteen minutes or so, saying whatever I want, while you sit silently and listen? Lutherans historically have insisted that their clergy--the ones who will speak these words Sunday after Sunday--receive college degrees and seminary training before being entrusted with your precious time and Jesus’ invaluable words. Your deepest hope--I imagine that’s why you keep showing up here--is that during these moments, you will hear a word or two spoken in a way that you never have before and will be lifted up as if by Christ himself. You pray that the words you hear here will strengthen you as a branch on Christ’s vine so that, no matter what challenges you face in life, you will not whither.

I agonize over the words I speak to you. I read and meditate on the chosen Scripture passages throughout the week; I study what scholars have said about Jesus’ words; I pray for God’s Spirit to inspire me so that a few words I preach might inspire you; I stare into space and wonder how best to give utterance to these words; I try to get my sermon on paper by Friday afternoon; on most Saturdays, I find myself sitting at home on my computer, tinkering with the words, fiddling and changing and deleting, trying to come up with the best sounding phrases and finest words, hoping that some twist of a phrase will touch you with God’s love. I am always nervous when I stand here before you and speak these words. I have said to every call committee I have met with that the moment I am not nervous when proclaiming God’s word to you, it is high time that I move on.

Yes, on this day, Mother’s Day, we give thanks for mothers, mothers who have chosen their words lovingly and carefully, who have done their best to convey Christ’s love to their children. That is not to say that they haven’t spoken a painful word or two to us. If moms are worth their salt, they will, from time-to-time, utter words that will prune us, correct us, and set us on a better course. And yet, for those who really care about another person, such words of correction, if spoken with love, are inevitably as painful for the speaker as they are for hearer.

On this Mother’s Day, let us all strive to give each other the gift of words chosen carefully and lovingly. We Christians have witnessed the power of such words spoken well: they have created this magnificent universe; they have brought each of us to life. During these days of Easter, may we all share such words with one another. May we treat each word we speak as if it is our very last one; and may each of our words, in one way or another, convey the sentiment of the greatest words of all, “Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 26, 2009
Third Sunday of Easter
Luke 24: 36b-48
"All Occasions Invite His Mercies"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
Christ Is Risen Indeed!

There is no way that it should have happened, no way in the world. When Jesus first called the disciples, they dropped everything--nets and tax books and families--and they followed him. They risked everything in the belief that Jesus was the one for whom they and their loved ones had waited for so long. And then, three years later, there they were in that upper room, startled, terrified, and filled with doubt. They just sat around the table, licking their wounds, wallowing in pity, wondering why things had gone so terribly wrong. Hadn’t Jesus been the one their grandmas and grandpas had told them about, the Messiah who would redeem Israel? There is no way that it should have happened, no way in the world.

What went wrong?

Jimmy Kilgore is similar to those disciples. He, too, did as he was told from the time he was a child. He had a paper route as a kid and started saving money early; he studied hard in high school and was accepted into Stanford as a National Merit Scholar; he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and went on to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School. He saved his money, sinking the maximum he could into his various retirement plans. He never bought fancy cars. He and his family lived in a modest home. And then the bottom fell out. There was corporate corruption at the very top of his company. His retirement account read zero when it arrived in the mail at the beginning of the month. He lost his job after twenty years of dedicated and hard work. How could this possibly happen to Jimmy Kilgore?

Perhaps you have faced the chaos of the disciples and Jimmy Kilgore. You are one of the good ones, always doing as you were told, living frugally and being generous to others. And then the bottom falls out. Like those others, you sit in your upper room uttering, “There is no way this could happen to me.”

On the evening of his resurrection, Jesus walks into every one of our upper room where dreams have been shattered and hopes dashed, where we sit stirring our coffee and staring into space--startled, terrified, and filled with doubt. We mumble, we are lost, we grasp for an appropriate Bible verse learned as a child, hoping it might provide solace for our broken lives.

It is amazing how the resurrected Christ appears to people sitting around and stirring coffee and staring into space. In the Bible’s resurrection accounts, the Risen Christ always appears in these ordinary routines when hope has been all but lost.

In his book, The Magnificent Defeat, Presbyterian writer and preacher Frederick Buechner writes: “It is a strange story. All the stories about how Jesus appeared to people after his death are strange, and the strangest thing about them is how unglamorous they are, how little fanfare there is about them. If you or I had written them, it would have been hard to resist giving them a little more drama.”

There the disciples sit in the upper room. They will soon return to the old routines, untangling fishing nets, fixing leaky boats, dusting off old tax records.

You know the feeling. In these days of economic stress, you hate to open your pension printout for fear of what you will find. You fear for your job, your home, and your children’s future. Your stomach is hollow like a carved out cantaloupe. Your dreams are fading fast.

I have a hunch that if any of us are to experience resurrection power, it will come as we stir sugar in our coffee without the least expectation of seeing the Risen Savior.

I wonder if this is the Easter invitation, to begin to see every moment pregnant with the possibility of the Risen Christ appearing to us. Imagine if we expect the Risen Christ as a guest every time we sit down for supper--you know, “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest.” What if we light candles even when we have hot dogs and baked beans and place freshly cut flowers from the garden at the center of our tables? What if, like the Jews at the Seder who reserve a seat for Elijah, we reserve a seat for the Risen Savior even when we are simply having Cheerios?

That’s how the first disciples experienced Jesus’ resurrection. They experienced new life not in the next life, after they were dead and gone, but in this life, eating and drinking and telling Bible stories to one another, trying to lift each other’s spirits after a few terrible days. They met Jesus on the same dusty roads they had walked so many times before, on seashores they knew so well, in well worn rooms where they had studied God’s Torah and recited words of the ancient prophets.

Might we similarly meet the Risen Christ here, now, as we sing our songs and pray our prayers and read the Bible and preach the Word and eat chunks of bread and drink gulps of wine? Might we experience the Risen One in the six wonderful people who will join this Christian assembly in a few moments? Keep your eyes open.

Perhaps what we learn in the resurrection stories is that no place is off limits for Christ’s victory over death. He comes to those places in our lives where we have all but given up, where hysteria prevails--that’s where Jesus comes. Christ’s resurrection reveals that there is no despair that cannot be transformed to joy, no relationship that cannot be mended, no lonely place that cannot be filled with God’s presence. As the English poet and priest John Donne once noted, “All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.”

When we ask, “How could this possibly happen to us?” that’s when we should be looking for the Risen One. We don’ need to escape to greener pastures, find new jobs, move to different homes, seek out novel cities, or even go out to eat. The resurrected Christ finds us at the same old jobs, with the same maddening friends, in the midst of the very same liturgy yet again. Funny thing how the Risen Christ comes to us in the humdrum, eating fish and breaking bread. He comes to upper rooms, on beaches, on dusty roads, at Third and Ash.

Yes, Christ Is Risen! Alleluia!

The Rev. Bill Radatz
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 19, 2009
Earth Day

Good morning and a happy earth day to you. It’s been over 20 years now that we have been celebrating earth day. There’s a new sense of urgency with which we approach earth day now, however, as we become more and more aware of the damage we are causing to this planet that we call home.

We think we are pretty smart, with all our technology and inventiveness. I know a professor of environmental sciences who has a wall this size full of books and they are all about living sustainably upon this earth. We know what to do and how to do it, he says, but we don’t do it.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve invited a few guest speakers to talk to us today about how to live sustainably upon the earth. They are really smart so pay attention!

This is my friend Sam (a tree)… or Samantha. Amazing – trees are both male and female. We’ll use Sam today. Sam, what have you got to say (a few moments of silence).

Sam speaks very softly, so let me repeat a few of the things he is saying.

First, he reminds us that trees are the oldest living things on earth. Many reach 500 years. There are olive trees in the Holy Land that were growing when Jesus walked the land. Eu trees in England are estimated at 5000 years old. How old are you?

These leaves take the poison waste that we are breathing out right now, the CO2, which would kill us if that’s all we had to breath in, and converts it to oxygen, the very thing we need to live. It takes our waste and changes it into what gives us life. Can you do that?

Leaves also do this other amazing thing – they take the energy of the sun and change it into food, for the tree and for us, and solid material like trunks and branches. Can you do that with the energy of the sun?

The tree also takes dirt and water, and changes those into sap (maple syrup is my favorite), seeds, nuts, fruit. Can you do that with dirt and water?

Roots of trees gather water and nutrition, but also make a network system that can hold up a tree weighing thousand of pounds and hundreds of feet tall, and at the same time make a carpet in the ground that holds the soil together and prevents erosion, even on steep mountain sides.

Trees provide cooling shade and protection from the beating sun, they provide shelter for us and lots of creatures in the rain, they protect undergrowth beneath it, and can even create their own micro-climate, like in a rain forest.

Trees provide habitat to hundreds of species of birds and insects and other creatures who call them home.

Tress and plants produce lots of byproducts that are used in making medicines and that can help heal diseases and wounds.

Trees are creatures of abundance. Note the quantity of leaves you often need to rake up in the fall. Oaks drop thousands of acorns, and only a few may take root and become new trees. But the rest do not go to waste. They become food for lots of creatures, and what’s left becomes part of the soil that allows other plants to grow.

Trees have 0% waste. Nothing is wasted. Everything is recycled in one way or another. Do you do that?

And wood has been the basis for human society and culture. Fire, habitat construction, the wheel – what would we be without trees?

And of course, a Lucy says to Charlie Brown, “When life gets to hard, trees are good to lean against.”

And then, after producing so much, for no good reason that scientists can explain, the leaves turn to amazing, breath-taking, beautiful colors. We’d like to think it is for our pleasure, but the tree has its own reason for such beauty in God’s creation.

Now we think we are very smart, us humans. And what do we do with these amazing trees in all our wisdom? We cut them down and say “let’s write on them!” Chop them up and make them into paper, upon which we like to write all our wisdom and news. Let’s make them into toothpicks! How about toilet paper?!

70% of the rain forest are now gone. We are losing ½ acre of forest every second, and with them we are losing 137 plant and animal and insect species every day.

Listen to the trees. They have so much to teach us about how to live sustainably in our world.

Now I’d like to introduce you to several other friends who are also very smart – friends with whom we share this planet. The words to the music in the background are in your bulletin, if you wish to check then out. Listen, carefully. You may even be able to hear God’s voice in the background.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 12, 2009
The Resurrection of Our Lord, Easter Day
Mark 16: 1-8
"Only God Can Resurrection"

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
Christ Is Risen Indeed! Alleluia

Believe it or not, I have spent a considerable amount of time pondering how best to greet you this morning. Greetings I have considered: “Happy Easter,” “Joyous Easter,” and a more churchly approach, “Blessed Easter.” As you just noticed, I particularly love--and finally chose--the time-honored greeting, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

For purposes of historical authenticity, we do well to examine the first Easter greetings. In the Bible’s resurrection accounts, the first greetings were far from cheerful ones. “Do not be alarmed” is how the angelic man inside the tomb greeted the women as they confronted the tomb with a rolled away stone and heard the news that the tomb was empty. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were not the least bit joyful or even feeling particularly blessed on that first Easter morning. Never before had they seen something like this. Never! They were terrified and amazed. And so, one must exercise extreme caution with Easter greetings.

If you want to proclaim Easter joy, not in a million years will you end your story as Mark does. His gospel ends with everything hanging: “They fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them.” Preacher Fred Craddock asks, “Is this any way to run a resurrection?”

If a television reporter accosts you after worship this morning and asks, “So, what do you believe happened on that first Easter?” what will you say? I can’t speak for you, but I will venture something profound. Whenever someone asks, “Pastor, what do you believe about Christ’s resurrection?” I offer an answer, any answer. Shouldn’t faithful Christians have ready-made answers to central matters of faith? After all, if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, as St. Paul suggests, this Christianity business isn’t worth a dime.

How might Jesus’ counsel us to answer the reporter’s question? In Mark’s gospel, whenever Jesus does something miraculous or says something astonishing, he orders the bystanders, “Don’t tell anyone”--to be blunt, he counsels, “Shut your mouth!” You would think Jesus would want us to take out glitzy ads in the newspaper, float helium balloons in the sky, have planes towing banners above the San Diego beaches announcing, “Christ is risen!”

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offers a possible solution as to why Jesus orders us, “Don’t tell anyone.” “Jesus holds back from revealing who he is because, it seems, he cannot believe that there are words that will tell the truth about him in the mouths of others. What will be said of him is bound to be untrue” (Rowan Williams, Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgment, Harper Collins Religious, Great Britain, 2000, pg. 5, 6).

Isn’t Archbishop Williams right? We simply do not have adequate words to explain the mystery of Easter. How could we? The Bible does not include a single account of how Jesus was raised from the dead. Not one! We hear of Jesus appearing to people after the resurrection but no where does someone see how he bursts from the tomb. No where! Why, then, do we feel compelled to offer resurrection explanations? At the end of one of his densest philosophical treatises, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein urged, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” One would think such advice applies to what we can and cannot say about the resurrection.

The church dare not be satisfied with simplistic answers to faith’s towering beliefs. I had a seminary professor who loathed simplistic answers. He warned us future pastors of cutesy hymns, corny worship, and kitschy church architecture that has lots of fluff and no substance. He had a particular distaste for banners in sanctuaries—do you see where I got my training? Father Kavanagh’s instructions regarding banners were as follows: “Banners are decorative images, not ideological broadsides or opportunities for tricky piety. Rather than a festal gesture for the assembly, banners often are a form of disposable ecclesiastical art bearing disposable thoughts which foster disposable piety. Such banners should be disposed of” (Aidan Kavanagh, Elements of Rite, Pueblo Publishing Company, New York, 1982, pg. 22). This good Benedictine monk understood that clichéd answers to difficult matters like the resurrection rarely provide lasting answers to life’s ultimate concerns; more often than not, in a few years hence, like pastel leisure suits and Nehru jackets, they prove an embarrassment as we wonder, “What were we ever thinking?”

The sign of a wise person, it seems to me, is someone who, in the face of an unanswerable question, is content to say, “I don’t know,” or better yet, to remain silent. Let the mystery of the resurrection rest on your hearts this morning. Let the empty tomb soak into your life. If resurrection is to change your world, then resurrection must be beyond anything you have ever known, seen, or imagined. Only God can make the Son of Man come back from the dead. Only God can put an end to evil and sin and bring peace on earth. Only God can resurrection!

I would imagine, deep in each of your souls, lies a hope to discover something here this morning that will change your life forever, something that will make you more of a person than you ever imagined you could be. Your presence here points to your eagerness to celebrate the mystery of that first Easter morning. Why else would we keep telling one another the story of Jesus rising from the dead? Why else would we keep showing up here? With all the hatred between nations, the struggling economy, the death of loved ones, and the confusion in our communities, oh how we need Jesus to rise from the dead.

I believe it is a good thing that we are rendered speechless by the events of Christ’s resurrection on that Easter morning so long ago. The Methodist Bishop of Alabama William Willimon writes: “We can’t ‘explain’ a resurrection. Resurrection explains us.” When we are rendered speechless, resurrection power is enabled to unleash its work in us and on the world.

And so, while we are unable to explain Christ’s resurrection, we can certainly celebrate it. That’s why we are here! We are here to praise God for destroying death and for offering us and those we love, life forever. Far better than our explanations of the resurrection are the praises we sing this morning that Jesus Christ is risen!

Oh yes…just in case a reporter does ask you when you are leaving here this morning, “So, what do you think about the resurrection?” here’s what I would suggest you say…Please stand.

Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 9, 2009
Maundy Thursday
1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
"Jesus' Hands"

Hands—I have been reflecting on the hands of Holy Week.

I have been drawn to Pilate’s hands. “So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves” (Matthew 27: 24).

Pilate’s hands were hands of power. He could have freed Jesus instantly or sealed his death. We know what Pilate’s decision was.

Pilate is probably not the worst man that has ever lived. Like many before and after him, he was simply doing his job. He was making the system work, upholding the vows he had made when installed as governor. Pleasing the people, showing strength in the face of the enemy, and honoring the powerful religious and political institutions and pledges were all in a day’s work for Pilate.

Isn’t there a little of Pilate in each of us? Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche Community which lives with the mentally and physically challenged writes: “We are afraid of showing weakness. We are afraid of not succeeding. Deep inside we are afraid of not being recognized. So we pretend we are the best. We hide behind power. We hide behind all sorts of things” (Jean Vanier, “The Vision of Jesus,” Stanley Hauwerwas & Jean Vanier, Living Gently in a Violent World, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Il, 2008, pg. 64).

On this night, we confess that we have not used our hands for the good of God’s kingdom. We look into the faces of the homeless poor, at the lives of the war torn, at this city’s suffering children, at the broken hearts of lonely neighbors and, for whatever reason, we, like Pilate, wash our hands of the whole unsolvable mess.

And then there are Jesus’ hands. We come face-to-face with Jesus’ hands tonight. We can only imagine what his hands were like, hands that knew hard work, hands that never cowered from the difficult task—callused, scarred, and twisted by the carpenter’s bench. And yet, in all their strength, Jesus’ hands were tender and compassionate, abounding with steadfast love.

Yes, this night is about Jesus’ hands. “And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him” (John 13: 2,3).

Not even a slave was expected to wash the master’s feet—much too dirty of a task. Isn’t it surprising, given the disciples’ impending betrayal, denial, and cowardice, that, nonetheless, Jesus took a servant’s towel, stooped down, and lovingly massaged each friend’s feet, one after another?

“Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things,” writes Jean Vanier. “It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.” (Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, Darton, Longman, and Todd, London, 1979, pg. 220.)

In a few moments, we will wash one another’s feet. How sacramental and yet how unnerving--to stoop down and take the feet of a brother or sister into our hands and gently wash. As we do this, our humanity will rise to holiness.

And then, these words regarding Jesus’ hands: “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way [with his hands] he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians 11: 23-25).

Jesus’ hands place the bread and the cup into our hands. Though we resemble Pilate in so many ways, when Jesus hands touch ours, we our saved.

Transformed by Jesus’ hands on this night, we become his hands, going from this place, out into the world, encountering the broken, touching the diseased, and embracing the rejected, touching them all, we pray, with the hands of Jesus.

This night…Jesus’ hands, our hands.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
April 5, 2009
Palm Sunday/The Passion of Our Lord
Philippians 2: 5-11; Mark 14: 1-15:47
"A Harsh and Dreadful Love"

There are some hymns that, at least for me, are impossible to sing alone. I always like to have a good singer at my side when the hymn is a particularly difficult one. With such support, something very difficult can suddenly be filled with great excitement.

We just heard one of the oldest Christian hymns from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Listen to some of the words again: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2: 6-8).

That, my friends, is an impossible hymn to sing without a little help from our friends. Dorothy Day, the founder of “The Catholic Worker,” called Christ’s love a “harsh and dreadful love.” We will need to sing together if we are going to sing such a love.

When we began this morning’s worship outside, the singing was easy and fun. We waved our palms in the sky and belted out “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.” It is the most thrilling parade of the church year. Now that Jesus’ donkey has turned toward Calvary, our singing has become subdued, hollow. The organ music has grown dissonant.

Saint Paul was in jail when he wrote to his beloved Philippians and urged them to join hands whenever they sang of Christ’s love on the cross. “Be of one mind,” he said. Paul knew that it would be impossible for them to sing of Christ’s love alone let alone live that love in the tough times they faced. Paul knew that there could be no virtuoso solo performances if the community were to survive persecution and challenge.

In his little book, Life Together, the World War II German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns of virtuoso solo performances. (Before returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer taught at Union Seminary in New York City where our preacher on May 3, Barbara Lundblad, currently teaches homiletics). Hear Bonhoeffer’s words:

“There are some destroyers of unison singing in the fellowship that must be rigorously eliminated. There is no place in the service of worship where vanity and bad taste can so intrude as in the singing. There is, first, the improvised second part which one hears almost everywhere. It attempts to give the necessary background, the missing fullness to the soaring unison tone, and thus kills both the words and the tone. There is the bass or the alto who must call everybody’s attention to his astonishing range and therefore sings every hymn an octave lower. There is the solo voice that goes swaggering, swelling, blaring, and tremulant from a full chest and drowns out everything else to the glory of its own fine organ…

“Only where everybody in the group is disposed to an attitude of worship and discipline can unison singing, even though it may lack much musically, give us the joy which is peculiar to it alone”(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pg. 60).

Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on congregational singing could easily apply to the entirety of the Christian life. When our words, our piety, and our commitments become solo performances, drawing attention only to ourselves, the air is inevitably sucked out of the Christian community. Watch whenever a person draws attention to himself or herself in worship, piety, or commitment and you will see the rest of the community stand back, withdraw, wondering why the person insists on going it alone. You know how trying it can be for the Christian community when one person demands all the attention and shows little or no concern for the opinions of others. In the Christian life, we are called to sing with a common voice, even if some of our passion must be sacrificed for the greater good of the community.

One of my Christian heroes is the late William Sloane Coffin who for many years was the chaplain at Yale University. There is a story told of him being in jail with a group of protestors—I forget whether he was in a Southern jail for protesting segregation or some other slammer for some other “crime” of conscience. In the jail’s darkness, forlorn protestors reported hearing Coffin begin to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. One after another joined the singing until, as one united choir, the jailed protesters bore Christ’s cross against society’s abuses. With one united voice, they could make a difference!

You have likely found similar strength in your time of need as you have sung a song imprinted on your heart since childhood with a groups of friends. You know how courage arises from such singing when you need no hymnal at all: you are emboldened to live Christ’s harsh and dreadful love even when the world does not necessarily want to hear what you have to sing.

As Holy Week proceeds to the Good Friday cross, I guarantee you that the crowds will stop singing and grow smaller and smaller. I wish it were different but, if experience rings true—which almost certainly it will—people will fade further and further from the cross the closer we come to Christ’s agony. It is hard to sing when staring at a cross. Not until Easter will this sanctuary swell again; not until the music regains its pleasing major keys and upbeat melodies and alleluias will the crowds again feel comfortable.

My dear friends, our world needs people who have the courage to follow Jesus when all that is being experienced are the minor keys of life and all that many churches offer are the major keys. Turn on your television to our nation’s largest churches and, inevitably, you will find it impossible to spot a cross anywhere in the sanctuary--too depressing, we are told; no one will come to church if the cross is present let alone, if it looms large. “Marketed Christianity” invariably leads with the least common denominator and, most certainly, that necessarily means an absence of Christ’s Cross. Sadly, our world needs us to sing Christ’s music, together, in the minor keys when few dare to sing such music for fear that it will prove fatal to success as the world measures it! We need to take Christ’s music to people who have lost the will to sing, whose only music is their weeping and whose only words, if any, emanate from the prisons of their lives.

As we sing together, by some miracle, the world might hear a snippet of what it so desperately needs to hear and yet is so afraid to sing, the voice of a Jesus who, though in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a slave for the sake of the world. Oh, how the world needs to hear that music. May God grant us courage to go to those in need and, together, sing of Jesus’ harsh and dreadful love.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 29, 2009
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Jeremiah 31: 31-34; John 12: 20-33
"A Tattoed Heart"

My little league baseball coach had two faded tattoos: one of a scantily clad lady on the inside of his arm; the other, a heart with an inked out name, right on his forearm, for all to see. I have always been intrigued by tattoos with the names of lost loves, erased and not, for all to see.

All of which leads me to this morning’s reading from Jeremiah. He, too, talks of a tattoo. This tattoo will be an incredibly painful one imprinted right on our hearts. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Bible is filled with stories of lost loves who turn their backs on God. Over and over again, God’s people get involved in messy affairs with, what appears to them, more attractive company than God. They are seduced by their neighbor’s fancy idols, fascinated with other nation’s exotic religions, long to join up with powerful and wealthy nations. God is broken-hearted by Israel’s repeated affairs and rejections and yet God never loses hope. Over and over again, God attempts to win back the hearts of God’s beloved people.

As affairs tend to go, Israel’s always ended in disaster. In one disastrous affair, their temple was destroyed, their holy city Jerusalem left in shambles, the Davidic dynasty hit a dead end, and the brightest and best were deported to the foreign land of Babylon—all because they were unfaithful to God.

Lent is a reflection on God’s repeated attempts to reignite the flames of affection with God’s beloved ones, to regain their love. Maybe that’s why Lent lasts six weeks. We, too, are included in those affairs. We have lusted after every conceivable god except the God of Jesus Christ. How many of us, in recent years, in one way or another, have chased the idol of extravagance? It was exciting while it lasted, wasn’t it? A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with a number of investment bankers. I had never experienced anything like it and probably never will again. When it was time to order, I chose the soft shell crabs—which everyone else chose, too!--I was so proud that the bankers followed my whims. Little did I realize that the soft shell crabs were simply hors d’oeuvres for the high-rollers. The wine was $100 a bottle and the dessert port $35 a glass—something I never realized existed. It was fun. “Maybe this life is for me!” I thought.

The excess of those days has proved shallow and fatal. I sense that we will look back on the days of extravagance with no small amount of embarrassment and heartache. Did we really think material goods could buy us happiness? What were we ever thinking?

And yet, God won’t give up on us. In this week’s issue of The Christian Century (April 7, 2009), John Buchanan, pastor of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian and editor of the magazine, writes: “If there is anything redemptive about this crisis, it is the possibility it offers to learn again the virtues we may have forgotten—modesty, frugality, responsibility, community—and to learn again who we are.” Maybe through all the pain we will realize just how much God cares for us and how important God’s love is for us.

It is so easy to forget who we are and whose we are. Even the church forgets. The church easily gets caught up in lusting for glory, measuring its importance by impressive buildings, beautiful sanctuaries, crowded churches, huge offerings, and prestige in the community. We even like the glory of our crosses to come in silver or gold and definitely not with the body of Jesus on them.

Today, we are invited to a different kind of glory. We are called to a ministry that reminds us and the world that, despite our past failures, God still desperately loves us. I saw such a vision of glory on Tuesday evening when a large group of First Lutheran members went to hear Bishop Murray Finck discuss the latest human sexuality proposals before our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We had been there two hours when Bishop Finck indicated that there was time for one more question. I looked down our row and noticed First Lutheran’s quiet Levi Brown raise his hand. Rather than asking a question, Levi made an unforgettable comment. He courageously said before the entire gathered group that he was once a drug addict living on the streets and near death. Through the outreach of the Central City Lutheran Mission in San Bernardino, Levi stopped drugs. Levi said, “I am alive today because of the Lutheran church.” He went on to say how delighted he is to be at First Lutheran where he and his partner, Tom, have been warmly welcomed. Levi could just as easily have said, “God’s name is tattooed on my heart. God has never given up on me.” I will not forget Levi’s testimony!

Our ministry, if it is anything, is about helping one another remember that Christ’s love on the cross will one day be tattooed on our hearts. Jeremiah said this would happen: he said there will come a day when we will realize the wonder of God’s love for us and from that day on we will be faithful forever and ever.

You may wonder what your pastor does on Saturdays. Yesterday, Dagmar and I went to the grand re-opening of El Cajon Harley Davidson. Do you think I blended right in with the leather crowd with my Birkenstock sandals? I must confess that I lusted after some of those amazing chrome machines. I asked Dagmar, “What would First Lutheran think if I pulled up to the church in one of these?” But what really got me thinking was the tattoo stand right there in front of hundreds of people, up on a stage, blues and yellows and reds being permanently imprinted on some macho guy’s leg. My mind wandered to this morning, to the tattoo that God promises to place on our heart.

Maybe for the remaining two weeks of Lent, we should look inward to our hearts. Imagine God’s name tattooed colorfully and boldly at the center of our lives. After all we have done, it is astonishing that God promises to tattoo, “God loves you,” right on our hearts.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 22, 2009
Fourth Sunday in Lent
Numbers 21: 4-9; John 3: 14-21
"Neccesary Pain"

There was once a young man who wished to become a monk. The monastery abbot instructed him of the arduous nature of the first twenty years of his training which would be spent in utter silence. He would be permitted, however, to speak two words every three years.

After three years of obeying this vow, the young monk was summoned by his abbot to speak his two words. He replied, "Food’s terrible.”

Three more years went by when, once again, the head of the monastery asked, “Well, do you have anything to say?" “Bed’s hard," were the monk’s words.

After three more years the Abbot once again asked for the monk’s words. The monk said, “I quit!"

“Well, I'm not surprised," said the Abbot. "You've done nothing but complain since you arrived.”

Only days after being freed from Egyptian slavery, the Israelites were complaining similarly. They grumbled about the godforsaken wilderness, the water, and the terrible food. Things were so bad that God’s people even longed to go back to Egypt where they had suffered brutal slavery for years.

Our first reading this morning comes from the book of Numbers in the Old Testament. It is a story about how God sent poisonous snakes to bite and kill the grumbling Israelites. After the poisonous snakes killed a slew of people, God ordered Moses to put a bronze serpent on a pole and put an end to the killing. From now on, whenever the Israelites looked to this pole, even if bitten, they would not die. While the healing process from the snake bites would be excruciatingly painful, nevertheless, they would live.

Have you ever noticed how danger and pain pave the way of our own healing? Rarely do we visit the doctor without walking out and hurting even more. I learned this lesson as a kid as did you. My parents told me, “Don’t cry, it will make you better.” Now that I am older, I still recall those warnings of pain and I still want to cry. What I realize now, however, is that pain, no matter how invasive and excruciatingly painful, is often essential to the healing process.

I recently read Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp. The author describes her disastrous drinking habit. The heft of the glasses, the jingle of the ice, the gorgeous liquids of Bombay Sapphire Gin and Maker’s Mark bourbon—she adored all involved in the drinking life even though it was killing her. It was not until she faced the brutal physical and emotional pains of detoxification that she was finally on her road to recovery. Said another way, it took the agonizing bite of the serpent to send her toward freedom into the promised land of sobriety.

I am sure that you have wandered through similar wilderness and suffered similar pain. You have been scared to death in the middle of the night, certain that a serpent is going to slither into your bed and bite off your head. You toss and turn. You look at your watch, three, four, five o’clock in the morning, and you are still wide awake! You wonder whether you will ever experience peace again. God’s people have discovered the hard way that God always travels with us and protects us even when we are on the wildest and most dreadful journeys of life.

Dagmar and I have grown quite fond of the desert. When we moved to San Diego, we dreamed of spending every weekend at the beach. We have been to the beach four times in four years since arriving in San Diego. Where we love to go is the desert. There is something about the fierce landscape that we adore, something that bids us give thanks for small mercies.

Last Monday, we hiked the Palm Canyon Trail in Borrego Springs. I was a bit jumpy: I was on the lookout for rattlesnakes every second; I was awfully thirsty. And yet, when we got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about all that we had seen--mountain sheep, lush palms, dainty cacti flowers dancing for joy amidst the desolation. Every sip of water we took was sacramental, every breeze a gift from God. Like Israel, we noticed the smallest things and each felt like a blessing from God.

The God of Sinai seems to thrive on taking His people to fierce landscapes and teaching them about the necessary pain of healing. Either God’s GPS was broken or God was like a man who refuses to stop for directions. God forced the Israelites into wild and wretched places where they were forced to trust God or perish. God could have led them to the Promised Land by far easier routes. Instead, God led Israel the long way, further than necessary, deeper into the desert, a way that required radical faith every aching step of the way. We moderns prefer a more tamed God or, as one author has suggested, a “God without the thunder.” We like to keep God’s nature affixed to bumper sticker and refrigerator magnet banalities far from the harsh, unforgiving climate of the desert. Whether conservative or liberal, we like to control the unpredictability of God. Of course, God refused and refuses to be controlled!

We Christians, too, if we wish to arrive in the Promised Land of Easter, must travel through some pretty rugged landscape. It is the journey called the cross. Like the Israelites who had to look to the bronze serpent to live, we must look to Christ on the cross to survive. This way goes straight through the agony of divorce courts and intensive care units, police stations and drunk tanks. This God meets us in life’s fiercest places and offers us new life albeit with the throbbing pain of snake bites.

There is a lovely story of a group of French military pilots who found a group of Bedouins living in the Sinai Desert where the Israelites once roamed. The pilots took three of these nomads to Paris with hopes of taming their wildness and letting them see France’s extravagant beauty. Apparently, the Bedouins were not impressed by the Paris marvels like the Eiffel Tower, huge locomotives, and steamships on the Seine. “They wept, however, at the sight of trees. These Arab Bedouins had never seen a waterfall, a river, a rose.” They were taken to the French Alps to view an enormous waterfall. “They stood in silence. Mute, solemn…gazing at the unfolding of a ceremonial mystery…The flow of a single second would have resuscitated whole caravans…Here God was manifesting Himself” (Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, Oxford Press, pg. 203…cf. this book for a wonderful study of desert spirituality). These sun-scorched Bedouins had suffered pain almost constantly. They were able to discover God’s magnificence in the simple things of life. And so, in every drop of water, every green tree, they tasted heaven.

During these Lenten days, we stand in the desert. We wonder whether we will ever get to Easter as all that we see and hear is the cross. We long for upbeat hymns dressed with alleluias and altar hangings robed in colorful splendor. But for now, we must remain in the wilderness a while longer.

We cherish this morning’s very simple arrangement of two orchid petals on the altar’s desert-like unbleached linen. Lent teaches us, like those desert nomads, to stand before simple gifts--imperfect words, modest chunks of bread, tiny sips of wine—and to be rendered speechless by the magnificence of God’s love. As we gaze upon the cross, no matter what pain we feel, may we know that freedom is just beyond the river.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 15, 2009
Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 20: 1-17
"Accomplished at Saying No...And Even Yes"

“According to the rabbis, those who observe Sabbath observe all the other commandments. Practicing it over and over again they become accomplished at saying no, which is how they gradually become able to resist the culture’s killing rhythms of drivenness and depletion, compulsion and collapse. Worshiping a different kind of God, they are shaped in that God’s image, stopping every seven days to celebrate their divine creation and liberation.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, pg. 134)

I recently heard a seventeen year old boy who was in a ton of trouble. He said that what he most resents about his parents is that they never have taught him to say no. They have never given him a curfew; he has always been able to come and go as he pleases. The teenager went on to say that he has never known the difference between right and wrong. He has made a host of tragic mistakes because he has never been taught how to say no.

I wonder: are we any different? Do we know the difference between right and wrong? Do we know how to say no and what to say no to?

In a recent survey it was discovered that only 14% of the people could accurately name all Ten Commandments. How many can you name? Surprisingly, twenty-five percent could name all seven ingredients in a MacDonald’s Big Mac® (9/2007 Kelton Research and 10 Commandments Commission). Does this say anything about priorities?

One thing is for certain: God taught the Jewish people how to say no. In giving Moses the Commandments on Mount Sinai, God entrusted the Jewish people with knowledge of right and wrong.

To many who know the Ten Commandments--or think they do--these laws can feel like a nagging parent. How many people steer clear of the church because they hate being judged? It is important to note that before God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, God first said these crucial words, “I am the Lord Your God who brought you out of slavery into freedom.” This doesn’t sound like a nagging God to me. This God saved the necks of God’s beloved children. These Ten Commandments were entrusted to the people of God, not for nagging, but so that they might live in freedom as they enter the Promised Land.

In all candor, those who criticize the church for judging are partially right. The church does judge. At the beginning of worship this morning, we all were judged. As I rehearsed the Ten Commandments and you lamented, “Kyrie Eleison” or “Lord have mercy,” we were judged.

When I teach Martin Luther’s Small Catechism and the Ten Commandments to confirmation classes, I ask the kids, “If you have sinned, raise your hand.” They always sheepishly look around to see if any of their compatriots raise their hands. Good Christians do not sin, they think. Luther said: to know the Ten Commandments is to know that we are all sinners.

Who is the sinner these days as our economy gasps for air? To understand the Ten Commandments is to recognize that we all play a part in the failing economy. We all want more than we have. We have insatiable appetites. We have not trusted God’s promise that there is plenty to go around if we only share with one another. We have forgotten the commandment about coveting our neighbor’s house. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, “The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”

In Tuesday’s New York Times, there was a review of Paul’s Singer’s new book, The Life You Can Save. Mr. Singer notes that in 2004, The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought a painting for more than $45 million. This money could pay for cataract operations on 900,000 blind or near-blind people in the developing world. Who here has not learned to say no to extravagant appetites?

In 2007, the software billionaire Larry Ellison gave away $39 million. That sounds amazingly generous. And yet, “if Ellison never earned another dollar, he could give away $39 million every year for the next 600 years and still have more than $1 billion as a cushion for his old age” (Dwight Garner, “If You Think You’re Good, You Should Think Again,” The New York Times, March 20, 2009). Why can’t we say no?

And, of course, we remember following 9/11 President Bush suggested that one remedy to the tragedy was for Americans to go out and shop. What does that suggestion say about our priorities, our ability to say no?

Now, if all that we do is point a judgmental finger at one another, what sense does that make? Within our Lutheran tradition, at least, judgmental finger-pointing is never the final word. Once we discover that we are all sinners, there is much more to be done: we then must announce words of forgiveness and hope. More than just requirements or regulations for sinners, the commandments invite us to dream and hope and envision. “Israel not only asked, ‘What is commanded?’ It also asked, ‘What is possible?’” (Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet, pg. 90). Like Israel, we are invited to imagine what this world might look like if we stop coveting our neighbor’s house.

How might we imagine living with God’s commandments? TACO is facing a financial challenge in the months ahead. Like many nonprofits who care for the poor these days, we wonder how much longer we can care for God’s desperate ones as we have doing for the past number of years. We could look at this dilemma as unsolvable--I believe such a posture would be a sad demonstration of an absence of hope and vision. I know there are ample resources to carry out our astonishing ministry to the homeless and working poor who increasingly come to our doors for help. We must pray to God for a spirit to share the resources that we have been given. We must learn how to prioritize and how to say no to all is unimportant in our lives and say a resounding yes that all God’s children might live.

Maybe you haven’t realized it yet, but your presence here this morning is a clear indication that you know how to say no to the ways of the world and yes to God’s life-giving commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” You have said no to the enticing ways of world that urge you to keep busy on Sunday, to do all the things that need to be done, never to rest, to act as if your meaning is by what you do. Your presence here is your admission that you cannot save yourself, that without God you are nothing. You have said yes by coming here where sinners gather to receive just as much to eat as saints do, where rich and poor all are embraced equally by God. By saying yes to God’s way--just by being here--you tell the world that you believe that God will provide for all people even as you take this moment to rest in God’s embrace.

As we gaze upon the cross, we see the one who said no to all Satan’s evil and cunning solutions for this world and said yes so that you and I might live. I congratulate you for following the cross and arriving here this morning. Now that you have said no to the world’s ways, may you know the wonder of God’s way in the cross of Christ.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 8, 2009
Second Sunday in Lent
Mark 8: 31-38
"Little Deaths"

I will never forget the first hospital visit I made while I was a summer intern at Christ Lutheran Church in Mozart, West Virginia. I had just graduated from college. Pastor Kurz met me in his study and told me that, while he was on vacation, I was to visit Joe Collins at Ohio Valley General Hospital. Joe was a thirty-two year old steel worker with a brain tumor. The moment I heard of Joe’s situation, I fretted: what pastoral words could I possibly offer in such a dreadful situation?

I walked into the intensive care unit and saw Joe with his head heavily bandaged; his wife, Pat, was holding his hands. Other than introducing myself, as far as I can remember, I was absolutely incoherent. Not a single soothing word or brilliant theological insight emanated from my lips. I babbled a few inane words and mumbled, “As Jesus taught us, we are bold to pray.”

I had made a fool of myself and likely made this desperate couple’s situation even worse. I remember thinking I might not be cut out for pastoral ministry.

Much to my surprise, when my supervising pastor returned from vacation, he told me how touched Joe’s wife was by my visit. Funny, isn’t it, how, as followers of Jesus, we sometimes do our best work as we stumble and bumble?

As my years of ministry have moved on since that visit, I have continued to face situations for which I have no answers to life’s worst challenges. I wish I could say things have improved with age and wisdom has soaked in, but that isn’t, at least, the case for me. I had no answers when I visited the family who had just found their baby drowned in the backyard wading pool; I had no answers when thirteen year old Kenny died of Cystic Fibrosis; I sat, numb, with Y.B.B. Mushala’s family after he was shot to death in the chest by a robber. On such occasions, I have tried my best to keep in mind Jesus’ words, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

I suppose Peter’s ministry was similar. He and many other followers had hoped that Jesus would bring all the answers to all that life offered. They believed that this Messiah, once and for all, would lead a revolution that would bring about God’s triumphant reign. Instead, what Jesus gave them were these words: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and lose who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Anyone who wishes to follow Jesus eventually discovers that Jesus’ way is rarely the easiest way. The way of the cross never offers slickly packaged answers to life’s toughest situations.

As we begin our second week of Lent, many of us are probably feeling good about the disciplines we have adopted for these forty days. We are reading our Bibles daily, praying fervently, attending Wednesday evening fellowship, worship, and study. The interesting thing is that, in most circumstances outside of these little Lenten choices, we are not afforded the luxury of choosing our spiritual discipline; rather, it chooses us. We simply decide whether or not we will follow Jesus.

Kathleen Norris writes of such a choice in her book, Acedia and Me. She notes that her most spiritual activity during the last year of her husband’s life was cleaning out his urinals and commodes. (Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me, pg. 229)

Few of us would think of emptying urinals and commodes as a spiritual discipline and yet, I dare say, one day, many of us will face such a choice. Perhaps you have said, “I never thought I would be able to do that for my husband.” That is what Lenten discipline is about, anytime of year; it is doing the unimaginable for those we love. That, by the way, is also what the cross is about.

The love of the cross draws us closer to others even when we can offer no answers for what ails them. One of my favorite professors, Gordon Lathrop, tells pastors that they must learn how to die with those they love. These words can easily apply to lay people, too. He says that pastors, who typically long to do good for other people, will eventually face the little death of their own limits and liabilities. “They cannot take away the sickness and the death that they encounter. They cannot solve a deep problem for another…But they frequently must simply be there…wise pastors are frequently face-to-face with their own limits, their own helplessness in the face of sorrow, sin, and loss. They must simply keep silence and be there” (Gordon Lathrop, The Pastor, pgs. 131, 132).

We are all called to face our limits, those times when we feel utterly helpless. These are times when our best feels inadequate and our faith flimsy. These times, my dear friends, are when we die a little death in choosing to love one another and to follow the way of the cross.

I recently received my Yale Divinity School alumni magazine. I always enjoy reading what my classmates and other alumni are doing. (My mother told me that, with age, receiving these magazines brings melancholy as classmates begin to die more regularly.) The recent issue contains the requisite success stories--a person elected bishop, another appointed president of a prestigious seminary, one who published his tenth book, another who grew a church from 29 to 2,000 members. What has surprised me is that these “success stories” have not stayed in my heart. There are other stories, however, which have furrowed deeply into my soul: like the story of the graduate who has been married now for 55 years and this is his chief cause for celebration; the one about the brilliant scholar who has take a leave of absence to tend to her husband as he slips into the fog of dementia; or the grandfather who retired early from the little church he deeply loves to care for his four year old grandson so that his recently widowed daughter can continue her law practice. One can taste the tears, long nights, the profound dignity, the deep resolve, lives teeming with Jesus’ words, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel, will save it.” These people have found a quiet grace more important than fame and fortune, a quiet grace worth living for and, more importantly, apparently a quiet grace worth dying for.

During these days of Lent, it would seem a good thing for each of us to ask ourselves “Is there anything or anyone in my life worth dying for?” The answers might surprise us, an answer like taking a deep pay cut to accept a job that helps those in need or putting out breakfast for the twenty-thousandth time without ne’er a “thank you” or sitting with a neighbor over cake and tea now that she is utterly alone. Small things, really, the way of the cross, the Christian life.

Lent will come for us when we least expect it. When it finds us, I beg you, cherish Jesus’ words, “Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
March 1, 2009
First Sunday in Lent
Genesis 9: 8-17; Mark 1: 9-15
"Rainbow Love"

How many children’s nurseries have a rainbow stretching from wall to wall? The First Lutheran nursery has a beautiful rainbow.

Noah’s Ark must rate as one of the all time favorite children’s stories. Who doesn’t like seeing the elephants and kangaroos and giraffes lumbering off the old ark with the bow in the sky?

Our home has a gorgeous view of the eastern California mountains. Whenever there is a storm and a rainbow follows, we are like little kids, calling each other like it is the last rainbow ever, “Come quick, come quick!” Rainbows make us come alive.

There is one problem with the story of Noah’s Ark. We remember the part about the rainbow and forgot what the rainbow was about.

You remember, I’m sure, what led to the rainbow. The world had not paid much attention to God’s wishes. Wickedness and evil and corruption and violence filled the land. The Bible has barely begun and everything is haywire. While God intended for everything to be good, creation refused to follow God’s intentions. We know the outcome. God was furious. There was a terrible storm that made Katrina seem like an afternoon drizzle. This storm annihilated the entire world except for two animals of every kind and Noah’s family.

At this point, if you have a brain at all, you wonder: what kind of God would annihilate creation? I think the answer is quite simple: an angry God.

After Noah and his family rode out the storm for forty days and forty nights, with everyone sea sick and the animal odors making them even sicker, the dove returned to the leaky ark with a freshly plucked olive leaf. Seeing this sign of new growth, Noah knew the waters had subsided.

This is the stuff we love to tell our children. We tell of the forty days and forty nights. For some reason, we leave out the part about God’s wrath that destroyed most of creation. We grow up with a very nice and mannerly God who would never hurt a flea. What we forget is God did some very bad things to some very bad people.

We domesticate God because we don’t care for an angry God who would rain down such devastation. We like God-lite. We like God captive to bumper sticker signs that inanely proclaim, “God Is Love.” Why? We grew up hearing too many fists slamming against pulpits, too many well-intentioned Sunday school teachers telling us to be good girls and good boys. Given our aversion toward an angry God, we prefer to start and end this story with hippopotamuses and whooping cranes disembarking from the ark with huge smiles on their faces.

But let me say this: whenever we forget how God once lost His temper and pretty much blew creation to smithereens, we shrink the grandeur of God’s love for you and me. When we forget the potential of God’s anger and his decision to curb it, we lose the wonder of God’s mercy.

After God wreaked havoc on pretty much everything, God was devastated and had a broken heart. God decided at that very moment, never, ever to loose God’s temper again. No matter how much humanity disobeys and goes astray, God decided to put a retraining order on the divine anger.

Whenever I see a rainbow, I somehow think this is a sign from God telling us how nice God is. Apparently not so. The rainbow is a sign for God. The rainbow reminds God that whenever God has had it with us, to take a time out, not to lose God’s cool. The bow reminds God to spare us one more time.

Maybe what we learn that is of most importance from the rainbow is that God will not let our evil make God evil. That’s not easy. Have you noticed? We live in an eye for eye, dog-eat-dog world. We think of ourselves first, guard our own interests, rally around issues that affect us directly and expect everyone else to follow suit. If someone hurts us, we feel justified in letting them have it. We dream up all manner of bizarre acts of revenge against those who have done us wrong.

Maybe this can be a different Lent. Maybe we can go home and draw a rainbow. As we gaze upon that rainbow, we might be reminded of God’s love for us. During these 40 days, we will watch Jesus being tested by Satan in the wilderness and end up going to the cross because he refuses to retaliate against those who will kill him. At every turn, Jesus has a choice: better or best? Every time we see Jesus tested, we see him choose love over hate, humility over arrogance, giving over taking.

The rainbow way is an invitation to become more than we ever imagined we could be. The rainbow way is an invitation to follow a God who checks his anger so that we might live.

There is a wonderful story told about two desert fathers, those peculiar men who went to the desert in the fourth century to get away from the corruption of the cities and to be with God.

“Once, two elders who were living together decided that they should have a quarrel like ordinary men. Since they had never had one before, they were not quite sure how to begin. So one of the elders looked around, found a brick, and placed it squarely between him and his brother in Christ. ‘I will say, ‘it is mine,’ he instructed his brother. ‘Then you say, ‘No, it is mine.’ This is the sort of thing that leads to a quarrel.’

‘Are you ready?’ he asked his brother.

‘I am ready,’ his brother said.

‘Okay,’ he said, regarding the brick. ‘It is mine.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ his brother said, ‘but I do believe that is mine.’

‘No it’s not; it’s mine,’ the first monk said.

‘Well, if it’s yours, then take it,’ his brother said. Thus the two elders failed to get into a quarrel after all” (from Barbara Brown Taylor’s, An Altar in the World, pg. 89, 90).

This little story of the desert fathers might be a good one for us during these days of Lent. When our temper gets the best of us and we want to fight tooth and nail for a principle that is dear to us, maybe like God, like those odd desert fathers, we might try to limit our interests when we are convinced we are right and, for the good of the community, to back down. Love works like that. Rainbow love dares love others in spite of what they have done to us. Rainbow love surrenders always having to have its own way.

Rainbow love is about following a God who could annihilate us in a second but chooses rather to love us all the way to the cross. I love the elephants and the kangaroos but, even more, I love a God who placed a rainbow in the sky and died for you and me and bids us come follow.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 28, 2009
Memorial Service for Delores Praefke

William Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” We could easily say that about Delores Praefke: “Nothing in her life became her like the leaving it.”

As you know, Delores fought valiantly against cancer for many years. She was a survivor. And yet she finally came to the point where she did not want to endure the agonizing procedures that likely would not add to the quality of her life. She finally said, “Enough.”

When she said, “enough,” I figured she would collapse. I expected she would endure deep sadness and profound melancholy after making such a momentous decision. I visited her soon after she made decided to stop treatment. I asked her how she was doing. In a way that only Delores could, with a twinkle in her eye, she said, “W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L!” Resorting to every pastoral instinct I have ever learned, seeking to unearth deeper emotions under the surface, I asked, “Wonderful? That must have been a difficult decision to stop treatment.” I was certain I would see the tears well up and hear the voice of dread for what tomorrow might bring.

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t difficult.” Like a little girl waiting to get her first pony, she said, “Now, I will soon see Jesus.”

Every visit after that was the same. Many of you who loved Delores discovered the same thing when visiting her or talking with her on the telephone. Didn’t you wonder just a little where the fear was, the bitterness, the sadness? I suspect that she took Jesus’ words seriously: “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” She considered the birds of the air and the lilies of the field: “Are you not of more value than them?” Jesus asked. Maybe when she made her decision for no more treatment, she was setting her eyes on the kingdom of heaven.

When our congregation went Christmas caroling at Delores’ house this year, she opened the door and chimed, “Well, l-o-o-k who’s here. What a wonderful time this is going to be.” She ushered us into her living room as if she were preparing to listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. With a smile on her face, she joyously sang “Away in the Manger” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful” with us and whispered the words, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.”

“Nothing in her life became her like the leaving it.” Only twenty-four hours before she died, Delores’ beloved Love One Another (LOA) Circle gathered with her at her bedside for the final time this side of the Kingdom come. These women had spent years and years together, celebrating children’s births, burying husbands, shoring each other up in times of agony. Delores’ energy was spent that day; she could barely lift her head and yet she knew her sisters were there with her. And then, with those she loved so deeply, she tasted the sacrament of the bread of heaven for the last time this side of the New Jerusalem. I dare say those who gathered with Delores that day will not forget those precious moments. As her dear friends sang, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” they saw a woman who was about to welcome a gentle death because it was only a few short steps to a victorious resurrection. You can almost hear Delores join Saint Francis of Assisi in the wonderful hymn:

Each of you will remember Delores in your own special way. You of the San Diego PEO chapter will remember her as a woman committed to the education of other women. You who worked with her at the Pacific Telephone Company will remember her consummate supervisory skills. You who lived near her on Hazelwood Place will remember a kind neighbor everyone hopes to have. You who called her “mom” will remember her as one who treated you like a daughter even as you treated her as “mom” on those final days as death drew near. You who cared for her at the end will remember a sweet woman who, though in pain, was quick with a smile and who afforded you the greatest dignity.

This church will not soon forget Delores Praefke either. She has left an indelible mark on this place. Teaching some of you as little girls while in Sunday school, starting the Junior Women’s Circle—can you believe it!—she lived and breathed the air of this congregation. For years, she humbly and quietly hosted meals at memorial services along with the women of this congregation; together, they made certain that this congregation’s trademark hospitality was offered to all who enter here.

As her dying day drew near, a radiance enveloped Delores. I certainly can’t say that about every person who has drawn near to death, but for Delores, I can say, she was not afraid to die. We knew it would be like that, didn’t we? Delores gave thanks to the Lord always because she believed that she was soon going to be with her blessed Jesus, with her beloved Larry, and with all whom she held dear. She had prepared for this day for a long time. Rather than fearing her death, she welcomed it with sweet expectation—what could be more wonderful than finally seeing Jesus face-to-face!

We will all miss Saint Delores. We will miss asking her, “How are you?” and hearing her say, “I am W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L!” Yes, even as she drew her last breath, she was WONDERFUL, for soon and very soon, she was going to see meet her savior and finally she could tell Jesus in person what she had always wanted to tell him, “How great thou art.”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 25, 2009
Ash Wednesday
"The Humpty Dumpty Dilemma"

I am great at taking things apart. What I am terrible at doing is putting things back together again. I took my weed-whacker apart on Saturday; the string-a-ma-gig kept getting twisted and wouldn’t unravel to cut the weeds. I found the right wrench, took the nuts and washers and spring and spool of nylon string apart, and placed everything on the basement floor. Once I disassembled everything, there was only one problem: how to put my weed-wacker back together again?

The Lenten journey is a lot like disassembling and reassembling my weed-whacker. Most of us are masterful at disassembling our lives. In a few moments we will write down our sins on the slip of paper attached to our bulletin. I doubt whether we will have a problem filling our slip of paper. We know that our egos get the better of us. Our tempers sometimes go out of control; we are embarrassed by this but, for the life of us, we find it easier to blame others rather than ourselves. We feel a lot like Saint Paul: we do the things we do not want to do and do not do the things we want to do. We find it easy to disassemble our lives, to enumerate our sins on the paper slips; what we find far more difficult is the Humpty Dumpty dilemma:

Most of us have probably already disassembled ourselves for Lent: we have decided what we will give up. The challenge, now, is what to take up; said another way, how do we put our lives back together again? Lent is the time when the church tries to solve this dilemna for us.

Martin Luther understood what happens when our lives are littered with sin. Luther was a master at writing his sins on a slip of paper. He was an expert at giving things up. What he found impossible was putting his life back together again once he repented of his sins. Luther’s great discovery was finding that God is the one and only one who has the ability to put our lives back together again.

During Lent, you and I, like Martin Luther, are called to invite Jesus to the basements of our souls. We are invited to let Jesus unravel the messes that we have found impossible to solve. The disciplines of Lent—fasting, prayer, and the works of love—are ways by which we let God unravel our messes. When we fast, we realize we cannot live by bread alone: we need God in order to live. When we pray, we realize how wonderful it is to have a love affair with God. When we tend to our needy neighbors, we discover the joy of looking beyond ourselves. The Lenten disicplines are the church’s way of teaching us how to let God put us back together again.

As we travel through these forty days, we will often feel like the Prodigal Son who wandered far from home and was miserable. We will realize that it is impossible to turn our lives around by our own devices. Like the Prodigal, we will try returning home on our own, only to find we are unable to climb the steep hill home. All that we can do is sit at the bottom of the hill, helpless and weeping, waiting for God to come running down the lane to carry us home.

And so, here we are. We have arrived at the foot of the hill to God’s house. Our broken and disassembled parts will soon to be traced on our foreheads. We will hear, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” While the words will remind us that we certainly will die one day and our bodies, ashes to ashes, will litter the ground, we will also hear that God will do something we can never do: God will take our ashes and put them back together again for ever.

I love Lent. I pray that you, too, will love this season. As you worship and pray and care for your neighbors, may you have a very happy Lent and may you discover God putting you back together again.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 22, 2009
Transfiguration of our Lord
Mark 9: 2-9
"Whistle While You Work"

The most frightened I have ever been was the first time I went up the elevator in a twenty-five story high rise in the very rough and tumble Southwark Housing Project in South Philadelphia. Being new to the city streets and beginning my seminary internship, I was trembling even before a few street toughs got on the elevator and began to raze me to high heaven. By the time I got off at the very top, my bones were shaking. All that I remember is whistling the hymn we had sung at worship the day before--“Alleluia, Sing to Jesus.” Wouldn’t you know it: after my visit was completed and it was time to get on the elevator for the scary trip down, it was broken. I had to walk down twenty-five pitch black flights of stairs stinking of urine and littered with garbage and drug paraphernalia. I am so glad I had been in church the day before because I whistled all the way down and all the way home.

We need mountaintop experiences to sustain us during those frightening times of life. Peter, James, and John went up to the mountaintop with Jesus. They weren’t exactly feeling good about themselves. Six days earlier, Jesus had asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered perfectly, “The Messiah.” Unfortunately things didn’t stay all warm and fuzzy for Peter. Only moments later, Jesus began to tell the crowd that he was going to undergo suffering, be rejected, and be killed.” Peter was horrified--I would have been, too. He interrupted Jesus and began to rebuke him for painting such a bleak picture of things to come. And then Jesus lambasted Peter with words that are some of the toughest Jesus’ speaks, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Have you ever been in such a situation? Everything is going well, you are on top of the world, when, out of the blue, you are attacked for something you have done or said and your world is rocked. That’s what happened to Peter.

You have got to believe that Peter was looking forward to the climb up the mountain. Even though Jesus was with them, nevertheless, he was getting away from it all. When they got to the mountaintop, the most amazing thing occurred: Jesus was transfigured before Peter’s eyes and his clothes turned dazzling white. Then, right there in front of him, Jesus stood with the great heroes of the Jewish faith, Moses and Elijah. Once again, Peter was on top of the world.

We love framing those moments when we are on top of the world. We want to bask in the glory forever. Peter, bless his heart, ever the buffoon, said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” What Peter didn’t say, but I’m sure was implied in his plan, was, “There might just be a dwelling place for James, John, and me, too.” I would have wanted to stay, wouldn’t you? This was a dream come true. This very brief moment was going to be imprinted on Peter’s mind for a lifetime. Why not stay forever?

But like all good things, this had to pass. Peter, James, and John along with Jesus came down the mountain. There was ministry to be done, people to be healed, demons to be exorcised. No sooner had they gotten to the bottom of the mountain than people came swarming to Jesus, pleading with him to heal a little boy suffering from an epileptic seizure.

Life works that way, doesn’t it: up and down the mountain. Up and down and up and down and up and down. That is what ministry and life are about. When I interviewed to be your pastor I was particularly looking for two characteristics in a congregation: 1-a congregation that unapologetically worships in the best way that it is able; and 2-a congregation that is willing to tackle the toughest issues of the day with dignity and grace. I suppose what I meant is that I was looking for a church that saw its ministry as going up and down and up and down the hill.

If our church is going to tackle the toughest issues of the day--health care for the poor, full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church, compassion for the homeless and working poor--we will need to be sustained by the finest worship we can produce. We will need to learn to whistle in the darkness and to know that Jesus is still with us.

I discovered this lesson when I was an inner-city pastor. I noticed how the historic African-American churches spent all day in church. Services lasted two and three hours and then everyone came back in the evening for more worship. I had not experienced such a devotion to worship growing up. We went to church and got out!

We are told that people will only spend an hour in worship; anything beyond that makes them—maybe you—fidgety, even angry. Why do people only spend that much time in worship? Because they are used to 58 minute television shows. Isn’t it sad that our worship mimics trashy television? Isn’t it sad that we can spend no more than an hour with Jesus every week?

The African American church taught me a lesson. Many of the people going up the steps of Bethel Baptist Church at 58th and Warrington on Sunday morning faced tough times Monday through Saturday: they worked thankless jobs as maids and street cleaners and were stung by violent racist barbs all through the week. They learned the lesson well from their ancestors who were slaves: cherish worship; stay as long as you can. You will need to whistle those Negro spirituals like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” through the week when the bull whips start cracking again.

I hope that you cherish the time you spend here this morning. I hope you love singing the songs and praying the prayers, hearing God speak to you and tasting Jesus’ body and blood. I hope these moments enable you to whistle throughout the week no matter what you face.

At the end of this service, we will say farewell to the “alleluias” for the season of Lent. For six long weeks, the word of glory, “alleluia,” will not pass our lips. In a way, the church will come down the mountain. During Lent, we will be reminded of how far we have strayed from God. We will be reminded of how dear that word “alleluia” is and how desperately we need to whistle it through the week. During Lent, as you long for happier days, for Easter and the resurrection, cheat if you have to and whistle “alleluia” to yourself.

I hope you will leave here today whistling up a storm. I hope that whatever you face this week, joy or sadness, laughter or tears, ridicule or adulation, you will be able to whistle while you work.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 15, 2009
Sixth Sunday After the Ephiphany
2 Kings 5: 1-14
"Dipping in the Jordan"

His name was Naaman, General Naaman to be precise; he was the commander of the armed forces of the nation of Aram. Everything had turned out well in the good general’s life. He was well-schooled, well-connected, and well thought of by people in high places. He was used to calling the shots, telling people where and when and how high to go. Medals lined his chest and a decorative and sharp-edged sword fell at his side. No one dared question the general.

And then that fateful day arrived. Early one morning while shaving, he looked into the mirror--he had never met a mirror he didn’t like. He was ready to be pleased by his most handsome complexion. He wiped the steam from the mirror and noticed a tiny spot on his right cheek. Though he could barely see the spot, the sight sickened him. He leaned closer and ran his index finger over a dab of shaving cream. Like all of us, he thought the worst.

Being a man, he told no one, not even his wife. He was afraid to go to the doctor. The days passed by and every day he took a closer look. He found himself nervously fingering the spot almost constantly. One day, while meeting with the king’s inner-circle, he caught sight of his visage in the large mirror directly behind the king’s throne. He could see the blemish from across the room; he needed no doctor to tell him that he had leprosy.

People today don’t much suffer from leprosy and, if they do, it can be treated rather easily. Nevertheless, we understand the general’s anxiety. We have been there. We have felt the small lump under our arm, seen the lipstick on our spouse’s collar, picked up the phone at 3 a.m., knowing that no good news ever comes at that hour. We have been in the general’s boot. We too have uttered, “I never thought something like this could happen to me.”

The general, however, was not one to let bad news ruin his life. He was the master of the uplifting adage--he had used a million of them to motivate his troops: when the going gets tough, the tough get going; accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory; in war there is no second prize for the runner–up. Being the master motivator, he was certain he could lick this leprosy thing.

And yet, that fateful day finally came when all the medals of valor, all the letters of commendation, all the victories meant nothing. There came the day, as it has come for us all, when he had to throw himself at another person’s pity.

For the general, it came as he had to trust an enemy slave girl’s suggestion where he should go for a miracle cure. Even with the king’s letter of recommendation in hand and the war chariots and noble steeds in tow, he discovered that no king, not his or the enemy’s, could do one solitary thing for him.

The general finally ended up at the prophet Elisha’s house. Even more humiliating than everything that had preceded this visit to Elisha was that the prophet was from an enemy religion and country and the prophet wouldn’t see him in person. The general had to settle for the prophet’s assistant. To make matters worse, Elisha told him, via the assistant, to go wash in the Jordan seven times and his flesh would be restored and made clean.

Whenever I think of the Jordan, I think of a majestic river like the mighty Columbia. But that’s apparently not how the general viewed the Jordan. He knew far grander rivers in his own country, ones like the Abana and the Pharpar. The Jordan? How dare Elisha suggest he dip into that stinking, little river!

There comes a time when we must dip into the Jordan if we are to be healed and, sometimes, in so doing, our world is turned upside down. I have heard more than a few people wonder where all the American doctors have gone in our San Diego hospitals. I dipped into that river when a group of Iranian pulmonolgists saved my life and when a Mexican woman tenderly bathed me clean.

Dip seven times in the Jordan. Many raging alcoholics who have tried and failed to quit drinking are given this command. Go to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in your local, dingy church basement and sit around with a bunch of coffee-drinking, Harley riding, well-tattooed, long winded degenerates and your life will be made well. Big shot intellectuals in Brooks Brothers' suits and silk ties don’t take well to such gatherings: I’m not sitting around with a bunch of drunks, the general might have said. And yet, he also might have heard that unless he went to those meetings and worked the twelve steps of AA--general or not—he would die.

There comes a time for all of us when we must go down and dip in the Jordan. It happens when we have lost our job, when our prince of a child drifts to no good, when we look into the mirror and weep. Like the good general, we have come here this morning for healing, to a Jordan of sorts. We have no answers and yet we want THE healing answer from God. We will hear similar words to the ones the general heard: Drink you all of it, this cup is the new covenant in my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Shouldn’t there be more to it that sipping a little wine and eating a morsel of bread? we ask. How can a little bread and wine forgive our sins and heal what ails us?

This past Thursday for the final time this side of the Kingdom Come, Delores Praefke did as she had been instructed by Jesus since she was a little girl. With her beloved sisters in Christ from the LOA Circle gathered around her bedside, she took the tiniest piece of bread that she could possibly eat and, in so doing, received the promise of eternal life. As death drew near, she did as Jesus had always told her: just a little bread and a sip of wine will be enough for eternal healing.

We will all come to that point. Like the good general and beloved Delores, we will go in search of a prophet who can bring us healing. The question, the only question, is whether we will dare go down and dip in the river and take and eat.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 8, 2009
Fifth Sunday After the Ephiphany
Mark 1: 29-39
"Do Not Disturb"

Our church council is currently planning its annual retreat for the end of this month. One of the things we must decide is whether to have the retreat here at First Lutheran or at another church. We have a lovely building for such a meeting; that’s not the problem. The problem is that if we meet here, we will constantly be interrupted by people coming to the door and asking for food and clothing and blankets. Since your council is made up of good-hearted Christians, they will feel compelled to answer the door every time someone knocks. It is impossible to imagine putting up a Do Not Disturb sign on the door--that would feel unchristian. So we struggle with where to hold the retreat.

This morning’s Gospel reading might offer us insight as to where we should hold our retreat. The reading focuses on Jesus right after he left the synagogue’s Sabbath worship. The service was chaotic; Jesus was forced to cast a demon from a possessed man right in the middle of his sermon. Jesus must have wanted to go home in the worst way, to scan the results of the latest camel races in the sports page and to catch a quick snooze. Rather than snoozing, Jesus went to visit friends where he found the disciple Simon’s mother-in-law desperately ill. As Jesus so often did, he made this ailing woman the center of his universe: he took her hand and healed her. Think of it: by this time in the day—two o’clock in the afternoon perhaps—Jesus had preached a sermon, cast out a demon, and healed a sick women. Jesus must have wanted to go home in the worst sort of way and yet that’s not how his day turned out.

As Jesus paused for a bite to eat, the entire city started banging at the door. Word had spread quickly that Jesus was healing up a storm and they all wanted a piece of the action. True to form, Jesus went out and cured many more before the day ended. At this point, you are thinking: Jesus never put up Do Not Disturb signs.

By the end of that Sabbath day, Jesus was exhausted. Being human, he went to bed. He slept awhile and then these gorgeous words: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” Might these words offer our council some insight as it decides where to hold this year’s retreat? For that matter, might these words help us all navigate through our daily lives?

In these few verses of Scripture, we learn something indispensable about how we should go about the rhythm of life. The rhythm goes like this: attend worship, serve the needs of others, sleep, rise, go to a deserted place and pray. Breaking this rhythm in any way would have been detrimental to Jesus’ health and it will certainly be detrimental to ours.

I was fortunate to have the wonderful spiritual writer Henri Nouwen as a professor in divinity school. He talked often about the pressures of parish ministry. Henri loved the words of this morning’s gospel. In his charming Dutch accent, he repeated them often: “In the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” Henri told us that the first thing we should do when we arrive at a new congregation is tell the parish administrator that there is one hour in every day that is sacrosanct; during this hour, except for extreme emergencies, we are not to be interrupted; if someone calls the church, have the administrator tell them that the pastor is in prayer. This message is as important for the parishioners as it is for pastors. It is important that everyone knows that their pastor needs to be in prayer every, single day; in fact, this is one of the essential things the congregation calls the pastor to do.

It is important that you be in prayer, too. You face enormous pressures from the moment you rise until you go to bed. You face the pressures of family, job, and friends. You, too, need a deserted place where you can meet with God, a place where no one should interrupt you. Do you go to such a place during the day?

And so, as Henri Nouwen urged me, I urge you. Find that deserted place and go there every day. It is there that you will find the deepest grace.

The Eastern Orthodox Church encourages its members to have a prayer corner in the house set aside for prayer with God. You might try that, too. Hang religious pictures in your corner, a cross. Have candles burning. Place fresh flowers there. Turn off the television and the radio; take the phone off the hook. You deserve a special place and time to be with God.

Jesus life calls us to such a time of prayer. There will be plenty opportunity to rush back into the world. The disciples rushed to Jesus, “Everyone is searching for you.” Refreshed and centered on God, Jesus was then able to go out healing and casting out demons and yet, remember, he had already been to a deserted place to pray. Even Jesus needed a sign that said Do Not Disturb.

We will all be tempted to break the rhythm of worship, service, and a deserted place with God. I have been involved in countless pastors’ meetings where my colleagues have discounted the importance of worship as part of the rhythm of the Christian life. Some, well meaning for sure, claim that service to the world is far more important than worship and is where real Christians are to be found. I am always saddened by these conversations. Over the years, I have watched amazingly committed friends crash and burn. Alcoholism, depression, bitterness, and broken marriages litter the trail of the best intentions. I have watched pastors, who have lived with their families and served congregations in the poorest neighborhoods, refuse to put up Do Not Disturb signs. I have sadly watched as one after another of my dear friends has burnt out and left the city. What if they had understood the essential rhythm of life that Jesus modeled—worship, service, and a deserted place of prayer--maybe they would have stayed in the city longer and met the needs of far more suffering souls.

My deepest longing is that you will honor the rhythm of the Christian life—worship, service, a deserted place for prayer. You should not burn out either! When you close the door and go to God in prayer, please do not feel guilty. View this time as your gift to our suffering world. Here, in the deserted place, you will be strengthened to do battle with the world’s fiercest demons and refreshed to heal those suffering from the most devastating illnesses. It is in the deserted places and at worship that your precious Lord will give you refreshment; it is from there that the Lord will take your hand and lead you out into the world to serve your fellow humanity with vitality and joy.

Yes, I think the council should hold its retreat here at First Lutheran. As we gather to pray, we will model the importance of going to go to a deserted place where we cry out to our precious Lord to take our hands and the hands of those we love. And you, you have kept that rhythm this morning, you have risen and come here to pray. How good to be here!

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 1, 2009
Fourth Sunday After the Ephiphany
Mark 1: 21-28
"Singing His Song"

Admit it, today’s Gospel reading is a creepy one--at least it is for me. Every preacher’s nightmare is having someone jump up in the middle of the sermon and start shrieking like a maniac. Jesus ministry was just starting off and what we just heard was his first sermon. First sermons are nerve-wracking enough without adding people’s raving interruptions. Studies reveal that some people prefer death to public speaking. And yet, what is amazing about Jesus is that when the guy jumped up and interrupted his sermon, Jesus didn’t miss a beast. The people were astonished—wouldn’t you have been?--because he kept right on preaching and with authority.

Of course, when hearing such a reading, we can’t help but wonder: what if it happened here? I am here to tell you, it does happen here.

It was this past Friday morning--right outside the sanctuary doors. We had just finished devotions and were on our way to serve the morning Bread Day meal to two hundred or so hungry souls when one of our beloved patio parishioners came bursting through the entryway. Without a pause, he thrust his arms into the air, and with eyes rolled to the heavens, he called upon us to pray for him. He did not use the typical, genteel Lutheran way, calmly saying, “Let us pray;” he didn’t even give us a chance to say “And also with you.” He reminded us, in machine gun fashion, that the Bible instructs people to pray when a brother is hounded by Satan—with such clear-cut advice, we suspected he knew we were Lutherans. “You know, brothers and sisters,” he cried out, “the Bible exhorts us to lift up any brother in need of prayer.” We listened politely, as we usually do when we are horrified. We tried not let him catch our eyes lest he choose us to utter those terrifying words, “Let us pray.” What was it that he wanted us to pray for anyway? It took some time but he got to it. “Pray that I won’t go out and use my credit card to bet on the Super Bowl.”

We had now seen the demon, a demon, by the way, that will hound millions this very day. Last year, in Las Vegas alone, $100 million was bet on the Super Bowl and an additional $6 billion was bet offshore. Believe it or not, one Las Vegas gambling site (I found it on Google!) predicts a $2 billion betting increase today over last year’s Super Bowl even with the struggling economy. Think of the prayers needed today that families will not be ruined!

Is it any wonder our brother needed a prayer? A demon was hounding him and he was in search of a miracle.

And guess what? I laid my hands on his head and did the best a little ol’ country boy from West Virginia could do.

We Lutherans don’t take easily to prayers for miracles, faith healings, and exorcisms--reminds us too much, I fear, of those West Virginia snake handling sessions. We like our healings in small doses; we prefer them to occur in more sensible places like doctors’ offices and hospitals and on therapists’ couches. Do we find it hard to believe that, with God, all things are possible--even when we are doing the praying?

I have people coming to my office every day in search of a word of authority--“Pastor, what does the Bible say about abortion? I am in deep trouble.” People come every day for healing--“Pastor, I just had a CAT SCAN and am scared to death. Please pray for a miracle.” People even come for exorcisms-“Pastor, I am addicted to alcohol and want you to break that damned demon’s back.”

I had a very wise bishop in Washington, DC. His name, Harold Jansen. One time I asked Bishop Jansen, “When is it appropriate to go visit someone? Should I schedule an appointment before knocking on the door to give them time to place the family Bible on the coffee table? What if they say ‘no’ when I call, what then? Do I need permission?” I will never forget his counsel: “Wilk, you never need permission when you come bearing the words of Jesus.” It took a guy from Brooklyn to teach with such chutzpah.

Maybe that’s why Jesus so surprised the people. “What is this? A new teaching – and with authority!” they cried. Jesus didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t take a vote first. He went and did ministry. And as you will remember, of course, it was because he did ministry in the name of God that he finally got himself hung on the tree.

I wonder if we cower from invoking Jesus’ name for fear that people will think us religious crackpots? Or pushy? Or could it be that we suffer from a failure of imagination, from an anemic faith that thinks it impossible for God to bring healing when a dear friend comes knocking at our door and says, “Would you please pray for our four year old grandson, Timmy, that he will be cured of leukemia?” It is easier to send them back to the doctor than to say, on the spot, “Let us pray.”

In a poem that I have quoted from this pulpit and yet which bears repeating, hear the words of Walt Whitman:

Isn’t it true? We expect miracles from the captains of industry, medical breakthroughs from the brilliant engineers and chemists, enchanting potions from the doctors with golden diplomas on their walls. But where do we go when their marvelous magic tricks fail, when all they can say in the waiting room is: “I am sorry. I have done everything possible.” Who then? Whitman suggests, “Finally shall come the poet worthy that name. The true son of God shall come singing his song.”

You and I are called to sing that song of Jesus to our suffering friends. Because your friends sense that you are a religious sort, they will almost assuredly come to you--after all, they peaked through the blinds this morning and saw you going to church even on Super Bowl Sunday. “Will you pray for Betty and me, we just received terrible news,” they will beg. Such news makes us crumble at the knees. We can pass their request on to the church office, but, I wonder if there is an even more imaginative and immediate response, something like, “Let us bow our heads.” It takes courage and authority when the giants have failed to work their magic and weeping neighbors stand at our doors. They trust that we know the song of Jesus and, for some peculiar reason, they trust that we can sing it. And so, a song we sing, a song worthy the name of Jesus, a song of healing, a song of hope, a song of confidence, a song that goes like this, “In the name of Jesus, I pray, be silent and come out of him!”

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 25, 2009
The Conversion of Saint Paul
Acts 9: 1-22
"Treasures in the Trash"

Gunnar Johanson was a member of our church in Washington, D.C. He grew up in Sweden and was the masseur of the United States Senate. Gunnar lived in the former apartment of General “Black Jack” Pershing of World War 1 fame, an apartment furnished with all manner of stuff that he had discovered in unseemly trash heaps in the nation’s capitol. When you entered Gunnar’s apartment, you entered a wonderland of grace.

One Monday morning, as he always did, Gunnar came to the church for a cup of coffee before heading off to the Senate. He called me to the alleyway and pointed to the trunk of his old green Pinto. Hanging out the back was a broken, ripped up, purple velour, dirt-encrusted chair. He was beaming with pride from cheek to cheek. I’ll never forget how we chuckled as Gunnar pulled away--that crazy, cheap Swede!

Two months later Gunnar had a party. There in the living room sat an exquisite antique chair. Gunnar had an eye for finding treasure in the trash.

Today, as we commemorate the Conversion of Saint Paul, we hear another story of finding treasure in the trash. It is God’s story. You know the name Saint Paul. Paul stood proudly as his compatriots stoned the first Christian martyr, Stephen. Paul was a murderer of Christians, a hopeless piece of junk.

Who would ever have imagined that God would make Paul the greatest apostle ever known? Even Paul would have laughed if you would have suggested that he would become one of the cornerstone saints of the church. He had no desires in this direction. In his own words: “You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors” (Galatians 1: 13-14).

It was as Paul traveled on the road to Damascus that he was knocked to the ground and struck blind. The Risen Savior stood before Paul and called him to a new life, a converted life. Paul could never have imagined choosing this path of life in a million years. God grabbed him from the trash heap and turned him into a treasure. His conversion was so earth-shattering that when the Lord told the Christian, Ananias, to go in search of Paul, Ananias was scared to death: “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem.” In the eyes of the earliest Christians, Paul was a hopeless piece of trash to be cast off in the junk heap of history.

How many times have we been like Ananias? There are people whom we would dearly love to draw close to, to laugh and celebrate with, and yet, their behavior repels us and moves us further and further away. Perhaps you have said it yourself, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” There are those times, too, when we would love to change ourselves but find trying a waste of time. We have tried and have been found left wanting. We look at ourselves, at others, and like that old chair, change is impossible to imagine.

What we see in the conversion of Paul is God intruding into a hopeless cause. There is an old African American adage, “God doesn’t make junk!” At those times when we cannot imagine a change for the better, of ourselves or others, it is precisely at these times that God comes looking for treasures. It is when we have hit rock bottom, broken and bruised, left to rot, that God discovers us. You could say, treasures in the trash.

As we have our congregation’s annual meeting today and reflect on our 120 year history in this community, my hunch is that our proudest memories will be those when treasures were rescued from the trash, those moments when hope seemed so fleeting. Who would have imagined thirty-three years ago that a few homeless people who stopped by here for coffee would end up giving this congregation a reason to live? I believe that the homeless community, so often treated like trash, quite literally saved First Lutheran Church and has given us an important reason to live.

Who would have imagined that one of this congregation’s finest moments would have come twenty years ago when a courageous vote was taken by our members to become a “Reconciling in Christ Congregation,” the first congregation in our synod to openly welcome gay and lesbian people to the Lord‘s Table? How many gays and lesbians have been treated like trash by the church? And yet, I can tell you, many beyond 3rd and Ash know of this congregation because of your courageous acceptance of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

What will be the next surprise in this congregation‘s history when God pulls treasure from the trash? It is never easy to tell at the time. Often it takes the perspective of history, of looking back, to recognize a miracle. What about our Sunday School? As you know, there was a time when there was none. Such a dream seemed futile. I have heard whispers that perhaps it is time to start a second Sunday School class for our littlest ones. Dare we say an intrusion of God’s grace, God making something happen that we never quite could achieve ourselves?

Always, when we least expect it, God comes and shakes everyone up. That’s how God works, plucking up treasures from the trash and scaring us half to death in the process. And yet, as the years go by, as we reflect back and savor and remember, we perceive that a miracle was occurring before our very eyes. When that happens, we are never able to stop talking about it.

If you have ever seen a treasure pulled from the trash or if you have been pulled from the trash yourself, I think you know exactly what I am talking about.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 18, 2009
Second Sunday After the Epiphany
John 1: 43-51
"Just You and Me"

As is my custom, last Sunday immediately after worship, I went to my office and read the lectionary readings for this morning. I gave them the once over to see whether anything struck me. I came to the names Philip and Nathanael as I read. I knew I should know them--after all, I am a pastor and pastors are supposed to know such things--but I couldn’t remember who Philip and Nathanael were except that they were disciples.

Well, this week got the better of me. Tuesday found me preparing my pastor’s report and agenda for the organizational council meeting; on Wednesday, I finished my annual report; I visited with dear colleagues from Philadelphia on Thursday. It was a short week.

For your information, I had my first colonoscopy on Friday. I don’t want to give you more information than necessary, but, as those of you know who have endured the procedure, the worst day is the day before; and that, for me, was Thursday afternoon. (That’s already more information than necessary from the pulpit.) Suffice it to say, I had precious little time for in-depth study on Thursday or Friday for this morning’s sermon.

While the week was a peculiar one, please know that Philip and Nathanael and this sermon have been on my mind. Who were these fellows? With thirty-two years of ministry under my belt, I should know. But, I confess--and sheepishly--I don’t. Philip and Nathanael--anyone have a clue?

It was not until Saturday morning--yes, yesterday--that I got down to finding out more about Philip and Nathanael. Philip is more prominent than Nathanael; he appears in all four gospels. He was from Bethsaida, where Andrew and Peter were from, and he followed Jesus the minute Jesus said, “Follow me.” Philip demonstrated a superb evangelism technique: he invited his friend, Nathanael, to come and see Jesus. We also know that when Jesus decided to feed the five thousand, it was Philip who said, “Six months’ wages would not be enough bread for each of them to get a little” (John 6: 7). That’s about it for Philip.

As for Nathanael, all that I could find--ALL--is that he was one with no deceit; he committed the rather significant blunder of asking of Jesus, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth;” he was at the Sea of Tiberias when the Resurrected Christ appeared to the disciples; and his name appears only in John’s gospel.

Maybe I am missing something but this is what I was able to dig up about Nathanael and Philip. They have exasperated me. My mind is so blank about these two fellows that I have been wondering whether I lost a mental step or two when they put me under for the colonoscopy. Dagmar knew I was spinning my sermonic wheels yesterday morning when I appeared to be doing more Solitaire-playing than sermon-writing on the computer and suggested I take a break and go to my beloved El Cajon Library to pick up my books and then go and get the car washed. Wouldn’t you know it: just as I watched my car go through the fifth of six lighted cycles at Body Wash Beautiful, I was struck with an insight as if from heaven!

As I watched the guys whisk out the floor mats, spray on the “Wheel Brite” solution ($4.95 extra for that), and wash my windows, I was struck by how ordinary most of us are and yet how necessary we are to make God’s world go round and round. Most of us are not Barack Obama—although a woman, a number of weeks ago when I was making public comments at the San Diego City Council Meeting budget hearings on behalf of the San Diego Organizing Project, did ask me whether anyone had ever told me that I look like the President-elect. And most of us will not be confused with courageous leaders like Martin Luther King. We are, rather, like the woman who pointed me to where I could find the outdoor push brooms at Home Depot; like my gastrointestinologist and nurses to whom I entrusted my very life at Grossmont Surgery Center and yet whom I hardly know; like the librarians, the ones who give me my weekly books--what are their names?

I got to thinking. Most of us are a lot like Philip and Nathanael. How many people know us? We work hard all our lives, contribute generously to our church, have served in our nation’s military during war and peace, are law-abiding citizens--and yet, who knows a thing about us? Who even knows our name?

And maybe, in a way, it wasn’t too different with Jesus. Who was he? The hotshots of the day, the big names like Herod and Caesar, Augustus and Quirinius, they were the celebrities. Jesus? Isn’t he the one from that dinky town, Nazareth, with a population of 300; how dare he have Messianic pretensions!

I spent the rest of yesterday thinking of all these people and our callings; the callings of the Body Beautiful car wash guys, the El Cajon librarians, the colonoscopy crowd. These people have been called by God and, in most cases, we will never know their names and yet, each, in their own way, if they do the best they are able, point us to the wonder of God’s creation; and, if we are so blessed, we might just see the light of Christ.

Jesus calls each of us to make his presence known in this world—as a parent comforting your screaming child at three in the morning, as an adult child calling your mom every morning to make sure she has made it safely through the night, as workers in our nation’s economy doing your best even though you might lose your job tomorrow after twenty-five years of faithful service. We often feel so unappreciated, and yet are we any different than Philip and Nathanael? Each of us is given an opportunity to point someone to Jesus.

So often, we say, “It’s just me.” When we invite someone to church, it’s “just me.” And yet, how important “just me” is. We are told that the most important evangelists are “just me.” All kind of experts tell us how to “grow our church.” We pay small fortunes for conferences, have untold meetings, engage in brainstorming sessions and marketing ploys, create fancy banners, and embark on sophisticated advertising campaigns. And yet, what is the most effective evangelism? Just you and me, Philip and Nathanael, inviting a friend to come see Jesus. That’s all and that is exactly how people come see Jesus.

God’s Messiah came out of just Nazareth. And who noticed? Just Nathanael, just Philip, just you, just me. Who again are Philip and Nathanael? As far as I can tell, they are people like you and me pointing others to Jesus, the light of the world.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 11, 2009
The Baptism of Our Lord
Genesis 1: 1-5; Mark 1: 4-11
"Not a Pretty Start"

Mark’s gospel begins abruptly: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” No Mary and Joseph, no shepherds and angels, no Herod and Magi, not even the baby Jesus. Mark’s gospel begins with Jesus as a grown man standing on the banks of the Jordan River, waiting to get his sins washed away with the rest of the riff-raff. Not a pretty way to start things out. Hardly Christmas joy.

Now wait just a minute! you demand. I thought Jesus was pure and spotless, without sin. Why is Jesus, the Son of God, standing in line to get his sins washed away? This isn’t such a dumb question. Christians have been stumped and troubled by Jesus’ baptism for years, even shamefully embarrassed.

To make matters worse, when Jesus goes down to the river and John, against his better judgment and initial refusal, washes him clean, an astonishing thing occurs. With chilly water still dripping down his face, Jesus looks up to the heavens and sees them torn apart. Nothing gentle or easy…Ripped apart. It is as if God cannot declare his delight fast enough. Torn apart and with that magnificent voice, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Most parents would be appalled to learn that their son had joined a line of hookers and Ponzi scheme traders, arms dealer and methamphetamine producers to have his sins washed away. Parents prefer their kids to have top grades, to be the finest soccer players in Southern California, to earn millions of dollars after getting their MBA’s from Stanford, to flex their muscles ferociously to protect their turf against all enemies.

When I was a pastor in West Philly, most of our members lived in row houses. Because row houses have connected porches, I could hop over one banister after another, going from porch to porch, easily making five visits in an hour. One day I was visiting Helen and Jack Green. We were sitting out front, talking, when their son, Raymond, came dashing down the street. When he got to the top of the porch, his dad asked, “Raymond, what’s the hurry?” Raymond, gasping for breath, said, “A guy down at the corner of Peach Street threatened to beat the snot out of me if I didn’t hand over my new boom box.” The dad asked, “Where’s your boom box?” Raymond said, “I gave it to him.” Raymond’s dad grabbed him by the shirt and screamed into his face, “No son of mine backs down to anyone. You get back there and get that radio or you are dead meat. Be a man. Now git!”

We may not do it the same way, but we understand. Parents are typically not proud when their sons or daughters back down, when they aren’t the brightest and the best, the toughest and the most outstanding…respected, in other words.

You would think God would have been embarrassed by his son hanging with muggers, liars, and thieves. But for some reason—and note this well--God is delighted. The heavens burst open and God announces, “That’s my boy!” This God takes a huge risk and commends Jesus for shaping ministry around the riff-raff. Maybe these few Bible verses tell us something about the shape our ministry should take, a shape, by the way, that most of the church usually doesn’t tell us about.

Funny thing how good church people these days would rather distance themselves from such risk-taking. We want to be found acceptable and clean by God. We would rather get things perfectly right rather than risk hanging out with disreputable sorts. God chooses the opposite tact: though the church will never understand the company Jesus keeps, God delights when Jesus joins company with the riff-raff.

There is tremendous pressure on the church these days. We so fear the decline of the church that we are tempted to play it safe and do what is acceptable to the majority. I recently read an article by a group of Lutherans that claims that if the church sides with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters at its national assembly this summer in Minneapolis, there will be a drastic decline in membership. The article insinuates that popularity and success are the litmus tests to the church’s integrity. The writers of this article warn against the risk of supporting a group of people who have been shunned by many in the church for far too long. Rather than standing in line at the Jordan with all people, those who write such articles counsel the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to run the opposite direction in fear or, at least, in search of bigger membership numbers.

When we see Jesus at the River Jordan, we also see God. We see God breaking from heavenly places and coming to earth, risking everything to live on the outskirts of life with the outcasts of society.

In today’s first lesson from the book of Genesis, we hear of a similar mess. “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” James Weldon Johnson describes the scene this way:

God seems to delight in going to messy places, dark places, places where righteousness springs from sin, peace from war, life from death, understanding from confusion, community from animosity. Whenever God gets into the act, God is like a child who delights in playing in the mess of creation.

As we embark on a new year, I have a hunch that, for many of us, there will be an inclination to play it safe, not to risk, to try to get things right. With the economy as it is, we fear one misstep might cost our ministry mightily. We will debate and disagree, study and listen, and we will believe that with time, we can get everything just right, perfect. All the while, people in the world will be suffering; homeless people will be moaning in the night. If we learn anything from the Baptism of Our Lord and the creation story, it is that God takes the greatest delight in going to places where most good, religious people fear to tread. When we join Jesus at the outskirts, at the wild and crazy river, we might just hear God proclaim, “You are my sons and daughters, my beloved, with you I am well please.”

We will never know for sure whether we are getting everything right—in fact, it is almost certainly the case, that we will rarely get things right. There will be occasions when we are in great error, when we stumble and fall. And yet one thing seems certain: if we risk siding with the outcasts, if we risk getting our finger nails dirty in God’s name, all indications suggest that God will be greatly pleased.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 4, 2009
The Epiphany of Our Lord
Matthew 2: 1-12
"When Love Comes to Town"

The Feast of Epiphany falls on the 6th day of January on the church calendar. We celebrate this special occasion today, two days in advance of the twelfth day of Christmas.

The word “epiphany” means something like "fantasy from the outside." As Christians, we believe that “the Epiphany” is Christ’s birth at Christmas; on this day God entered our world and our lives. In the words of the rock group, U2, accompanied by legendary blues guitarist B.B. King, this is the day that “love comes to town.”

The troublesome thing about today’s Gospel reading is that the people we would most expect to welcome God to earth do nothing of the sort. One would think King Herod would have welcomed God’s son to earth. Kings are trained in the ways of protocol. They know how to bow, what fork to use, and what titles are appropriate for particular dignitaries. They have staffs that attend to such social minutiae.

King Herod, as you know, was not the least bit enthralled by the news of this new king. People in power tend to be touchy about sharing power. The least little threat can cause them to resort to all manner of nasty torture and uncivilized brutality. Age old laws meant to protect the rights of the citizenry quickly go down the drain as the powerful scramble to protect their turf.

While one might have expected the Jerusalem Philharmonic to serenade the new king with some theme and variation on Handel’s coronation music, Zadok the Priest, nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, Herod immediately began secretly conniving how to do away with this fledgling king.

And then there were the chief priests and scribes. Wouldn’t they welcome the Christ Child? The moment the Magi from the East came knocking at Herod’s door, the religious authorities took their dusty scrolls down from the shelves and rolled immediately to Micah 5 verse 2 in their sacred text. They had known exactly what was foreseen by the prophets since childhood: “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.” They pointed the Magi to that little town of Bethlehem; there, they would find the king.

And yet, religious officials are complex sorts. I know this from experience, being one myself. Most of us, while loving and defending Scripture, also know how the bills are paid. We don’t want to threaten the equilibrium for fear that those in power will cut us down to size, leave the flock, or slash their tithes. The scribes and priests knew that the Wise Men were clueless about membership numbers in annual reports, benevolence payments for mission work throughout the world, and money necessary to carry out effective ministry to God’s little ones on the city streets of Jerusalem; and, if they had known about this sort of stuff, the religious authorities sensed that the Magi could have cared less. As if on cue, the priests and scribes counseled moderation, if for no other reason than their biggest dream was to offer the prayer at Herod’s upcoming inauguration.

Then there were the Magi. The best way to describe them is “dreamers and visionaries” (Nicholas Westerhoff).

I must confess I would have been troubled by these wise men, whoever they were. They were shady: no one knew exactly where they were from—was it Persia, Babylon, or Arabia; or their names—was it Baltazaar, Caspar, and Melchior; and what about the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh--rather peculiar stuff, don’t you think, for a baby?

When someone comes knocking at First Lutheran’s door in search of a king because they have seen following a shiny star, the direction I want to send usually is not Bethlehem. It would be like a Scientologist, Jehovah’s Witness, or fortune-teller showing up here this morning to tell us what our faith is all about. Honestly, what would you think if someone came up front with a crystal ball to tell us about the Christ Child? I know this is California, but really!

And yet, I give the Magi credit: they heard that love had come to town and they were exercising their imaginations the best they knew how. They consulted biblical scholars and even Herod before doing anything foolish, but then they acted. They didn’t read another book or attend another committee meeting. They summoned the courage to follow a star to Bethlehem in search of the Christ Child.

In truth, to this day, it requires odd ones to dream of a world where Jesus might possibly be king. Anyone who takes this little king seriously is finally going to be viewed an oddball. Anyone who believes that a Jewish baby who ends up dying on a cross is the Son of God…well you tell me! The writer Flannery O’Connor said it this way, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”

I just finished reading a beautiful little book, Living Gently in a Violent World. One of the authors of this book is Jan Vanier, the founder of L’Arche Community which consists of houses around the world where small groups of people permanently live with people with disabilities. Many of you are familiar with the late Dutch priest Henri Nouwen; he lived in a L’Arche house in the later years of his life after forsaking appointments at Yale and Harvard. Those who live in these communities dare think that God chooses to come down to earth to live with people just like this, people who have been rejected by most of polite society.

Vanier writes: “We are afraid of showing weakness. We are afraid of not succeeding. Deep inside we are afraid of not being recognized. We hide behind all sorts of things. However, when we meet people with disabilities and reveal to them through our eyes and ears and words that they are precious, they are changed. But we too are changed. We are led to God.” Vanier continues, “There’s a mystery, and maybe it comes back to the question of who God is and where God is” (Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier, Living Gently in a Violent World, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 2008, pg. 64, 66).

If they were living today, I imagine the Magi would travel to places like L’Arche to find the Christ Child. They would point us to the baby Jesus in the homeless woman right here on our patio, in the aging man with Alzheimer’s whom we sing Christmas carols with, in the drug addicted teenager who sits slumped at worship with his baseball cap on backwards. No one would ever imagine looking for Jesus in them. The Wise Men did and they do: they lead us where most kings and religious authorities forget to look for God. They lead us to the mangers of our world where the vulnerable ones live.

Epiphany, “fantasy from the outside.” Funny thing, huh, how love comes to town?

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 28, 2008
First Sunday of Christmas
Luke 2: 22-40
"Dying a Good Death"

If you were one of the lucky ones, your parents prayed with you when you were a little child. Perhaps the first prayer they taught you was:

Praying this prayer with us, our parents, knowingly or unknowingly, were teaching us how to die a good death. They were giving us words for a lifetime, words that would assure us that God was always with us no matter what goblins were under our beds or what beeping goblins hung over us in intensive care. I have found that after all the seminary study and many books read on prayer and spirituality, still, before I close my eyes, I return to the prayer my parents first prayed with me.

I suppose it’s because of that prayer that I particularly adore old Simeon and Anna whom we heard about in today’s Gospel reading. These two old folks spent a lifetime around the Temple in Jerusalem. You could call them Temple rats, if you like; they soaked up the atmosphere of that holy place, hearing the prophecies of the coming Messiah, looking to see what animals people brought for sacrifices, and smelling the incense of prayers rising to heaven.

First Lutheran has quite a few members akin to old Anna and Simeon. You are the ones who have soaked up the atmosphere around here for years and years. You might have been married here; your children were baptized and confirmed and married here; you buried your beloved spouse from here as you said your final farewells. Like Anna and Simeon, you have gathered here, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, listening for news of the Messiah, news that will help you and those you love live a good life and die a good death.

You can easily imagine Simeon and Anna’s joy as they saw Mary and Joseph coming to the Temple with the Christ Child. They couldn’t contain their enthusiasm. They had waited for this child for ages.

You can see old Simeon, with bent and crippled hands, straining to lift the tiny Child to the heavens. You can see tears streaming down his cheeks as he utters, Now I can die.

I saw a similar joy here at First Lutheran Church two weeks ago during our Sunday school’s Christmas pageant. As little Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise people and animals streamed up the aisle, I didn’t know whether to look into the eyes of the children or our older members. As soon as the pageant was over, as if on cue, as part if part of the script, long time members expressed their delight, “What a thrill to see these young children. They are First Lutheran Church’s hope.” Said another way, the good news of God’s presence for young and old, homeless and housed, gay and straight, will be announced in this place for years to come.

The two groups I most enjoy being around this time of year are little children and elderly homebound members. The children have ants in their pants; they actually believe that God has come to earth for the salvation of the world. I also love being with our homebound members; they eagerly listen and watch for the arrival of that Little Child into their homes and hospital rooms; they hope, like Anna and Simeon, that he will speak a word that will lift their spirits forever.

Old Simeon sang these words as he lifted the Holy One of Bethlehem to heaven:

The church has always cherished Simeon’s song. The Lutheran church, in fact, has made this song its signature piece, often singing it at the end of Sunday worship. Now that we have beheld the Christ Child in bread and wine and words spoken, we can depart in peace. The church has also sung these words at the end of its evening prayer service, the Vesper liturgy: as the sun goes down, we close our eyes, perhaps for the final time, confident that we have seen our salvation.

At the church I served in Washington, we had a tradition of visiting our dying members in their homes or hospital rooms. The parish choir always came too. We joined hands around the bed of our blessed dying ones. We listened to the Gospel and told stories that should always be told before people die of how they lived life well and pointed us to the baby Jesus; we sang Children of the Heavenly Father, one verse always in Swedish, in honor of the parish’s Swedish heritage; we passed around bread and wine and almost always Kleenex; and then, at the end, we sang, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. We supported one another with the vision of salvation as death drew near.

God willing, each of us is much like old Simeon and Anna. We spend a lifetime searching for the coming Messiah, whether as little children with ants in our pants on Christmas Eve or as older ones longing for the Christ Child as our final night draws near. At some point, each of us will be put to the test: we will have to live and die what we have heard spoken. Like Simeon and Anna, we will need to trust that this Child is our salvation as we navigate through that valley of the shadow with grace and dignity. Is it any wonder that Anna and Simeon were so thrilled? Is it any wonder that our older members are thrilled at the Sunday School Christmas pageant? And each of you this morning, you, too, I pray are thrilled at our dear Savior’s birth as you have beheld your salvation.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 24, 2008
Christmas Eve
Luke 2: 1-20
"Beggars at the Manger"

I have spent the past few weeks praying for a brainstorm for tonight’s sermon: Dear God, please send a word or two from heaven that will be your gift for the wonderful people who gather on Christmas Eve at First Lutheran Church. I have been a beggar with outstretched hands.

You come here tonight, with open hands, in search of that very word from heaven. What is challenging for me, the preacher, is giving you what you need. You are all so different tonight. One of you has a diamond ring in your pocket and another hopes to receive that ring and you both expect your time here tonight to be the perfect bow on a memorable evening. Another one of you is spending this night alone for the first time in a long time; you long for a word to soothe your shattered soul. Some of you actually are not here tonight; you are huddled in sleeping bags on the San Diego streets, longing for any word of hope and yet too embarrassed to set foot here.

Each of us tonight, in our own way, is a beggar in search of a word from heaven.

Christmas Eve has been this way from the beginning. Remember: the son of God was a child of beggars. Everywhere his parents searched for a birthplace, the answer was no.

This Christmas for many of us, like no other in recent memory, is filled with melancholy. We understand, perhaps more than ever, what Mary and Joseph felt as they sought the elusive room in some inn. Some of us worry that the turbulent stock market will make us indigent beggars in our old age. Others, young, bright, and talented college graduates, have been brought to our knees, willing to do any work, not matter how menial, for a buck. Others of us fear losing our home, our chief earthly treasure…All beggars.

In tonight’s beloved Christmas reading from the Gospel of St. Luke, the angels come bearing good news of great joy. This good news, we are told, is “for all people,” happy and sad, rich and poor, addicted and sober. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, Who is the Christ the Lord.”

Apparently, there were people the night God’s son was born who never imagined they would need a savior, people like Quirinius and Caesar Augustus. They were the proud and resourceful ones, the over-achieving and affluent ones; they never dreamed of reaching out their hands to anyone. And, of course, there was the flourishing inn owner who refused to open his doors to a highly pregnant girl and her disheveled boyfriend; he shooed those shabby beggars away.

There were others on that night, shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. They were happy to reach out their hands to just about anybody. They had been ridiculed for as long as they could remember and so, when angels came with the news of a savior born in Bethlehem, they went running to see what was up. They had never been too proud to beg so nothing was going to stop them now.

Just a few weeks ago a woman whose conversation I particularly enjoy, came to my office, asking if I would lend her five dollars. I have customarily given her a few dollars when she has asked. That day my wallet was empty. A few hours later, as I was about to turn onto the freeway entrance ramp and head home, I saw my friend at the corner of 5th and Cedar, with a sign, begging for money. And I wondered: was she any different from me, from you? Just how close are we to bearing such a sign with our hands out?

I suppose, for most of us here tonight, we find it hard to think of ourselves as beggars. And yet, listen to how Martin Luther defined the Gospel: the Gospel is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food. Luther understood that, when the veneer is stripped away, we are all beggars. In Luther’s eyes, whether well scrubbed and happy or wounded and broken, each of us comes here tonight in search of free food or, in other words, the gifts of God.

It is fitting and appropriate that this congregation, known for feeding a beggar or two on our patio, makes it perfectly clear that there are other beggars, too. They are the silent beggars. They are many of us here tonight. Even though we have smiles on our faces and have sent upbeat Christmas cards, underneath the decorations of ivy and mistletoe, our pleading and trembling hands are outstretched, longing for a word from heaven that will dissolve our deep loneliness and soothe our hidden pain.

I spent much of today visiting our homebound members. As many of you know, this is a tradition of mine since the day I was ordained nearly thirty-two years ago. Every Christmas Eve I go to those who are at the most frightening of edges and see whether this Christmas story still works its magic. And so, I read the Christmas story to them, we tasted the Christmas sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, and we sang “Silent Night” together albeit a bit shaky and off key. At each visit, I encountered a beggar, an older member of this congregation with hands outstretched, longing for the joy that only the Babe of Bethlehem can bring. And, of course, I was often on the verge of tears, knowing that I am a similar beggar, longing for the same heavenly joy to come down from heaven.

There is a children’s Sunday school tradition that many of you know. You clasp your hands with fingers intertwined inward. Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, and here are the people. Join me. Intertwine your fingers. Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the doors, and here is the manger.

In a few moments, the Christ Child will be placed in that very manger, your begging hands. You long for heavenly food come down to earth and you have found it here.

And so, like the hundreds who came here on Friday because they heard that we were giving out free duffel bags, we come here tonight because we have heard that free food is being given out. Like the shepherds who came to Bethlehem, the woman at 5th and Cedar asking for a little change, our homebound members who are sick and lonely, we come to this place, just as Mary and Joseph did so many years ago. We come as beggars, one and all, knocking at heaven’s door and praying that the Christ Child will be placed in our hands. We sense that this gift will fill us with joy forever…May you have a very blessed Christmas.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 21, 2008
Fourth Sunday of Advent
2 Samuel 7: 1-11, 16; Luke 1: 26-38
"A Perfectly Fine Tent"

Are you ready for Christmas? Frankly, I never quite am. Even though I finished my Christmas shopping early this year, I still suspect there are a few gifts out there more perfect than the ones I have purchased. My Christmas cards—with notes included—were sent out with weeks to spare and yet I worry whether I have forgotten someone. I will do the same thing here at church, trying to get every word of my Christmas Eve sermon just right and making sure that every homebound member is visited. I suppose it is my sense of inadequacy that makes me worry so much: if I don’t get everything perfect for Christmas, God might not come to dwell with us during these holy days.

King David wanted everything perfect, too. He secured his leadership by brutal military campaigns. Once his enemies were brought to their knees, he established Jerusalem as the capitol city and brought the Ark of the Covenant there. Good Jews believed that God dwelled in the Ark or very nearby when on earth. The Jewish people bore the Ark through the hot and dusty desert for years and years and apparently this living arrangement was perfectly pleasing to God. David had grander designs, though. A tent was no longer suitable as God’s primary residence now that David was so successful. Like children who live in opulent McMansions and are embarrassed by their parents’ humble abodes, David felt that God needed an upgrade, something more impressive, something like David’s own glorious palace.

Late one night, God visited the prophet Nathan to tell him that David’s plans for an ornate temple were unnecessary; a tent was sufficient for God. Nathan reported God’s desires to King David: The Lord will make you a house. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever. This house would not be made of stone or cedar but rather would be made in a tiny baby born in David’s insignificant hometown of Bethlehem.

Most of us are like David. We want things as perfect as possible when God comes to visit. Drive around any city and you will see massive buildings built to God’s glory. The bigger the edifice, the more God must love the ministry, we are led to believe.

The first church I served in inner-city Philadelphia was insignificant as far as worldly standards go. Calvary, in its early years, dreamed of building a cathedralesque structure and yet this dream never materialized. Calvary is one of those buildings that looks like it got stopped halfway through the building project. It never got the Tiffany windows or the gold leafed vaulted ceiling. To this day, in the entryway, there is an architect’s rendering of what Calvary’s majestic edifice might have been.

I was always grateful that Calvary never achieved its dream. As many neighborhoods grew poorer and poorer, small buildings were much easier and cheaper to maintain. More than thirty Lutheran churches in Philadelphia with large and imposing buildings have shut their doors in the past forty years or so because they could no longer afford the upkeep. The largest of these was Philly’s original megachurch in the 1950’s. Its huge sanctuary was not big enough to host the 75,000 worshipers on Easter morning so services were held at Temple University’s football stadium. In the 70’s and 80’s, this once proud congregation began to shrink. It could no longer afford upkeep on its massive physical plant and finally closed its doors in 1992.

Tiny little Calvary, a pipsqueak kind of place, is still doing ministry to its very poor neighborhood. Modesty might have saved Calvary. Who knows, maybe God likes things small.

And then there is this church of ours, First Lutheran. I spent thirty years of ministry sensing that the best ministries are the big ones—places where thousands worship on Sunday. Deep down, I suppose I am still plagued with the nagging suspicion that God prefers to come to big places like Saddleback Community Church and the Crystal Cathedral. But the Angel Gabriel has been working on me. Just as the angel came to little Mary and told her that she was good enough to be the mother of God, the angel Gabriel has been coming to me, telling me what a wonderful place First Lutheran is for God to dwell. I increasingly enjoy telling people who ask how big our congregation is, We are a tiny little place. What a gift to realize that God delights in coming to tiny little places, places like a raggedy old nomadic tent in the desert, the little town of Bethlehem, and, oh yes, our tiny congregation at 3rd and Ash.

What a blessing to learn that God is content with small dwelling places. After all, most of us, at one time or another have had grand designs of our own. We once dreamed of being important and influential, making a profound difference in the world. Typically, around forty-five years of age or so, such dreams come crashing down. We are forced to reframe our once grand schemes to more modest and achievable ones or else we, too, come crashing down. This reframing often occurs with no small amount of pain and soul searching. If we are lucky, what eventually occurs is that we realize that God adores modesty and we begin to feel comfortable in our own skin.

I have loved our Confession during these Sundays of Advent. After we have confessed our sins, I have declared to you: Hear and believe the good news that all your sins are forgiven. With God nothing is impossible. We hear the good news that we are good enough for God to come and dwell in our hearts. God says to us, I lived in a raggedy old nomad tent for years and that was fine. I came to earth in a virgin’s womb and that was fine, too. Now, I come to dwell in your hearts and that will be terrific. Yes, with God nothing is impossible.

So, even if the cookies aren’t baked, the presents aren’t bought, the cards aren’t sent, and you aren’t feeling particularly cheerful, remember, God is pleased to come to pitch a tent and live at your place.

Have a joyous Christmas.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 14, 2008
Third Sunday of Advent
John 1: 6-8, 19-28
"Just Plain John"

I suppose, from the beginning of time, we humans have been consumed by the question, Who are you? We want to know about other people: what do you do for a living, where did you grow up, where did you go to school, what are your proudest accomplishments? We wonder, what makes you important?

The people in John’s time ask these questions, too, particularly as they approached John. All four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) mention this fellow John. What is interesting in today’s reading from the Gospel of John is that never once does it refer to John as “John the Baptist” or even “the Baptist.” John’s credentials are not listed in today’s reading. We don’t hear of how the people swarmed to the wilderness to listen to this wild-eyed radical; we don’t hear his stock-and-trade tirades like calling people “a brood of vipers;” we don’t see John taking people’s hands as they walk down to the river to have their sins washed away. Also, the stuff that particularly mesmerized me as a kid is missing; we don’t hear a word about John’s exotic diet (locusts and wild honey) or his bizarre dress habits (his outfit of camel’s hair clothing and a leather belt). None of this appears in the Gospel of John. There is no way we can catch a startling image of who this prophetic firebrand was using the muted, dare I say, bland account according to John.

What we get in today’s Gospel is “Just Plain John.” People wanted--and want--so much more than “Just Plain John.” One of the problems in the early church was that there was an entire popular movement of people so attracted to the charismatic figure of John that they thought he might just be the Messiah instead of Jesus.

This nasty habit of confusing the messenger with the message has been a vexing and embarrassing one for the church down through the ages. I can think of a host of churches just during our lifetime that have been called “Reverend So and So’s Church.” In these churches, there is the danger of the messenger becoming the messenger because of his—and it is almost always his-- charismatic skills. When “Reverend So and So” retires or dies, there is usually a huge vacuum to fill which presents enormous problems. With the messenger and message gone, these churches often dwindle and die and their enormous buildings go up for sale.

People wanted John to be more than he was, too. “Who are you?” they asked. They hoped he was the Messiah, or Elijah, or one of the prophets. Over and over again, John had to correct his adoring admirers, letting them know in more words or less, I’m “Just Plain John.”

In the Gospel reading we just heard, the writer spends an inordinate amount of time telling us who John is NOT, far more time than he spends telling us who John is. “…the negatives in these thirteen verses reach a grant total of ten ‘nots,’ ‘neithers,’ and ‘noes’” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting on the Word). John repeatedly has to tell the people, I am not…

“Just Plain John.” And just plain John’s only mission was to point his admiring followers beyond himself to Jesus.

It’s easy to get caught up in being more than “Just Plain John” or “Just Plain Jane.” Most of us like the house lights shining brightly on us. I do! We like to be noticed for our accomplishments, to have others applaud us for our magnetism and hard work, to be viewed as indispensable to Christ’s mission in the world. While we know better, we like feeling important, necessary. When we are not given our proper due or overlooked, we grow discouraged and even become angry; we feel unappreciated.

I love the icon on this morning’s bulletin cover. Note how, at first, your eye is drawn to the imposing figure of John the Baptist. He seems so central, so big. But then you notice that, with his right hand, and index finger, John points away from himself to the Christ Child, in a communion chalice. The moment you see Christ in the cup, your eyes immediately shift from John and you almost forget he is in the icon. You are so taken by Christ in the cup. You start thinking of how this tiny child is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, as John proclaimed just verses following today’s gospel. You become consumed with the thought of how this little baby of Bethlehem will one day die for you. This icon could easily be called “Just Plain John.”

I urge you to take your bulletin home. Place this icon in a prominent place (your refrigerator, your car dashboard, a marker in your Bible, your bed stand). Mediate this week on “Just Plain John” as he points beyond himself to the Christ Child. Pray to God that you might be more like John.

Our Sunday School is now going to put on the Christmas pageant. I eagerly anticipate this pageant every year but no more so than this year after Marie Ruth and Melanie Novak told me that the script has been written by the children themselves. Christmas pageants are so wonderful. Rarely, however, are they done to perfection. There is inevitably a rambunctious shepherd getting dangerous with his crook, an angel bursting into tears, a Mary waving to mom and dad, a Joseph picking his nose, an Elizabeth getting dumbstruck in mid-sentence. They are “Just Our Plain Young Beloved Children” pointing beyond themselves to the baby Jesus.

As we watch these beautiful ones this morning, tears will come to our eyes because we long for those days of innocence when we were “Just Plain John” and “Just Plain Jane.”

May we be filled with wonder as, together, with our children and John the Baptist, we point beyond ourselves to the only one who can bring us hope and love and peace, the Christ Child of Bethlehem.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
December 7, 2008
Second Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 40: 1-11; Mark 1: 1-8
"O Comfort My People"

I recently read two books that have affected me deeply. One is Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, the other Father and Son: Finding Freedom by Lutheran pastor and writer Walter Wangerin. Both books are about troubled sons. Nick is a creative writer who has a ferocious methamphetamine addiction. Matthew is a budding basketball star who finds the evil lure of the streets hard to shun. Both sons cause their parents untold agony. There comes a breaking point when the parents cannot tolerate their sons’ disobedience, lies, and addictive behavior any longer.

Walter Wangerin writes of the time he and his wife tell their son that he must leave their home and of the agonizing drive he and his son make to Indianapolis. When they arrive in the big city, Walter Wangerin asks his son where he wants left off. After his son gets out of the car and closes the door and heads down a mean street where danger lurks everywhere, the father turns towards home and weeps.

The parents in both books are forced to make excruciating choices; they confront their children’s addictions and tell them that, until they turn their lives around, there is no room for them at home.

Love is like that: love risks tough actions with the deepest hope that drastic measures will restore the lives of those we love to wholeness and happiness. When these parents throw their sons out of the house, they risk that their sons will never love them again. As they watch their sons walk away from home, they desperately pray that one day their sons will return home alive and express their love for their parents..

The story of God’s people in the Old Testament is an eerily similar story. God’s chosen ones never thought God would turn God’s back on them. They cheated the unsuspecting, abused the poor, and lived extravagantly. In their eyes, their luxurious lifestyle was proof that they were the greatest nation and God’s favored ones. Little did they ever imagine that hard times were coming soon!

Like the parents of a drug addicted kid, God finally had enough of Israel’s addiction to lavishness and arrogance. He announced that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would overrun them, take their brightest and best kicking and screaming into exile, and let Jerusalem rot.

Far off in strange Babylon, God’s children longed for their Father’s house, the great Temple, in Jerusalem. They yearned to sing their beloved hymns and yet their harps hung useless in willow trees. Parents no longer told their children enchanting bedtime stories of how little boy David slew the giant Goliath and how Delilah cut Samson’s hair and made him lose his strength until his hair grew back. No stories were told, no songs were sung. There was only silence.

We have all been there, abandoned in alien and frightening territory, with lumps in our throats and boulders in our stomachs. No stories to comfort us, no music to cheer us. The only sound is our weeping.

There is much truth to the adage of Alcoholics Anonymous that we cannot turn our lives around until we hit rock bottom. Typically, only when we surrender our clever excuses, deathly lies, and blame of others do we come to realize how wrong we have been; only then are we ready to hear another voice besides our own monotonous drone. Only then can we hear John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. We are best able to hear God’s voice when all other voices have been silenced and it is quiet enough to hear heavenly harmonies.

That is precisely when Isaiah came singing, Comfort, O comfort my people--when Israel had stopped singing. All the pomposity and arrogance, the self-assuredness and self-centeredness had dissolved. Isaiah came into this dismal and hopeless situation, like a circus clown, announcing hope when the people and the king were mourning their losses. Prophets are like that: they are silent when the king and his court jesters are chattering away in praise of their extravagance and power and they start their songs of hope when the king and his subjects are rendered mute and hopeless. Then, in the dark Advent of our lives, we await the music of the poet worthy the name, Jesus Christ our Savior.

Those addicted sons, Nick and Matthew, squandered their lives and lost everything. And yet, by the grace of God, that was only the beginning. Imagine the joy they felt when they heard the loving voice of their parents coming to save them as they walked home like the bruised and broken prodigal son.

I have been wondering whether these financially challenging times might possibly be our Babylonian captivity. Have we grown so accustom to gobbling up the world’s valuable resources and using the backs of the poor for our extravagant lifestyles, that we can’t imagine living otherwise? Is it possible that God is telling us that money has become our idol? Could God be telling us that gigantic homes, gas guzzling cars, and fat stock portfolios are not what life is about? Maybe our prayers these days will not be answered as we ask. Maybe the economy will not return to its “glory days.” Maybe God will answer our prayers another way, as he answered them for Israel. Maybe God’s answer to our prayers will tell us that there is far more to life than money.

Let me be frank: this is as hard a message for me to hear as it is to proclaim from this pulpit. I love the pleasure money buys. I love the security it promises. I am afraid, too. What is happening to my pension? Will your pledges add up to do ministry as we hope in 2009? In the midst of my worrying--and I assume, your worrying, too, since almost every conversation I am involved in these days eventually leads to money--could God be crying for us to hear: There is a better way. Turn to me and live.

These are tough times. Except for those of us who grew up in the depression, we never thought God would drop us off in such a tough neighborhood and drive home in the opposite direction, weeping all the way. And yet, I believe that God is closely watching over us. God is calling us, as God called Isaiah and John the Baptist before us, to tell one another and our community that there is a better way. It is the way of Advent. Turn to God and live.

Today and in the days ahead, the most important words in these fragile times will not come from the halls of Congress or the trading floor of Wall Street. The most important words of new life will come from God, Comfort, O comfort my people. When the only news we hear these days is bad news, let us proclaim God’s good news that Christ is coming to love us and save us.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 64: 1-9; Mark 13: 24-27
"The Dark Bruise of Advent"

Thus saith Isaiah, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. You have uttered similar words. You have uttered similar words these days what with a fragile economy, wars raging, terrorism on the rise, and jobs at a premium. O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.

The church’s Advent season comes at the darkest time of year. The days are short, the nights long. The dark dog of night nips at our heals wherever we go. These are times when we are wont to cry out for God’s help.

The church dresses the sanctuary in blue during these Advent days. Blue is the somber color of late night skies long before morning. Blue is the color of our tossings and turnings, and our wondering whether we have slept at all this night. Blue is the color of getting out of bed in the wee hours, gazing through our tears, through the darkness, far off to the eastern sky where it is a dark, Advent blue. The great Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel called this blue “the dark bruise of night.”

Many of us pray our most feverish prayers during “the dark bruise of night.” This is when we feel most helpless, most out of control. We understand why Isaiah screamed, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, because we have screamed such words, too.

We scream into the night because we believe that God can break into our lives and make a difference as God has done time and again in the past. We remember how the Jewish people shook their fists at God when they were enslaved in Egypt and how God answered their prayers and delivered them to freedom. We are heartened by such a memory. If God could deliver the Israelites, God can surely deliver us. Such memories cause us to pray with a glimmer of hope even in the bluest of nights.

And yet, we must be careful how we pray. If we dare pray, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, our world might be turned upside down in ways far beyond our imagination. Over and over again through the centuries, when God’s people have prayed, they have almost always been surprised at how God has answered.

In her collection of essays, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard writes of the utter surprise that occurs in the midst of prayer:

“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? …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 w can never return. “The eighteenth-century Hasidic Jews had more sense, and more belief. One Hasidic slaughterer, whose work required invoking the Lord, bade a tearful farewell to his wife and children every morning before he set out for the slaughterhouse. He felt, every morning, that he would never see any of them again. For every day, as he himself stood with his knife in his hand, the words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice and destroy him before he had time to utter the rest, ‘Have mercy‘” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, pg. 40).

We come to God in “the dark bruise of the night” because every solution we have tried on our own has failed miserably. We cannot help ourselves. And so we come to God, helpless, beggars, with hands out. Luther describes this time in his Small Catechism when he notes that “I believe that by my own reason or strength, I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.” Members of Alcoholics Anonymous describe this time, similarly, when they finally come to admit, “I am powerless over alcohol--my life has become unmanageable” Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes this time as he waits to die in Hitler’s prison, “A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes…is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.”

Most of us are familiar with this dark time of waiting. It is the time when we scream for God to pass by here and open the door of our prison--whatever the prison may be. We beg God to deliver us to a freedom of God’s making. We are absolutely helpless and terrified parents whose children are out-of-control and know far better than mom or dad what is best for them; we are drunks who have ruined our last and only chance for a better life; we are philandering and lonesome, looking for love in all the wrong places--all of us hapless and helpless. We stand at the window, gazing out over the dark blue night, broken, surrendering, and weeping, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

Perhaps this is the strange time when God will come, precisely at the time when we have given up all hope. This is when God has come in the past. God comes when our hearts are soft and our wills are tender, when our lives are blue and our arms are open to God’s coming in any way God chooses. And God comes, as a small child in a manger perhaps, in a little nibble of bread, a small sip of wine, in a few words of apology and forgiveness granted. We will take anything God will give us. And God gives us everything. Suddenly, in the midst of our darkest hour, God’s light appears like we have never imagined. This God is not of our making but this God comes down from heaven.

And so, during the dark bruise of Advent, we watch and wait and cry out with all the people of God, Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 23, 2008
Christ the King
Matthew 25: 31-46
"King Jesus' Friends"

Today is Christ the King, the final Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday, we start afresh with the First Sunday of Advent. As we conclude this church year, we do well to review the life of Jesus. Have we learned a thing or two about our king?

One thing seems certain: Jesus is unlike any other king we or the world has ever known. From the very beginning of his life, peculiar things were afoot. Jesus’ mother was a twelve-year old virgin soon to be married to a modest carpenter named Joseph. Scandal was in the air even before Jesus was born. Like any Sunday schooler, we ask the logical question, who exactly was Jesus’ father, especially if he is God’s son. As he grew older things got worse. He ate with the wretched and spent too much time with ne’er do wells. To cap it off, Jesus was nabbed by the authorities at thirty-three and crowned with thorns; his throne was nothing more than a hideous instrument of execution. Christ the King, you say? Oh yes, and one other thing: his followers confess that he rose from the dead, a claim that has been disputed from the moment someone screamed, “He is risen indeed! Alleluia”

For an entire year, beginning last December 2nd, we have watched the comings and goings of this odd king. If Jesus had a cemetery headstone, it might read:

What Christian doesn’t know these words? And, of course, we and all good Christians pray for these pitiful ones every Sunday. The question remains, however: if we were arrested for caring for these outcasts, would there be enough evidence to convict any of us?

I have been weeping inside for the past two days. Do you remember Sharon? She spent her days here under the bougainvillea blossoms. She had bags and bags like Santa Claus except her bags had nothing much--empty tuna fish cans, crushed Coke cans, and other useless trash. Sharon’s bags filled the entire First Lutheran entryway. When we told her she couldn’t have all that stuff, she laughed like a tiny bird and said, “I suppose I should get rid of some it, shouldn’t I, but it’s really hard, it’s all I have. What would you do?”

For a while, Sharon was our chosen one. She came to our Lenten evenings for a little Bible study, a cup of coffee, and some cake. Some of you talked with her. Last year, at a national gathering of theologians, I called her our holy icon, our Lazarus at the gate, our living stained glass window for all the world to see.

We let her stay at the church’s entrance. She did us no harm. Jim Lovell and our other fine social workers worked tirelessly to help Sharon find a safe place to stay but, for whatever peculiar reason, the streets seemed more appealing and less threatening to her.

When we asked other more boisterous ones to move on, some said, “I ain’t movin’ ‘til she moves!” They sensed favoritism, even racism, in our letting Sharon remain. And maybe they were right. We finally had to tell Sharon to move on. First Lutheran was no longer her oasis in the urban desert. We could no longer play favorites.

Sharon died this week. The words “I was homeless and you gave me a room” have haunted me these days.

One of Jesus’ dear friends is now gone from our little corner.

How hard it can be caring for Jesus’ friends as we are hounded by angry neighbors, upset police, and hassled town officials. If we learned anything this year about King Jesus, we learned that his friends are not well received by polite and powerful company. The world has little patience for the flaws and brokenness of our king’s odd assortment of friends.

I suppose we all wish King Jesus’ friends were a bit different, more socially acceptable you could say. And yet we have discovered this year that Jesus’ friends ARE his friends precisely because no one else will love them. And thus, he calls us to love them on his behalf.

King Jesus is so patient with his friends. This past Wednesday evening I read a few words to our Centering Prayer group. Listen:

“Jesus Christ came. He walked towards the ‘full stop’. He lost his mobility. He was nailed down! He is not even at three miles an hour as we walk. He is not moving. ‘Full stop’! What can be slower than ‘full stop’— ‘nailed down’? At this point of ‘full stop’, the apostolic church proclaims that the love of God to humanity is ultimately and fully revealed. God walks ‘slowly’ because God is love. If God is not love God would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love.” (Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile an Hour God)

Maybe that’s what happens when we follow the king, we slow up and open our arms, we stop and care for Jesus’ oft’ unlovable friends. Almost every time, when we slow down to care for the unlovable ones, someone gets mad. Whenever we take the side of the oppressed, someone threatens to leave the church. Is it any surprise that they hung King Jesus on the cross for the company he kept?

Maybe that’s what we have learned this year. Walking and caring for Jesus’ friends takes patience and courage and lots of time. Come to think of it, Jesus has taken his time with me for my entire life. Week after week, since I was a little baby and my parents brought me to church in their arms, I have come by here as have you. We have come by here and we are not always changed for the better. We bring old habits that are hard to break; we do the things we do not want to do and do not do the things we want to. And yet, week after week, Jesus is here to welcome us with a meal of love.

Maybe that’s what we have learned: King Jesus gives every moment of his life to those he loves. And maybe that is his invitation to us, to take our time, to love one another, especially those the world has no time for. If we slow down and love, perhaps we will catch a glimpse of our Gentle King in his Gentle Kingdom.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 16, 2008
Twenty-Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 25: 14-30
"Fighting the Fear of Scarcity"

It’s hard to say Praise to you, O Christ” to the Gospel we just heard read. I tossed and turned last night thinking about this morning’s sermon. I know that many of you detest these weeks of stewardship. You join the millions who grumble, “All the church ever does is ask for money.” I don’t particularly like to ask for money either, especially knowing how it upsets some of you. There is a smarmy feeling that accompanies such asking, like being the salesman who has the perfect beach front property just for you, adjacent to a swamp. In these fragile economic times, as you worry about jobs, houses, and retirement, the last thing you need is someone begging for money.

But let me also confess to you that asking for money at First Lutheran is far easier than in most churches. I know the kind of ministry we have and so do you. I know how bare-boned our budget is. If you don’t think we have a lean budget, come to the office some summer day. Rachel, our administrative assistant, knocks on my office door occasionally and asks, “Would you mind if we turn on the air-conditioning today?” Our church is used every day of the week for essential ministry to our community. We have just added additional Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings because another place closed its doors on these groups. We have recently offered our building to another church group so they can worship on Sunday afternoons. If we have any issues at First Lutheran, most focus on the use of space or the lack of it!

The only thing that stops us from expanding ministry to God’s blessed poor is money and space. And so, I do not really feel as guilty asking for money as previously stated. In fact, I feel compelled to do so. After all, you called me to be your pastor in part to ensure that we carry on ministry the best we are able. And the plain truth is, money is required to carry on ministry.

The invitation for each of us, including me, to make a financial pledge at First Lutheran and beyond our doors is an invitation to recognize how richly God blesses us and to discover that we can be more generous than we ever imagined.

Today’s Gospel lesson is an instruction on how to be generous. Three people are given talents by their boss, meaning lots of money: one person five talents, another two, and the final one, one talent. Persons one and two double their money by taking extravagant risks while their boss is away. The third person, fearful of what his boss might do if he loses money, takes the safe approach and buries his talent in the ground. When the boss returns to settle accounts, he commends those who risked everything in order to make more and he lambastes the one who took the safe approach and did nothing with what was entrusted to him.

What we hear in today’s parable of the talents is that there really is something quite wonderful about risking everything in the name of Jesus. The past two weeks we have heard Temple Talks by two couples. Each couple has spoken of their commitment to their church. One couple is very young and newly married, the other, older and married for many years. What each couple shares in common is the priority of tithing, giving 10% of their income for the Lord’s work before they make any other financial commitments in their lives. They have decided to risk what they have in the Lord’s name, to trust that God will be good, and to discover how richly God blesses them.

I believe every person in this church can make a regular offering. Every person. When people tell me they can’t give, I feel sorry for them. How sad not to be able to make one minor adjustment in life in order to bring something to the altar on Sunday morning. I have lived in some of the poorest neighborhoods in this nation and never have I met someone who can’t give something for the Lord’s work.

Let me be clear. This is not a judgment on how much you give. Invariably, someone comes to me during stewardship time with hurt feelings and apologizes for not being able to give more or to increase their pledge. That is not the point. One person in our congregation puts 60 cents in his envelope every week, more often than not, six dimes. I applaud the gift and the giver! This person has chosen to be an integral part of this community. My hunch is that he has taken a tremendous risk of faith. Are we willing to take a similar risk?

I am pleased to announce that every Council member has already made a pledge for the coming year. These twelve pledges total $71,000, a 15% increase over their giving last year. Some of the pledges are larger than others. What is remarkable is that, together, they total $71,000 or an average gift of $114 per person, per week. Note well: together, we make amazing ministry happen. Alone, it can never happen.

By now, you should have received your pledge card in the mail. I hope that each of you will make a financial commitment to ministry in 2009. Some of you will be able to give $15,000 a year; others $30 a year. Together, together, we will enhance ministry.

Our pledge is a spiritual discipline, calling us to generosity. Pledging and giving help us fight our fear of scarcity. Every Sunday when we fill our envelopes and place them in the offering plate, we remind ourselves that God is very good to us.

In these days of economic uncertainty, the worst we can do is nothing; the worst we can do is be paralyzed by the fear of scarcity. One of the great church fathers, Irenaeus, is reported to have said, “Being human is being fully alive.” Being generous people is part of what it means to be fully alive. Pledging and giving are invitations to faithful and thankful living. I hope and pray that the request we make of one another to make a commitment to our church will be viewed as an opportunity to be fully alive and to realize just how blessed we are. How good to know that God provides in these difficult days.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 9, 2008
Twenty-Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 25: 1-13
"Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning"

Regardless if you are a Democrat, a Republican, or wondering where Ross Perot’s name was on the ballot, you share a sense of pride for our nation this morning. It required a heart of stone on Tuesday evening not to shed a tear as Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech as the forty-fourth President of the United States. Who among us ever imagined that we would have an African American president in our lifetime? African Americans could easily have been like those five foolish virgins who were unprepared and neglected to keep their lamps trimmed and burning for the return of the bridegroom. And so, we look with great admiration at all those who waited for this election. They are the ones who dared to believe that hope springs eternal. They have been entrusted with Spirituals to help them be prepared, songs like:

Keep your lamps trimmed and burnin'

Keep your lamps trimmed and burnin'

Keep your lamps trimmed and burnin'

For this ol' world is almost done

Songs like this have been passed down from one generation to the next. These songs have been songs of hope, songs sung proudly as bull whips have cracked over backs and dogs have ripped flesh. Our African American brothers and sisters’ are a proud testament to the virtue of being prepared, of anticipation, of keeping lamps trimmed and burning until God makes justice roll down like streams of running water.

I remember sitting on the front steps of the Clifton Terrace Housing Project with Gladys Norris on a hot and humid July afternoon in Washington, DC. From the steps of this rundown tenement, you can see the United States Capitol in all its splendor. Gladys Norris and her family might as well have lived a million miles away. Her former husband was in prison for narcotics trafficking as was her oldest son. As we sat on the stoop with little toddlers playing in the dusty, glass-strewn front lot and drug dealers plying their trade before our eyes, a thought crossed my mind that haunts me to this day: what would have happened to me if I had grown up in that rat infested slum with gun fire exploding night and day and my daddy in jail? Would I have been able to withstand the temptation of becoming a drug dealer, knowing that I could make a ton of money and a lot quicker working at MacDonald’s? Would I have had the luxury of attending the schools I did and other opportunities that have come my way throughout my life--like being the pastor of this wonderful congregation? As you know, I am certainly not the brightest and the best: a few breaks and growing up with a particular color of skin have helped enormously. Would I have been able to believe that hope springs eternal and kept my lamp trimmed and burning? I wonder.

It is so easy to give up hope. You don’t have to grow up in a dilapidated apartment house to know that. The infant church found it almost impossible to keep hope alive a few short years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus had said that he would return to be with them--and soon. Early Christians believed that Jesus would return in their lifetime. And yet time passed by agonizingly slowly, year by year, and there was no Jesus. Friends and family were being brutalized for their faith. How to keep hope alive when Jesus was no where to be seen?

What about you? How are gays and lesbians among us feeling this morning following the passing of Proposition 8? Are you able to keep hope alive when the test results indicate a curious shadow on the scan? When the mortgage is due and you still don’t have a job, does hope spring eternal? When you find it impossible not to drink one more drink, are you able to believe that tomorrow is a new day and keep your lamp trimmed and burning?

Jesus entrusts today’s parable to those of us who feel hope slipping through our fingers like fine sand. Jesus calls the most desperate of us to hope. Keep your lamps trimmed and burning for Jesus, the bridegroom, will indeed return.

One of the greatest fears that I have witnessed in my ministry has occurred at almost every wedding. Jared (First Lutheran’s Director of Music) can tell you about those fears as he has sat at the organ bench with fingers growing weary and hands nearly falling off, playing one organ piece after another, almost into the funeral music, as it is well beyond the appointed hour and the bride or groom is not to be found. The bride or groom is almost always late. There is nervous laughter in my office as the groom and best man wonder whether the bride will show. The bride and her bridesmaids tremble under their beautifully adorned hair and designer dresses when “Mr. Wonderful still hasn’t arrived.” Will they be jilted at the altar, made fools of in front of family and friends? Waiting can be so hard.

It is so easy to lose hope, especially when you very life depends on the results. Many people have sacrificed their lives for these words: “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” On this Veterans’ Day weekend, we honor and remember those who have given of their lives and continue to do so that this nation might achieve that vision of liberty and justice for all. They have sacrificed their lives for a glimpse of the prophet Amos’s dream of a day in which justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. To stand at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia, is to be moved by those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Is it any wonder that soldiers keep vigil with their lamps trimmed and burning, honoring those who hoped even as they drew their last breaths in battle?

I believe that we witnessed a dream come true on Tuesday, November 4, for the United States of America and for the world. You have got to believe that the whole world was watching. Would the most powerful nation in the world, a nation which until 143 years ago had countenanced slavery, elect an African American president? Every oppressed person in the world watched with astonishment as Barack Obama stood in Chicago with his wife and little girls. Yes, indeed, with God all things are possible. No matter what your politics, this morning is the appropriate time to give thanks to God. It is the time to revere those people who dared to believe that there will come a day when an African American might become president of the most powerful nation in the world. It is the time to hold in highest honor those soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, that liberty and justice might roll down like ever-flowing streams.

For all those who believed and lived that hope springs eternal, we owe a profound debt of gratitude. For the God who filled their souls with hope as they kept their lamps trimmed and burning and enabled them to keep on keeping on, we offer God our highest praise.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
November 2, 2008
All Saint's Sunday
Matthew 5: 1-12
"God's Quotidian Saints"

I love discovering a word that I have never heard or used before. My newest word is “quotidian.” When I came across “quotidian” Monday evening, I rushed to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary for its meaning: “commonplace, ordinary.” I like the word’s sound, too, kw?-‘tid-?-?n.

I am now going to attempt to use my new word in a sentence for the first time. Today we lift before God the quotidian saints. It requires exceptional imagination to know who a quotidian saint might be. Jesus gives us the beatitudes to help us spot them. They are poor in spirit, feeling like they don’t have a thing to offer the world or their church; they are constantly weeping, never able to get over the loss of loved ones; they are forever standing up for the oppressed little ones and are ridiculed by many for their naïve compassion. Jesus calls these ordinary people, the blessed ones. We could say, quotidian saints.

The word “saint” typically gets us searching for religious giants like Saint Joseph and Saint Mary and modern saints like Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa. Most of us never rub shoulders with such saints--we just read about their astonishing achievements and stunning faithfulness.

The saints we know are ordinary, so ordinary that we miss them most of the time. They are fathers who don’t spend enough time with their kids because they are so busy putting food on the table and they feel like failures; they are moms driven to wit’s end by their little ones’ orneriness and in moments of exasperation wash their mouths out with soap and feel not quite up to motherhood; they are the ones next to us, right now, who irritate the living daylights out of us and yet once in a while do something for us that takes our breath away. So ordinary, quotidian saints if you will.

All Saints Sunday invites us to a deeper grace where we are given eyes and the opportunity to see God’s face in one another. I pray for these grace-filled eyes every time I do a funeral. My chief mission, as I see it, is to uncover the beauty of a person sometimes hidden beneath years of bedevilment and calamity. With patience and lots of God’s grace, I think I can safely say that I have always been lucky enough to unearth some dazzling gift of saintliness in every person I have buried. It has not always been easy, but it has always been worth the effort.

I once did a funeral for Harvey Stone. The local funeral director, a friend of mine, called me, as he often did, to see whether I would do the funeral for this man who was not a member of my church or any church for that matter. I had never met the man. I agreed to do the service, as I always do, with the one condition that the family meet with me prior to the funeral so I could see Harvey through their eyes. Harvey must have been a wicked cuss: there was little in the family’s dark stories that I could repeat in public. All they seemed to remember was a hard-drinking, irascible soul whose chief pleasure was golfing on the Lord’s Day. I didn’t want to make the funeral a complete bust by suggesting that grandpa was almost certainly destined for the fires of eternity so I searched high and low for some smidgen of saintliness hidden underneath the years of nastiness and mayhem. In my funeral homily, I noted that Harvey was a child of God and would most assuredly be the recipient of God’s loving forgiveness. I invited the mourners to envision grandpa playing golf on the fourteenth fairway of St. Peter’s classic heavenly layout. No sooner had Harvey’s casket been lowered into the ground than the youngest granddaughter accosted me and lambasted me for failing to warn her hellion cousins of the eternal fires that awaited them, just like they awaited Grandpa Stone, if they didn’t change their wicked ways.

Maybe I did miss a golden opportunity to hurl a zinger or two at a bunch of unrepentant sinners. I think not though. What I hope I did was invite the family and friends to put on grace-filled eyes, if but for a moment, and see God’s light peaking through this most wretched of men. My hope was that by risking to cast Grandpa in God’s positive light, the family might begin to view one another a lot less harshly and dare see each other with a bit more understanding.

I suppose every one of us wishes that someone would invest the time to know each of us better and see how, in spite of our mixed up lives, we do shine forth as quotidian saints doing a thing or two that makes this world a better place.

In his book, Notes of a Native Son, the African-American writer James Baldwin describes a preacher who took the time to know his father in his funeral sermon. Listen and see if you hear the preacher striving to spot a quotidian saint. “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. [You probably have heard a funeral sermon like this where you wondered who the preacher was talking about.] ….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.”

All Saints’ Sunday is our best attempt to lend coherence to the lives of those we have loved and those who have tested our patience beyond belief. All Saints’ Sunday is an invitation to see those at our sides, now, as blessed in God’s sight. All Saints Sunday is no more and no less that living with grace-filled eyes and seeing each other as God sees us, as blessed ones, quotidian saints.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 19, 2008
Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22: 15-22
"God Grant Us Civility"

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Most of us are familiar with this quote of Jesus and have used it a time or two to substantiate one political position or another, whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. In political discussions, especially those regarding church and state, this quote rolls off our tongues like melted butter.

Funny thing, when Jesus’ opponents heard him first utter “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,” the Bible observes, “They were amazed; and they left him and went away.” Jesus stunned them.

Interesting, isn’t it, how this quote regarding what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God gets us up on our soap boxes, all lathered up and ready to spout our favorite political positions. Rarely, if ever, does this quote stop us in our tracks and leave us speechless and amazed.

When the Herodians and the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him about whether or not taxes should be paid to Caesar, the last thing on their minds was listening to Jesus’ thoughts on the matter. As different as day and night, the Herodians and the Pharisees had one thing in common: they wanted Jesus dead. The Herodians were Jews who were loyal to Herod and the Roman government. The Pharisees, on the other hand, found it unthinkable to bend a knee to any earthly ruler, including Caesar. If Jesus answered that one should not pay taxes to Caesar, the Herodians would have been viewed him a traitor; if he answered that one should pay taxes to Caesar, the Pharisees would have branded him a blasphemer. Either way Jesus answered, eventually, he was a goner.

Is it possible that this morning’s gospel reading tells us less about the appropriate position one should take in political debates and far more about the nature of civility in public debate? I think it does.

I don’t know about you, but I am eager for this election to be over. I am sick and tired of incivility, barbs, and cheap shots by Democrats and Republicans alike. If this election season says anything about our nation, I am afraid it speaks volumes about how far we have strayed from civility. Not for a minute do I think this is new phenomenon. Read David McCullough’s book John Adams and you will see how our founding fathers squabbled over the establishment of the United States of America. For some reason, I always assumed that the creation of our nation was a slam dunk, with all leaders in agreement about the creation of the United States. Apparently not so. Our founding fathers fought like cats and dogs. This morning’s bulletin quote of the day by Thomas Jefferson might sum up our founding fathers’ behavior: “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.” Has anything changed?

On November 4, we will elect a president. This president will face monstrously difficult challenges such as the war in Iraq and a faltering economy. In this state of California, we will decide whether gay and lesbian people should be given the right to marry. I don’t need to tell you that we are a nation and a state and even a church divided. What troubles me most in all of these issues is the inability of people, including church people and religious leaders, to debate and to disagree with civility.

I heard a seminary professor a few years ago who had served on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Human Sexuality Task Force. He said the commandment that he most feared being broken in the church’s debate on human sexuality was not “You shall not commit adultery,” but rather “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” He spoke of the threats made and the lies told about task force members when their positions didn’t reflect what some thought they should. Is it possible that we have lost the capacity to disagree in love and the ability to disagree with some manner of civility?

I detest the lies told about presidential candidates and about people who hold one position or another on Proposition 8. Racism, sexism, homophobia, nastiness abound in this election. Perhaps, like Thomas Jefferson, we should tremble for our nation’s very soul if we are serious about the commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

When Jesus took that coin with Caesar’s image on it, he said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Jesus’ answer about the coin reveals that every decision a nation makes is finally held accountable to God who is ruler over all.

We are citizens of a wonderful and powerful nation. With such astonishing power comes incredible responsibility. How we live as a nation matters; how we treat friend and foe matters.

Ours is a remarkably diverse nation and, for the most part, has kept its doors open to people from every nation. When Dagmar became a citizen this spring, she joined 1,700 people from the San Diego area who became citizens of this great land. I will never forget the judge asking the people from different nations to stand--Albania, Argentina, Angola, Mexico, Columbian, Namibia, the Philippines, Iraq, Great Britain, Russia, Japan--he even mentioned Texas! As people form those nations proudly stood, I cried. By the grace of God, each one of us must do our very best to make certain that this remains one nation under God, to insure that disagreement is not only tolerated but applauded, and that true citizenship is marked by a willingness to engage fully in the political process while, at the same time, not attacking or lying about a person whose positions may differ from ours. Let us pray that the decisions we make in the coming election are ones that honor God and keep this nation truly great.

You have noticed I’m sure, that Caesars come and Caesars go; mighty nations once thought invincible grew arrogant, treating the poor unjustly and riding roughshod over weaker enemies; these nations—think Egypt, Babylon, Assyria to name a few--finally ended up on the trash heap of history. Let us pray that our nation be spared such a fate. Let us pray that our elected leaders seek the highest good for ours and every nation. How nations have treated their friends and foes, the poor and downtrodden, has, according to the Bible, stood as a testament to how God has viewed their greatness. Let us pray for the courage and wisdom for the facing of this hour. Let us pray that we will look in amazement when we ask God what is fair and just. Let us pray that as we vote on November 4, God will look with grace and mercy upon our nation.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 12, 2008
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 22: 1-14
"This Magic Moment"

First Lutheran Church does its best to keep every one of our tables open for all who come by here for food. As we are fond to say, “All our tables are open whether at the altar on Sunday morning for the body and blood of Jesus Christ or at our patio tables on Monday and Friday where hundreds receive their daily bread.” Open tables for all God’s children are what we are about at First Lutheran Church.

This morning, once again, we welcome strangers to the wedding feast of the King’s son. The ushers are seeing to it that the front doors are kept wide open, making certain that latecomers are welcome at this morning’s feast. Jared, as always, has gotten us a large loaf of fresh bread. You know that I will give each of you a robust hunk of bread--we need to celebrate this feast with gusto and abundance! The altar guild has made certain that there is plenty of wine so that you can, if you wish, take a big gulp from the delicious cup of salvation.

There is something marvelous about wedding feasts. Dagmar has encouraged me to write a book about my experiences in ministry. In that book, I would devote an entire chapter to weddings I have done. Dagmar and I attended one wedding banquet at Washington, D.C.’s exclusive Congressional Country Club. Glasses of champagne, clams on the half shell, and caviar were served on the veranda overlooking Congressional’s signature 18th hole. Roving violinists serenaded the guests. A four course meal was served, accompanied by a string quartet. After the cake was cut, the groom said to the assembled wedding guests, “In your honor, we have a treat for you; I introduce to you, the Drifters.” For the next hour, we danced our hearts out to such soulful classics as “Under the Boardwalk” and “Up on the Roof.” I’m not a big dancer—in fact, Dagmar would say I’m no dancer. But, that night, decked out in my clerical collar, I danced with Dagmar like I was Fred Astaire and she was Ginger Rogers. Not even I could sit at our table, sour faced, as everyone else danced to “This Magic Moment.”

Herein lies the problem with today’s parable. We love the part about everyone being invited to the wedding feast, good and bad, from every hovel and alleyway. What befuddles us, even angers us, about the parable is why the deprived guy who was dressed improperly was thrown out on his ear. How did Jesus expect this pour soul to ever get an appropriate wedding outfit when he was invited at the last minute? Homeless men typically don’t own Brooks Brothers suits and homeless women don’t have a vast array of Chanel dresses. Doesn’t Jesus get it? The people invited from the highways and byways are never going to meet the king’s extravagant dress code standards.

The question of “what to wear” presents a colossal problem for those who wish to attend any wedding feast. A number of our patio parishioners have told me that they would love to worship here but feel uncomfortable doing so. I don’t believe they feel this way because we treat them rudely; rather, I sense that they don’t feel like they measure up even to First Lutheran’s minimal sartorial standards.

When Jesus talks about the guy getting thrown out because he is dressed improperly, I don’t for a minute believe he is thinking about tailored suits and stunning dresses. Being dressed for the king’s wedding feast has nothing to do with girls wearing paten leather shoes and bobby socks and boys wearing seersucker coats and wingtips. Jesus has something far more profound in mind. Jesus is talking about our hearts: are we clothed in gratitude and joy or crankiness and gloom when we show up at God’s feast? Proper attire is about making certain that our hearts are dressed in the splendor of thanksgiving when we come here this morning to God’s feast of grace.

Let me tell you about another part of my upcoming book, again from the chapter on weddings. I was fortunate enough to perform the wedding for the son and daughter-in-law of General and Mrs. Colin Powell. The rehearsal dinner for eighteen or so was held at the General’s home at Fort Myer, Virginia. Dagmar and I started pondering what we would wear to this memorable evening the moment the gold embossed invitation arrived in our mailbox. As soon as the honor guard opened our doors on Generals’ Row, we were on our best behavior, minding our “p’s” and “q’s.” I acted the best that can be expected of a country boy from West Virginia and Dagmar even got a kiss from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not to have been excited and well prepared for this evening was unthinkable.

Wedding feasts do that to us, especially the ones that mean the world to us, like our sons’ and daughters’ or our very own. Mothers of the bride spend years contemplating the perfect dress for the special day, probably from the moment their beautiful little babies are born. Fathers nervously put on their tuxes, hoping that all the studs are in the little plastic packages and the cummerbunds fit over their advancing paunches. Friends choose perfect wedding presents for the blissful couple. You know how the anticipation works for such affairs.

In my contemplated book’s chapter on weddings, I will write of one other wonderful wedding feast at which I have been privileged to preside. The feast is that of God’s son. For the better part of thirty-one years, just like this morning, I have invited people like you to the most important wedding feast that we will ever attend, the feast of our Lord Jesus Christ. The question is: have we prepared ourselves appropriately for this smashing event? Are our hearts clothed in gratitude?

Everyone is invited to this feast. The label of the clothing we wear here is marked “gratitude;” the gifts we bring are our thanksgiving that God invites us here. How special to be here this morning. Given the honor of our inclusion, we sit in our seats a bit more elegantly, sing the songs a bit more joyfully, and pray our prayers a bit more exuberantly.

Listen: hear the music of the angels serenading you this very moment—do you here them? Look: see Jesus coming to you. Feel him tap your shoulder and feel yourself blush as he says, “May I have this dance with you?”

Oh, how our hearts flutter as we dance with Jesus at this wedding feast. It is indeed a magic moment.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
October 5, 2008
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 21: 33-46
"Tending God's Vineyard at 3rd and Ash"

This morning’s parable of the wicked tenant of the vineyard may be a bit tough for us to understand. Most of us are out of touch with the everyday tasks of vineyards and harvests. Some of us grew up on farms but we all said “goodbye” to the family farm years ago. Vons and Ralph's are as close as we get to the harvest.

What we are far more in touch with is landlord-tenant relationships. We know what it is to pay rent to a landlord or a mortgage to a bank. In these financially challenging times, those who can’t pay the landlord or the bank are in big trouble.

When we lived in Washington, D.C., our row house was a half block off Sixteenth Street, the main thoroughfare that runs straight into the front door of the White House if you go far enough. Sixteenth Street is lined with embassies, churches, and apartment buildings. It was a common occurrence to see people’s entire households thrown out on curbside by the Marshall’s deputies, evicted for not paying the landlord the monthly rent.

We here at First Lutheran are tenants, too. We typically don’t think of our relationship with God in this way. Some of us talk about First Lutheran as “my church” or “our church.” We forget that God has entrusted this little corner of God’s immense universe to our care. We are called to bear fruit in this vineyard, to show God that we are worthy to tend this place, if but for a time, in God’s name.

Not all churches are up to the challenge. Many churches have been rudely thrown out on curbside with altar, pulpit, and baptismal font because they have not produced the fruits of the kingdom. I can think of a host of congregations thrown out of the vineyard for bad farming practices. One congregation loved calling itself “Old St. John’s.” It was one of the city’s historic churches founded by German immigrants. Above its impressive wooden doors, etched in stone, were the words, “Johanes Kirche Evangelisch Lutherisch.” Things changed over the years for “Old St. John’s.” The immigrants were no longer German; they were now Puerto Rican. This congregation forgot its heritage of offering the native language to new worshipers who longed to hear the Gospel in their mother tongue. They demanded that newcomers worship in English. After all, they said, “This is America!” Need I tell you, not one Puerto Rican ever entered “Old St. John’s.” This proud church ended up on the curbside trash heap, dead, because it bore no fruit.

Another church was astonishingly vibrant, located in a bustling vacation community. Every summer, thousands of people crammed the church’s sanctuary while at the beach. The pastor and the members were upset. They told the synod missions committee which I chaired that all they ever did was take care of visitors-- making coffee, handing out bulletins, and directing people in and out of the parking lot. These people and their pastor gained a reputation as uninviting and grumpy. What was once a lively ministry came to a screeching halt—thrown out on the curbside because they harvested no fruit.

It has been 120 years since God first offered our ancestors these few city blocks to plant and tend and harvest the Gospel. God called the saints before us and God calls us now to be stewards of the mysteries of salvation. It is our task to see to it that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection are proclaimed to all who come by here. Every day, our challenge, even though the oldest Lutheran church in Southern California, is to make certain that we are the NEW First Lutheran Church, not “Old First,” and that our message is fresh and relevant to all who come to our oasis for a cup of water.

Over the years, as the hymn proclaims, this little corner has been beset by change. It has been our task and the task of those saints before us to make certain that God’s good word is heard by all who enter here. The crops must be rotated if the harvest is to be plentiful; that means, in every age, the challenges are just a bit different. In one age the task is to build a sanctuary for worship; in the next members build apartments, Luther Tower, for senior citizens on fixed incomes; in another age the church cares for those who call these neighborhood streets “home” and provides health care to those desperately in need of medical attention; in another age our calling is to see to it that gay and lesbian people hear the Gospel in ways that touch their lives with compassion and hope when other churches and pastors publicly state, “You are not welcome here.” As the hymn says, every age is challenged to test its heritage and to keep on rising from the dead.

God also calls each of us to be tenants in the vineyard. Each of us has different skills and is called to produce different crops. We must examine our skills and the soil where we are located. This morning, I invite you to give thought to what you are called to do in this vineyard at Third and Ash. What are your skills that will help ensure a plentiful harvest here in the city? Some of you sing, others garden; some serve on the food line, others teach Sunday School; some assist at worship, others prepare newsletters and bulletins; some count Sunday offerings, others cry out for justice with the San Diego Organizing Project. What is God calling you to do here at First Lutheran Church?

Yes, the church of Christ in every age must test its heritage and keep on rising from the dead, especially if it wants to keep from ending up on the curbside trash heap with font, pulpit and altar. If we offer our skills and gifts generously, crops will grow and the harvest at First Lutheran will bear delicious and beautiful fruit and, God willing, we will remain tenants here at Third and Ash for years to come.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 28, 2008
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 21: 23-32
"Just Say NO"

There is something automatic about Christians saying “yes” when Jesus comes and asks something of us. We dare not say “no” to Jesus. We find it much easier to just say “yes” and so much harder to say “no.”

When I was in my first year of seminary, I took an Old Testament class from the world famous biblical scholar Brevard Childs. He was a wonderful professor and a man of profound faith who began all his classes with astonishing prayers and yet we all shook in our boots. I will never forget when Mr. Childs asked the class to turn to the book of Habakkuk in our Oxford Annotated Bibles. Many of us were clueless as to where to find Habakkuk. Since we were in an Old Testament class, our best guess was to look somewhere in the front of the Bible, in the first thirty-nine books. Most of us were future pastors and we knew it was best to say “yes” when asked whether we knew where Habakkuk was. Some of us flipped through the Bible, hoping that Habakkuk would magically appear. Others put their Bibles under their desks, secretively looking for Habakkuk in the book of contents. None of us dared say “no,” that we were clueless where to find Habakkuk. It was far easier pretending that we knew where Habakkuk was and saying “yes” than admitting that we were clueless and saying “no.”

The great Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard said this about saying “yes” and saying “no.” “The ‘Yes’ of promise keeping is sleep-inducing. An honest ‘No’ possesses much more promise. It can stimulate; repentance may not be far away. He who says ‘No,’ becomes almost afraid of himself. But he who says ‘Yes, I will,’ is all too pleased with himself. The world is quite inclined – even eager – to make promises, for a promise appears very fine at the moment – it inspires! Yet for this very reason the eternal is suspicious of promises.”

Kierkegaard suggests that when we dare to say “no,” we are being far more honest with God and we have a far better chance of turning our lives around and becoming faithful people. Saying “no” puts us in a place where we are weak and helps position us for “repentance.”

Jesus’ parable of the yes and no brothers occurs right after he has come to Jerusalem the week of his crucifixion. He meets with the chief priests and the elders. These are the “yes men,” the ones who know all the religious answers to everything: they know about keeping the rules found in the Bible and how to lead worship perfectly. Quite a few of them, in Jesus’ eyes, are all talk and no action, “yes men,” if you will, just like the one son who instantly told his father that he would work in the vineyard but never showed up for work.

Then there are the “no men” and “no women.” They are the tax collectors and prostitutes. They are like the son who told his father he would not go and work and then had a change of mind and appeared for work at 7 a.m. These are the clueless ones. They don’t have an inkling about what offerings are right and appropriate to give to the Lord, don‘t have the foggiest idea about the biblical cleanliness codes and who to steer clear of, and could never find Habakkuk in the Bible if they ever heard of it.

The “yes men and women” are all shook up by Jesus behavior. Right before he meets with them, he barrels into the Temple and turns the place upside down. Jesus is furious with those who do all the religious practices correctly and yet abuse people and make a mockery of God’s house of prayer. The “yes men” wonder by what authority Jesus is ransacking the temple.

“Yes men and yes women” are the kind of Christians that almost always answer correctly when Jesus asks a question. If someone asks us about whether we pray, we instinctively feel it appropriate to answer “yes;” you and I know that prayer is what Christians are supposed to do. And yet, how many of us have an appointed time, everyday, when we pray? What if someone asks us about the Bible? I imagine there isn’t one of us who would dare say the Bible doesn’t mean much to us. But, how many of us read the Bible everyday?

Maybe it’s time we just said “no." By admitting our helplessness in prayer and our lackadaisical attitude toward Bible reading, we might find that God is willing to jump in and help us, to lead us to new habits of the heart.

I suspect that’s why Jesus has a warm place in his heart for tax collectors and prostitutes. He knows that with them there is no game playing. What you see is what you get. He knows that with a “no,” there is a good chance that these people might just turn around and live.

There are many things that we know how to answer “yes” to. We know we are to love our children but, when we consider how much time we spend with them, we might find we are actually saying “no.” We say we hate television and how it warps our view of God’s world and yet when asked to turn it off, we find it impossible. We say that we want to protect the environment, but we drive our cars incessantly, even when walking will do, and we water our yards like they are the fairways at Torrey Pines. Wouldn’t it be better if we admitted our inability to do the things we want, the things we feel like we must say “yes” to, and wait on the Lord to change our ways?

Yes or no? that is the question. One of my favorite quotes is this: If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Another way to ask that question is: do we walk the walk and talk the talk? By daring to say “no,” we put ourselves into God’s hands. We admit that we cannot help ourselves, that we do things we do not want to do, and do not do the things we want to do. Let’s dare to just say “no” and trust that God will forgive us and lead us into paths of goodness.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 21, 2008
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Jonah 3: 10- 4: 11; Matthew 20: 1-16
"Free Lunch"

This morning’s Bible readings are filled with angry and grumpy people. Jonah is angry because God doesn’t clobber his hated enemy. The hard workers in Jesus’ parable grumble because they work a twelve hour day and aren’t paid a dime more than the people hired at Home Depot at three in the afternoon.

Jonah hops a boat and goes as far away as he can from those nasty Ninevites. Jonah knows that God wants him to call the good-for-nothing Ninevites to repentance and he knows that they will beg for mercy and God will forgive every one of their stinking sins.

In the Gospel, the hard-workers are fit to be tied, just like Jonah. What ever happened to an honest day’s work for any honest day’s pay? You can see the hardest workers protesting in front of the owner’s home, carrying placards that cry for fair employment practices and shouting, “EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK.” What is it about Jesus, anyway--he compares the Kingdom of heaven to a workplace where everyone, no matter how little they work, is paid the same as the hardest workers?

Jonah is angry. The hard workers are grumbling. How are you feeling?

One of the things I love about our ministry to homeless and underserved people is that it inevitably confronts us with the same challenges that Jonah and the hard workers in Matthew’s gospel confronted. Every Monday and Friday, 200 or so people come here to get their daily bread. No questions are asked of our patio parishioners: nothing like have you been actively seeking work or are you in a clean and sober program? We don’t even make them sit through a worship service in exchange for food. Every person gets a free meal. Whenever we reflect on our feeding program, there is inevitably some grumbling. I give a generous offering every week; what about “them,” what do they contribute? Are they expected to wash dishes, pick up trash? Is anything expected of “them?” Are we enabling irresponsible behavior? Isn’t there a better way to go about this, to challenge the system that forces people to stand in line for bread? Is all we do around here, anyway, is care for the homeless? So hopping mad!

Have you ever noticed, whenever we forget that part where Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a place where all are given free food, equal pay, and unlimited forgiveness, we start getting grumpy? If we forget that God’s kingdom is for sinner and saint, hard worker and shirker alike, we are bound to get cranky—after all, we are so darn holy.

If you go home and look in your Bible’s index, you will find the book of Jonah listed under the heading of “Prophets.” How did cantankerous Jonah ever get into the lofty prophetic company of Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea? Unlike those prophets who proclaim God’s word even if they don’t particularly like the idea, Jonah goes the other way when God calls. Jonah counts the cost of his prophetic task and is miserable. He forgets that his very message, his very success, is linked with God’s mercy showered even upon his most hated enemy, the Ninevites. Jonah measures his worth by his work--none of this mushy, do-gooder stuff for Jonah. Jonah may just have invented the adage, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Jonah knows his hourly wage, his medical and dental benefits, where his pension stands in this topsy-turvy market, how his yearly raise compares to his coworkers’. He knows that those folks from Nineveh, Iraq, don’t measure up to his work review. They need hammered and hard. He is infuriated by God’s generosity to them. Jonah throws a temper-tantrum, picks up his prophetic tools, and goes and mopes under a bush. “It just ain’t fair!” he whimpers. “I’m so holy and they are so evil.” So grumpy!

A most peculiar prophet, don’t you think? His heart is so tiny that his imagination is incapable of envisioning, let alone proclaiming, God’s desire to embrace the enemy, Nineveh. Though labeled a prophet, he is a weak-kneed one at best. He is a stranger to grace, unacquainted with mercy.

I grew up a lot like Jonah, learning that what I earn is in direct proportion to how hard I work. I got up before the sun and delivered papers when snow drifts were above my twelve year old knees. I worked on a farm, toiling in the hay fields as my friends flirted with girls at the local pool. I was taught that hard work ennobles the soul, and conversely, that God doesn’t much care for lazy folk. I am glad Jonah is deemed a prophet: he’s a lot like me.

One of the things I have found hardest in life is not measuring my worth by how much I work. When I was studying to be a pastor, I got it in my head that the best pastors work long hours. My supervisor was at the church by eight in the morning and never left before two in the morning.

Imagine my surprise as I have grown older to discover that people, especially men, who measure themselves by how hard work, inevitably die of heart attacks at forty-eight, drive ourselves to drink, or end up as sour as a lemon. Therapists say that, next to the minefield of intimate relationships gone awry, vocational crises is the next major reason people end up on therapeutic couches. People hate their work. Call it midlife crisis or, as one of my favorite psychologists terms it, “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife.” If we are lucky, sooner rather than later, we hear God say, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” And we sense God loving us no matter how much or how little we work. It’s an astonishing lesson for those of us who have learned to measure our meaning by how hard we work.

If you hear the words “the kingdom of God is like…,” you might just get up and quit the job that has made you so miserable for so long, go to Wal-Mart to work part-time, and spend the other time writing poetry. You might take a day—or two—off and go for a relaxing hike on Saturday morning or kayaking on an autumn afternoon. You might not feel so bad when you lose your job, realizing that now you will have more time to be in love with God.

How blessed are we who come here this morning, not because we must but because God is singing love songs to us. How blessed are we when we hear the angels sing, “There is such a thing as a free lunch. The body and blood of Christ, given and shed for you.” Tis’ a gift to be free.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
September 14, 2008
Holy Cross Day
1 Corinthians 1: 18-25
"Christ's Body Broken For You"

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

In 1983, when my father learned that he had prostate cancer, he asked that our family keep quiet about his condition. I asked him, “Dad, don’t you want the church to pray for you on Sunday morning?” He told me that if the business community found out that he had cancer, he would be viewed as weak and ineffectual. This has haunted me to this day. My father could not share his deepest pain with his brothers and sisters in Christ for fear that his competitors would take advantage of him.

A few years ago, I learned that my father was probably right to urge our silence. A very successful financier in the congregation I served told me that a project that our church was engaged in would never be run so haphazardly in the business where he worked. “Such mediocrity would not fly in the business world,” he said. “I would be fired in a second!” I told him that I didn’t doubt that, but there is one important difference: the church is not the business world.

I think this is what the apostle Paul had in mind when he said, “God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.” And what is our proclamation? It is the foolishness of Christ crucified, what Paul termed “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” The cross is the proclamation that God is strongest when God is weakest. We are so impressed by strength and wealth, beauty and power. Is it any wonder that Paul called the cross a stumbling block, foolishness, to much of the world? Is it any wonder that what the church does day in and day out will not fly in the business world?

Do not think that the church has not tried to be successful by the world’s standards. A church here in Southern California, in a recent building project, instructed the architect, under no circumstances, to have crosses in his plans, not in the sanctuary, not on the steeple—no where! The congregational leaders did not want anybody to confuse them with failures; they did not want to appear as a bunch of losers. In place of this dreadful cross which spells only weakness, they had the architect place huge video screens. During worship, beautiful pictures were flashed on these screens, pictures of soaring eagles, the majestic Grand Canyon, waves caressing shorelines, the white steeple of a New England church poking up through red and yellow fall leaves, pictures, if you will, of God’s power and might. All things bright and beautiful, as the hymn says.

Is this all there is to life? All things bright and beautiful? Is this what you experience day in and day out--great successes and stunning beauty? I doubt it.

Barbara Lundblad, one of our nation’s finest preachers and a teacher of preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City (who, incidentally, will preach here at First Lutheran in May 2009 as we celebrate twenty years of being a “Reconciling in Christ” congregation) writes: “Touch the place where the wounds are in your own life and in the lives of others. No one is unscarred by living. You and I have wounds almost too painful to bear, wounds we can’t talk about, even with those we love. We will never be all fixed up, not in this life. The wounded Christ comes to us saying, ‘Peace be with you’” This is what the cross is about, Jesus coming to our weakness with his weakness.

She goes on to write: “The wounded Christ shows us something else: this scarred Jesus meets us before we’re all fixed up.’

“Have you been betrayed by someone you loved or betrayed by a cause you’d given your life to? ‘Behold,’ said Jesus, ‘one of you will betray me’ (Matt. 26:20).”

“Have you been let down by your closest friends or by people who have broken large or small promises without apology? ‘Could you not stay awake with me one hour?’ Jesus asked them (Matthew 26:40).”

“Have you been afraid to go on living but also afraid to die? Have you been uncertain whether you had any sense of God’s will for your life or anyone else’s? ‘Father,” Jesus prayed, ‘if you are willing, remove this cup form me’ (Matt 26: 39a).”

Have you felt utterly alone, completely abandoned? “Jesus cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’”(Matt 27: 46b) (Barbara Lundblad, Transforming the Stone, Abingdon Press, 2001, pgs. 46, 47).

Jesus has lived in our painful places, places where we have all been and where some of us are this morning, places where we feel utterly alone, broken, and afraid.

I was at a San Diego Organizing Project luncheon on Thursday and talked with a Catholic priest about private confession. I told him that we Lutherans, while offering private confession, rarely avail ourselves of this opportunity; in fact, most of us think that private confession went out the window with the Reformation. We Lutherans like to think that we do not need a pastor to offer us forgiveness. I suspect that there is something deep within us that causes us to shy away from telling another person of our sins. We don’t want others to see our brokenness. The priest went on to tell me how moving it is to see people weep as they recount their failures, and then to see their great joy as he declares to them, in the name of Christ, that their sins are forgiven. Because of the cross of Christ, where Jesus took our failures upon his shoulders, we need never fear our failings. Because of the cross, our failings never need to be the final world.

I think we get that here at First Lutheran, I really do. When I first met with our Call Committee in January 2005, what struck me most profoundly was not this congregation’s wonderful outreach to the poor, its glorious worship life, or its award winning sanctuary. What impressed me far deeper--and still does--is the brokenness that people are willing to share with one another. One member spoke of being a recovering alcoholic; another spoke of her pain growing up a lesbian; another that he struggled to believe “all this stuff.” They shared that pain with a person they barely knew. I detected a community whose character is measured not by perfection and accomplishment but rather by a willingness to share vulnerability with one another and to trust that in such sharing, comes the very healing of God.

As we take the bread this morning and hear, “Take and eat; this is my body broken for you,” we are invited to bring our deepest pain and festering wounds and to leave them at the Lord’s table where his very brokenness is shared with us.

Is it any wonder that Martin Luther encouraged us, when we rise in the morning and before we go to bed, to make the sign of the cross? What a reminder that God takes our deepest pain and worst sorrows and promises us a brand new day and a very safe night.

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

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 31, 2008
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 16: 21-28
"Not So Neat and Tidy"

As soon as this morning’s worship service is over, we are off on vacation. I love getting ready for vacation. If there is a time in my life when all is neat and orderly, it is the day I leave for vacation. My desk is clean; my hair is cut; the bills are paid. I read the Bible readings well in advance so that this morning’s sermon would be prepared with time to spare. I want everything neat and orderly when we go on vacation.

Imagine my dismay when I read: “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 will find it.” Those words have nagged at me for weeks. The minute I read them, I knew that my vacation preparation was not going to be neat and tidy.

I have a hunch that Peter longed for things to be neat and or tidy, too. When Jesus told him that he would have to suffer and be killed, Peter blurted out: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” Peter thought that following Jesus was going to be pleasing as punch and here Jesus was talking about the cross and dying.

As followers of Jesus, we expect things to go smoothly and well. Peter was the first public relations guy to convince us of that. Peter felt that if we followed Jesus, our lives would be filled with joy and plenty. One of the largest churches in America mimics Peter’s strategy: follow Jesus and you will experience financial fortune, claims the pastor. The pastor of another huge church refuses to take public stands on hot issues of our day, fearing that they might divide his church--heaven forbid that the church become a place where civil discourse on important issues occurs and where we have the opportunity to learn how to disagree with one another in love.

Oh, how we try to avoid the cross. We like the symbol of the cross in our sanctuaries and on our jewelry but dare not let the cross become a guiding principle for our lives. Who would ever imagine that faithfulness might bring death?

When I was the dean of our conference of Lutheran churches in Philadelphia, one of my tasks was to meet with an historic city congregation that was about to close its doors. The last thing this church wanted to do was die. All kinds of blame was tossed around as fewer and fewer people came to church: the pastor was denounced for not being dynamic enough; lay leaders were criticized for not demonstrating creative leadership; the bishop was attacked for not offering magic answers, including lots of money. I will never forget meeting with this grieving group of people. If only the right answers were found, they thought, their church could thrive forever.

It seemed like they had never heard Jesus’ words, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” I asked these people who cared deeply for their church: “Why are the words of death only true for everyone else around here except you church people? Homes are being boarded up everywhere you look; businesses are being closed. What makes you think that your church should be different?” What a gift this group of people could have been to their community if they had only dared die with dignity. This was a novel idea to them and it was not well received. Good Christians, they thought--we all think--should thrive and grow, not decay and die.

There is hardly a day that goes by here at First Lutheran Church that I don’t think about how we are called to bear the cross; and there is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t try to avoid that cross at all costs. As I was leaving church Friday afternoon with a clean desk and an unfinished sermon, I came upon a man spread out on our patio, blocking our entryway, with no shoes or socks, snoring to beat the band. He was an ugly sight. Such scenery, I’m almost certain, turns away some prospective members and agitates some of our neighbors. And then I thought of something I had read how the Russian Orthodox Church regards people sleeping on their church doorsteps. They view these people as gifts from God. These hapless folks teach us how to trust only in God, and by so doing, how to gain our lives even when we are losing them. It is so difficult for me to follow Jesus; you see, I like things neat and tidy.

One of my very dear friends is the abbot, the head priest if you will, of a monastery. He visited us last month. During supper, I asked him, “Father Joseph, are you happy at St. Gregory’s Monastery?” The minute I asked the question, I knew it was a foolish one. “Am I happy?” Father Joseph asked. “Oh Wilk, that is not the question. The question is whether the monastery enables me to be faithful to God.”

Does being a Christian enable you and me to be faithful to God? Faithfulness comes as we let a bit of ourselves die for others, as we take the time to sit with a lonely elderly person and listen to her story once again; we die a small death as we go to Tijuana, even for just one Saturday, to help families living in squalor find dignity as we join them in building their home; we die a small death as we challenge our city, county and federal government to create policies and programs that treat the poor justly and not just help the rich get richer; it comes as each of us gives more of our income than we think we can afford so that Christ’s name can be proclaimed here at 3rd and Ash; it comes as we dare ask forgiveness of someone we have hurt very badly. All small deaths, but all deaths that promise life.

Such a life seems ridiculous to those who have not heard Jesus calling, “Those who lose their life for my sake, will find it,” and who only know of meeting their individual and selfish needs. And yet, for those of us who hear Jesus’ voice, our lives are transformed from death to life. We become the ones who teach the world to die daily so that God’s life-giving glory might be revealed to the world. In the tiny deaths of our lives, we are given the opportunity to teach the world a thing or two about dying with dignity and in teaching the world that lesson, we are given life beyond measure, a life filled with the presence of God in all that we do. Not particularly neat and tidy, but whoever said it would be?

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 24, 2008
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 16: 13-20
"Life-Saving Words"

“ Who do people say that I am?” I imagine that each of you, at one time or another, has attempted to answer Jesus’ question. Even in Jesus time, there were many answers offered as to who Jesus might be: some said he was John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah, and still others one of the other great prophets. So many opinions, so many ideas.

After the disciples presented Jesus with a laundry list of possibilities of who he might be, he asked them point blank, “And who do you say that I am?” Now is the time for conviction, not an opinion. Don’t tell me who Rick Warren or Robert Schuler, Rush Limbaugh or Bishop Finck, Barack Obama or John McCain thinks Jesus is. Now tell me what you think.

Let me add a word of caution. We Americans champion the individual spirit, the rugged cowboy riding off into the sunset on his own terms, singing a duet with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.” We Lutherans run a double danger: Martin Luther said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” We sometimes interpret this to mean that every cockamamie idea is a good one as long as it is our individual opinion. When we hear Jesus say, “And who do you think I am,” there is a tendency to think it is time for a free-for-all, all answers acceptable.

And so we lean forward to hear Peter answer, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” “Way to go Peter,” we scream. “Hip-hip-hooray for the individual spirit.” Jesus congratulates Peter, too, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!”

What we forget in our rush to congratulate every opinion about who Jesus is, are the other words Jesus uttered to Peter: “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Without God’s instruction, Peter could never have provided the right answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s answer was not his individual opinion; it was an answer placed on his lips by God.

Of course, there are those who say Jesus is simply a great man, like Gandhi but with more clothes, Martin Luther King but from Nazareth, Mr. Rogers without the cardigan, or even the greatest man who ever lived. This is not the answer for which Jesus commended Peter. The prize went to Peter, not because he blurted out whatever came to mind or what he had learned from talk radio or cable television or study of the latest fashionable theologians. Peter’s answer proclaimed God’s intention for the salvation of the entire world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. No other answer offered an iota of such hope and no other answer was the one revealed by God.

It has been two years since I was in Grossmont Hospital’s intensive care unit struggling for my life. Many people have told me that such a life-threatening experience is bound to be life-changing. It has taken me a while to figure out exactly how my life has changed from that near death experience.

As most of you know, for a few days, things were touch and go. Tubes were running everywhere, beepers were going off, and nurses and doctors kept a twenty-four hour vigil over me. I remember the thing that I longed for most, in addition to seeing my family, was to be assured of God’s presence as doctors told me, “You are not out of the woods yet” and “people have died from with one blood clot and you have had four major ones.” I desperately wanted a pastor at my bedside to say, “Hear the word of the Lord from the book of Psalms” and “Take and eat, this is Christ’s body.” I was overwhelmed when our Bishop Finck assured me that God was with me in the valley of the shadow of death and no matter what happened to me, because God became one of us in little Jesus and faced a death like ours, somehow, someway, all would be well with my soul and the souls of those who loved and prayed for me.

I must tell you that for the first couple of weeks, every visit was like running a 26 mile marathon. After a visitor left, I was drenched in sweat, gasping for air. If someone was going to visit me, what they had to say needed to count. Since every word I spoke or that was spoken to me required enormous physical exertion on my part to give or receive, wasted words came at alarming physical cost to me. So, every word had to work!

As I learned to be a pastor—and I am still learning, I remember thinking that if I sat at a person’s bedside long enough, enjoying conversation and listening to their agony, then somehow what I did had value. It seemed, the longer I stayed the better my visit. When I was sick, I changed my mind. What mattered was not the length of the visit--in fact, short visits were preferable; what touched my ailing heart was hearing visitor’s tell me in their own words that the Son of God had conquered death on that Friday called Good and risen from the tomb on that day called Easter. I need their conviction that this story was true for them and me, too. I needed someone to remind me over and over again that whether I lived or died, God was with me forever. I need to hear every person answer the question, “Who do you say that I am?” I listened with baited breath, hoping that every answer would bring me hope.

Elaine Pagels, a noted Christian historian at Princeton University speaks of a time when she walked by a church and was enticed to enter. She observes, “Here is a family that knows how to face death.” Another way of saying what Professor Pagels says, it seems to me, is, “Here is a family that struggles to tell one another that God is present in the toughest moments of life.”

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we gather here together Sunday after Sunday in order to discover who exactly this Jesus of Nazareth is and what answer to that question might mean for us and those we love. If we listen to one another and to the church through the ages, we will hear the voice of God urging us to tell those we love and live with that God will never let them down in spite of all that they face. When someone asks you, “And who do you say that I am?” before answering, pray that God will put God’s words on your lips. After all, the words you speak, may at that very moment be life savers.

The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
August 17, 2008
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 15: 21-28
"Jesus Changes His Mind"

The gospel reading you just heard is one of the most troublesome readings in the entire Bible. Rarely if ever is Jesus presented in such negative light. Jesus acts harshly and rudely to a woman whose daughter is suffering terribly. All the woman wants is to have demons cast out from out her daughter. She comes to Jesus knowing that he can help her daughter. Jesus rebuffs her plea.

The disciples demand that Jesus send this hysterical woman away. We expect Jesus to lambaste their intolerant behavior but that does not happen. Instead, Jesus treats the woman worse than the disciples do. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he says. In other words, you are not ‘my kind.’

Ethnic and religious intolerance is as old as the hills. During these Olympic Games, we have seen it raise its ugly head once again as the Spanish Olympic basketball team mimicked their Chinese hosts by stretching their eyes. What surprises us this morning is that we are not talking about rich, pampered athletes: we are talking about Jesus.

Biblical scholars have tried all manner of creative intellectual gymnastics to clean up Jesus’ act. For me, their arguments fail. As much as I hate to say it, Jesus comes off as an intolerant bigot. When the Canaanite woman begs him to help her daughter, he says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to dogs.” I can assure you, if I uttered such slanderous nonsense from this pulpit, you would throw me out--at least you should! Sadly, I find it almost impossible to defend Jesus. He is concerned only with his “own kind” and does not demonstrate an iota of compassion for the woman who belongs to the people Israel loves most to hate.

Most of us are appalled by ethnic hatred and religious intolerance. We are sick of religious zealots bombing buildings and killing innocent people. What is sobering this morning is Jesus’ behavior, his calling the Canaanite woman a dog. And yet, lest we only point fingers at other tribes and clans and even at Jesus, let us confess our own intolerance acted out in holy wars and inquisitions and our everyday prejudices. Let us not forget that we continue to drum people out of our very own Lutheran churches because they don’t quite fit our neat categories of who a Christian should be.

Just this past Friday, I met with one of our patio parishioners. He has told me on countless occasions that he has felt unwelcome when he worships here. I find his words hard to believe and yet I keep meeting with him, trying to figure out how we might make him and other homeless people feel accepted at worship. He said, “You know that I stand out.” He feels like the Canaanite woman.

As welcoming as we are, it is amazing how subtly, even unknowingly, we say, “You really aren’t our kind.” We know how to dress for worship even if we call it “California casual.” We clean up well, better than most. Quite a few of us feel much more comfortable going to people we know after worship, insiders, rather than introducing ourselves to even one stranger every week. That ease with insiders was the way of the disciples--and, I’m afraid, of Jesus too.

This morning’s Gospel reading makes our minds reverberate with the rudeness that Jesus and his disciples demonstrated toward the desperate outsider. Four times Jesus blocks her access to health care, the final time annoyingly blurting out, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and give it to dogs.”

I am in awe of the Canaanite woman’s tenacity. She refuses to take “no” for an answer. “You call me a dog, Jesus, fine. Then give me some crumbs; that will be plenty to make my daughter well.” If there was ever a model of relentless prayer, the Canaanite woman is it.

And then something incredible occurs because of her doggedness: Jesus changes his mind. Is it possible? I thought Jesus was always right, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. And yet, out of the blue, we hear him say, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” His narrow world view has exploded and suddenly an outsider, a detested enemy, receives his undivided attention. The Son of God changes his own way of thinking and brings about healing and wholeness for a suffering person.

How dangerous we can be if we don’t demonstrate the courage to change our minds. Rabbi Sheila Peltz speaks of such danger after visiting Auschwitz: "As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place." Enough said.

We can be so self-righteous about our strong, unyielding opinions. We take pride that we stand our ground, that we don’t budge in the face of societal pressures, that we aren’t the pathetic puppets of political correctness. We think stubbornness somehow a testament to our character. Apparently Jesus discovers it a wonderful thing to change his narrow world view, to welcome an entire suffering world into his arms.

Today’s Gospel reading is so important to us who gather here this morning for we are heirs of that suffering Canaanite woman. We are her kin. We are Gentiles, too, outsiders who, because Jesus changed his mind, are welcome here this morning. She has laid the ground work for each of us.

Come to think of it, Jesus is better than I ever imagined when I first started struggling with today’s Gospel reading. I have been too hard on him and for that, I beg his forgiveness and your understanding. You see, Jesus dared change his mind in order to heal outsiders, us. If Jesus changed his mind for the sake of this suffering world, shouldn’t we be courageous enough to change our minds