@EUCC Sermons

The way that John tells the Easter story, after much sturm und drang, Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and went and told the disciples all about it.

If you are like a lot of Mainline Protestants, you may not be entirely sure what happened on that first Easter Sunday, but you are confident that you have met the living God in a garden.

I know this sentiment to be true for many of my Iowa relatives who are card carrying Christians and farmers, and who trace our lineage as farms back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

I remember, in particular, how my erstwhile father and my mother’s parents (who rarely discussed their faith) would tell me quietly as we hoed the garden, or rode through the fields on a tractor, that they could feel the presence of God while they were working in their vegetable gardens and flower beds, and driving through the pastures checking livestock and working crops on our family farms.

The downward trend in church membership and worship attendance in the U.S. have been popular topics of sociologists of religion, evangelism workshop, and clergy coffee klatches since I began my vocational discernment process 45 years ago.

Every once in a blue moon, these topics gain interest in the popular press--most notably around Christmas time and Easter, which are still included on many secular calendars. This year was no exception. A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center reported that worship attendance is down by 50% across the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, though others report that participation via the Internet combined with in-person statistics indicate that overall attendance is higher.

Interest in these trends is understandable because, with rare exceptions, these statistics have been trending downward, in dramatic ways, across all Christian denominations for my entire life. Sociologists, historians, and theologians have all shared their data and analysis as to why this phenomenon is occurring.

Make no mistake about it. The gospel is scandalous. Anyone who doubts this assertion wasn’t paying attention when Pastor Nadia read today’s scripture lesson or they weren’t paying attention to any of the other iterations of the story found in the synoptic gospels (Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:1-10, and Luke 7:36-50.)

The gospel in general, and this story about Jesus’ anointing, in particular, reads like the Victorian equivalent of “scandal sheets,” for many reasons.

For starters, Luke’s version depicts the woman with the alabaster flask as a sex worker, and this depiction has wafted into two, some say all four of the gospel renderings of Jesus’ anointing and that scent has wafted into popular understandings of Mary’s identity to this day.

It takes a lot of courage to speak truth to power. It takes a lot of courage to speak truth to power, especially when you don’t feel very powerful. It takes even more courage to speak truth to power, when you know that sooner rather than later, you’re going to die for speaking truth to power.

In theory, we all know that we’re going to die someday; but some people who speak truth to power do so knowing that they are not going to die a normal death due to natural causes. Some people who speak truth to power do so knowing that they will suffer many negative consequences: from name-calling to ostracism, from vandalism of their property to physical and psychological abuse, and from incarceration to execution.

Christ’s temptations in the wilderness are reminiscent of hero narratives from many different cultures, including his forebears in the faith, Moses and Elijah, and the ancient Hebrew people who fled Egypt for Palestine.

Moses was described in the Torah (Ex. 34:28 and Deut. 9:9) as going 40 days without food on Mt. Horeb while he waited to receive the Law from God.

The Hebrew people spent 40 years wandering in the Wilderness, until they entered the Promised Land.

And, the prophet Elijah (who lived 1200 years later) went on a 40-day journey from Israel to Mt. Horeb, where he hid in a cave from Queen Jezebel, who sought to execute him for condemning her worship of foreign fertility gods (I Kings 19:4-8).

Today’s gospel reading describes a mountain-top experience involving Jesus, two of the ancient prophets, and three of his closest friends. If you have ever found yourself in the mountains on a cloudy day, you can likely imagine the setting for today’s Gospel reading. Understanding what actually happened on that mountain in Luke 9, however, may be less clear.

I’ll be honest with you. It took me a long time to understand what was going on in the Transfiguration story, and how it might inform our modern lives. This is because I had to first get past my need for the story to make sense, historically and scientifically.

Every once in a while, when my sister and I were kids, we would get into a little trouble. Shocking but true.

Sometimes we got into fights over who was wearing what to school on a particular day. We had a lot of clothes that were similar, because our family liked to buy us matching things, and we weren’t all that interested in matching.

Sometimes we had trouble sharing, and we would get into a game of tug-of-war over a toy until one of us (or the toy) went flying.

Sometimes we would plan a little “adventure” that resulted in one or both of us--and our play space--turning into a big mess.

The Rev. Dr. Richard E. Hill, erstwhile president of Lakeland University, my college alma mater, was the keynote speaker at the Senior Banquet for the Class of 1985, the year I graduated. May 1985 was a long time ago, so I don’t remember much about the event. But I remember two things: President Hill told one of his notoriously bad jokes, and the audience groaned, and he told me and my peers that we should expect to change jobs at least seven times over the course of our working lives, and that we should not be surprised to change careers at least once, maybe twice, before we retired.

President Hill went on to explain that his career forecast for us was based on an escalating trend that had been documented by the US Department of Labor, and that as a result of this trend and his forecast, our professors had intentionally prepared us to be life-long learners rather than repositories of knowledge.

Today’s gospel lesson is set in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown. Here he went up to the bema, rolled open the scroll, and read that hopeful passage from the prophet Isaiah about a messiah coming to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.

Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. While all eyes were still fixed on him, Jesus looked his people straight in the eye, and said: “I’m the man. I’m the Messiah.” Then, mic drop. Folks were speechless.

Rather than giving Jesus a standing “O,” as would have been fitting for a guy who they purportedly had been awaiting for 600 years, the congregation marched Jesus out of the synagogue, right through the city gate, and stopped at the edge of a cliff where, they might have just shoved him into the abyss, but they did not. Why?

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either.

Today, we join Roman Catholics and Western Protestants in reading and reflecting on the meaning of Christ’s baptism and the meaning of this sacrament in our traditions. When Christians speak of baptism, most think of water, and the main questions are: how much? a little, or a lot? And what, if any preparation, is required for baptism?

Concerns about the amount of water used and preparation required for baptism haven’t been completely settled in modern Christianity. But today most Christians agree to disagree, while quietly assuring themselves that they are right and the others are wrong.