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Submit Your Own! Water to Wine for Haiti By David von Schlichten Sermon on John 2:1-12 On the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year C, January 17, 2010, at St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church, Youngstown, PA with the Reverend Dr. David von Schlichten (word count: )
Water to Wine for Haiti
God is often associated with abundance. Today’s story of Jesus changing water to wine demonstrates that God-given abundance. In fact, not only does Jesus provide wine, but he provides between 120 and 180 gallons of wine; and not only does he provide between 120 and 180 gallons, but the wine is delicious. The steward implies that this wine is the best of the reception. Jesus provides abundance. The Bible prohibits drunkenness, but responsible use of wine is part of enjoying abundance from God. Jesus offers fragrant, bright, fruity abundance for us, too. How? How does Jesus provide abundance for you? Food? How many restaurants and grocery stores do we have within five minutes of here? McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Giant Eagle, Shop ‘n Save, Wal-Mart, Rainbow Inn, Mecick’s, Tin Lizzy, and that’s not nearly all of them. Abundance. How about clothing? I have a pile of clothes in my closet. I don’t begin to wear everything I own. Do you have a home to live in? Do you have a car? Do you have any people who care about you? Do we have abundance? The Book of Concord teaches that God the Father gives us food and other blessings. Most of us here have abundance, but some of you are struggling. Further, there are billions of people in the world lacking in food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and education. All the buried, broken, suffocating, grief-stricken, homeless, wandering, and starving in Haiti are lacking in abundance. Why? Why is it that God has blessed legions of us with abundance while other people have so little? Why, God? That’s unfair. How can you allow so many people to suffer while giving me more than enough? Why, God? I don’t know. Neither does Pat Robertson. I often do not know why God does what God does, but I do know that God calls you and me to share our abundance with those lacking abundance. The Bible is clear and loud as the fire siren about that call. We are to care for the poor. We are to help those in need. You and I are to offer our abundance to others. Will we fix every problem? No. Will there be obstacles? Yes. Are there people who cheat the system? Always, but the call remains. Despite all of these issues, we are still to take our abundance and share it with those who are doing without. How can we do that? How can we share our abundance with, say, the Haitians? We can pray, of course. We can give money and supplies. My sister-in-law’s brother-in-law is from Haiti and is there now. He is a doctor, and he has converted his home into a hospital. What can we do? One important step towards helping the Haitians is taking the time to learn more about them. The more we know about a nation, the better we can help them. Besides, the Haitians are our fellow human beings. God loves them just as much as God loves us. Why not take the time, even a few minutes, to learn more about them? Last night, I read about Haiti on the Internet. I learned that one of the official languages of Haiti is French. Haiti has a population of 10 million people, many of whom live on two dollars a day or less. 96% of Haitians are Christian. Haitian art work is prized all over the world. I learned all of that in five minutes. Learning even a little about another culture, another nation, can help us to help those people better. What else can we do to help Haiti or other people in need? What about you? Are you in need? What can we do to help you? Let me know what you need, and I will see what we can do. We certainly can pray for you. Let us know what you need. The Church, in general, has tremendous abundance because God has given us the highest of riches. God has blessed us through baptism, has saved us and made us part of God’s family called the Church. The Holy Spirit has blessed each one of you with a gift. As it says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” God has also given us, the Church, abundance through the Bible, worship, prayer. Because of God, we, the Church, have an abundance of forgiveness. Through God, we, the Church, have an abundance through Holy Communion, the real presence of Christ in, with, and under the bread and the wine. Abundance. Astounding! Best of all, one day, we shall know abundance eternal, not death infernal, in heaven. Someday we shall experience the forever-abundance of heaven, where there is no poverty, no racism, no larger countries exploiting smaller ones, no earthquakes. We shall all be free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we shall be free at last. Until then, God says, “Here is your daily bread, abundance. Use it to provide daily bread for others. Just as I have cared for you, care for others. Care for others, care for others. Thank God Almighty. Care for others, and you can, because, through the water of baptism into Christ, God has transformed you into wine. Identity By David von Schlichten On the Baptism of Our Lord, Year C, January 10, 2010, at St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church, Youngstown, PA with the Reverend Dr. David von Schlichten (word count: 788)
What Is Your Identity?
Who are you? What is your identity? How would you describe yourself? How do you view yourself? We humans spend much time doing but not much time reflecting. All this running around, keeping busy, and we don’t know who we are. In the movie Avatar, Corporal Jake Sully is given the job of infiltrating the Na’vi, a race of aliens on the planet Pandora. Humans want to mine the planet for a precious mineral, and Jake is to get to know the Na’vi. His goal is to find their weaknesses so that the humans can exploit them. Through technology, Jake is able to look like a Na’vi. He lives among them with the intention of betraying them. As he gets to know them, however, he comes to care for them. He falls in love with one of the female Na’vi. After three months, he has to make a decision: is he going to side with the humans who want to exploit the planet, or is he going to side with the Na’vi? At the core of his struggle is his identity. What does he stand for? Who is he? Who are you? What if you sat down and wrote in as few words as possible who you are? Here are words I came up with for myself: poedifier, writer, husband, father, son, sibling, friend, pastor, white, male, German-American, forty, lefty, animal-lover, scholar, and teacher. I am hard-working, funny, driven, focused, compassionate, self-deprecating, shy, reflective, prone to melancholy, sensitive. How about you? Some of us develop negative identities, such as when we allow another person to be central to our identity. Legions of us, for instance, teach girls and women that they need to have a boyfriend or husband in order to have value. Granted, relationships can be wonderful gifts from God, but when our self-worth is dependent upon such relationships, we end up unfulfilled. When we look to another person for our self-worth, for our identity, then, when that person lets us down, we wind up devastated. If I need someone else for my identity, then my identity is brittle, easily shattered. A gift that makes our identity tough as diamond is baptism. According to the Bible and the Book of Concord, because you are baptized, you will live forever in heaven, free of charge. You will live forever in paradise, the New Jerusalem, where no one is an alcoholic, no one robs banks or shoots people in a mall, no one cheats on you, no one loses her job. Because you are baptized, you will live in a colorful, sparkling kingdom where the food is always fantastic and never fattening, where the animals are gentle and playful, and where nothing ever smells bad. Further, because you are baptized, you have endless forgiveness of sins. What is the worst thing you have done? Did you ask God to forgive you? If so, then you’re forgiven, because of your baptism into Christ. If you commit that sin again and repent, God will forgive you again. “So does that mean that I can do whatever I want, knowing that God will forgive me? Do whatever and then play the forgiveness card?” By no means, because, if you think that way, then you are taking advantage of God and, when you repent, you are not truly penitent. You see, if you are not trying to improve, then you are not really sorry for your sins. John the Baptist says we are to bear fruit worthy of repentance. In other words, repenting is not just about saying we’re sorry; it’s about living like we’re sorry. In any case, when we truly repent, we, the baptized, receive forgiveness. Of course, God can forgive unbaptized people – God can forgive anyone he wants – but we know that God does forgive the baptized. Because you are baptized, you have eternal life, you have endless forgiveness of sins, and, because you are baptized, you have a new level of closeness with God. Baptism assures you that God is always with you, even when it feels like he’s not. God comes to us, the baptized, through the Bible, prayer, Holy Communion, each other. Of course God can come to anyone at any time, but we, the baptized, have a guarantee. We the baptized know for sure that God comes to us, is close to us, forgives us, grants us life eternal.
What is your identity? Who are you? Do you have a healthy, clear identity, or does your identity need healing? I pray that you will take time this week to reflect on yourself. Sit down with some paper. Write at the top, “Who am I?” and put as number one: “I am baptized, just like Jesus.”
Incarnation Change By David von Schlichten
One Time that God Changed
I’m a pretty smart guy, for the most part, and my friend Glenn is also a pretty smart guy. However, we have our dumb moments, and one of them was back in college. We had made some sort of drink from a powder. We dumped in the powder, poured in the water. The directions said that we needed to shake the mixture, but the container had no lid. We sat there for a good minute wondering how we were going to shake this container that had no lid and not make a mess. We didn’t have anything we could cover the opening with. We stared at the container. How are we going to shake this without a lid? Then, duh, it occurred to us: we could stir the mixture instead. We needed to change our thinking from shaking to mixing. That change was easy, but many changes are painful. Did you ever have to make a difficult change? Give up smoking, drinking, or drugs? Lose weight? Go through a divorce? Deal with an illness? Change careers? Return to school? Man, I remember moving out here. I did not want to move to southwestern PA. I didn’t know anyone out here. Youngstown? Where’s that? Latrobe? I remember Bob Frable driving me around. It all seemed so foreign. I remember crying on my first birthday out here. Change. Change can be terrifying. What if I fail? I’m not strong enough. Well tell ourselves that the nightmare we know is better than the risks involved in waking up. Change? I can’t do it. Sometimes other people tell us we can’t do it. Has that ever happened to you? You want to make a change, and then here comes so and so to tell you that you’ll fail. “You? Don’t make me laugh. You’ll fail without me. You can’t change. You’re too weak.” Satan loves to badger us. Satan couldn’t do anything about Christmas, the celebration of one of the biggest changes of all time: God becoming human and entering the world as that human. Think about it. Before the birth of Jesus, God had just been God. With the birth of Jesus, with the Word becoming flesh, God did something new. God changed. God remained God, but he also became fully human through the birth of Jesus. The Son of God had always existed and been divine, but, by being born as Jesus, the Son of God changed. The Son of God became flesh, became human. God changed. God was still God, but now God was also, at the same time, fully human. Change. That change, God becoming fully human by being born as Jesus, led to the death and resurrection, which have changed us. Because Jesus, the God-human, died and rose, we, the baptized, have eternal life, for free. We also have a new intimacy, a new closeness, with God that we never had before. Through Christ, God is closer to us now than ever. Through Christ, we have new power, through the close kinship with Jesus Christ, the God-human. So now, when you have to make a painful change, you do not do it alone. You are never alone. Satan growls, “You can’t change. You’ll fall flat on your face,” but Christ, the God-human, is with you. “Get behind me, Satan!” You can talk to Christ through prayer. You can learn from him through Scripture. You meet him through other people. You eat and drink him through Holy Communion. You’re not alone. God changed by becoming human and then endured the agony of the cross so that you have new intimacy with God, new life through God. Change can be painful. Oh, man, does it hurt sometimes! The tears, rage, terror, mixed emotions, anxiety. “You can’t do it. You’ll fall flat on your face.” “Get behind me, Satan!” Remember Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. [sing to “Concrete Angel”] I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can do all things –
Christmas Eve Sermon: Joseph By David von Schlichten Sermon on the Birth of Christ On Christmas Eve, Year C, December 24, 2009, at St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church, Youngstown, PA with the Reverend Dr. David von Schlichten (word count: 782)
Voices of Christ’s Coming Sermon Series Part Five: Joseph
Dude, the stress of these past several months has been crazy. First, I’ve been going to vo-tech to learn carpentry and then working half days to help build a house. So that’s all good, but it’s a lot of work. And then my girlfriend came to me last March and was like, “Uh, I’m pregnant,” and she’s only fourteen and I’m only sixteen so I’m, like, whoa. Kids at school have been calling her all kinds of names. You know how judgmental people are against teenage girls who get pregnant. It really ticks me off, but punching people out isn’t going to do any good, and God doesn’t want me going around beating people up. Violence is not God’s way, and I take my religion very seriously. My girlfriend and I are both very religious. We go to temple every Friday night. We’re really good friends with our rabbi. He’s been really supportive, by the way. He’s been counseling us and has taken us out to lunch a few times. Our temple held a fundraiser to give us money to buy stuff for the baby. So some people have been all judgmental but others have been supportive. Dude, we don’t need judgment and gossip. We need support. Especially since this is no ordinary baby. Back when she first got pregnant, I was totally freaking out because, dude, she and I have never been together. You know what I mean? So I’m like, “Mary, who have you been sleeping with?” I felt just sick, and I was all ready to break up with her, but I thought I should give her a chance. Then Mary’s like, “Joseph, I swear that I did not cheat on you.” She said, “If I tell you something really weird, do you promise not to think I’m insane?” I took her hand, and I’m like, “I promise I’ll try.” And she’s like, “An angel came to me and told me that the baby is going to be the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God. We are to name him Jesus, because he will save God’s people from their sins.” And I’m like, “Okaaayy. What have you been smoking?” She was crying, and I was like, “I need to think about all this.” So I went home and prayed about this whole mess. That night I had a dream. This glowing guy with a white suit and dark brown eyes came to me and is like, “Joe, don’t be afraid to stay with Mary. She’s telling you the truth about the baby.” And that was that. Now, here we are. We’re spending the night in Pittsburgh, because the government wants everybody to go to their hometown for the census. Whatever. My family’s originally from Pittsburgh, so we made the trip here, even though she was, like, ready to give birth any minute. Well, we needed to stay a motel, but we couldn’t find a vacancy anywhere. But then we found this one motel that has a kennel in the back for pets, so we set up in there. And then she went into labor and had her baby in, like, two seconds. We didn’t have time to get the car or anything. So here we are. Cats and dogs in cages all around us. Mary, the baby, and I are in a room in the kennel, where she just had the baby. Some of the staff helped us out, so that was good. The ambulance is coming to check them both out and to take them to the hospital, but they seem to be doing okay. He’s just sleeping away. They should be here any minute. You know, a part of me thinks this is all insane. I mean, dude, the world’s a mess. Swine Flu, cancer, heart attacks, wars, people shooting each other. The economy’s shaky at best. People are losing their jobs. There’s so much to get depressed about. Sometimes I think, “God, how can you let all this happen?” I don’t get an answer. And now we have this baby to take care of. How are we going to manage that? But then, another part of me looks down at that baby, and I think, “I don’t know how God works, and I don’t know how a baby’s going to be a savior, but I do know that that baby is a miracle. Something miraculous has happened here tonight. Maybe God does miracles like this all the time, and most of us just don’t notice. We’re too busy worrying and complaining and being all negative.” Look at that baby. He is a miracle. He is God on earth. God has come into the world. Yr C 4th Sunday Advent Luke 1 :39-55 By J L Wallace THEOTOKOS(The God-Bearer)The angel had said “Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you.” [Luke 1:28] She was perplexed by these words. She certainly didn’t feel “favored,” as the intense waves of morning sickness swept over her. The angel had said nothing about the morning sickness, or the whispering that would occur around her frequent bouts of nausea. She knew, when the angel spoke, that whispering about a betrothed pregnant girl was inevitable, and, nonetheless, she had said “Yes” to God; “let it be according to your word.’” [Luke 1:38] But she hadn’t realized how painful the gossip would be.Listening carefully at the well, she had learned much from other women about pregnancy and morning sickness, but she was unable to ask questions for fear of discovery. Now, at three months, the baby was beginning to show, and she needed desperately to get out of Nazareth. The angel had said her cousin Elizabeth, by some miracle, was also with child. [1:36] She decided she must go see Elizabeth; she would find sympathy and understanding there. So, that very day, her urgency sent her down the dusty road to the well-swept, welcoming doorstep of her old cousin, Elizabeth. They were two ordinary women, but both found themselves in the most extraordinary of circumstances: one too old, one too young, and both pregnant. So they came together in their need to share the anxiety and excitement of their predicament. Arriving at her cousins’ house, a song arose in Mary’s heart. Resting in the cradle of her body was “the desire of all nations” [Haggai 2:7] and resonating from that desire was a song of justice. “The song [seemed to] sing her.” As one theologian put it, “she was no revolutionary, she simply wanted to sing a happy song,” but the music falling from her lips was that of “an astonished prophet singing about a world in which the last have become first, and the first have become last.” [Barbara Brown Taylor, “Magnificat”] The Spirit of this song reverberated in the amniotic sea that joined Mary and Elizabeth. The moment Mary called out to Elizabeth, baby John turned and rose to greet his LORD across the waters. His mother, Elizabeth, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Joy consumed them. They danced in the Spirit, and the glory of God, like sunset on the sea, illuminated their souls. Elizabeth marveled, “why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” [Luke 1:41-43] Mary stayed with Elizabeth and Zechariah until John was born. In a little prayer community of “two or three,” God came among them, claiming their reality, so they might claim God’s reality of hope and peace, love and joy. In that little faith community, the deep strength of God resided, and nothing was considered impossible. Out of that community we are bless-ed.This Advent season, like Mary and Elizabeth, we wait in community for the promises of God to unfold in our lives. Keeping time with Mary's song, means we pray for one another, encourage one another, and rejoice with one another. Mary’s music keeps time with a steady beat of repetitive kindness while waiting God’s promises to kick. We, too, must actively listening for the one who is still speaking in this world. This frequently it means getting up from our easy-chairs and opening the door of generosity, care, and concern. Mary’s Song does not side with the status quo of this world. The status quo of this world is out of sync with the goodness of God. The primary function of God’s justice is goodness, but, too often, the primary function of justice in this world is vengeance. When Mary said “Yes” to God, she probably understood very little of this larger picture. Yet, she understood one thing very well, saying “Yes” to God was the most important ‘yes’ in her life.Whatever our future as a community, when we re-imagine community with faith, the moment becomes a powerful moment for healing. Elizabeth and Zechariah surrounded Mary with prayer and acceptance when her doubts assailed her, strengthening her for the next step. This picture of Mary, Elizabeth, and Zechariah teaches us the meaning of community and the courage and peace that can result from intercessory prayer.The Greek Orthodox Church calls Mary, the Theotokos; the “God Bearer.” For she was called to bear God into the world, (and so are we). She became “pregnant with hope,” just as we are to be. God knows our hope, like Mary’s, is mixed with anxiety and fear. Nonetheless, we are called to be ready “to give an accounting for the hope that is in” us. [1Pet3:15] We are to be as eager to give hope to others as a woman 9 months pregnant is to deliver her child. To those in our lives who are feeling hopeless, our message is hope! Have you given any thought to how you might bring hope to others? In Mary’s pregnancy we get a glimpse of the joy, and perhaps just a little of the trepidation, of being “God Bearers,” messengers of hope. Have you told anyone lately how God has given you hope? Have you shared the hope that is within you? Elizabeth and Zechariah welcomed an unsure and frightened girl into their home, she came for a visit, but stayed for a season. Together they learned, laughed, and grew in confidence in the LORD. In the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary was a “God Bearer” who learned how to hope!When Mary said “Yes!” to God, she wasn’t sure what that involved. God was clearly up to something, but there were no details. By faith alone she said “Yes!” Believing in the goodness of God cleared the way for her. If God was asking, it was important. If God was asking her, she was a part of the plan. She marveled that God was not too busy to pay attention to a single, insignificant 14 year old. Every person, great or small is important to God. The smallest detail in our ordinary life doesn’t escape God’s notice.Some Christians think we are called to make sure our neighbors get “it” right, but we are not called to correction, we are called to faithfulness. Is all right in the world? No! Will all become right in the world someday? Yes! How? I don’t know. Knowing isn’t our job, that’s God’s job. Our job is to keep the faith. “Semper Fi,” hold on, trust God! The angel’s words were; “Greetings, favored one!” [1:28] It is no small thing to be in the favor of God. We have no way of judging our value, but we get a glimpse when God calls us “children” (because we know how we feel about our own children). Yet, we cannot grasp the depth of God’s “favor.” We got a peek last week when we heard the words of Zephaniah; “The LORD, your God, is in your midst…he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” [Zeph 3:17] That we belong to God is beyond our grasp, what is left to us is accepting the gift of God’s “favor,” God’s grace.There is a risk to saying “Yes!” to God. The risk is the same as it was for Mary. What is that risk? Quite frankly, it is the risk of being totally misunderstood, misjudged, rejected and powerless to do anything about it? Mary instinctively recognized this, and “she was greatly troubled.” But the power of those who take the risk of loving God, risking themselves by loving others, is wrapped the power of saying “Yes!” to blessing, “Yes!” to the mysteries beyond us, and “Yes!” to strength for the long haul. AMEN. [First Page] [Prev] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 [Next] [Last Page] Return |
