Tag Archives: Jesus

Pastor Thoughts, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Why do we have to be this way – the Tension of Lent

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Our Lenten journey hasn’t been easy this year. The themes we have explored have ranged from the clash of kingdoms to human unwillingness to receive in the incarnate Christ, to our anxieties over the judgement of our sinfulness, to the loving father whose sons were lost in worlds of their senses of entitlement. 

This fifth Sunday presents us with the story of Mary, the sister to Martha and Lazarus. As Jesus eats a meal with friends, she anoints his feet with expensive perfume, an act of extravagant love in preparation for Jesus’ burial which is being foreshadowed in the moment. 

Yet, Judas objects to such a waste of perfume, pointing out that the money could have been used to feed the poor. 

We have all been present for these kinds of moments. Something beautiful, tender and loving is ruined because someone cannot handle the depth of emotion, or so it seems. 

It makes me wonder how two people can see the same event and moment in time with such diametrically opposed perspectives about what is going on. One person sees a beautiful act of love and another person sees a wasteful overindulgence. 

This question is relevant to our moment in history. As Canada faces an election, and our longtime national neighbour to the south, the United States, pursues aggressive trade tactics, it boggles the mind how we can be so divided on how we perceive the leaders running for election and those enacting ruinous financial policies on the whole world. 

One side looks at a particular leader and sees a vile, destructive, untrustworthy person, while the other side sees a champion and protector. How can we look at the same things and see them so dramatically differently?

How can one person see a hero in someone when another person looking at the same individual sees only a villain?

As human beings, we have to live with one another while, at the same time, we represent an impossibly diverse spectrum of opinions and tastes. 

Judas is right⎯using the money for the perfume could feed many people. Mary is also right⎯the act of love is for Jesus who is on his way to Jerusalem and Good Friday. But cannot Judas also see the loving beauty in this sacrifice of perfume? But cannot Mary see that she is being extravagant and indulgent?

These final weeks in Lent leave us in much the same situation as the previous weeks. The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan remain in conflict. God’s people continue to be unwilling. The unproducing fig tree’s fate remains unknown if only delayed a year. The prodigal son and his older brother haven’t yet been transformed by their father’s love. 

Judas sees only money being poured onto the floor and down the drain; Mary sees only the end coming for her much-beloved friend.

Maybe that state of tension and uncertainty is the point. Maybe that is where human life is lived, in the tension between creatures that cannot see through each other’s eyes. 

Yet, somehow in that unresolved tension between us, Jesus comes and stakes his cross into the ground, into our hard hearts… and there God’s love is revealed. There, while we cannot see each other, it is revealed that God sees and understands us. 

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

A Responsibility to Repent?

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It is only the third week of Lent, and already, the themes of the season have been remarkably difficult. The temptation of Jesus was a glimpse into the clashing of kingdoms in the first week. Jesus’ lamenting for Jerusalem and wanting to gather in God’s chosen people was really about the unwillingness of human beings and the destruction of Jerusalem temple.

In this third week, the Lenten theme is less convoluted. Jesus is asked by the people who followed him around tragedies that loomed large in the minds of the Israelites: a group of pilgrims unceremoniously killed by Pilate and a civil construction project that fell on 18 workers. One might assume that these followers of Jesus are wondering: Where is God in the midst of these tragic moments? 

But the followers aren’t wondering about that. Rather, they are asking if the pilgrims or workers were worse sinners who deserved their deaths. 

Ouch… that is not the kind of question you are supposed to ask out loud! Especially not of Jesus. That feels like the kind of insensitive question that a parent would scold a child for asking. Or, at the very least, there should be some tacit acknowledgement that it is inappropriate to blame victims for their suffering. 

Of course, this kind of victim blaming happens all the time in our world, but rarely in circumstances so tragic. It is not uncommon in our time for victims of sexual harassment or assault to be blamed for wearing inappropriate clothes, or for the poor to be blamed for their poverty, and for us to wonder if those who develop an illness did something to cause it. But we wouldn’t look at a pedestrian hit by a car and think, “Oh, they were probably a tax cheat who deserved to be hit.”

In Jesus’ day, however, it wasn’t uncommon for people to believe that any kind of suffering was the result of sin or unrighteousness.

The reality is that we also know there are degrees of sin to some extent. We know that some things are worse sins than others. We know that the Nazis who claimed to be just following orders during the Holocaust are not the same as speeders. That fighting with my sister as a kid is not the same as dealing drugs. That clandestinely appropriating some of my children’s Easter chocolate is not the same as wealthy CEOs hoarding hundreds of times more salary than their employees earn. 

We know that some things are worse sins than others, but in this season of Lent when we take time to step back and consider our lives, our identity and even our sins… what are we to do with this knowledge? What are we to do with Jesus’ response to his followers?

Jesus’ response sounds pretty pious, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”

Is Jesus warning them, and us, that if they and we don’t get our acts together, we might suffer the same fate as the pilgrims and construction workers?

I don’t think so. Even if it sounds like Jesus is saying that if we don’t repent we are going to suffer. 

Martin Luther would remind us that, in regard to repentance, God has commanded us to confess and repent. Our response to our sin is not to worry about our degree of sin, not to worry about who among us has sinned the most, but to confess and repent of our sin. 

In fact, the only thing that we can do in response to our sin is to confess and repent. 

And how does God respond to sin? Well, that is something we will explore throughout the Lenten season.

Photo: The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

The Forefront of the Kingdom of God – Part 2

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Last week, in the light of the Sermon on the Plain or the Beatitudes, I talked about how the Kingdom of God is local and near to us. 

One of the things that Christianity has struggled with in the last 70 years or so is correctly identifying where the primary work of the Kingdom of God is happening. All too often, we have associated the Kingdom of God with other kingdoms and powers. Christians have looked for political influence, economic influence and cultural influence. Every time we do this, the powers of the world have taken the opportunity to exploit and use Christianity for their own benefit. You don’t have to scroll through many news headlines to find Christian Nationalism being used by political authorities right now. 

As Jesus keeps preaching the sermon on the plain this week, he speaks of loving our enemies. He preaches forgiveness and mercy in the face of violence and persecution. A message to those in power that sounds like rolling over and being a doormat for abuse, it sounds like an encouragement to weakness. 

In some ways, there is a tiny bit of justification for their skepticism. Jesus isn’t advocating simply suffering and enduring great injustice. Rather, the issue is one of location and scale. To understand what Jesus is getting at requires us to consider again where the primary work of the Kingdom of God is. 

We hear the word ‘Kingdom,’ and it conjures visions of feeding the hungry of the entire world, ending poverty on a national scale, or standing up and protesting injustice with great crowds of support. Kingdoms loom large in our minds. Yet, the Kingdom of God, or perhaps more accurately the Reign of God is best seen elsewhere; the work of Kingdom happens on a more personal and intimate scale. 

As Jesus talks about loving one’s enemies this week, he isn’t talking about far away foreign nations (though we ought to love even our far-away foreign neighbours), but more likely the enemies in front of us. The people in the community, the friends, family and neighbours with whom we may be in conflict with are the ones we ought to love.

Martin Luther’s revolutionary understanding of God’s forgiveness of sins wasn’t just about our individual and personal relationship with God. Forgiveness of sins is also about our neighbour. What is forgiveness of sins for, if it isn’t for building community? 

Where do things most clearly and regularly happen? In the local, small communities where we actually live our lives. For example, in the congregation of the faithful. It is here that we practice loving our enemies, as we confess our sin, ask for forgiveness, listen to the Word of God, and share bread and wine at the table. Local churches are at the forefront of the Kingdom of God. The place where we can see most clearly the work of the Kingdom. 

It might feel too obvious or plain, too easy and mundane. But the Kingdom of God is where the Gospel is preached and the sacraments are administered. The place where we are constantly practicing loving our enemies, practicing asking forgiveness and giving mercy. Churches are the little outposts of the Kingdom of God, bringing the new reality of God’s mercy and love to bear for the world.

covid-19, Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts

The Beginning of Faith – Pastor Thoughts

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If you hear enough Lutheran sermons, you *should* have some sense that Baptism is a cornerstone part of our understanding of faith. (I will have to talk with my pastor colleagues if they haven’t made clear that Baptism is pretty important). Martin Luther pushed for a renewal of the Christian understanding of Baptism as centrally important to how we understand our identity as people who belong to God and as members of the Body of Christ. 

This week we hear the story of the Baptism of Jesus, which is important to come back to each year. As we are implored regularly in the liturgy, remembering our Baptism is an important part of our worship. The irony is that most of us don’t remember our own Baptism. So what does remembering our Baptism look like? Well, it is something we do as we hear about and witness the Baptisms of others. 

In the story of Jesus going down into the waters of the Jordan to be baptized by John, God proclaims that Jesus is God’s Beloved Son. This proclamation is not just for that moment but the proclamation that God makes to all who are baptized. It was the proclamation made over Sutton who was baptized last Sunday at our church. And it is the proclamation made to each person we bring to the waters and who is washed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

But Baptism is still more than just a welcome for new babies and an entrance into the Church of Christ. The story of Jesus’ Baptism does not come to us in a vacuum. It comes to us in this season after Epiphany as we move toward Lent and Holy Week. The one who is baptized by John in the Jordan, whom God is well pleased with, will become the one who is crucified on Good Friday and who  rises again on Easter Sunday. 

St. Paul reminds us in Romans 6, “therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”

In Baptism, God claims us as God’s own children. God names us beloved AND most importantly, God identifies us with the death and resurrection of Christ. God ties us to the in-breaking of God into the world with mercy and reconciliation. 

This essential part of Baptism is the beginning point of faith, that we die to sin and death in the baptismal waters with Christ and we are raised to new life by the resurrection of Christ. So when we gather together to witness a Baptism in our community, we are reminded that, just as this new Christian is now identified with Christ’s death and resurrection, so too are we, by virtue of the same Baptism with which we were baptized. 

As we hear this story of Christ’s Baptism this week, remember that it is the story of our Baptism, too.  

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Waiting for the Apocalyptic Kingdom

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We have arrived at Christ the King Sunday. This is the end of the liturgical year, which means we have made our way through the stories of Jesus’ birth, journey to Jerusalem, death and resurrection as told by the season of Advent through Easter. We have also made it through Jesus’ teaching and ministry as told by the Gospel of Mark. 

Altogether, these two parts of the liturgical year serve to create a narrative that takes us through the story of Jesus each year. 

There is another piece to this journey, however. This liturgical move is more than one that moves us from one year to the next. The move we make in our calendars and in our Sunday worship shows us a glimpse of the much larger scale movement that is happening all around us. 

Christ the King Sunday, or perhaps more accurately, the Reign of Christ Sunday, lifts the Apocalyptic veil on our world. No, not an apocalypse like the movies imagine with zombies, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, or exorcist priests fighting demons.

Rather, the Apocalypse as the Biblical Narrative imagines it, the one that we have had in the background in this year of reading Mark, and perhaps in the background of pandemics, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the election of populist leaders that are tracking to fascism. Apocalypse hardly seems like the thing of movies and novels these days, it is out there in the world. 

The Apocalypse that the Bible imagines is one that is rooted in the conflict between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Sin, Death and the Devil. On Christ the King Sunday we are equally concerned with the fact that the Kingdom of God has entered the battle plains of this world with the intention of striving against those forces that would defy the One who holds all creation and us within God as we are with Christ’s Kingship. 

This is the work of God’s Kingdom in the world, to push back against all those forces that cause suffering and death, the forces of systematic sin and evil that cause oppression and enslave us.

But God’s Kingdom’s work is not the one of military might or political and economic power.  Rather, it is accomplished on the cross, in the one who takes our sin and death to the grave while exchanging with us the gifts of forgiveness, righteousness and life. The Kingdom’s work is to meet the powers of this world with the reconciling mercy of God, with true Kingdom power that can transform this world for the better. 

On the Christ the King Sunday, we prepare for the Apocalypse of Biblical proportions to come – for it to flip us over into the Advent of God’s new world, where we will be new creations.