Sunday Sermons
The act of preaching is something that happens between the preacher and the gathered assembly each week, but sometimes folks find it helpful to be able to read or go back to the sermon text. So, Pastor Inga will do her best to keep this page updated with her most recent sermons. (If there's one in particular you're looking for and can't find, just ask. She probably just didn't get around to getting it posted.)
You'll notice the sermon text always begins with a list of the scriptures of the day, which are the basis for the sermon. You may find it helpful to read those passages before delving into the sermon itself.
Select Sermons for Lectionary Year A, 2020
La Frontera -- Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany - January 26, 2020
Guest Pastor Ron Roschke
FIRST READING SECOND READING GOSPEL
Isaiah 9:1-4 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 Matthew 4:12-23
A few years ago when I was working as an assistant to the bishop, I often heard people in the southern part of our Rocky Mountain Synod—in New Mexico and El Paso—talk about La Frontera—The Border. And as I looked at the readings appointed for this Third Sunday after the Epiphany, I found lots of fronteras winding their way through these writings. So, this morning I’d like us to think about borders and boundaries for a little while.
In today’s Scripture, the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali get mentioned both by the prophet Isaiah as well as by our gospel writer Matthew. The regions of Zebulun and Naphtali were definitely frontera. They are in the northern-most parts of Israel, and for them, geography shaped everything. For much of its history, the land of Israel could simply keep to itself. But a thousand or more miles away to the northeast there is “the land between the rivers”—Mesopotamia. And this region, in what is now Iraq, generated one massive empire after another: Sumerians and Babylonians and Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians and Persians. Countries become empires because they have an expansionist hunger to gobble up all the smaller countries around them. And when these Mesopotamian empires wanted to expand, they almost always went west and south, following the green, lush lands on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean
Sea. And more than once, their armies reached all the way to Israel. The Mesopotamian armies always invaded from the north. And that means that frontera
regions like Zebulun and Naphtali were the first to be attacked. Because they had suffered such attacks, defeat, and oppression, the prophet says these lands were “brought into contempt”; these are people who have “walked in darkness,” living in “a land of deep darkness.” The prophet writes these words sometime after the Assyrian armies of Emperor Tigleth-Pileser III had destroyed these homelands for the Jewish people on the northern frontera, scattered the people as exiles. The Assyrians brought in other conquered people to populate the land—“Galilee of the nations,” “Galilee of the Gentiles.” The emperor himself boasts about how he would take his captives and.impale them on sharp stakes and hoist them as ornaments along the roads of his conquered lands. Darkness indeed!
The prophet Isaiah makes a bold claim:
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
on them light has shined.
Dark and light…. There is a boundary between them. They are opposites, and so there is a dividing line that separates them. As different as day is from night,
the line between them can be somewhat ambiguous. Think of dawn. Think of dusk. When exactly does night end and day begin? But also be aware of this:
knowing that daylight is coming changes the way we think about the darkness The promise of light pulls us into it. It is called hope. Hope makes darkness
bearable. We can survive the darkness if we know it will not last forever.
Boundaries also crisscross through today’s Second Reading. Paul is writing to the Christian community at Corinth in Greece. He had served as its founding
pastor some years before. When he left, Pastor Apollos took over for him. (I’m not sure whether they had an interim pastor between them or not). But now
word has come to Paul that the congregation has gone into a kind of civil war. The community has been divided by competing groups fighting with each other.
The groups identify themselves with different people they consider to be their heroes. One group swears allegiance to Paul. (Maybe they’re the charter
members, hmm?) Another group champions the forward-thinking revisionist style of Pastor Apollos. Some champion Peter, but use his Hebrew name,
Cephas. Still another group identifies itself as “Christ-people.” Perhaps people in this group think that staying above the fray is Christ-like and makes them the
only true Christians in the community. But this congregation doesn’t just fight about their heroes. They also fight over who has the superior spiritual gifts.
Isn’t speaking in tongues far better than people who love boring liturgy? Oh yeah, but doesn’t the ability to prophesy overshadow a bunch of gibberish
nobody else can understand?
These arguments create boundaries that divide this community of faith. And it’s a curious thing about boundaries: boundaries can become much more important than the issues that define them. Very often, fronteras are perceived as places of danger, especially when people begin to frame them out of fear—“us” versus “them.” What begins as a difference of opinion turns into a battle for turf and---identity. And inevitably, these kinds of civil wars are always fought with the conviction that those of us inside our frontera are right and good, and those outside the boundary are wrong—maybe even evil.
It's interesting to see how Paul handles this community in chaos. We might expect him to weigh in with a theological opinion. Obviously, some of these
groups are more right than others! Or maybe we’d expect him to preach a gospel of toleration—after all, there are probably good people on both sides,
right? But Paul takes a more radical approach: he preaches about Jesus, the crucified.
Jesus was definitely a frontera person. First of all, he grew up in Nazareth and chose to live in Capernaum. These towns are in the region that was once
Zebulun and Naphtali—“Galilee of the Gentiles,” the prophet Isaiah calls it. This frontera was understood by Judean people in the south to be back-water
and backward. Galilee is even further north than Samaria, and if you’ve read the gospels, you know how low an opinion southern Jews had of Samaritans!
But Jesus’ frontera identity and personality went deeper than geography. Jesus seemed to always live intentionally at the edges. His life was a confusion to
people who wanted to maintain sharp, clear boundaries. He chummed around with Samaritans and Gentiles. He was critical of the laws that were meant to
separate Jews from their non-Jewish neighbors—laws about what foods you can or cannot eat, and the commandments surrounding the Sabbath day, meant to put the people of God on a calendar different from the Gentiles around them. Even more serious was the fact that Jesus kept as friends a rather unsavory
community of outcasts, sinners, prostitutes and tax-collectors. He kept intentionally blurring the lines between good and bad, right and wrong—so much so that he became known as “the friend of sinners.” He kept reaching out to the people who were supposed to be seen as bad, and he criticized those who wanted to maintain themselves inside the boundaries of respectable, lawful behavior.
When Jesus journeyed south to Jerusalem and came into the heartland of those who maintained rigid boundaries between “clean” and “unclean,” “holy” and
“profane,” he found himself at the center of an increasingly hostile controversy. But his battles weren’t only with the religious authorities protecting the status
quo. He also came into conflict with the Romans who had annexed this region as part of their immense empire. Roman leadership saw Jesus’ immense
popularity—friend of sinners that he was—as a threat to their claim on the land and its people. More and more Jews looked to Jesus as their promised Messiah, the anointed one, the son of David, the one promised by Isaiah to bring an end to centuries of darkness.
So Jesus was a threat and an outlaw to both Jews and Romans, and that landed him on a cross. You see, the Roman overlords, like the Assyrians centuries
before, liked to use human bodies staked to wooden poles as billboards of the empire’s absolute control over its conquered peoples. That Jesus ended up on a
cross was a definite sign he was a “loser Messiah.” His words about God’s coming kingdom and new day lay scattered like the skulls of the rest of the
sorry thieves and revolutionaries that were strewn over that hill of death. This, indeed, was deep, deep darkness.
But the fact that the light of Easter morning revealed that Jesus’ tomb was empty, showed that God did indeed endorse Jesus’ radical program of breaking
boundaries—for only God can raise the dead. Jesus, the crucified Messiah, was the sign that God was doing something new: loving and befriending sinners,
crossing the lines that fearful humans create thinking they will protect themselves from people who are different from themselves. God creates the new day by entering the darkness, by identifying with us when we feel lost and hopeless, by sharing our grave with us so that no place in creation can claim to be separate from God’s love and life.
Now I think that this reality has everything to do with your community, good people of St. Mark’s. You see, right now you are a frontera people. You find yourself in this strange in-between place in your history. Pastor Inga is no longer here and your next pastor has not yet arrived. The darkness of this in-between twilight might feel like it’s getting way too long. I suspect many of you could easily say, “Let’s get this interim over with and get on to our real life.” But the story of Jesus—God’s frontiersman--reminds you that the twilight, the in-between places, this strange territory on the frontera, is not a God-forsaken piece of nowhere. It is here, in twilight, in darkness shaped by hope, that God is present—in all the contradictions, in all the gaps, in all the things that feel unfinished or not-begun. God is again claiming you and calling you and placing the future inside you. People who must for a time live with the dark shall see a great light. Trust that, for God is with you here, now, in this frontera—in the name of Jesus.
Guest Pastor Ron Roschke
FIRST READING SECOND READING GOSPEL
Isaiah 9:1-4 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 Matthew 4:12-23
A few years ago when I was working as an assistant to the bishop, I often heard people in the southern part of our Rocky Mountain Synod—in New Mexico and El Paso—talk about La Frontera—The Border. And as I looked at the readings appointed for this Third Sunday after the Epiphany, I found lots of fronteras winding their way through these writings. So, this morning I’d like us to think about borders and boundaries for a little while.
In today’s Scripture, the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali get mentioned both by the prophet Isaiah as well as by our gospel writer Matthew. The regions of Zebulun and Naphtali were definitely frontera. They are in the northern-most parts of Israel, and for them, geography shaped everything. For much of its history, the land of Israel could simply keep to itself. But a thousand or more miles away to the northeast there is “the land between the rivers”—Mesopotamia. And this region, in what is now Iraq, generated one massive empire after another: Sumerians and Babylonians and Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians and Persians. Countries become empires because they have an expansionist hunger to gobble up all the smaller countries around them. And when these Mesopotamian empires wanted to expand, they almost always went west and south, following the green, lush lands on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean
Sea. And more than once, their armies reached all the way to Israel. The Mesopotamian armies always invaded from the north. And that means that frontera
regions like Zebulun and Naphtali were the first to be attacked. Because they had suffered such attacks, defeat, and oppression, the prophet says these lands were “brought into contempt”; these are people who have “walked in darkness,” living in “a land of deep darkness.” The prophet writes these words sometime after the Assyrian armies of Emperor Tigleth-Pileser III had destroyed these homelands for the Jewish people on the northern frontera, scattered the people as exiles. The Assyrians brought in other conquered people to populate the land—“Galilee of the nations,” “Galilee of the Gentiles.” The emperor himself boasts about how he would take his captives and.impale them on sharp stakes and hoist them as ornaments along the roads of his conquered lands. Darkness indeed!
The prophet Isaiah makes a bold claim:
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
on them light has shined.
Dark and light…. There is a boundary between them. They are opposites, and so there is a dividing line that separates them. As different as day is from night,
the line between them can be somewhat ambiguous. Think of dawn. Think of dusk. When exactly does night end and day begin? But also be aware of this:
knowing that daylight is coming changes the way we think about the darkness The promise of light pulls us into it. It is called hope. Hope makes darkness
bearable. We can survive the darkness if we know it will not last forever.
Boundaries also crisscross through today’s Second Reading. Paul is writing to the Christian community at Corinth in Greece. He had served as its founding
pastor some years before. When he left, Pastor Apollos took over for him. (I’m not sure whether they had an interim pastor between them or not). But now
word has come to Paul that the congregation has gone into a kind of civil war. The community has been divided by competing groups fighting with each other.
The groups identify themselves with different people they consider to be their heroes. One group swears allegiance to Paul. (Maybe they’re the charter
members, hmm?) Another group champions the forward-thinking revisionist style of Pastor Apollos. Some champion Peter, but use his Hebrew name,
Cephas. Still another group identifies itself as “Christ-people.” Perhaps people in this group think that staying above the fray is Christ-like and makes them the
only true Christians in the community. But this congregation doesn’t just fight about their heroes. They also fight over who has the superior spiritual gifts.
Isn’t speaking in tongues far better than people who love boring liturgy? Oh yeah, but doesn’t the ability to prophesy overshadow a bunch of gibberish
nobody else can understand?
These arguments create boundaries that divide this community of faith. And it’s a curious thing about boundaries: boundaries can become much more important than the issues that define them. Very often, fronteras are perceived as places of danger, especially when people begin to frame them out of fear—“us” versus “them.” What begins as a difference of opinion turns into a battle for turf and---identity. And inevitably, these kinds of civil wars are always fought with the conviction that those of us inside our frontera are right and good, and those outside the boundary are wrong—maybe even evil.
It's interesting to see how Paul handles this community in chaos. We might expect him to weigh in with a theological opinion. Obviously, some of these
groups are more right than others! Or maybe we’d expect him to preach a gospel of toleration—after all, there are probably good people on both sides,
right? But Paul takes a more radical approach: he preaches about Jesus, the crucified.
Jesus was definitely a frontera person. First of all, he grew up in Nazareth and chose to live in Capernaum. These towns are in the region that was once
Zebulun and Naphtali—“Galilee of the Gentiles,” the prophet Isaiah calls it. This frontera was understood by Judean people in the south to be back-water
and backward. Galilee is even further north than Samaria, and if you’ve read the gospels, you know how low an opinion southern Jews had of Samaritans!
But Jesus’ frontera identity and personality went deeper than geography. Jesus seemed to always live intentionally at the edges. His life was a confusion to
people who wanted to maintain sharp, clear boundaries. He chummed around with Samaritans and Gentiles. He was critical of the laws that were meant to
separate Jews from their non-Jewish neighbors—laws about what foods you can or cannot eat, and the commandments surrounding the Sabbath day, meant to put the people of God on a calendar different from the Gentiles around them. Even more serious was the fact that Jesus kept as friends a rather unsavory
community of outcasts, sinners, prostitutes and tax-collectors. He kept intentionally blurring the lines between good and bad, right and wrong—so much so that he became known as “the friend of sinners.” He kept reaching out to the people who were supposed to be seen as bad, and he criticized those who wanted to maintain themselves inside the boundaries of respectable, lawful behavior.
When Jesus journeyed south to Jerusalem and came into the heartland of those who maintained rigid boundaries between “clean” and “unclean,” “holy” and
“profane,” he found himself at the center of an increasingly hostile controversy. But his battles weren’t only with the religious authorities protecting the status
quo. He also came into conflict with the Romans who had annexed this region as part of their immense empire. Roman leadership saw Jesus’ immense
popularity—friend of sinners that he was—as a threat to their claim on the land and its people. More and more Jews looked to Jesus as their promised Messiah, the anointed one, the son of David, the one promised by Isaiah to bring an end to centuries of darkness.
So Jesus was a threat and an outlaw to both Jews and Romans, and that landed him on a cross. You see, the Roman overlords, like the Assyrians centuries
before, liked to use human bodies staked to wooden poles as billboards of the empire’s absolute control over its conquered peoples. That Jesus ended up on a
cross was a definite sign he was a “loser Messiah.” His words about God’s coming kingdom and new day lay scattered like the skulls of the rest of the
sorry thieves and revolutionaries that were strewn over that hill of death. This, indeed, was deep, deep darkness.
But the fact that the light of Easter morning revealed that Jesus’ tomb was empty, showed that God did indeed endorse Jesus’ radical program of breaking
boundaries—for only God can raise the dead. Jesus, the crucified Messiah, was the sign that God was doing something new: loving and befriending sinners,
crossing the lines that fearful humans create thinking they will protect themselves from people who are different from themselves. God creates the new day by entering the darkness, by identifying with us when we feel lost and hopeless, by sharing our grave with us so that no place in creation can claim to be separate from God’s love and life.
Now I think that this reality has everything to do with your community, good people of St. Mark’s. You see, right now you are a frontera people. You find yourself in this strange in-between place in your history. Pastor Inga is no longer here and your next pastor has not yet arrived. The darkness of this in-between twilight might feel like it’s getting way too long. I suspect many of you could easily say, “Let’s get this interim over with and get on to our real life.” But the story of Jesus—God’s frontiersman--reminds you that the twilight, the in-between places, this strange territory on the frontera, is not a God-forsaken piece of nowhere. It is here, in twilight, in darkness shaped by hope, that God is present—in all the contradictions, in all the gaps, in all the things that feel unfinished or not-begun. God is again claiming you and calling you and placing the future inside you. People who must for a time live with the dark shall see a great light. Trust that, for God is with you here, now, in this frontera—in the name of Jesus.
Select Sermons for Lectionary Year B, 2018
Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 9, 2018
Pastor Inga Oyan Longbrake
Second Reading: James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17
1My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 5Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. 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? 6But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? 7Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 9But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. [11For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.]
14What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Gospel: Mark 7:24-37
24[Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
---
Grace mercy and peace from the one who is, who was, and who is to come… AMEN
I was asked by an Episcopal friend and colleague recently: Do Lutherans believe this verse?
…faith without works is dead… (James 2)
He knew how Martin Luther wasn’t a big fan of the book of James and went so far as to suggest it should be tossed out of the canon. He knew that our Lutheran theology and identity is grounded in the good news that by grace we have been saved through faith, and this is not our own doing, it is not because of our good works, but is the gift of God.
So what do Lutherans think, then, about the verse that comes to us today?
It looks like we’re willing to read it in worship, at the very least.
Well, I told my friend that I’m a Lutheran who believes it.
Faith without works is dead.
Because I think it challenges us to consider what brings faith to life.
If we had simply gathered here for coffee every Sunday morning over the last 10 years and acknowledged to each other that, yes, we are still Christians before heading out the door… well, sure, Jesus would still love us, of course, but… how alive would our faith be?
So one of the things I’m happy to say about our years together is that they have been full of life! We dove into the deep end of the pool, asking ourselves what it would mean to be church in this moment, in this place and neighborhood? Where were we called?
We’ve gone all kinds of places together. We’ve had successes. We’ve had failures. We’ve had joy in communion with one another. We’ve had conflict as we took on difficult and complex ministry tasks and ideas. We’ve taken risks and gotten creative. We have trusted God and we’ve been scared. We’ve had healing and growing and all that goes with it when you really dive in and go for it.
It reminds me a little of the famous line from Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
It is so much better to step out boldly in faith even if you sometimes fall on your face or make the wrong choice than to never step out in faith at all.
This is what Luther meant when he shared his own famous line: Sin boldly!
Go for it, people of God! Go for it. If we really believe God’s got us, that the Holy Spirit is right here as our Advocate and we are in God’s hands, then you go for it. Live out this faith of yours.
And so we have. And God has been faithful.
And I shall always be grateful.
Because the good news, being good news and all, will always compel us, always send us out into the world to share the good news with others, to love others as we have been loved, to serve others as we have been served.
This has always been and shall always be the pattern of the Christian faith.
Free gift given = Forgiveness. New life. Never-failing love and presence. Eternal identity.
Children of God = Respond in faith and love as the free people you are.
This is the pattern of death and resurrection. And it just keeps going.
The promise is that new life will always come.
So let us be thankful for sinning boldly together for the last 10 years. I hope your faith has been challenged. I hope you have wrestled with it. I hope diving into the works given to us to do has brought life to your faith – and even more faith to your life.
I have certainly grown. You have challenged me and pushed me to become a better pastor. You have challenged me to know myself better and both be true to myself and faithful to my call. I shall always be in your debt.
Because being challenged often helps us get where we need to go.
Just ask Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman…
Just after Jesus told the Pharisees last week that they were using the law incorrectly and needed to examine their hearts and remember why the law was given to them in the first place, here we now finding Jesus acting a whole lot like those Pharisees and scribes.
And preachers have been scratching their heads over this passage ever since.
The Jesus we know stands with the outsider. Almost exclusively. Here is the lone exception.
Not only does he not stand with her, Jesus compares the Syrophoenician woman to a dog.
It’s pretty bad.
And yet, she isn’t intimidated or scared off. Maybe she’s used to this treatment.
Or just desperate.
In any case, she continues. She demands that she is entitled to at least a little bit of God’s love, too. And without much effort at all, she seems to change Jesus’ mind.
Without even getting up from the dinner table, Jesus casts the demon from her daughter back at home and sends the woman on her way. Wow.
From there Jesus and the disciples continue on their way, and the next one in need of Jesus isn’t given such a hard time, even though he is most likely a gentile just like the women, given that they are in the Gentile region of Tyre. This deaf man, also an outsider, is healed with the word Ephphatha. Be opened.
We hear these two stories of healing at a turning point in Jesus ministry.
This passage is situated between the two feeding stories in Mark’s gospel. In chapter six, people are fed on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee. In chapter eight, they’ll be fed by Jesus on the Gentile side.
The kingdom of heaven is about to be blown wide open and Ch 7 holds the turning point.
In Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew or Gentile.
Jesus is for all and we are ONE in Christ.
So I really wonder if Jesus is making this declaration by letting the Syrophenician woman make it for him, on behalf of all gentiles just like her.
The way she says it indicates her understanding.
Yes, but even the dog’s get the crumbs from under the children’s table.
Yes, she acknowledges, there is priority for the Jewish people, the children, chosen by God, but I am arguing for Gentile inclusion as well. Because we know the crumbs, if they come from you, shall be enough.
It’s a tremendous statement of faith.
It’s always the outsiders who recognize the true power of God.
And then, Ephphatha. Be opened.
Jesus doesn’t just heal this man. He points all of us to where he is headed, and where we are to follow.
Be open! Open your hearts and minds! My new community, the kingdom of God is for ALL.
Now let’s go. Let’s take that good news and go. Head ourselves for the other side of the Sea and keep going.
This past week, Bishop Jim Gonia joined the council and me here and led a ritual called the “Blessing of Transition.” It was a time where affirmations and encouragements were offered. Council offered them to me. I offered to them.
In the sanctuary we gave thanks for the ministries of baptism, communion, preaching, funerals, weddings, and the sending of us into the world that have happened over these last 10 years.
It was a powerful moment, so I want to offer affirmation and encouragement to all of you as well.
You are a precious part of God’s beloved community.
You are a brave and loving part of the Body of Christ.
You have made a difference to the world and especially in this neighborhood in the name of Christ. I encourage you to stay confident going forward. Sin boldly. Remember the works God has given you to do not only witness God’s love to others, they bring life to your faith as well.
And don’t forget to laugh. I encourage you to laugh at yourselves and with each other as often as possible. This life of faith is way too important to be trusted to a bunch of overly serious people. So if you do find yourselves taking all this too seriously, just remember that day you made me sit under the cross fountain in the park on Stewardship Sunday and get soaked. Or the evening at the block party when Ollie Daniels stood in the middle of the parking lot and hula hooped for all of us. Or ask some of these young people to sing their favorite silly song with their favorite silly actions. Or ask one of the women to tell you about the time that Bernice Parker short-sheeted all the hotel beds at a women’s gathering.
When we take ourselves too seriously, that’s when we’re most tempted to shoosh the Holy Spirit and tell her we’ve got it all under control. And you don’t want to do that! Just think of all the adventures you’d miss out on! Besides, life abundant is surely meant to include joy and laughter and gratitude – as much as we can get.
I thank you, friends. You have all contributed to and enriched one of the most significant chapters in me and my family’s life. You have cared well for us. You have made me a better pastor. So I thank you. We thank you. And I will thank my God every time I think of you.
For all of it, I say, one more time, Thanks be to God.
AMEN
Pastor Inga Oyan Longbrake
Second Reading: James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17
1My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 5Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. 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? 6But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? 7Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 9But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. [11For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.]
14What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Gospel: Mark 7:24-37
24[Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
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Grace mercy and peace from the one who is, who was, and who is to come… AMEN
I was asked by an Episcopal friend and colleague recently: Do Lutherans believe this verse?
…faith without works is dead… (James 2)
He knew how Martin Luther wasn’t a big fan of the book of James and went so far as to suggest it should be tossed out of the canon. He knew that our Lutheran theology and identity is grounded in the good news that by grace we have been saved through faith, and this is not our own doing, it is not because of our good works, but is the gift of God.
So what do Lutherans think, then, about the verse that comes to us today?
It looks like we’re willing to read it in worship, at the very least.
Well, I told my friend that I’m a Lutheran who believes it.
Faith without works is dead.
Because I think it challenges us to consider what brings faith to life.
If we had simply gathered here for coffee every Sunday morning over the last 10 years and acknowledged to each other that, yes, we are still Christians before heading out the door… well, sure, Jesus would still love us, of course, but… how alive would our faith be?
So one of the things I’m happy to say about our years together is that they have been full of life! We dove into the deep end of the pool, asking ourselves what it would mean to be church in this moment, in this place and neighborhood? Where were we called?
We’ve gone all kinds of places together. We’ve had successes. We’ve had failures. We’ve had joy in communion with one another. We’ve had conflict as we took on difficult and complex ministry tasks and ideas. We’ve taken risks and gotten creative. We have trusted God and we’ve been scared. We’ve had healing and growing and all that goes with it when you really dive in and go for it.
It reminds me a little of the famous line from Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
It is so much better to step out boldly in faith even if you sometimes fall on your face or make the wrong choice than to never step out in faith at all.
This is what Luther meant when he shared his own famous line: Sin boldly!
Go for it, people of God! Go for it. If we really believe God’s got us, that the Holy Spirit is right here as our Advocate and we are in God’s hands, then you go for it. Live out this faith of yours.
And so we have. And God has been faithful.
And I shall always be grateful.
Because the good news, being good news and all, will always compel us, always send us out into the world to share the good news with others, to love others as we have been loved, to serve others as we have been served.
This has always been and shall always be the pattern of the Christian faith.
Free gift given = Forgiveness. New life. Never-failing love and presence. Eternal identity.
Children of God = Respond in faith and love as the free people you are.
This is the pattern of death and resurrection. And it just keeps going.
The promise is that new life will always come.
So let us be thankful for sinning boldly together for the last 10 years. I hope your faith has been challenged. I hope you have wrestled with it. I hope diving into the works given to us to do has brought life to your faith – and even more faith to your life.
I have certainly grown. You have challenged me and pushed me to become a better pastor. You have challenged me to know myself better and both be true to myself and faithful to my call. I shall always be in your debt.
Because being challenged often helps us get where we need to go.
Just ask Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman…
Just after Jesus told the Pharisees last week that they were using the law incorrectly and needed to examine their hearts and remember why the law was given to them in the first place, here we now finding Jesus acting a whole lot like those Pharisees and scribes.
And preachers have been scratching their heads over this passage ever since.
The Jesus we know stands with the outsider. Almost exclusively. Here is the lone exception.
Not only does he not stand with her, Jesus compares the Syrophoenician woman to a dog.
It’s pretty bad.
And yet, she isn’t intimidated or scared off. Maybe she’s used to this treatment.
Or just desperate.
In any case, she continues. She demands that she is entitled to at least a little bit of God’s love, too. And without much effort at all, she seems to change Jesus’ mind.
Without even getting up from the dinner table, Jesus casts the demon from her daughter back at home and sends the woman on her way. Wow.
From there Jesus and the disciples continue on their way, and the next one in need of Jesus isn’t given such a hard time, even though he is most likely a gentile just like the women, given that they are in the Gentile region of Tyre. This deaf man, also an outsider, is healed with the word Ephphatha. Be opened.
We hear these two stories of healing at a turning point in Jesus ministry.
This passage is situated between the two feeding stories in Mark’s gospel. In chapter six, people are fed on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee. In chapter eight, they’ll be fed by Jesus on the Gentile side.
The kingdom of heaven is about to be blown wide open and Ch 7 holds the turning point.
In Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew or Gentile.
Jesus is for all and we are ONE in Christ.
So I really wonder if Jesus is making this declaration by letting the Syrophenician woman make it for him, on behalf of all gentiles just like her.
The way she says it indicates her understanding.
Yes, but even the dog’s get the crumbs from under the children’s table.
Yes, she acknowledges, there is priority for the Jewish people, the children, chosen by God, but I am arguing for Gentile inclusion as well. Because we know the crumbs, if they come from you, shall be enough.
It’s a tremendous statement of faith.
It’s always the outsiders who recognize the true power of God.
And then, Ephphatha. Be opened.
Jesus doesn’t just heal this man. He points all of us to where he is headed, and where we are to follow.
Be open! Open your hearts and minds! My new community, the kingdom of God is for ALL.
Now let’s go. Let’s take that good news and go. Head ourselves for the other side of the Sea and keep going.
This past week, Bishop Jim Gonia joined the council and me here and led a ritual called the “Blessing of Transition.” It was a time where affirmations and encouragements were offered. Council offered them to me. I offered to them.
In the sanctuary we gave thanks for the ministries of baptism, communion, preaching, funerals, weddings, and the sending of us into the world that have happened over these last 10 years.
It was a powerful moment, so I want to offer affirmation and encouragement to all of you as well.
You are a precious part of God’s beloved community.
You are a brave and loving part of the Body of Christ.
You have made a difference to the world and especially in this neighborhood in the name of Christ. I encourage you to stay confident going forward. Sin boldly. Remember the works God has given you to do not only witness God’s love to others, they bring life to your faith as well.
And don’t forget to laugh. I encourage you to laugh at yourselves and with each other as often as possible. This life of faith is way too important to be trusted to a bunch of overly serious people. So if you do find yourselves taking all this too seriously, just remember that day you made me sit under the cross fountain in the park on Stewardship Sunday and get soaked. Or the evening at the block party when Ollie Daniels stood in the middle of the parking lot and hula hooped for all of us. Or ask some of these young people to sing their favorite silly song with their favorite silly actions. Or ask one of the women to tell you about the time that Bernice Parker short-sheeted all the hotel beds at a women’s gathering.
When we take ourselves too seriously, that’s when we’re most tempted to shoosh the Holy Spirit and tell her we’ve got it all under control. And you don’t want to do that! Just think of all the adventures you’d miss out on! Besides, life abundant is surely meant to include joy and laughter and gratitude – as much as we can get.
I thank you, friends. You have all contributed to and enriched one of the most significant chapters in me and my family’s life. You have cared well for us. You have made me a better pastor. So I thank you. We thank you. And I will thank my God every time I think of you.
For all of it, I say, one more time, Thanks be to God.
AMEN
