I wanted to preach a sermon about doing the mission of God, not just talking about doing the mission of God. I thought a sermon about how we can change our minds in the process of determining what God is calling us to do would be interesting. I would have loved to talk about how Jesus deems tax collectors and prostitutes more worthy of the kingdom of God than the chief priests and elders and what that might mean in our context. I would have settled for a sermon about how everyone in the parable enters into the kingdom of God whether or not they actually do the will of God.  

Unfortunately, none of these lovely sermon ideas actually reflect the point of Jesus’ parable and encounter with the chief priests and elders.

If I have nothing else for which to thank God, at least this day is a gift, a day of sunlight and birds singing, a day of connection with people and God, a day in which I may learn and serve and grow.

In 381 of the common era, approximately 300 years after Jesus lived, died, was raised, and ascended, church leaders gathered for the Council of Constantinople.  The council was called by Theodosius I, the Holy Roman Emperor, in the city of Constantinople, a city now called Istanbul in the present-day nation of Turkey.  This was the second time the Roman emperor had convened church leaders to debate the core beliefs of Christianity.  The first time had been in 325 in Nicea where they wrote the first version of the Nicene Creed.  In 381 at the Council of Constantinople, the leaders of the church formulated the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the doctrine which states that Christians believe in one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each equally and fully God.  The output of the council was the Nicene Creed in basically its present form.  From the first council in 325 to the second council in 381, the major item up for debate was whether the Holy Spirit was equally God in relation to both God the Creator and Jesus.  

Are you still awake?  Have I bored you completely?  

Hey, church, happy birthday! Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the church. Not the birth of a building, not the birth of a denomination like Lutheranism or Presbyterianism, not the birth of a hierarchy or structure. Today is the birthday of the church, the people of God gathered together in community.

The first time I ever felt alone, I was eight years old. For the whole of my remembered life, my family had lived in Greenbush, Minnesota, and a month before the dreaded alone date, my parents sat me down—along with my sister—and told us that we would be moving to a town called Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, three hours away. While my sister graciously accepted this news, I told my parents through tears that it was fine that they were moving but that I would be staying in Greenbush. Moving day came, December 26, and lots of people from church came to help pack up the moving van. After avoiding the moving van and pretending that I wouldn’t be moving, I finally succumbed to reality and got in the van.

You—just you, you apart from whatever material things you have or don’t have—you are a gift to us all, just by being yourself and sharing yourself here with us as we pray and break bread and sing and talk together.

ELCA pastor Heidi Neumark in her brilliant book Breathing Spaces describes her 19 years of ministry at Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx. Just as has happened in many cities, the neighborhood around Transfiguration Lutheran had transitioned from one socio economic status to another, from one ethnic and racial composition to another, from dealing with certain social problems to others in the years before and during Pastor Heidi’s time at Transfiguration, namely 1984 through 2003.

You may know that I have been trying to bike more and drive less. Because my biking is primarily for the purpose of transportation, I have slowly been figuring out the best routes to get to the places I normally go.

In the swirling mass of Good Friday images: crown of thorns, blood, nails

In the chaotic movement from Pilate’s headquarters to the Place of the Skull to the new tomb in which no one had ever been laid

In the cacophony of “Crucify him” and “Hail, King of the Jews”

In the barren emptiness of “I am thirsty” and “It is finished”

It is difficult to know how to make sense of this day.

Vulnerability is not weakness.  

Serving others is not weakness.

Washing another’s feet is not weakness.

And while these are true, what’s wrong with weakness?

I’m going to start by telling you something that might be shocking.  I dislike how many Christians do evangelism.  

At its Greek root, the word evangelism simply denotes the practice of sharing the gospel.  While that practice is certainly something we want to do, we want to share the gospel, the details about how we share the gospel are important, at least to me.  

Just as people of other religions do, many Christians believe that we have a corner on the market of truth.  Right?

By the power of God, the Israelites had escaped slavery in Egypt, successfully crossed the Red Sea, fled from the Egyptian army, and found refuge in the wilderness and even manna each morning laying on the ground like dew to feed them.  They didn’t know it at the time, but they would wander in the wilderness for forty years while they searched for the promised land.  They would soon receive the Ten Commandments and a host of other laws.  

In the meantime, the people were thirsty.  The wilderness into which they had been spewed was much like our own desert landscape here in Arizona: dry, harsh, prickly, sandy, home to a plethora of insects and reptiles.

Perhaps because of Jesus’ words today or perhaps because I simply like to be positive, I have always tried to avoid feeling angry. I clench my teeth, speak carefully, reason well, seek solutions, and understand the other person’s actions in the most charitable way possible. I want to say upfront that trying to avoid feeling angry isn’t always helpful because the holding in of anger creates bitterness and usually comes out later in unintended ways.

In our reading from the prophet Micah this morning, God instigates a case with the people of God.  God wants to know why the people have wandered from God’s way when God had delivered them from slavery and saved them.  In response, the people wonder how they might repay God—with burnt offerings, with calves a year old, with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil, with their firstborn children…?  Seemingly exasperated, the prophet Micah reminds the people: God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

When I was 15 years old and getting confirmed, I wrote in my required confirmation essay that I would never be a leader in organized religion because I didn’t believe organized religion was necessary for the world.  

Six years later, I was sitting in worship at the home congregation of my college roommate, and I just suddenly knew that I would be a pastor.  My view on the subject hadn’t changed, to be clear.  I didn’t want to be a pastor; I just knew that I would.  It was like the decision was taken completely out of my hands.

Two thousand years ago, the shepherds who were out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night were visited by an angel who proclaimed the birth of a Savior who laid in a manger in Bethlehem. In response to this astonishing announcement, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” The shepherds actually went and saw. Even though it was ridiculous—an infant savior in the face of imperial Roman power?

Oscar Romero was a Roman Catholic priest turned bishop and then archbishop of El Salvador from 1977 until 1980 when he was assassinated by para-military personnel inside a church in the middle of a worship service he was leading.  

During those three years, he used the pulpit and his regular weekly radio address to call out corruption among El Salvador’s leaders and the repression of the Salvadoran people.  There were many things to fear in El Salvador in the late 1970s: disappearances, torture, rape, murder, the low-level threat of military occupation of city streets.  In this context, on November 13, 1977, preaching on the very same biblical passage we read today, Archbishop Romero echoed Jesus’ words.  He said: I tell you, brothers and sisters, let us not be frightened.  

To be a reformer of the church is risky.  Today, we remember and celebrate the work of Martin Luther, a reformer of the church, who lived in early sixteenth century Germany, the reformer whose name our own Lutheran church bears.  Where Wycliffe and Huss and Tyndale were silenced, either through the successful banning of their books or their execution, Luther’s voice somehow managed to be heard.