March 7, 2021 + The Third. Sunday in Lent
First Lutheran Church
March 7, 2021 + The Third Sunday in Lent (B)
First Corinthians 1:18-25 18The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Sermon “The Foolishness of the Cross”
Pastor Greg Ronning
Where do you experience God? Do you experience God in nature? Do you experience God on the top of holy mountains, in the majesty of a star filled night, in the depth and the power of the ocean, in the stillness of the desert? I do. Do you experience God in those so called “perfect moments?” Do you experience God in profound “aha” moments, in coincidental connections, in synchronicity, in perfect days, wonderful nights, in serendipity? I do. Do you experience God in creativity? Do you experience God in music, in art, in film, in performance, in personal moments of creation? I do. Do you experience God in relationships? Do you experience God in love, in friendships, in fellowship, in holy conversations? I do.
In all these things we experience God, yet in all these things we don’t truly experience the whole fullness of God. They are mostly just a glimpse into the divine, mountain top moments that flirt with us, quicken us and make us feel good. Wonderful moments to have and to hold along life’s way. In all these things we see God, we find God, but in all these things God doesn’t really “find” us. We are not “saved” by the beauty of nature, we are not “sanctified” by perfect moments, we are not “made whole” by art, and we are not “transformed” by friends. All those things play a role in our faith life, even significant roles at times, but not alone, not as stand-alone events, not apart from that place where God truly meets us, at the cross.
Lutheran Theologian Dan Ehrlander writes, “God meets us most profoundly, God becomes incarnate in our world, God truly connects with us, at the point of our deepest reality – our honest confrontation with weakness, pain, suffering, and death.” God discovers us not “neatly and “above it all,” not in the wonderous, but rather “in the midst of it all.” And unfortunately, this “counter intuitive truth,” this divine paradox, sometimes escapes us. We don’t always look for God in our lows, we’d prefer to find God in our highs. It seems “foolish” to look for God on the lowly cross instead of on top of the holy mountain.
We live too much of our life desperately seeking out love, hope, and meaning in all the wrong places. We desperately try to “get our act together” so people will notice us, acknowledge us, approve us, and maybe even love us. We desperately try to clean ourselves up, put our best foot and face forward, hoping to catch the eye of another. We’ll go to drastic lengths, in desperation we will even “change our appearance,” just to fit in, to seem perfect, to make ourselves stand out, hoping that it will make a difference. We’re looking for God by climbing to the tops of our mountains, in the hopes of our glory!
The irony of it all is that God is present for us with love, hope, and meaning, but our desperate acts to find that love, hope, and meaning lead us away from God. God is not waiting for us in the hopes of our glory! In this week’s epistle, in a word from St. Paul, God invites us to surrender our desperate lifestyle of trying to get it all together, and just be human. For it is in our most human moments that our desperation will be satisfied, that healing will take place, that love and peace will embrace us and our world. We don’t need to get our act all together for God to take notice of us and love us, God already has taken notice, and God already dearly love us, just as we are.
This is the good news. And it seems like such a “surrender” would be an easy thing to do. But it’s not. “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” We live in the world, a world that has taught us to look for sure things, sound logic, and common sense. And the cross is none of those things! How can death possibly lead to life? How does letting go of life create life? How does the broken body and heart of Christ bring life to the world?
Lutheran Pastor and Theologian, Mike Coffey, in his book “Renounce, Resist, and Rejoice,” reminds us that the cross is a necessary part of the Christian faith, that it is necessary for something new to happen, that is necessary for true liberation, that it is necessary for transformation, that it is necessary for us to experience God’s love. However, he adds, “Except, don’t mistake it: It wasn’t necessary for God.”
He reminds us that God’s mercy, love, grace, and life-giving power doesn’t depend on some contrived system of offense and retaliation, the need for some kind of debt to be repaid, or as the appeasement of some kind of divine anger. God loves us, because God loves us! God is love, God’s is truly unconditional love, and “nothing can separate us” from that love, and so it is that the cross is not necessary for God.
But once again, it is necessary for us, for on the cross God in Christ Jesus exposes the emptiness of this world, the emptiness of the principalities and powers, the emptiness of violence, the emptiness of every human idolatry (money, things, power, government, anything) that seeks to replace God. On the cross they are revealed for what they are: distortions of truth, outright lies, the work of doubt and fear. Every time we gather around the cross “these things” are “exposed” in order that we might be changed, made new, made alive in the love of God. We “need” the cross, and we are called to engage the cross, not that we might die, but that we might “die to sin” and rise again to life abundant.
The Cross, it doesn’t always make sense, but it does make a difference. There is no love stronger than the love of the cross. And once you’ve experienced being loved like that, being loved in the midst of all your broken-ness, being loved as you are, for who you are, because you are; - you will never be the same. All things will truly become new. God invites us to surrender to the foolishness of the cross, the saving power of God.
February 28, 2021 + The Second Sunday in Lent
First Lutheran Church
February 28, 2021 + The Second Sunday in Lent B
Mark 8:31-38. 31[Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
“The Fear of Death”
Mark Twain reportedly once said, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” Perhaps that fits today’s gospel, when Jesus “quite openly” and “matter-of-factly” gets straight to the point, “I must suffer, be rejected, and die.” Peter challenges this notion of suffering and death, to which Jesus responds, once again very candidly and without any pretense, “If you want to follow me, you need to deny yourself, and take up a cross.” Once again, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” Jesus makes it very clear; if you want to follow him, if you want to be one of his disciples, if you want to be a Christian, - you will need to “deny” yourself and take up the cross.
Well, I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I wanted to hear this morning. I’ve been there and done that! For almost an entire year now, I have had to deny myself so many things! I’ve given up eating out at restaurants, gathering for parties, visiting with friends, working out at the gym, traveling to exciting places, attending conferences with colleagues, singing with my band, visiting “indoors” with my parents, and worshipping in-person inside this sanctuary. This whole mess started last year in Lent, and now it’s Lent again, - it’s like Lent never ended! I’m really not in the mood to hear what Jesus has to say in this Sunday’s appointed Gospel, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” I’m really not in the mood for Lent!
Yet, those are the words in today’s appointed Gospel. The purple paraments are up, - so for better or worse, - it’s Lent. It’s that season in which we are called to “deny” ourselves, the season in which we “give something up” in the hopes of creating space for new life.
But truth be told, we really need it! We need some new life! So, once again, still in the midst of social distancing, still in the grim shadow of COVID, still in the loss and grief and the loneliness of it all; we turn to embrace and engage the Lenten journey, that paradoxical Lenten truth, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Yes, it’s time to give something up for Lent.
When it comes to “giving something up” for Lent the greatest temptation, to which we all fall victim, is to diminish the traditional spiritual practice. Truth be told, the kinds of things that we usually and typically choose “to give up” don’t really rise to the level of “deny yourself and pick up your cross and follow me.” I usually try “to give up” chocolate, exercise more, or stay away from the evils of Facebook. Sometimes I “give up” time watching TV in the hopes of replacing those hours with something more productive or meaningful. And while all those things are good and beneficial activities, things that I need to do, things that will make me healthier both physically and spiritually; quite honestly, they don’t really qualify as “kingdom things.” I cringe to think that Jesus has invited me to follow him, to seek after the kingdom of God, and my response is, “Sure, I’ll give up my Snickers bar and Facebook!”
I suppose the other response would be to drastically swing the proverbial pendulum all the way in the other direction by practicing “the kind of self-denial that strips life of all pleasure, all embodiment, all celebration, and all joy.” (Debi Thomas) I don’t believe that following Jesus ultimately leads to such austerity or a faith life marked by the strict and unwavering fanaticism of religious fundamentalism. That doesn’t sound right or feel right. Afterall, Jesus gathered up the little children, feasted with sinners, and turned water into wine!
So where does that leave us? How might we faithfully respond to the Lenten call of Jesus to deny our self and pick up the cross? What would a more balanced approach to “giving something up for Lent” look like?
As I pondered this question, did my theological research, and looked more closely at today’s Gospel reading, I began to wonder if Jesus is not really asking us “to give things up” as much as he is inviting us “to give up” one thing in particular - our fear of death. You’ll notice in today’s gospel reading that Jesus gets really “animated” when Peter rebukes him for his passion prediction; his proclamation that he must suffer, be rejected, and be killed. Peter seems to have forgotten the last part of that prediction, “and after three days rise again.” Jesus immediately and sternly rebukes Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” And then he gathers his disciples and the crowd and lets them all know, in no uncertain terms that his mission, his calling to heal all the broken-ness of this world, will result in a deadly conflict with the principalities and powers of this world. Theologian Ira Brent Driggers writes, “(Jesus) commitment to the healing of humanity literally knows no limits. And neither—Easter tells us—does God’s life-giving power.” We are once again reminded both of the nature of the Kingdom of God, and the promise that death does not have the last word, and thus that death is not to be feared when living out the mission of the Kingdom.
So it is, that perhaps, what we are being asked to give up at Lent, is our fear of death. And to be certain, the evidence clearly reveals that we are afraid of death. Social scientists and theologians agree and point to our contemporary western culture’s impulsive need to spend millions of dollars every year on a variety of products and services that help us ignore our mortality. We avoid death by consuming: cosmetics, health gimmicks, beauty supplies, fashion, leisure, electronics, sex, entertainment, real estate, and sports cars just to name a few commodities.
Theologian Debi Thomas expands on the question, “What would (Jesus) say to a culture that glorifies violence but cheapens death? A culture that encourages rugged individualism and “freedom” at the expense of self-giving compassion and empathy? What would he say to my own frightened heart, that priorities self-protection over so much else that matters in this life? What if Jesus’s call is for us to stop clutching at this life so desperately? To step out of the vicious cycles of denial, acquisition, terror, and violence that seek to cheat death, but in fact rob us of the abundant life Jesus comes to give us?”
In the end it is our fear of death that steals life away from us. It is a lifestyle deeply rooted in that fear that consumes us. It is in trying to save and preserve our life, that life it lost. And it is in the letting go of that fear, acknowledging death, that abundant life is found here and now, as well as forever and ever. If the pandemic has taught us anything about life, I hope that we have all come to realize what is really important. It’s not the idolatrous “things” we consume and to which we desperately cling, in hopes that they will somehow give us life; it’s the people and our relationships with each other that really matters. It’s the love we share with each other, and the love that we dare to share with those in real need, that makes us truly alive. It’s the meaning and purpose of love that makes all the difference between truly living and just surviving.
So, as our Lenten journey continues, as we respond to Jesus’ invitation to follow him, let us find a way together to deny, “to give up,” - our fear of death. And in doing so find ourselves clinging solely to our baptismal identity as the beloved children of God, instead of in the things we vainly consume. And being set free from death, may we find ourselves inspired and emboldened to share in the suffering of others, to be present in their pain without the baggage of our own fear, to be fully present as Christ is fully present, with the gift of abundant life. For it is in the letting go of our fear of death that we will be set free to truly love and serve others, set free to walk and live in the way and presence of Jesus.
Beloved of God, be not afraid. We have been united in death with Christ, and we will be raised up to life in Christ; - today, tomorrow, and forever. Amen.