First Lutheran Church

May 1, 2022 

The Third Sunday in Easter

Acts 9:1-20  1Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

10Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” 11The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, 12and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” 13But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; 14and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” 15But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; 16I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” 17So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, 19and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, 20and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”

Sermon

“Seeing Is Not Always Believing”

Pastor Greg Ronning

“Seeing is believing,” right?  How often have you lived by that motto - when someone tells you something just too fantastic and outrageous?  A few months ago, the person who cuts my hair casually mentioned something about some kind of “bald spot” on the top of my head.  What? I quickly dismissed it as nonsense, outrageous!  About a week later I was watching the Livestream video of one of our worship services, and I saw myself from a different perspective, one I never get to see, from behind and above; I watched myself turn and face the altar, and there it was, in plain sight, - a bald spot!  When did that happen?  Sometimes you need to see it to believe it.  Empirical data! “Seeing is believing.”

But seeing is not always believing!  Sometimes our brains are fooled by illusions, sometimes we are mocked my magic, sometimes we only see - what we want to see, sometimes the truth remains hidden even when we think our eyes are wide open.  So it is that sometimes we need, “not to see,” in order to truly see and believe!  Sometimes, “There’s more than meets the eye.”

This is the story found in today’s appointed reading from the book of Acts, the story of the conversion of Saul, also known as the Apostle Paul.  It is the story of someone who in many ways lived by the motto, “seeing is believing;” until he was struck blind on the Road to Damascus, and in that experience, - came to believe.

Saul of Tarsus was born a Jew, and he describes his early life, (as found in his letter to the Philippians,) in terms of the things that he achieved, the things that can be seen, life viewed and life lived - from the outside - in. Saul was extremely “confident in the flesh.” He was rightly “circumcised on the eighth day,” he was a descendent of “the tribe of Benjamin.”  He was exemplary, “a Hebrew of Hebrews,” “a Pharisee,” educated by one of the best teachers of the Torah.  And he lived according to the law, and with great “zeal” and pleasure he persecuted the early church.  He concludes his early life biography with these not so humble words, “as to righteousness under the law” – I was “blameless.”  Saul was not insecure or timid, he was not filled with doubts, he was convinced of the truth, the things that he saw, the law lived and experienced from - the outside – in.

We first read about this confident and zealous Saul in the seventh chapter of the book of Acts.  He is present and “approves” of the execution, the stoning of Stephen, one of the first missionaries of the early church.  “Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.”  He then appears in chapter nine, today’s appointed reading, “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”  Saul was a man on a mission, a man of great conviction, a man with strong core beliefs, a man with a clear understanding of his calling in life.  Once again, Saul lived from the outside – in, seeing and believing according to the law written in stone.  No room for questions, no room for different interpretations, no room for something “more than meets the eye.”

And then something happened to him, on the road to Damascus, he has an encounter that will change his life dramatically and forever. A light from heaven flashed, a voice cried out, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And suddenly, “his eyes were open,” but “he could see nothing.”  And then, “for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.”

And in the middle of this “divine blindness,” he is unexpectedly visited by grace and mercy. In the dark, deprived of his sight, hungry and alone, the unknown, and somewhat reluctant healing hand of Ananias reaches out and touches him. The Holy Spirit descends, and “something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized.”  Seeing is not always believing, Saul comes to believe without seeing. 

Up to this point in his life, Saul lived life primarily, if not only, from the outside-in. He was a student of the law, he was raised by “the disciplinarian,” and he was all about following the rules. His obedience, his accomplishments, the way he measured up to others, - those were the things that defined him, - seeing was believing.  And accordingly, though he may not have showed it, deep down he must have lived in in great fear.  In fear of not measuring up, in fear of failure, in fear of making a mistake, and in fear of death - the ultimate punishment under the law.  Defined by the external law, Saul rose to power and demanded respect from others, but did he live in peace, was he free, did he know unconditional love?

On the Road to Damascus, it all comes crashing down on Saul.  His life comes to a standstill, a stand-off.  But Saul is not the only one traveling on that road!  We too can be found on that very same road, living life from the outside-in, deceived by illusions that claim to be the truth, trapped by the law in its various manifestations, anxiously wanting “to see” and then “believe.”  And we too, can be found living in fear, in fear of not measuring up.

Yes, we have been blessed by grace, but sometimes grace slips through our hands, because it is just so tempting to want to find our self-worth, our purpose, and our identity; - in our own good works, our own achievements, in rules carved in stone, in proving our own goodness, in demonstrating and substantiating empirically that we deserve to be loved, not because we are, but because of all that we have done.  Yes, we have been blessed by grace, but let’s be honest, it’s very easy to be tempted away.  Ego and pride are just not that interested in grace and mercy.  We’d rather be “saved” by our own merits.

This is the human condition, the struggle to trust grace and mercy over doing the good works of the law. To trust our identity as “beloved” in the humble proclamation of the cross, over and against trusting our identity in our own achievements, “circumcised on the eighth day,” “of the tribe of Benjamin,” “a Hebrew of Hebrews,” “blameless under the law.”  What do you trust in?  Baptized at First Lutheran, a third generation Lutheran from the Midwest, an American, a good citizen, …. It’s hard to trust solely in grace.  But thanks be to God we are not on that Road to Damascus alone, Christ awaits us.

On that road Paul was struck down by Christ, left blind, and in that encounter, he realizes everything he had done and accomplished was meaningless, everything he held to be dear and true was worthless, living under the law proved to be empty.  Is that what await us on this road we sometimes travel?  Is that the good news this morning?  Christ is waiting for us on the road to strike us down?

Hey if that’s what it takes, - that’s what it takes!  But perhaps there is another way to encounter Christ, perhaps this morning we are invited to put life on pause for a bit, to close our eyes and to honestly reflect on our life.  And in doing so encounter grace and mercy anew, opening up our eyes to a new way of believing, a faithful way of believing.  Perhaps we are being invited to let go of religious legalism, to set ourselves free from all our vain attempts to live from the outside-in; and to discover ourselves once again from the inside out, to be reminded that we are the beloved of God simply because God loves us – and for no other reason!

It's true, seeing is not always believing.  Hebrews 11:1 reminds us, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  

Saul came to believe in Jesus, by letting go the things he could see written on stone, and trusting in things he could not see, things written on the heart, things like grace, mercy, and love.  And soon after his experience, he began using his Greek name Paul.  Things had changed.  Saul means “to ask or pray for,” Saul was the name of the first King of Israel, the king that the people had “asked for,” “prayed for;” Paul means “small and humble.”  A different name for a different way of life.  Paul would become a servant, boldly proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus, - that we are justified not by works but solely by the love and the grace of God.

May we all be set free by the truth of this Gospel, may we be reminded to live from the inside-out, trusting in the new covenant written by Christ on our hearts, trusting that which we know deep down with our eyes closed, trusting and believing that we are nothing less than the beloved of God.  Set free by love, to love God, to love ourselves, and to love our neighbor.  Amen.

Sermon on Luke 24:1-12

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

These women followers of Jesus woke early on the first day of the week to finish the previous week’s grisly business. They were taking spices and ointments to care for and honor Jesus’ body. It was what you did when someone you love died, just as we call funeral parlors, florists, and pastors. It was what was expected.

But many expectations were shattered that day.

They expected to go to the tomb with their spices and prepare Jesus’ body for its final resting place.

I’m not sure how they had planned to move the stone, but they didn’t expect it to already be rolled away from the tomb.

They didn’t expect that Jesus’ body would be gone.

They didn’t expect divine messengers to suddenly appear.

Then, the divine messengers tell them that their expectations are all wrong:

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

The women (understandably) expected to find Jesus where the dead are buried.

Where do you expect to find Jesus?

Up in the sky?

I caught myself the other day when we were working on learning the song “Jesus Loves Me” with hand motions in Messy Church. We got to the line “Little ones to him belong,” and I found myself pointing up on the word “him.”

There is a common understanding of Jesus and God being up—up in the sky, up in heaven, looking down on the Earth. There are plenty of places in the Bible that talk about God being in the heavens or Jesus ascending to heaven.

But is that the only or even the primary place to find Jesus?

If we only think of God and Jesus being “up,” then it’s harder to remember that Jesus is all around us and that God isn’t far away, looking on in judgment and unconcerned with our individual joys and challenges.

Jesus defies our expectations that we can primarily find him “up there.”

Or do we expect to find Jesus primarily in history?

We spend a lot of our time together reading from the Gospels—the biblical stories of Jesus’ life on Earth in the first century. That’s a good thing—so much of what we know about Jesus is because of those stories about what he did, who he spent time with, what he said “back then.” That’s why the Incarnation—when God became human in Jesus—is important. So much of what we know about God is because of what we know about Jesus during those thirty-something years he spent as a human walking around among us.

But sometimes our expectations are that we can primarily find Jesus “back then.” That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for Jesus to be part of our lives now, except perhaps as a good example for us to follow.

Some of us may say explicitly that we believe Jesus was a good teacher, a good moral example, who lived in the first century and died and is no longer part of our lives except through memory and story.

Others of us may not say that explicitly, but we sometimes say it with our lives. We sometimes act like following Jesus is a to-do list. There’s nothing wrong with asking “what would Jesus do?,” unless it causes us to forget God’s grace. Jesus’s life and death and resurrection mean that we don’t earn a relationship with God—we are embraced into God’s family as we are. It’s that knowledge, not our own strivings to be carbon-copy Jesuses, that will make our lives shine with God’s love.

Maybe we expect to find Jesus particularly in “holy” places?

It can be easy sometimes to feel Jesus’ presence in a sanctuary like this or a grand cathedral or a peaceful chapel.

It can be easy also to feel Jesus’ presence when looking over the ocean or a mountain view or when listening to worshipful music.

Moments like those are beautiful and to be treasured.

But we can sometimes forget that Jesus is present in the person sleeping on our church steps and in the difficult coworker andin the tiny apartment where a mother is trying to stretch one packet of ramen to feed her family.

Jesus is present in the stubborn dandelion pushing itself out of a crack in the sidewalk, and Jesus is there when your neighbor blasts that music you just can’t stand, and Jesus is with every suffering person in Ukraine.

Jesus is present in spaces that are easily labeled “holy,” and also, Jesus’ presence makes every space holy.

Perhaps our expectations that Jesus is “up there” or “back then” or only in “holy” spaces are ready to be shattered.

The messengers from God asked the women why they were looking for the living among the dead.

They turned the women’s expectations upside down by letting them know that Jesus was among the living.

We, too, can find Jesus where we don’t expect him.

We can find him here on earth—not just far away in the clouds. We can find him in our daily lives, concerned with our own particular selves.

We can find him in the present—not just two thousand years ago. We can accept his embrace and know that we are loved just as we are, without having to strive to measure up to his example.

We can find him everywhere—not just in certain set apart, clean enough, fitting enough places. We can find him present in our messiness, pettiness, and pain.

Let’s stop looking for the living among the dead.

Let’s stop looking for Jesus only in heaven and in the past and in “holy-enough” places.

He’s all around us. Where will you see Jesus this week?

After all, Christ is risen!

First Lutheran Church

April 3, 2022 – The Fifth Sunday in Lent C

John 12:1-8 - Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Sermon

Pastor Greg Ronning

This past Saturday afternoon I was resting in my hotel room, preparing to officiate at a wedding.  I was in New Orleans, and the night before at the rehearsal dinner we enjoyed plenty of drink and a wonderful four-course meal.  By wonderful I meant, that I was still full 20 hours later, and another meal awaited me, in just a few hours, a wedding feast that would be extravagant, a five-course meal.  As I rested, I picked up my phone, and decide to watch some news. The news was horrible, I watched as the people of Ukraine were being destroyed by Russian bombs dropping from the sky.

It has always been this way.  Someone has always toasted with a wine glass in one part of the world, at the same time someone else has lost everything in another part of the world.  Even in the same city, someone falls in love, while somebody else grieves the loss of a loved one.  “The fact that suffering, the ordinary, and beauty coincide’ is both unbearable and remarkable.”

In today’s appointed Gospel, Mary of Bethany, breaks open a jar of pure nard, a very expensive ointment worth three hundred denarii, the wages a day laborer might hope to make in an entire year; and she lavishly anoints Jesus’ feet.  Judas is outraged, “We could have sold that and given the money to the poor!”  The author of John suggests that Judas’ outrage is not motivated by concern for the poor but his own greed, but still - Judas’ criticism gives me pause.  Shouldn’t we be thinking about the poor?  Shouldn’t we be sensible about our resources?  Shouldn’t we be restrained in our personal choices?  Is that not what disciples of Jesus do?

Jesus’ responds to Judas’ concern, and his response is frankly a little confusing, even troubling, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”Is Jesus saying that the poor don’t matter, that we should accept poverty as something that can’t be changed?

Today’s Gospel, today’s world, a life filled with weddings and a life filled with war, leaves me with difficult questions regarding poverty, piety,and stewardship.What am I to do with my life as a follower of Jesus?  How do I exist in this world of celebration and misery, this world of art and bombs, this world of beauty and horror?  Once again, “The fact that suffering, the ordinary, and beauty‘coincide’ is both unbearable and remarkable.”

John August Swanson is one of my favorite contemporary artists. In particular I love his paintings of biblical stories.  (Ex. The Good Samaritan)Swanson was born in Los Angeles in 1931, his parents were humble Mexican and Swedish Immigrants, an unlikely pair escaping violence and poverty in their native countries and trying to survive through the Great Depression and its aftermath.   Growing up Swanson experienced poverty, and as a person of faith he struggled with the many and complex issues of poverty.  As a young adult he was active in the social justice programs of his church serving his neighbors and his community. And that experience led him to go to college to become a community organizer, - that seemed to be his calling.  Yet in college he became an artist!  In his studies of both the social sciences and the arts, he realized that through the visual arts he could awaken the holy imagination of people and inspire them to build a better world.  He combined social justice with the power of art.

Professor Gonzalez-Andrieu of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles writes, “If you want justice, work for beauty. Justice is the work of making all things beautiful for all of us, restoring beauty to everything that is neither good nor true.” “Art as a Gospel of Beauty points us back to the One source of all that is beautiful.”

In today’s Gospel Jesus invites us into a moment of beauty.  Into a moment of the senses, not common sense, but the senses that make us alive, the senses that inspire our faith, the senses that remind us that we are loved.  There is fragrance, there is touch, there is something to see.  In Mark’s version of this story Jesus responds to Judas, “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.”  And then Jesus points to the importance of this event, “Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

So, what’s the message for today? 

I think it’s one of balance, the call to live a balanced life that inspires us to love our neighbors, especially our neighbors in need.  Art and beauty are gifts from God that activate our holy imaginations, that give us a glimpse of the divine, a vision of shalom – peace for all of creation.  We sing, we create, we feast, we celebrate love, we enjoy life; not at the expense of the poor, but to empower us to serve those in need, to restore the fullness of life where it has been taken away.  This demands a careful balance.  Art and Beauty in their purest forms are not to be self-indulgent but point us back to “the One that is the source of all that is beautiful,” and call us to the work of justice –“making all things beautiful ‘for all’ of us.”

Jesus’ declaration that, “You always have the poor with you,” was not a call to accept the condition of poverty as permanent in our world, not an excuse allowing us to selfishly enjoy life in the midst of suffering.  Jesus was most likely was referring to Deuteronomy 15:11,“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded.” Beauty and justice are to be connected, beauty and justice are meant to open up our hands! To whom much is given, much is expected.”

What is it that empowers us to be openhanded?  What is it that inspires us to be generous?  What is it that causes our faith to be put into action serving others?   What is it that causes us to give from our bounty to those suffering in faraway places?

Perhaps it was a moment of beauty?  Perhaps it was a celebration of love?  Perhaps it was a work of art?  Perhaps it was a song that seeped into our heart?  Perhaps it was that moment when you were in need, when you needed comfort, when you needed help, that moment when someone who loved you treated you lavishly, extravagantly, and plentifully.  Mary lavishly anoints Jesus to prepare him for the cross.  On the cross Jesus opened up his hands offering grace and mercy and love.

Let us all take in the beauty of this world, the beauty of God’s creative presence, let us open up our senses and enjoy. And may that beauty, that joy, the beauty and the joy of the one that creates, sustains, and empowers; open our hands generously to those in need.  Amen