First Lutheran Church

November 20, 2022 + Christ the King Sunday Year C

Thankoffering Sunday

Luke 23:33-43When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.  Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing.  And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!"  The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!"  There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."  One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"  But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?  And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong."  Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."  He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

Sermon

“The King on a Cross”

Pastor Greg Ronning

Next Sunday we begin a new church year with the Season of Advent.  But before we can do that, we must properly conclude this current liturgical church year, and as always, we do this by celebrating “Christ the King Sunday.”  Traditionally on this day the church celebrates the Kingdom of God and its King, Jesus the Christ, seated on the throne at the right hand of God, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the sovereign ruler over all creation.  Christ the King Sunday, a grand and majestic conclusion to the liturgical church year!

However, the Royal metaphor, kings and kingdoms, just doesn’t carry the weight it carried hundreds of years ago. As Americans we severed our relationship with Kings and Queens some 250 years ago.  As a nation we don’t have a king or a queen and we don’t really know what it means to have a literal “royal family,” it’s not part of our experience. 

Yet, in some ways, the royal image is still popular, the “myth” is still with us in our culture.  We love watching “The Crown” on Netflix. We still imagine and dream about “Camelot.”  Just down the road at Disney there are all kinds of Kings, Queens, Princes, and Princesses running around to the delight of everyone.  And with the recent passing of England’s Queen Elizabeth, we were able to witness all the tradition, all the majesty, all the pomp and circumstance, that goes along with having royalty.  Kings and Queens are still all around us.

So it is that on Christ the King Sunday, even though it is not part of our daily experience, our democratic system of government; we can begin to imagine Jesus as our King.  And given what we know from England, and shaped as we are by Disney, we might expect the appointed biblical readings for this Sunday to reflect some of that pomp and circumstance, some of that majesty, some of the qualities of “the magic kingdom,” the awe of Windsor Castle, and the wonder of fairy tales; all that we might imagine.

For instance …

Something from the Book of Revelation would be nice, like this description of the throne in chapter four, “At once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne!  And the one seated there looks like jasper and carnelian (crystal), and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God, and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal. ”Glorious!

The ninth chapter of Isaiah is majestic and poetic, “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Great will be his authority, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. ”Majestic!

And perhaps the Transfiguration story from the Gospel of Matthew, “Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. …  suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  Vivid and Incredible!

But that’s not what we get on Christ the King Sunday. Not even close!  We don’t get an incredible story, a majestic story, a glorious story; - No, we get the crucifixion.  We get someone who has been stripped of his clothes and his dignity, someone who is mocked and tortured, someone struggling in pain, someone who is about to die.  We get someone condemned by the state, someone hanging on a cross between two common criminals, a dead man walking.  We don’t get the fanfare of England, we don’t get the magic of Disney, we don’t get a fairy tale ending, - we get the so called “folly” of the cross.

Theologian Debbi Thomas writes, “Can we pause for a moment and contemplate the paradox that is at the heart of our faith?  This is our king.  This is our king.” 

Yet it is this paradox that saves us!  Because when it comes down to it, we don’t need royalty, we don’t need a King or a Queen, we don’t need a sovereign proxy to intercede on our behalf, we don’t need someone who pities us from up on high; - we need someone who is very present in the midst of our life!  I am not going to be saved by a crown of jewels, I need the crown of thorns.  I am not going to be saved by someone who doesn’t know the struggles of life, I need someone who knows what it’s like to struggle, to be alone, even to die.  I am not going to be saved by a royal proclamation, I need a radical divine incarnation, intervention, that begins in the dust where I live, is present beside me, reaches out to me, and lifts me up.  We need a God who knows what it’s like, a God who has suffered, a God who has endured despite the pain.  We need a God who reigns from the cross, who reigns in humility, suffering, and weakness.  We need a God who reigns in such “descent .”As St. Paul proclaimed, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)

God’s people, the saints of old, have always found God present in such “folly,” in “descent, ”in the midst of life’s great struggles, in the midst of the human condition, in the midst of it all, in the heart of the cross. Mountain tops always seem to fade, but those who have been found by God, those who sense God’s strange peace and strong love in the midst of the hardest times, never forget that deep and strong presence.  Yes, God is present always, in our joys, in our everyday moments and places, but God is most profoundly present, encountered, and experienced when things are not going so well, even falling apart. So it is that God reigns from the cross.

Today’s “Christ the King” gospel reading comes to us unexpected and perhaps even unwanted.  We’d probably rather have the glory, the majesty, the pomp and circumstance, and the awe. Who wouldn’t, it’s the first impulse of our human nature.  Yet the promises that flow from the cross, the promises of love, grace, mercy, and hope; in the end are more wonderous and everlasting.

Listen to the promises found in today’s Gospel ….

 "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." A radical word of forgiveness for all of us still caught up in sin and brokenness, for all of us struggling to do the right thing, for all of us, a forgiveness, that is without condition, only a powerful word of love, a word of love that can truly set us free.

One of the criminals asks Jesus, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus replies, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."  How good it is that Jesus “remembers.”  Be assured that as you walk the road that is your life, a road that is full of ups and downs, a road that can be hard and long, a road the Jesus too has walked; -Jesus remembers you.  And in this re-membering you are gathered up, and re-membered into love, re-membered into relationship, re-membered into the Kingdom.

And of course, “Paradise.”  Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, holds all of life in his outstretched loving arms, and in those outstretched loving arms he will hold us in this life and in the next, now and forever. God has the last word, a word that conquers fear and death, a word that is life, a word for each of us, a word for all of us.

This morning God invites us to trust and believe in the paradox that is our faith; to trust and believe in Christ, who exchanged a golden crown for a cross made of wood.  Christ Jesus, who reigns from the cross, who reigns in humility, suffering, and weakness, who reigns deep among us in wonderous descent.  May we be blessed with the courage to do the same, to lay down, to enter into our own humility, suffering, and weakness, and in faith discover the God who awaits us with the fullness of abundant life.

Christ reigns from the cross.  Thanks be to God, Amen.

Sermon on Luke 21:5-19

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

There are some events that are so significant that they change our understanding of time:

There is a before, and there is an after.

Some are historical, like 9/11 or March 2020. There was before 9/11 and there was after. There was before COVID and since COVID (we still haven’t reached an after, exactly).

You can still tell which movies were made before 9/11 by their airport scenes or if they show the New York skyline.

It was weird in 2020 to watch tv shows that showed people hugging and not wearing masks.

There was a before and an after.

The same is true in our personal lives. Just as there are historical events, there are also personal events that change our understanding of time.

A death, an accident, or a diagnosis can be just as earth-shifting.

And again, there is a before and an after.

And for Jewish people in the first century, there was before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and there was after.

The Temple was the center of Jewish cultural and religious life. Its destruction in 70 CE must have felt like the end of the world.

In our story today, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple, and his followers are horrified that such a beautiful place would be destroyed.

And also, the writer of Luke wrote down this story after the destruction of the Temple.

It’s like someone in 2022 writing a story about an airport that takes place in 2000. There’s no way to write that story without thinking about 9/11, even though it hadn’t happened yet when the story took place.

Jesus was preparing his followers for the tragedy to come, and the writer of Luke was reassuring people who had lived through it that Jesus was still with them and God was on their side.

Jesus was talking to people in the before, and the writer of Luke was talking to people in the after—people who felt like the world was ending.

We know something of that, don’t we?

We are in our “after” for the outbreak of COVID.

We are in the “after” of the start of the war in Ukraine.

Election Day was earlier this week, and those tend to feel like “before” and “after” situations, too.

Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria are experiencing drought and food shortages.

There are protests in Iran and violent countermeasures by the government.

Puerto Rico was hit hard by a hurricane in September.

And those are just some of the historical events. We haven’t listed them all, and we haven’t even mentioned the personal heartbreaks in this community. We’ve had deaths and diagnoses and lost jobs and so many other “afters.”

Our world is hurting. So many of us are living in the “afters,” where it feels like the world is ending.

And still, the world continues. Time isn’t stopping, even when it seems like the world can’t hold any more pain.

Sometimes people blame disasters on God’s judgment on people’s “immoral” behavior. They declare God’s judgment like it’s theirs to dish out.

And if you read our passage in Malachi out of context, it can sound very “fire and brimstone.” It can sound like it supports the idea that God rains destruction on “wicked” people.

But the book of Malachiis more about God calling to account people in power who are abusing their positions.

That’s really different from: “they had an earthquake over there because their cultural practices are different from mine, which are obviously the right ones.”

Both the passage from Malachi and from Luke are apocalyptic. That sounds like a scary word, because our culture tends to use “apocalypse” to mean a big disaster or a very scary way the world ends.

But in the Bible, “apocalypse” means “unveiling” or “revealing.” So whenever there’s something that talks about an upcoming disaster or what it will be like at the end of time, it’s not meant to scare you. It’s not meant to be fire and brimstone and judgment. These passages are meant to reveal something, not tell a scary story or shame people into behaving.

So what are these passages revealing?

The passage from Malachi is reminding people who have become complacent and people in power who are abusing their power that the Reign of God will be fulfilled one day and that God’s justice will be complete. Yes, what is evil will be no more—there will be no more suffering or taking advantage of each other—and God will bring healing to the world. It’s a message of hope to remind people that God will make things right.

And in our Gospel passage, Jesus is saying that disasters and wars and all kinds of terrible things are going to happen, and they’re going to feel like the end of the world, but they’re not.

They might feel like God’s judgment, but they’re not.

They’re things that are going to happen, and people are going to assign all kinds of meaning to them, but they’re just part of what it means to be alive on our planet.

Sure, we should work for peace to put a stop to wars, and we should take care of our planet to minimize the impact of natural disasters, and we should take care of our neighbors when they’re victims of any kind of tragedy.

But, these events that Jesus talks about don’t mean it’s the literal end of the world or that God is inflicting punishment on us. Far from it.

What is being revealed here is that God is present with us in suffering and pain.

God is with us when it feels like the end of the world.

God weeps with us in tragedy and cries out when we experience anguish.

Jesus was preparing his followers for the destruction of the Temple, and the writer of Luke was reminding his audience that God was with them when it felt like the world was ending.

None of this is to minimize the tragedies in our lives and in our world. Things feel like the end of the world because in a way they do end the way the world was in the “before” time. There is no going back once there is an “after.”

But both Malachi and Jesus remind us that God is on our side, not waiting to punish us.

There have been and will continue to be a lot of things that feel like the end of the world, and God is with us in that.

And one day, the Reign of God will be fulfilled, God’s justice on the behalf of the least, the last, and the lost will be complete, and the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.

Until then, in all your befores and afters,

care for each other,

share your stories about how you see God moving in the world,

and remember that God is with you, no matter what.

First Lutheran Church

November 6, 2022 + All Saints Sunday

Luke 20:27-3827Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30then the second 31and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32Finally the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."

34Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."

Sermon

“Trusting in the Resurrection”

Pastor Greg Ronning

In what do you place your “absolute” trust?  When things get crazy, when things get uncertain, when things fall apart, when big decisions need to be made, when mortality must be faced, - what do you count on?  When push comes to shove, where do you place your “absolute” trust? This morning Jesus invites us to trust in the “resurrection,” to actually trust that “death” that leads to “life,” and even more specifically, that dying to Christ, that Christ on the cross, leads to this promised resurrection!

In this week’s Gospel reading the Sadducees ask Jesus a complicated question about the resurrection.  They tell a story about a woman who had seven husbands and they are wondering whose wife she will be in heaven. Well, it’s a trick question, the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection, and they are hoping to embarrass Jesus with this question. However, Jesus quickly responds with an answer, revealing that the Sadducees don’t understand the true nature of the resurrection from the dead.  Jesus replies, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”  Jesus proclaims that in the resurrection “all things will be new!”  In other words, it’s like comparing apples and oranges.  They will be different, totally different?

So, what does this mean for us?  And what does it have to do with trusting in the resurrection?

Today is All Saints Sunday, a day when we gather to celebrate the promise that we are surrounded by that great cloud of witness’ who have gone before us, and that one day we will be reunited with those dearly departed that we love.  In this week’s Gospel Jesus affirms these promises, - there is a resurrection!  However, he also warns us about, and more importantly sets us free from, undo speculation on the nature of that existence and those relationships.  He invites us into a simple promise, a promise that it will be very good, that it will be beyond our wildest imaginations.  All things will be new! “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’(Revelation 21:3-4)

Yes, there is a resurrection, and it will be good, very good!  However, I don’t think that’s where the gospel for this week ends!  There is a bigger question for us to consider, - what does the resurrection mean for us today? 

As followers of Christ, as the beloved children of God who have been united with Christ in death and raised up to life in the waters of baptism, as people of faith who do not belong to this age but to the kingdom that comes and is already present, what does it mean to belong to the resurrection - today?  What does it mean to trust in the resurrection - today?

The pattern of faith, faithful living, as taught to us by Christ, is a pattern of death and resurrection.

John 12:24-25“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

Luke 9:23 “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Mark 8:35“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

To trust and live in the resurrection today, is to embody these teachings of Christ!

And that’s kind of radical.  Jesus challenges us to trust “not in the things of this world” not in money, not in power, and not in the flesh. Instead, he challenges us, just as he challenges the Sadducees, to see beyond this world, and to see instead the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God present right here, right now! And then, to trust in that very real and very present Kingdom; the things of God, the values of the kingdom, the power of love.  Things like loving your neighbor, caring for the poor and the needy, giving instead of taking, sacrifice instead of domination, sharing instead of hoarding, surrendering what we have for the sake of others.  Values rooted in the principles of grace, mercy, forgiveness, hope, and peace.  To trust and live in the resurrection today is to embrace these things, these things that are very different than “the things of this world. ”The kingdom and this world are very different, like apples and oranges.

In between the lines of this week’s gospel Christ invites us to step away from the ways of the world, the way things are, even the clear black and white of the world’s perceived reality, and instead to lay down our life, and to trust that in such a death we will be raised up into the fullness of the resurrection, a life of meaning and purpose, the life of true love, an abundant life now and forevermore.

I would like to end today’s sermon with a song entitled, “Lay Me Down.”  It’s a prayer, a prayer that acknowledges both the truth about “death and resurrection” and just how hard it is to trust and live in that pattern of “death resurrection” on a daily basis.  It’s not easy to trust that in death there is life, that somehow the cross invites us into life, that in dying we are truly born again.  I invite you to pray with me as I sing the song.

“Lay Me Down”

Lay me down, Lift me up into the sky

Hold me close, Let me know that this is life

Gently kiss my teary eyes

It’s so hard,

To step into your broken heart and believe this is love

This is love

Lay me down, Lift me up into the sky

Hold me close, Let me know that this is life

Gently kiss my teary eyes

I am frightened

Standing on the edge but in control wanting to let go

Wanting to let go

Lay me down, Lift me up into the sky

Hold me close, Let me know that this is life

Gently kiss my teary eyes

Love that gives

Begins by taking everything away, I am gone

I am gone

Lay me down,

Hold me close,

Gently kiss my teary eyes

Now I lay me down

To sleep, will I die or will I wake, I don’t know

I don’t know

My eyes,

My tears,

My hopes,

My fears,

I surrender

Lay me down, Lift me up into the sky

Hold me close, Let me know that this is life

Gently kiss my teary eyes …