November 26, 2017
25^th Sunday after Pentecost – Christ the King
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, IA   52101
Rev. Amy Zalk-Larson
Preacher: Rev. Marion Pruitt-Jefferson

First Reading: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 95:1-7a; Second Reading: Ephesians 1:15-23; Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46

Beloved of God, Grace and peace to you from Jesus, our Good Shepherd.

Well here we are again this morning with yet another parable of judgment. These are such difficult stories to listen to. The judgement is so harsh and the punishment is so severe. Yet the experience of having been judged and found wanting feels familiar to us.

It starts in early childhood, when we begin to assert our independence and learn the meaning of the word “No.” It expands rapidly when we enter school and notice that our friend got a gold star on her paper and we only got a check mark. We are put in groups for math and reading, and even though our groups have cute little names that don’t appear to be hierarchical, we quickly discern that the goldfish are in fact better than the tetras.

We learn very early about the separation for the sheep from the goats.

The judgment and competition increase as we get older. We go out for the team – we are assigned chairs in band and orchestra – we try out for the play – audition for the choir – take the ACT and the SAT and we wonder if our performance is good enough, if our scores are good enough – if we are good enough….

As we grow into adulthood the competition becomes stiffer and the judgments more consequential. We’re set loose in the consumer driven marketplace, and quickly discover just how stiff and harsh the separation of the sheep from the goats can be. We apply for a job and receive a letter from personnel thanking us for our interest but indicating that our qualifications don’t meet their needs at this time. We seek advancement in our place of work and we’re overlooked. We work for years at one company and then are told our position has been eliminated and the company is moving to Mexico.

Even our entertainment is laden with judgment and competition. Reality TV shows are designed to weed out the weak from the strong – to separate the stunningly beautiful from the merely attractive, to set the sharp and the shrewd against the slower and less cunning. If you don’t measure up your voted off the show, eliminated from the cast. And somehow this feels entertaining to us?

And if all of these cultural voices of judgment weren’t enough – many of us do battle daily with our inner critic – that voice in our heads that is continually evaluating everything about us and that refuses to ever be satisfied with who we are.

And then we come to worship – believing as we’ve been told our whole life that this is a place of welcome, a place of unconditional love and forgiveness, a place of belonging. And then we are confronted with this stark and powerful story of judgment. The sheep are separated from the goats. The sheep are blessed and inherit the kingdom. The goats are condemned and sent off to eternal punishment.

It is a deeply disturbing story. And when we hear it, it’s only natural for us to wonder, am I a sheep or am I a goat? Or maybe, at least in my case, when I hear the king recite those 6 acts of compassion and mercy: I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was naked and you clothed me, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me, I know I don’t belong among the sheep. I know that I have not given freely of my resources or even my own hears in service to those who live on the margins of society. And yet I do believe the good news that I shared with the children a moment ago, that we are indeed God’s beloved sheep and that we belong to God’s flock. Maybe you share a similar response to this story. So what are we to do?

Well, if we persist in focusing our attention on the sheep and the goats and their respective fates, we will experience only guilt and fear and despair. But the surprise for us here is that the sheep and the goats are not the main characters in this story. The King who is the great Shepherd of the Sheep is the central character of this story, and because of that there is HOPE for us.

This story of the final judgment is the very last parable that Jesus’ tells in Matthew’s gospel. What follows immediately after this is Jesus passion – his suffering, death and resurrection. Jesus who began his life as a refugee fleeing from the hatred of King Herod, now ends his life as a condemned criminal. Jesus who spent his entire life healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, eating with outcasts and sinners, now dies as one of them, rejected and cast out. And because of that we can live in hope.

The first words of this parable are “when the Son of Man comes in glory.” Immediately after this parable concludes, Jesus turns towards Jerusalem, and his next words to his disciples are “the Son of Man will behanded over to be crucified.” You see the “glory of the Son of Man” is not a mighty throne from which people are condemned. The “glory of the Son of Man” is the Cross. There the One who comes to judge the nations is himself judged. There we see that the Son of Man is in fact the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He is the One foretold by the prophet Ezekiel who announces: I myself will shepherd my sheep…I will gather them in from all the places they’ve wandered, I will feed them on good pasture, I will bind up their wounds and strengthens their weakness, and I will make them to lie down in peace and safety.

Beloved, the judgment has been rendered, and by the grace and mercy of God, we have been found to be the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of God’s hand. Our Good Shepherd has drawn us to himself, and here at this table he feeds us with his own life – on the good pasture of forgiveness, mercy and love. Filled with our Shepherd’s love, we are set free to bear that love to all the suffering world.

November 19, 2017
24^th Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, IA
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Anyone look at the world these days and feel a little outraged? When we hear about mass shootings, sexual harassment, child abuse, white supremacists marching in the streets, we can get pretty angry at the world. I also weary of all the outrage around and within me. It doesn’t really help matters and often makes things worse.

Given that background, it can be hard to know what to make of the outrage we hear from God today in the reading from the prophet Zephaniah. God says, “I will bring such distress upon people that they shall walk like the blind; because they have sinned against the Lord, their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung.”

We also hear that we have a God who isn’t pleased with our complacency, who says, “I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.’”

All that makes your friend’s angry Facebook posts sound like Mr. Rogers in comparison.

I should probably make it very clear that I did not choose these readings for this Stewardship Sunday. This Sunday, like every Sunday, we’re using the assigned readings for the day from the larger church’s common set of readings called the lectionary.

The lectionary helps keep preachers and congregations honest- we don’t get to just pick the readings we like, the ones that make us feel good, the ones that reinforce what we already think. The lectionary helps ensure that the readings don’t sound like a warm, fuzzy Hallmark card. I think that goal was achieved today! Both in the first reading, and in the Gospel. where we were here, again, about someone being sent in outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This picture of God frightens many of us. Sometimes it turns us away from God – we think, “no thanks, not going there, not touching that with a ten-foot pole.”

Both of those things seem to be going on for the third worker in the parable from Matthew today, the guy who buries the money entrusted to him. He tells the Master, I knew you were harsh and angry so that’s why I just buried the treasure you gave me. He seems afraid, he seems to just not want to deal with the Master. I get that. There are times I want to avoid the angry parts of God- this week I was tempted to cut part of the assigned Zephaniah reading so we didn’t have to deal with it and, true confession here, I actually added in the last 3 verses that sound nicer. There are times I wish we just had a Hallmark God who made me feel warm and fuzzy all the time. Except then I look at the state of the world and I realize warm and fuzzy isn’t going to cut, isn’t even going to come close to addressing all the issues we’ve got going on- all our selfishness and greed and complacency and hatred. We need justice and righteousness and God’s shalom- God’s true wellbeing for all people. Warm, fuzzy, sentimental, niceness doesn’t bring real hope.

What does bring me hope is that God passionately engages our world working for justice and righteousness. God isn’t like us who get outraged but often stop there. God’s anger is a refining fire of justice and righteousness. And God is always actively bringing in justice and wellbeing.

Sometimes that means that God calls us out and convicts us when we are lazy, complacent or complicit in injustice. It also means that God gives us what we need to share in God’s work and to experience joy and hope. God gives to us abundantly.

God is like the Master in the gospel parable today who entrusts his workers with all his property-all that he owns. Each worker gets a major gift- one talent was equivalent to fifteen years of wages. They don’t all get the same amount but they all have major resources available to them.

In the same way, God entrusts us with resources, with abundant gifts, and God expects us to use them, to multiply them, to do God’s work with them by increasing justice, righteousness, shalom.

But one of the workers in the parable chooses not to do anything with what he’s been given. Rather than gratefully receiving his gift and getting to work, he hides what the Master gives him. Rather than getting out there and putting the Master’s resources to work, he focuses on his concerns about the Master’s temperament and the situation.

Perhaps he gets fixated on why he only got one talent rather than five and gets hung up in comparing himself to the others, in feeling sorry for himself. Maybe he thinks he doesn’t have enough for himself or enough to make a difference and gets hung up in feeling inadequate. Maybe he feels put upon by being asked to do something more when he feels like he’s already done enough. Maybe he gets paralyzed by the fear of not measuring up to the Master’s expectations, or maybe he just doesn’t want to deal with a Master who can get passionate.

I get that, I’ve so been to all those places-sometimes I go to each of them many times a day.

But when I go to any of those places of fear, jealousy, inadequacy, avoidance-I miss out on the joy of the Master and on the chance to participate with the Master in making the world more just, more well. I find myself stuck in darkness, weeping, gnashing my teeth, outraged and despairing about the state of the world and my own heart. What little hope I did have is taken away.

But God does not leave me there. God doesn’t leave us stuck in these places, God does not leave us buried. Our passionate God continues to call us out- to convict us and call us out from all the things that trap us, all the ways we hide. And God continues pour out the resources of faith, hope, love, joy and forgiveness into our hearts.

Day after day, week after week in worship, God calls us out and God pours out abundance upon us. And day after day, God asks us to use what we’ve been given to participate in God’s work in the world.

As we do, we enter into the joy of our Master, again and again.

Thanks be to God.