Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
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.

Before we look at Jesus’ response to a trick question about divorce practices in the ancient world, I want to consider the story from Genesis 2 that we heard earlier. It’s such a beautiful story that has so often been misinterpreted. Exploring this story can help us to rejoice in all healthy relationships and to support those experiencing pain from relationships.

The story begins with God saying, “It is not good.” That’s a striking phrase, especially after Genesis 1. All throughout Genesis 1, in beautiful poetry, God speaks creation into being, looks at it all, and repeatedly declares, “It is good.” And after God has created human beings in the image of God, God looks at everything and says, “It is very good.”

Yet right after that, the creation story in Genesis 2 begins with God saying, “It is not good.” God says, “It is not good for this human I’ve created to be alone.” Often, we hear this phrase translated as,“It is not good for man to be alone.” That’s led to all sorts of gender stereotypes of men as bum- bling idiots, incapable of dealing with life without good women by their sides. But the Hebrew word used here isn’t the gender specific word for man. Instead, it is the word ‘Adam’ which comes from the Hebrew word ‘Adamah’, for ground or earth. This word has the sense not of a man but of the being formed from the earth. A better translation is earthling or human.

God isn’t saying, wow if I don’t help this guy out by giving him a little wife, things are going to go downhill fast. No, God is saying it isn’t good for humans to be alone. We are all created for relation- ships. So, God creates a second human to be a helper and partner to the ‘Adam’. Once this other human is created, then the two humans are named – in the Hebrew as man ish and the other as woman ishah. The names show the interconnectedness of these beings; they are cut from the same cloth, one and the same. That is, men are not from Mars and women from Venus. Our genders shouldn’t define us or separate us. We are all earthlings, formed from the earth and interconnected. We are all made in the image of God. And it is good for us to be in relationships as helpers and partners to one another.

The story continues with a beautiful example of one kind of relationship: a man and a woman marrying, holding on to each other, and forming a new family. Yet this is not the only way of being in relationship that is celebrated in scripture. We see examples of friends, parents, children, in- laws, congregation members being helpers and partners. Also, the type of martial relationship de- scribed in Genesis 2 isn’t good in and of itself. Any relationship that does not honor the image of God in the other, any relationship that abuses, diminishes, or excludes others is not good. The wit- ness of scripture is that God rejoices to see health, well-being, and dignity in any human relation- ship. When God sees these qualities, I believe God still smiles at what God has made and says, “It is good.”

When I picture relationships of health, well-being, and dignity, I picture my friends Johanna and Joanne and their group of five LGBTQ couples. I got to witness Johanna and Joanne’s love from an early age because they moved next door to my family when I was three. They welcomed us into their lives and into their group of friends. We shared meals, birthdays, and holidays together. This group of people had a beautiful community. They honored each other’s partnerships and support- ed each other like family. If anyone needed help, there was always someone available. The partnerships among these couples have withstood the test of time. It is good to behold this love.

It is also good to behold a father helping his child in worship here at Good Shepherd; to behold friends working on Altar Guild or putting together school kits; to see people of different genera- tions connecting at coffee hour. It is good. God rejoices in all these kinds of healthy relationships.

The witness of scripture is also that when God sees pain, loneliness, abuse, and oppression, God still says, “it is not good.” I think this is what Jesus is naming when he answers the question about the legality of divorce. Jesus chooses not to get into a debate about the law. Instead, he points to the underlying reason the law is given – to protect vulnerable women and children. In Jesus’ day, men could move from one wife to the next with no consequence to the man and extreme consequences for the woman. These are the kinds of things that God sees and says, “This is not good.”

Later in talking with his disciples, Jesus also names the painful reality that divorce does have negative effects for both spouses. The pain of divorce impacts the partners, their children, their families, and future marriages. God sees this pain and knows that it is not good for people to ex- perience and cause this pain to one another.

But God doesn’t just see the pain and brokenness. God also works to make things better. The wit- ness of scripture is that when God sees that things are not good, God works to do something about them. In Genesis 2, when he sees that it is not good for the human to be alone, God creates another human as a helper partner. When our relationships are not good, God sees the pain and does something to make things better.

Sometimes this looks like divorce and a new marriage. In this congregation, there are so many examples of people who have been able to leave unhealthy relationships and have remarried into healthy, happy, relationships of well-being and dignity. These are beautiful to behold. They are the kinds of relationships God smiles upon and rejoices in. It is good.

God also works to make things better through a wide range of relationships, not just remarriage. God works to bring us into relationships of health and dignity in congregations, in families, in community. God has created us for relationships. When our relationships are healthy, God rejoices. When they are broken, painful, or ended, God knows this is not good for us. And God works to make things better.

Most of all, God comes to us in Christ Jesus who is present today in his body and blood and the body of Christ. Jesus comes to be in relationship with us, to draw us into a life-giving relationship with God. In this relationship, we experience God’s loving gaze. We hear God’s desire for us to be in healthy relationships. We are given the healing, mercy, love, and forgiveness so that we can extend  all that to one another.

And it is good.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
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.

Our Gospel reading today is so harsh, even grotesque. I appreciate the words of author Barbara Brown Taylor who writes, “The one thing I like about this text is that it defines the limits of Biblical literalism. Walk into the most Bible-believing church you can find – where the women do not wear trousers or speak in church, where the men do not swear oaths or mow their lawns on Sunday – go into a place as strict as that and I bet you won’t find many people with eye patches and wrapped stumps, because even the most literal Christians balk at this passage.”^[1]

Sharing that quote feels like a bit of comic relief with this hard text. Yet I’m also struck by how easily I poke fun at Christians who believe differently than I do. I’m as bad as the disciples at the beginning of our passage today. Even if this passage isn’t to be taken literally, it is one we should take seriously.  When we are tempted to fixate on what everyone else is doing wrong, Jesus calls us to take a good, long look at ourselves.

As I’ve been trying to do that this week; in praying with this text, I found this reflection by Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes to be helpful. He writes:

“The hand that causes you to stumble is not at the end of your arm. It’s deeper than that. What is the hand in you that reaches for what is not yours? Cut it off. There is nothing you need to grasp.

“What is the eye in you that does not look with love? Pluck it out. The eyes of love are good enough.

“What are the feet in you that won’t trust, that lead you away from the path of love? Cut them off. You don’t need to go there.

“Does it sound harsh? Don’t worry, they’re not part of the real you. Besides, they’ll grow back.

“The Teacher is not asking you to maim yourself. He is inviting you to name what interferes, and to take away its power. He’s leading us out of the unquenchable fire of our fears, desires, and attachments.“Without our grasping, fearful, compulsive parts, perhaps then we will rely more on the eyes and hands and feet of Jesus.

“This pruning is how we become whole.” 

These words express what I hope will happen for us as a congregation through the racial justice work we’re doing together.

We need to name the ways racism and white supremacy impact this congregation.

We need to be led out of the hell on earth that we perpetuate and experience in a world so impacted by racism.

We need to be pruned.

We need Jesus to free us and guide us.

Pastor Garnaas-Holmes’ words help us to see that our problems are deeper than our physical bodies. Yet, especially when it comes to racism, it’s also important to pay attention to our actual bodies because our bodies internalize all the trauma and all the history that gets wrapped up into the word race.

I’m learning about this from Minneapolis based trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem. I’ve listened to his On Being interview with Krista Tippet three times and I’m now listening to his book My Grandmother’s Hands. He has such wisdom about how bodies are impacted by racism. Menakem has learned that our bodies carry racialized messages even when we don’t intentionally choose them. He’s found that, “The white body feels that it is fragile and vulnerable … it sees Black bodies as dangerous and needing to be controlled; yet, also, as potential sources of service and comfort.”

And ,“The Black body sees the white body as privileged, controlling, and dangerous.”^[2]

These messages shape us on visceral, unconscious levels. These messages lead white bodies to, for instance, clutch bags tighter when on an elevator with a Black body or cross to the other side of the street when a Black body is approaching. They lead white teachers to notice Black kids acting out much more often than white kids doing the same things.

This means that racism shapes how we use our hands, feet, and eyes – the very body parts Jesus asks us to tend to in our Gospel reading today. And this means we can’t just tackle racism by look- ing at concepts and ideas. We can’t think our way out of this problem. We need to engage it at a deeper level.

So today we aren’t going to have an intellectual discussion about the draft racial justice statement.

We’ll do that too, but today we’re going to share in practices that help us tune into our bodies, spirits, and emotions. Last week we laid the groundwork for this and we’re going to build on that today. It’s also why the written statement is just one step in our racial justice work. We are also going to look at the embodied practices, patterns and policies in congregational life that need healing.

The practices we’ll use today are helpful when facing any of the things within us that need to be pruned – all our grasping, fearful, compulsive parts.

We’ll share in some silence and take some deep breaths together.

We’ll practice relying on God by opening with prayer, and by asking ourselves, “Where is God in this?”

We’ll listen and pay attention to how we feel and what we notice within – within our spirits, our bodies, our emotions.

We’ll welcome discomfort trusting that we are held in God and that God can use discomfort to prune and form us.

If you can’t stay for the session today, I invite you to follow these same practices when you read the draft statement later. There will also be questions to help you engage your body, spirit, and emotions as you read.

Our bodies have been so impacted by racism. Yet our bodies, all bodies, are loved and redeemed by God. And God, through Christ Jesus, is present in physical ways to heal us. Jesus came among us to heal with his hands, to walk the way of the cross and to look upon us with love. He gave his hands, feet, and eyes to heal and reconcile us.

By the power of the Spirit, Christ Jesus is still present with us now.

Christ is present in his body on earth, the church.

Christ is present in water and the word to give us new life.

Your body is loved and redeemed by God. You can enter racial justice work trusting you are held in God and that God is with you to bring healing.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

^[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels (Cowley Publications, 1997), 118.

^[2] Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies.    (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017), 36.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
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.

The disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying but they were afraid to ask. And then they started to argue about who was the greatest. Those may seem like two random, unconnected events. Yet I wonder if there isn’t some correlation there. When we feel uncertain, confused, and anxious, it’s hard on our egos. It’s tempting, then, to try to save face, build ourselves up, and tear others down. It’s easy to get a bit argumentative.

This may have happened to me once, or twice, or more when trying to cook with my husband during most of our marriage. I didn’t grow up around a lot of cooking. My dad didn’t cook. My mom did sometimes, but she tended to view meals as nutritional opportunities. Taste was fairly low on her priority list.

Good food is a huge part of my husband’s family, and he loves to make it. His mom’s a great cook and he’s learned from her. He’s also just figured a lot of stuff out by trial and error and exploring. He makes it look effortless. I like to bake but dealing with all the prep, timing, and chopping involved in Larson style cooking felt intimidating. I’m also not great at remembering how to do things in the physical world, but didn’t want to ask again. Instead, I’d often get a little feisty and critical to deflect attention for my shortcomings. Or, I’d just check out and go pay bills instead.

Thankfully, Matt is committed to practicing patience and graciousness and mostly succeeds at it with me. And, during the pandemic I decided I wanted to cook more. As I practiced, I gained confidence, experience, and comfort with it all. I can now relax and enjoy time in the kitchen. I can ask Matt questions and sometimes even remember the answer. It took both grace and practice to help me really start cooking with fire.

We need grace and practice in so many areas of our lives, certainly when it comes to following the way of Jesus. His way of love and mercy and justice can seem really appealing. Yet there’s also so much about Jesus and his church that is challenging, countercultural and unsettling. It’s easy to get feisty and irritated or just check out altogether.

Thankfully, Jesus offers us both grace and practice. Jesus always starts with grace – choosing us even though we are just as clueless as his first disciples, calling us into abundant life with God though we’ve done nothing to deserve it. And Jesus leads us into a life of practice together. As Jesus’ followers we are always on the way. That’s a phrase we heard twice in the Gospel today in reference to the disciples – they were on the way. We are too.

In this life, we never arrive at some perfect point, our practice doesn’t make perfect. Instead, as Christ’s church we journey together on the way. In worship and community life, we learn the practices of faith including those described in our readings today. We practice serving and welcoming people on the margins of society. We practice yielding, making peace, and living with gentleness.

We practice asking hard questions, rather than arguing, when we don’t understand. These are difficult things.

We can’t do them on our own or just by trying harder.
We need practice. We need community.
We need forgiveness and grace when we fail because we will.
We need help to start again.
We are given all of this in Christ’s church as we are together, on the way.

This combination of grace and practice is why the church is a good place to have difficult conversations about racial justice as we will today. We begin with God’s grace, grace that frees us to con- fess our sin rather than trying to deflect it. When we feel anxious and unsettled about racial issues,

It’s easy to get argumentative and defensive. Or, we worry about making mistakes and so we check out.

Grace allows us to confess that we sin and fall short of the glory of God. It allows us to confess that by what we have done and left undone, we have perpetuated systems of racial injustice and violence. Grace also assures us that God works in and through our broken humanity so that we might be sustained to learn from our mistakes and continue to show up for the work of antiracism.

God’s grace and forgiveness makes new life and reconciliation possible. Grounded in this grace, we share in practices of faith.

We practice listening deeply to others whose experiences are different from our own.
We practice being uncomfortable.
We practice asking hard questions and acting with courage.
We practice yielding and letting go of privilege and power.
We practice living in the way of Jesus.

This is an ongoing work. We will never arrive at some point in which we are free from sin and racism. We’ll always be on the way, always needing to keep practicing. When we fail, as we will, we turn again to God’s grace.

Beloved of God, we have what we need on the way to practice antiracism together. We have what we need to get cooking with fire. I’m grateful to be in the kitchen and on the way with you.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
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.

It’s not about you.

There are some big topics covered in our readings this week. The takeaway I have from it all is the simple phrase – it’s not about you. And that’s good news for each of us.

There’s so much emphasis on the self in our culture: self-improvement, self-expression, self-care, self-esteem, selfies. All of these can be good things, but they can also become exhausting. How do you look in that selfie? Are you doing enough to care for yourself? You could try this diet, this life- style change, these ten simple steps. Are you living well and making a difference? Maybe, but when you look at your social media feed, maybe not. Does your life have meaning and purpose? Will your obituary show that you’ve lived a full life? All the focus on self can make us anxious, competitive, unsatisfied, prone to judging and gossiping about others.

In an opinion piece entitled “It’s Not About You”, columnist David Brooks discusses these problems and says our culture needs to give better advice to young adults.^[1] He notes that when you listen to graduation speeches, you hear a familiar refrain: “Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams, find yourself.” This is all a lot of pressure. And, he argues, “most successful … people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and [a loved one] feels called to help cure that disease. A person works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so the department can function.” Brooks writes, “most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.”

As Christians we are called by a problem – this world is not what God intends. God’s dream is shalom, the peace and wellbeing of all creation. God’s dream is that we live in harmony with God, one another, and all that God has made. We are clearly quite far from this dream. So, God calls us to face this problem within ourselves and in the larger world. God calls us to die to our sinful, self-centered way of being. And God calls us into the work of healing and redeeming this world.

That can sound intense and demanding. Yet it is also very liberating. It isn’t up to us to make something of ourselves, construct our own lives, secure our futures, or leave a legacy. God’s call is what gives our lives meaning, purpose and significance each day.

We all are called to different roles and various tasks. This past year, the members of our Anti- racism Task Force have been summoned by the pain of racism in our culture. Others were summoned by the work of making masks, serving as shepherds for flocks of Good Shepherd members. or to deepen prayer for the sake of the world. As we begin the Sunday School year, many are being summoned to work with our children and youth.

Yet God’s overall call for each of us is to be part of God’s work of shalom. As we respond to this call, our lives are constructed by God’s love, justice, and mercy. It’s not all about us. We are summoned by a problem beyond us. Yet as Christians, we aren’t just summoned by what is wrong. We are also summoned by our loving God who created us, who delights in us, who gives us life each new day.

When Jesus calls us to follow and give up our small, self-focused lives, this is good news. Jesus is saying to us: Your life is not about you, it is a gift from God. God is holding you and your life. You can surrender to God and experience God’s abundant life for you. You can surrender to God and discover what God will do through you.

It’s not about us – thank God! We can let go of the anxiety and exhaustion and judgement that come with a self-focused life. We can trust our lives to God. This does not mean that our lives will be easy. Our scripture passages today are clear that all of us will face suffering, especially when we follow in the way of Jesus seeking God’s shalom.

When suffering comes, it is again good news to hear the message – it’s not about you. Often when we suffer, we turn inward. We question what we’ve done to deserve this, why this has happened to us. We feel isolated from others whose lives seem so much easier. We think there’s something wrong with us. Our scriptures today reveal that suffering isn’t a sign that you’ve done something wrong or that God has abandoned you. It’s not about you.

Even the Messiah, God’s anointed servant, was not able to avoid suffering in this broken world.

Instead, he entered the pain of the world showing that there is nowhere God won’t go to heal and redeem creation. Faithfulness to God does not mean a get out of suffering free pass. It means following Jesus, the one who entered even death to bring new life for us all. As we follow, we will face suffering and struggle. Yet God is working in all things to bring new life for us and for all of creation.

Your life is not about you. It is about God and what God is doing for us all.
Your life is held in God.
You can let go and trust God who loves you, forgives you, and is always working new life for you and all that God has made.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer

^[1] It’s Not About You By David Brooks, New York Times, May 30, 2011. All quotes from this opinion piece.