Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 20, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

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

“We are seared and we are scarred by those things that make us restless in the night.” That line about Jacob’s all-night wrestling match has stayed with me since I heard it from Wartburg Seminary Professor Craig Nessan. (Sermon for the Northeastern Iowa Synod Fall Theological Conference, October 2016)

What keeps you up at night, tossing and turning?

How have you been seared and scarred by worries, fears and regrets that plague you by night?

What blessings have come out of the wrestling?

The night Jacob wrestles with a stranger ‘til daybreak he has so many reasons to be anxious and afraid. He’s been leaving messes in his wake and running from it all and now there’s so much stuff from his past with which he has to contend.

Jacob’s life to this point has been marked by contentious relationships. When he was born, he was grasping onto the heel of his twin brother. Apparently even in the womb he was striving with his brother, trying to get out first. His parents gave him the name Jacob which can mean trickster or overreacher or the one who supplants others or even just the heel. Talk about a loaded name.

Jacob lives up to his name. He tricks his brother Esau into giving away his inheritance, Esau’s birthright as the first born. Later he tricks his blind father into giving him the blessing that should go to Esau. Esau gets spitting mad and Jacob has to run for his life. He flees to his uncle Laban’s house and then spends years trying to get the upper hand in their fraught relationship. Jacob marries Laban’s daughters Rachel and Leah, gives Laban lots of grandchildren and works for him. But as he is leaving Laban to finally go home, he does Laban wrong in a business deal and has to flee with things he stole from Laban. As Jacob makes his way toward home, he learns that his brother is approaching with 400 armed men.

Jacob is between a rock and a hard place. He wants to go home but his angry brother stands in the way. He can’t go back because he’s made a mess of things with Laban. His life is full of things that keep him up at night.

Our backstories may not be quite as fraught as Jacob’s. Most of us don’t have to worry that our family conflicts will end in armed warfare.

Yet there’s still so much that weighs on us – so much with which we must contend: fears, worries, regrets, disappointments. And, we are seared and scarred by these things that make us restless in the night. The good news is that God doesn’t leave us to wrestle with our stuff on our own. God doesn’t say: Wow your life is a mess, good luck with that; have you tried a sleeping pill? Instead, God gets into the mix of it all with us.

This is what happens for Jacob. At the point we pick up his story, everything is catching up with him. He gets his family safely settled and goes off by himself to prepare to face his brother. Jacob likely feels so alone as all the fears and worries crash in on him.

Yet he isn’t left alone to wrestle with all his stuff. A stranger shows up to wrestle with him. When it’s all said and done, he finds that he has been wrestling with God. God is there to say, “You can’t keep running. You’ve got to face this. You’ve got to engage your life and I’m here to help you to do that.”

God does the same for each of us. God is a wrestling partner who challenges us, engages us and pushes us to confront everything that is keeping us up at night.

We see this throughout scripture and in the person of Christ Jesus. God doesn’t stay removed and at a distance. God gets involved in the nitty-gritty stuff of our lives. And God is not above contend-ing with us when needed.

When God contends with us, it is not as our enemy. God’s challenge is not to destroy or defeat us. It’s to get us going, like a sparring partner who gets a boxer prepared for a good match. It’s to get us to wrap our arms around life and lay our hands on God.

The thing is, it’s rarely apparent that we are wrestling with God. Like Jacob, we often don’t recognize God in the wrestling match. It may often feel as if God is distant, silent and removed. Yet as Pr. Steve Garnaas-Holmes describes it, whether we know it or not we are always wrestling with God. He says, “No matter what our struggles, our deepest anxiety is about our identity, our Source, our meaning, our future, our worth, which means we’re really wrestling with the One from whom those things come. This is good news because as much as it may appear that the difficulties of our lives are our enemies, at their heart is a God who is our ally and deepest friend and companion.”

He continues, “God comes to us in dark, lonely places, in struggles and mystery. So, grapple vigorously with this life and its Creator. Trust the grace that lurks in the night.”

This wrestling and struggling isn’t warm, fuzzy and uplifting the way we might prefer encounters with God to feel. It may even leave us feeling wounded. Yet the wrestling also brings deep bless-ing. We find that God is present when we thought we were most alone. We find that God has a hold of us and that God will not let us go.

God has claimed you in Christ Jesus and you are held in God now and always. Whatever struggle and wrestling you face, God is with you. God is your ally, friend and companion always. You can trust the grace that lurks in the night for you.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 13, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

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

This week I read a vivid description of what happens when we worship: In worship we experience something like cataract surgery.^[1]As many of you know from personal experience, a cataract makes your vision cloudy as if you are looking through a frosty or fogged-up window. Cataract surgery involves removing the cloudy lens of the eye and replacing it with a new lens. After people have this surgery, their eye seems to sparkle like a window that has just been cleaned. There is a twinkle in their eye. Take a close look at someone who’s had this procedure recently- it’s fun to see.

Worship is a bit like cataract surgery. It cleans the fog from our vision and changes how we see the world. It helps our eyes to shine with clear-eyed hopefulness. That’s good news because how we see things really matters. The way we perceive God, other people and ourselves really impacts our lives. That’s clear in our Gospel reading today.

Ten men with leprosy approach Jesus but keep their distance because they knew they’re seen as unclean, impure, disgusting. They know people look at them with judgement and condemnation.

They’ve been taught to hide away out of sight, to keep their distance. Yet Jesus sees these people and wants them to be both healed and restored to community. So, he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. He wants the priests to look closely at them and declare that they are well.

These ten lepers do as Jesus tells them. Yet as they go, we’re told that one man sees that he is healed. He notices, recognizes, perceives the amazing thing that God has done for him. Because he can see it, he can’t help but turn back to praise and give thanks – a very faithful response.

Ten people have been healed, but apparently only one really perceives clearly what has happened. What he sees makes all the difference in the trajectory of his life and provides him with powerful healing experiences as he praises God, expresses gratitude and gets to hear Jesus’ words of blessing spoken over him.

Those things all contribute to well-being and wholeness (and by the way, we get to share in them today.) He experiences these things after perceiving what God has done for him. How we see matters.

Jesus then asks his disciples and all of us to take a look at this faithful man – to really see him and learn from him. He is a Samaritan, which means he is not only considered a foreigner to the Jews, but also an enemy. The Jewish people have been conditioned to look down on people like him, to view them with suspicion – the way prominent politicians are encouraging us to perceive immi- grants and Muslims. How we see matters.

Jesus wants us to see others differently – to see as he sees. So, throughout the Gospel of Luke, Jesus calls his disciples’ attention to the people they view as enemies and says, look here is a good Samaritan. Here is a faithful Samaritan. This is who you should picture when you think about goodness and faithfulness. As he does this, Jesus asks all of us to look more closely at those we fear and distrust to see their abundant goodness and faithfulness.

From a variety of different angles, this story shows us that the way we see matters. It impacts everything.

Yet, so often our vision is clouded by our fears, insecurities and judgements. We view people as problems to be kept at a distance or as enemies to be feared. We look at ourselves with shame and even disgust, seeking to hide from others and from God. We perceive God as an angry judge and are unable to recognize and give thanks for the healing that God brings into our lives. We get stuck in negative perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. When we see the world in these ways, we don’t experience well-being and wholeness.

Jesus wants us to see differently. Jesus wants to cleanse away all that clouds our vision and give us a new way to see. That is what happens each week in worship – it’s why worship is a bit like cataract surgery. Through word and song, bread and wine our perceptions of the world are challenged and reoriented. Our vision is cleansed and renewed. We are given a new lens with which to view God, others and ourselves – a lens of compassion and love.

Yet before we’re willing to enter this process, we need to know we have a trustworthy surgeon. We need to know that we can trust God to guide our perceptions and our view of the world. This is the most important thing that happens in worship – we learn that God can be trusted.

We learn this because in worship we are drawn into God’s loving gaze. We come into God’s presence and we experience God’s face shining on us with love and delight. We see that God is loving, compassionate and forgiving. This allows us to be clear-eyed and hopeful, even in this troubled world. It allows us to experience well-being and wholeness, even when we face illness, pain and hardship.

The healing service we share in today lets us bask in God’s compassionate gaze. In this gaze, you are seen, blessed, healed and sent out to delight in God’s world.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

^[1] Rev. Dr. David Lose offers this image for worship in the Dear Working Preacher blog dated October 3, 2010, entitled “Cataract Surgery”

http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1518

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 6, 2019
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.

Last Sunday we heard from a great hero of the Christian faith, Bishop Munib Younan. He has work- ed tirelessly for a just peace in the Holy Land and for interfaith understanding throughout the world. At times he’s risked his own life. Bishop Younan had just received the Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) Award, an honor that he shares with others like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. Yet at a luncheon last week, when that award was mentioned, Bishop Younan laughed it off and said something like, “I’m Lutheran we’re saved by grace. I don’t need an award.”

As I talked with the bishop at different gatherings last week, I was struck that he hasn’t set out to be a great and powerful man. He is simply a pastor who loves God and his people, who is doing what needs to be done to serve them. He isn’t seeking to have influence and power; he’s just doing his job.

Yet before I met Bishop Younan, I was a bit intimidated when I thought about spending time with such a heroic man. How have I contributed to peace and justice in the world? I probably felt a little like the disciples in our Gospel reading today when they plead with Jesus to increase their faith.

They feel inadequate in the face of what Jesus is asking of them – they want more faith, more power, more assurance that they can do this.

The problem is by quantifying faith, by begging for extra help to do what Jesus tells them to do, by fantasizing about some superpower that they don’t possess, they miss the point. Faith is not a sub- stance you can measure – it is someone you trust. And Jesus has told his disciples over and over: I’m right here, I’ve called you, I’m with you, you can trust me, you can trust God.

So, Jesus gets impatient with them and basically tells them: stop focusing on yourself and what you think you lack. Don’t expect more of some thing in order to do what I’m calling you to do. Get over yourself, look to God, you have all that you need.

You can trust God to do more in you than you can do on your own.

There’s also something lost in translation with Jesus’ words here. What he says is really more like: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, and you know you do, you can work wonders. But then he continues: Don’t try to be amazing and work wonders and get all sorts of accolades – just do what needs to be done and be content with that.

OK, that’s not exactly what Jesus says. According to Luke, he says, “When you have done all that you were ordered to do, say … We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”

I wish Jesus had used a different metaphor and been a little more kind, but he does give us some pretty freeing advice here. Don’t try to be more than you are, don’t do things expecting praise, don’t try to be amazing, just do your job and God will work in you as you do.

Our reading from 1 Timothy tells us that God has saved us and called us with a holy calling. God has given us each important callings. Our callings are to be workers, parents, spouses, friends, helpers, teachers and servants. As we live out our callings, God is working through us to love and heal the world.

This is important to remember in this time when there are so many challenges in our world. It can all be overwhelming and intimidating. We can start to feel like we need to be heroic to make any difference. Sometimes we feel if we can’t be like Bishop Younan or Greta Thunberg or Desmund Tutu, we shouldn’t even try.

But Jesus says just be who you are. Just do what is yours to do. Just get to work. This is all Bishop Younan does – he just seeks to do his job well. It is all any heroic person ever says. Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, originally from Clinton, Iowa, is the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor from either the Iraq or Afghan wars. There’s a terrible story that led up to it, as is usually the case, but in reflecting on his actions SSG Giunta had this to say, “I didn’t run through fire to do any- thing heroic or brave; I did what I believe anyone would have done.” Heroes of most any kind usually echo that sentiment. “I was just doing my job.” “Anybody would have done it.” “I just did what I’m supposed to do.” That’s Jesus’ point: Just do what you’re supposed to do – you don’t need more faith, you just have to be who you are as God’s child and use the faith God has given you.

Just do your job. Care for your spouse, be kind to your kids, help your neighbor, listen to a co-worker who is down, bring soup for the October Fiesta, call your representative. In daily life, in the ordinary things, practice love and kindness and service. In these and so many other ways, you are doing what God has called you to do and you are bringing hope and love into our world.

You are a beloved child of God. You are enough.

You don’t have to do anything heroic, or grand, or flashy. Just do your job.

God will work through you.