Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
February 3, 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, God’s love made flesh.

I have attended or presided at A LOT of weddings. My spouse and I have good friends from high school, college, seminary and our summers working at Bible camps, as well as large extended families which means lots of weddings. The church I served right after seminary has a long center aisle, impressive stained-glass windows and a gorgeous altar up front. It’s also located in the heart of Minnesota lake country. Those things added up to a whole lot of weddings in my first call. Then I served at Luther College where lots of people fall in love and ask their campus pastors to help them get married. All of this is to say that I’m quite familiar with our second reading from 1 Corinthians, chapter 13 – that passage on love that is so often read at weddings.

It’s a beautiful passage, but it’s hard to preach it at a wedding, especially because the apostle Paul wrote it to a community that was facing conflict and having a hard time staying together.

That actually makes it a perfect passage to ponder during marriage. Marriage certainly involves conflict and times when it’s really challenging to keep on loving the other person, as is the case in any significant relationship. Love is hard work. Yet, that isn’t the message people really want to hear on a celebratory day as they stand in front of their family and friends.

It isn’t the message we want to hear about our church community either. We don’t want there to be conflict or difficulties. We want church to be a place where we feel welcomed, loved, connected, and a place where everyone gets along. Often congregations are that way – often Good Shepherd is.

Yet congregations are made up of human beings; so, conflicts and challenges are going to be part of the mix. And something powerful happens when we stick with each other, even when it’s hard. We experience so much growth, beauty and grace when we keep on showing up for each other even when we don’t feel particularly loving. That isn’t always possible – sometimes marriages, relation- ships and congregations become toxic and it isn’t good or safe to stay in them. Sometimes people need to change congregations in order to more fully love God and serve others. Yet, if it’s safe and possible, there is power in staying, in practicing love well after the honeymoon phase is over.

And love really does take practice, work, effort. Paul makes that clear in 1 Corinthians 13. He shows us that love is not really about feelings. It’s about concrete actions that we take for others and actions we avoid for the sake of others. His point gets lost in the English translation when we hear love is patient, love is kind, love is not irritable or rude – a long list of adjectives. That makes it sound like love means always feeling patient and kind, never feeling grumpy or annoyed.

But the way Paul actually wrote the passage, those words aren’t adjectives describing love in some flowery, abstract sense; those words are verbs. He uses sixteen verbs in a row to say what love does and does not do. Paul says to love is to be patient, to be kind, to not be jealous, not boast, not be arrogant, not be rude and not seek our own way, not be irritable, not be resentful and not rejoice in wrongdoing. To love is to rejoice in the truth, to bear all things, to believe all things, to hope all things, to endure all things. Paul is saying love is active and concrete. It takes work, it takes practice.

One of the gifts of healthy families, friendships and congregations is that they give us the chance to practice love when we feel good and when we don’t.

Recently, I read this passage at the funeral of a ninety-three-year-old member of Good Shepherd. These words I’ve heard and read at so many weddings came alive to me again as I considered how this woman and her beloved spouse lived out love for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health for over sixty-two years.

These words come alive for me again as I think about the concrete ways you all do love for others in our congregation and community – bringing meals, doing grocery shopping, driving immigrant neighbors to court hearings, and visiting people even when they no longer remember you. You do this when it feels good and when it is hard.

This passage comes alive for me again today as we head into our annual meeting after 60 years as a congregation. This congregation, like all congregations, has known great joy and deep sorrow, times of energy and vitality, times of struggle and conflict.

Often it feels really good to be together as we worship, sing, serve and share in fellowship. Other times, it is harder. There are times you may even have an urge to throw someone over a cliff – the way Jesus’ home congregation tried to do to him. Do resist that urge, of course. But even if you feel that way, it doesn’t mean you can’t love that person. Love means choosing to be patient, choosing to show kindness, choosing to look for the good in that person no matter how we feel.

This is hard. It’s why we need a lot of practice in families, in friendships, and congregations in order to learn to live out love.

It’s why we need God who chooses to love us always no matter what, why we need God who for- gives and heals and strengthens us always.

God comes to us in really concrete ways – in water and word, bread and wine, flesh and blood, in the body of Christ – to actively love us, to do love for us.

God knows and sees us fully and chooses to love us always. Because we are loved so deeply, we can love others no matter how we feel.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 27, 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.

Our Gospel story today is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. After his baptism, he spends forty days in the wilderness and then, filled with the power of the Spirit, he begins teaching and preaching.

That word, power, captured my attention this week. Maybe because we just watched a massive power struggle unfold in our country with the partial government shutdown. And it isn’t really over, yet. As those in power wrangle, the rest of the country hangs in the balance. It’s been heart- breaking to hear the stories of federal workers impacted by this – people working two extra jobs to pay the rent, people waiting to pick up their medications because they can’t afford the gas for the drive to the pharmacy. They feel powerless in the face of all this, as do so many Americans.

I am grateful that media outlets have been sharing these stories, as well as the stories of the ordinary people seeking asylum at our southern border. We need to focus on these people, on all the not-so-powerful people impacted by our government’s actions.

So much of our attention goes to those in power. It’s easy to get fixated on the actions of leaders like Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin. We do need to keep abreast of what these people are doing and how they are using power. It is good to be concerned about the rise of strongman rulers in many parts of the world.

Yet, our scriptures today direct our attention elsewhere. They also give us a new perspective on power.

Jesus comes, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, and says that his power will be used for the sake of those who have no worldly power.

His ministry is for the sake of people who are poor and prisoners, for those who are blind, and all who are oppressed. Jesus focuses his attention on the people that society ignores – people who are viewed with pity if they are seen at all. By fixing his gaze on these people, Jesus says something powerful about God. Jesus declares that God sees all of us – not just those the world sees, but everyone. And God gives special care and attention to those whom the world doesn’t want to see.

The Apostle Paul says something similar in our second reading when he uses the metaphor of the body. That metaphor was used often in the ancient world. Politicians and philosophers used the image of the body to talk about families, households, cities or countries; but they used it to rein- force hierarchy and oppression. The body needs a head, the thinking went, and the head is most important; those who are the hands and feet must serve the head. Every other part of the body should seek to conform to the mandates of the head.

Paul turned this thinking on its head by stressing the importance of each part and encouraging us to show greatest honor to the parts of the body that seem least important.

Both Paul and Jesus call us to join them in turning our gaze away from the halls of power and towards those who live without worldly power. That is where God is focused, that is where God wants us all to focus.

In his preaching and teaching, Jesus also invites reflection on how power is used. Our culture often defines power as achieving our goals, controlling our destinies. You are powerful if you can get what you want, or better yet, get other people to do what you want.

Yet Jesus, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, does not use his power for himself. He doesn’t build himself up or claim power over others. Instead, his power is demonstrated by what he accomplishes for others. He uses his power to set others free, to raise others up.

Jesus call us to use our power the same way. We are to ask ourselves if we are using our lives and our power to lift others up, to make life better for other people.

We can do all this, beloved, because we too have been given the power of the Holy Spirit. We can see others, we can use our power for their sakes because that same power of God, the power that filled Jesus, is at work in us, in you. Filled by the Spirit of Jesus, we are not powerless. We can use our voices as citizens on behalf of those who have less power. We can turn our eyes away from the powerful and towards those Jesus sees. We can use our power to lift others up. As we do, we are also drawn into relationships that heal us and our world. We are saved from despair, we are lifted up as well.

We can do all this because God also sees and loves every part of each of us, every part of you. God sees and loves even the parts you would rather hide – the things that cause you shame, the things that make it hard for you to use your power for others. God sees all of that and gives special care and attention to those hard things.

Beloved, God’s power is at work to tend and work through all of who we are – everything strong and weak and beautiful and shameful within us and within our lives. With that power at work in us, we can pay attention to those without power. We can use our power for the sake of others, for the healing of this world that God so loves.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.