All Saints Sunday
November 4, 2018
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 readings today are awash in tears, so fitting for this day when we remember our beloved dead. In these readings we hear that God honors our tears and promises to wipe them away. God shares our tears – Jesus stands at the grave of his friend Lazarus and weeps. And, God promises a future without tears – mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and all peoples will feast at God’s banquet.

That phrase, all peoples, is key. God’s promise of a future without tears is not just for a few – it is for everyone.

The prophet Isaiah stresses that by using the word all four times. God will make “for all peoples a feast of rich food”, and God will “destroy the shroud [of death] cast over all peoples”, “the sheet spread over all nations”, God will “wipe away the tears from all faces.”

In God’s promised future there will be no us and them, no separations, no divisions. We will all be healed together. We will all feast together.

We need this vision to give us hope in all times, and especially in this difficult time for our country.

There is so little hope right now and so much fear – fear about the future, fear about other people and their visions for the future. Fear keeps us apart from one another. It boils over into anger, hatred and violence – into pipe bombs sent in the mail, grocery shoppers killed just for being black, and elders shot down as they worshipped.

How can we live faithfully and hopefully amidst all this fear and anger? How can we be a healing presence in our world?

Perhaps we need to take a cue from our readings today and focus on the tears – pay attention to the pain within us and within other people.

Our own tears and sorrow can give us the gift of vulnerability. They can break down our defenses and open us up. They can soften us.

And we certainly need vulnerability and openness now. Initiatives like the Civil Conversations and the Better Angels Project all tell us the same thing. Rather than stridently, angrily defending our view and attacking others, we need to be vulnerable and open – vulnerable enough to acknowledge what troubles us about our own positions and open to recognizing what is admirable in others’ positions.

Welcoming our own tears and sorrow can give us the gift of vulnerability and openness that we so need.

Paying attention to other people’s tears and sorrow is important as well. This allows us to see our shared humanity and helps to nurture compassion for one another.

So many former Neo-Nazis and white supremacists say that what caused them to change was not outrage or force or punishment, though there certainly should be serious consequences for hate crimes. What does bring change for people who hate is compassion and empathy. One former white supremacist, Christian Picciolini, describes a turning point for him. He was beating up a black man when his eyes locked with the victim’s and he felt a surprising empathy. About the same time, he began to get to know African-American, Jewish, and gay customers at the record store he was running. He was selling white power music but had to sell other types of music to stay in business. His customers knew he was hateful and violent, but they keep coming in and kept initiating meaningful conversation with him. He says, “What it came down to was receiving compassion from the people that I least deserved it [from], when I least deserved it.”

Our compassion and empathy can be deepened by focusing on the tears and pain of others.

Of course, living with compassion, vulnerability and openness is so hard, especially as we face our own personal losses and grief. We can feel so very exposed and raw. It’s tempting to fight back the tears, to defend ourselves from the discomfort, to shut others out or attack them in order to have some illusion of control.

So we need more than a focus on our own and others’ tears. We also need God’s presence, God’s care and God’s promises.

And Beloved, God is so very present with us through Jesus. Jesus knows about deep grief – he stood at his friend Lazarus’ grave and wept. He knows the power of fear – he saw it in Lazarus’ sisters who worried how they would survive in their patriarchal culture without their brother’s support. Jesus knows about anger and divisiveness. Some of the people gathered at the grave were amazed by his love for Lazarus, others sneered, “Why didn’t Jesus prevent Lazarus from dying, he healed the blind man after all.” Soon after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, this anger boiled over into a plot to kill both Lazarus and Jesus.

Jesus experienced all of this and yet he continued to choose the way of love and vulnerability. He did not defend himself or attack others; he gave himself in love.

And now the risen Jesus is here amidst all the grief, fear and anger you face. He is present to give himself in love to you today. Here at this table, Jesus meets you to tend to your tears, to feed you with his love.

Jesus gives you a foretaste of the feast to come in which all peoples will be gathered at God’s banquet.

God honors your tears and promises to wipe them away. God shares your tears. And God promises you a future without tears where mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and you will feast with all people.

May this tender care and these powerful promises heal you today.

May God help us all to bring healing and love to our tear-filled world.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Reformation Sunday – Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
October 28, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Pastor Marion Pruitt-Jefferson

First Reading:  Jeremiah 31:7-9; Psalm:  126; Second Reading: Hebrews  7:23-28; Gospel: Mark 10:46-52

Beloved of God,

Grace and peace to you from our Jesus, our Savior.

This is a story about a desperate human being whose only means of survival is to sit in the gutter, at the side of the road, and cry out for mercy. It is a story for our time. A story that is intimately connected with all stories of human suffering and despair.

And it’s a story about the power of God to transform human suffering – to bring people from hopelessness to unbounded joy; to lift people up from lives of desperation and futility and give them lives of purpose and meaning. And it is a story about the power of God to take away human blindness and open our eyes to the vision of God’s love and justice for all creation.

As I prayed with and studied the story of Bartimaeus this past week, I thought about the thou- sands of desperate women and children and men crying out for mercy as they make their way north through Mexico to our southern border. I thought about a story Marty Steele and I heard earlier this month about what it was like to hold a 14-month old baby in a detention center in Texas – a child taken from her parents and placed in a for-profit prison run by our government. I thought about the immense humanitarian crisis taking place in war-torn Yemen where parents are crying out for mercy for their children – children who are dying by the hundreds each day. Like you, I watched as hatred and violence once again played out on our national stage in the horrific shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue and in the rash of politically motivated bombings.

What are we to do when the cries of our suffering world come at us from all directions and we feel overwhelmed? Maybe, like Bartimaeus, we just start by crying out to God for mercy. I know it’s not Advent, yet, but I would also cry out, “Come Lord Jesus!” I would pray with the Prophet Isaiah, “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down! Come and make right all that is so terribly wrong in our world.” And because I know that all the problems in the world are not just out there, but also in here, I would cry out for mercy for my hardness of heart … mercy for lack of faith … mercy for failure to live in love.

What did Jesus do when Jesus heard Bartimaeus’ cries for mercy? Well, obviously Jesus healed him. But before that … before that it says that Jesus stood still. That’s remarkable because in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is always on the move. One of Mark’s favorite words to describe Jesus is ‘immediately’ – immediately Jesus did this or that, or went here or went there. Mark uses that word something like 42 times in his gospel. So it’s noteworthy that when Jesus heard Bartimaeus, he stopped and stood still. Jesus stopped what he was doing, which was very important because he was on his way up to Jerusalem where he was going to give his life for the redemption of all creation. But Jesus stepped aside, stood still and listened to Bartimaeus’ cry for mercy.

Maybe, like Jesus, when we hear all of those cries for mercy, we too need to stop and be still. Most of us are really good at doing lots of things and keeping busy. And especially when there are urgent needs, we can kick it into high gear and take care of business. And to be sure, God is at work in all of that.

But there is a deep humility in recognizing that it’s not up to us to save the world. God has al- ready done that in the death and resurrection of Jesus; and God continues that saving work everywhere that suffering and death and evil are present. When the needs of the world over- whelm us, there is deep humility in letting go, in standing still and recognizing our own need for God.

Our worship is just that sort of stopping point – that point of stillness in our over-full weeks. Here in this sacred place the sure and certain promises of God meet the needs of our suffering world and of our own lives. Here in our gathering together, in our singing and in our praying, in our greetings of Peace, and in our sharing in bread and wine we experience God’s invitation to a deeper participation in love – love for God, love for one another, and love for our broken world.

Here we sing ancient words of hope – Those who sowed with tears, will reap with songs of joy!

Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves. (And again, I think about the Honduran migrants marching through Mexico, carrying their precious seeds of hope for a better tomorrow.)

Here we listen to the stories of Jesus and we see again that in Jesus the blind see, the hungry are filled, the prisoners are set free, and the dead are raised to new life.

Here, in our open and empty hands, we receive Jesus, who comes to us humbly, hidden in bread and wine. And only then, when we are filled with Jesus’ endless life and unfailing love, are we sent back into the world set free to participate in all of God’s saving and loving work – set free to bring people from hopelessness into joy; to lift people up from lives of desperation to lives of purpose and meaning; to share with all people the vision of God’s love and compassion and justice for all creation.

Lord, Have Mercy.