Sermon for Sunday, March 12, 2017 – “Born Again?”
Second Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2017
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 rest of the Sundays in this season of Lent, we’ll be hearing about people who have transformative encounters with Jesus. Today we hear about Nicodemus, someone who has a lot in common with many of us 21^st century Americans. Nicodemus seems open to considering something new in his religious life. He’s curious and rational. Nicodemus sees something intriguing in Jesus and approaches Jesus directly. He wants to understand more about who Jesus is and what he does.

Yet for all his interest, Nicodemus doesn’t want to advertise his curiosity in Jesus widely – he comes to Jesus under cover of darkness, in the night. Perhaps Nicodemus, a leader of the people, doesn’t want to anger the other religious and political leaders. Jesus is upsetting the powers that be. The Gospel of John tells us that Nicodemus comes to Jesus right after Jesus cleanses the temple of moneychangers with a whip of cords. Maybe Nicodemus is concerned about his own position and security.

Whatever the reason, Nicodemus seems to want to keep his interaction with Jesus secret, hidden, private.

He isn’t ready to follow Jesus in the full light of day. He needs some information, some answers, first. Seems reasonable.

But Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, refuses to give Nicodemus a straight answer about who he is and what he does. Instead, he tells Nicodemus that he must be born from above, that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.

Here Nicodemus is just checking out this whole Jesus thing, gathering information, not really ready to commit yet; and Jesus tells him he needs to be born from above. That seems a little extreme.

The Greek words translated here, ‘born from above’, could also be translated ‘born again’ or ‘born anew’. But no matter how you translate it, it’s an intense metaphor. Being born involves change, disruption, transformation. It involves being pushed out of a safe, comfortable place into a much larger, riskier, and yet, more beautiful, world.

Nicodemus totally misses that Jesus is using a metaphor and interprets Jesus’ words literally, asking, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus offers Nicodemus a metaphor to transform his imagination and his relationship with God, but Nicodemus gets hung up on the literal and totally misses the point. As he does, he makes it even more clear that Jesus is right. Nicodemus does need to be born anew.

Nicodemus wants to stay hidden in a safe, dark place. He wants to be fed with simple, direct answers. He wants to remain comfortable in womb-like protective darkness. But Jesus wants Nicodemus to live with God in the full light of day. He wants Nicodemus to move beyond absorbing simple answers and into full participation in the kingdom of God. Jesus wants Nicodemus to be born anew.

Jesus wants the same thing for us. Jesus wants us to be born again into full participation in God’s kingdom of love, mercy and justice. Certainly, there are times when we need comfort and nurture, times when we need to be sheltered like a child growing in the womb. The Hebrew word for womb is also the scriptural word used to describe God’s compassion. The Bible shows us our need for quiet growth in the womb of God’s compassion. Yet the Bible also gives us images of God laboring to give birth to the people, to push them into the fullness of who they have been created to be. God wants us to be born anew.

So how does this happen for us? These days, Christians struggle with this metaphor and its implications.

People speak of being born again as if it’s something we do, as if we are in control – thinking that if we say the right things, do the right things, make a decision for Jesus or believe the right doctrine, then we will be born again, By implication, those who don’t do those things can’t be born again.

The thing we seem to forget is that the one being born has very little to with the whole birth process. The work of birth is done by the one who is giving birth.

So, being born anew depends upon God, not upon us. It is the work of the Spirit – the Spirit, that like the wind, blows where it chooses. We have very little control over the process of our being born anew.

That is a little unsettling and uncomfortable. Like Nicodemus, we’d probably prefer more direct answers.

We’d prefer clear steps outlining what to expect in our life with God.

We do get some assurances and some promises. We are assured, in the witness of scripture, that God has chosen to pour out the Spirit upon the church. We are promised that we are each given the Spirit and a new birth in baptism.

But that is just the beginning of a life-long process of ongoing renewal and rebirth. The Spirit doesn’t give us new birth once and then leave us be; we are reborn over and over. We are born again when we are con- victed of our sin and yet assured that we have new life in Christ. We are born again through the very body and blood of Jesus. We are born again when life events disturb us but still God brings new life out of them, as God promises to do.

The Spirit continues to nurture us and push us out of our comfort zone and into a larger, risky and yet more beautiful world. In that larger world, we aren’t safe. We come up against the powers that be, the powers that oppose God’s new kingdom and God’s passionate love for the whole world. We come up against hatred and death – the sin that killed Jesus. That sin is all around and within us.

Yet in the face of all this, the Spirit gives us new birth, new life, again and again. The Spirit gives us what we need to live as participants in God’s kingdom of love, mercy and justice.

This is what happened for Nicodemus. Later in the Gospel of John we see that the Spirit pushed him to speak up for Jesus in a heated conversation between the temple police and other Pharisees. Then after Jesus’ death, the Spirit pushed Nicodemus to anoint Jesus’ body with oil at great risk to himself. The Spirit birthed Nicodemus into new life. The Spirit does the same for us.

Let’s take a moment to pray silently. Our prayer time will continue into the introduction to the hymn,

#397 Loving Spirit.

Sermon For Sunday, March 5, 2017 – “Wilderness Vulnerability”

First Sunday in Lent
March 5, 2017
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.

When you think about the wilderness, what images come to mind for you? Do you picture trips to the Boundary Waters, backpacking in the mountains, African safaris? Do you see the wilderness as an inviting place, away from all the noise of our daily lives?

Or does the wilderness seem overwhelming and intimidating, a place where life is challenging? After all, there’s always the threat of dangerous weather, dangerous animals and even dangerous bugs. And, there’s always the chance of getting lost.

The Jewish people in Jesus’ day saw the wilderness as a terrifying place. Of course, they didn’t have bug spray, good footwear and Gore-Tex jackets to protect them. But more importantly, their ancient stories of times in the wilderness were stories of struggle and hardship – including forty years wandering in the desert after they left slavery in Egypt.

So when Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us about Jesus’ time in the wilderness, they aren’t saying Jesus had a peaceful, “let’s get away from it all and enjoy the wide-open spaces” moment. They’re saying he spent forty days in a dry, barren, foreboding space. Jesus endured the kind of wilderness experience that is more imposed than chosen, a kind we often do our best to avoid.

Yet all of us, personally and collectively, experience these types of wilderness times within our souls – times when we feel vulnerable, exposed, raw, at the mercy of forces beyond our control.

In our personal lives, many triggers can bring about a wilderness time – aging, transitions, loss, health issues, betrayals, to name just a few.

There are wilderness times in our collective lives as well. It seems we’re in one now as we watch the brutal war in Syria rage on for years and feel powerless to help, as the world refugee crisis grows, as our climate becomes increasingly volatile, as the divisions in our nation deepen.

In times like these, it is tempting to do try to avoid the vulnerability of the wilderness experience. We’re tempted, as Jesus was. Perhaps the temptations come from an actual Satan, a tempter. More likely they come from within us, but that’s beside the point. When Jesus was vulnerable and famished in the wilder- ness, he was tempted to choose a quick fix – to just turn stones into bread.

We have all sorts of opportunities for instant gratification. In our vulnerable, wilderness times they can seem even more appealing: buy something, eat something, get away on vacation, try these five simple steps and you’ll feel better. Sign an online petition or post something on Facebook and you’ll change the world.

Our culture trains us to want to seek immediate solutions but that is rarely the most helpful response.

We’re discovering this in the White Privilege conversations that are happening in Decorah right now.

They make us feel vulnerable and uncomfortable and we want to do something to make this all better.

Yet a quick fix would let us skip over the internal work we need to do in the wilderness of our own psyches. Sometimes we need to be uncomfortable and unclear, so that there is more space within us for God to bring change, so that our hunger for God’s guidance can grow.

In the wilderness Jesus rejected the quick fix and instead relied upon God’s word. As he did, his com- mitment to God’s ways and his trust in God deepened. The same thing can happen for us in wilderness times.

Except, notice that even as Jesus trusted God, he also didn’t just take a blind leap of faith. Satan tempted Jesus to just throw himself off a high pinnacle and trust God to catch him. Jesus discerned that this was a test and remembered that scripture says, “don’t put God to the test.”

We often get the impression that trusting God means turning off our brains, abdicating personal respons- ibility and putting everything into God’s hands – a leap of faith. But God gave us agency and intellect and God expects us to use them. Especially in wilderness times, personally and collectively, it isn’t helpful to say, “just leave it to God.”

We put God to the test if we simply pray for healing, peace, and justice and then fall back and expect God to fix everything in our lives and our world. I think we’ll be in the wilderness a lot longer if we do that.

We’re called to look to God’s word, discern God’s guidance, pray and act.

Authors Shane Claiborne and Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove wrote a book called Becoming the Answer to our Prayers. They say, “Prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants us to do.” Wilderness times can help us to become the answer to our prayers. They can give us space to listen for what God wants us to do and they can reveal how lost we get when we don’t follow in God’s ways.

We especially get lost if we seek to use power and control rather than follow God’s way of love. This is a major temptation when we feel vulnerable. We want to go on the attack, stop our opponents, win argu- ments, prove others wrong – we want to put ourselves above others. Jesus also faced the temptation when he was in the wilderness. Satan showed him all the kingdoms of the world and promised Jesus could rule over them all if only he made a deal with the devil. Instead of claiming power, Jesus remained faithful to God’s ways of self-giving love. In him we see that change doesn’t come through power over others; it comes through being vulnerable and practicing love for ourselves and others.

When we find ourselves in wilderness times, it is so tempting to try to protect ourselves and avoid feel- ings of vulnerability and uncertainty. Yet the wilderness times can teach us to trust, to discern, and to live God’s ways of love. Wilderness times can be a powerful gift and during the season of Lent, the church intentionally enters the wilderness together. We practice hungering for God’s justice, we increase our times of prayer and we recommit to following Jesus in acts of mercy and love.

Let us join in a time of silent prayer now. Today our time of prayer will continue into the introduction to the Hymn of the Day. That hymn has changed to #319 O Lord, throughout These Forty Days; so I invite you to turn to that now and then join in prayer.

Let us pray.

Sermon For Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2017 – “Beautiful Dust”

Ash Wednesday 2017
March 1, 2017
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.

Tonight, we will be marked by ashes and told, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Often around Ash Wednesday, I reflect on an experience I had with dust and ashes. I found new meaning in it again this year as I thought back.

I was at one of my favorite places in the world, my family cabin; but this time it wasn’t for vacation. This time I was frantically digging in the dirt for my father’s ashes before the cabin was sold.

Both my parents were cremated and we buried their ashes at their cabin. Some years after their deaths our whole extended family couldn’t afford to keep the cabin, so we had to put it up for sale.

My aunt went up there one weekend to dig up my parents’ ashes so we could move them to a new burial site. She found my mom’s ashes but couldn’t find my dad’s. I was troubled by the thought of leaving his ashes behind. So, when we went up there to pack up before the sale, I decided I needed to go search again.

It soon became obvious that this was no simple task.

• I realized the wooden box the ashes had been in had probably deteriorated.
• The rock we’d used for a burial marker had been moved in my aunt’s earlier searches and now there was just a huge hole.
• The ashes could be anywhere around or below that big hole – I had no idea where to begin.

But I was feeling desperate so I just attacked that dirt. Within minutes I was drenched with sweat, covered in dirt and surrounded by mosquitos; but I was determined not to rest until I found those ashes.

I dug for over an hour. All the sadness I felt about selling the cabin, all the anger and regret, all the grief about my parents’ deaths – all of that was being channeled into my frantic searching and I was getting nowhere.

When have you found yourself stuck, digging yourself into an ever bigger hole, unable to stop? When have you been consumed by anger and regret? When have you desperately tried to fix a situation through your own effort? All of that was going on for me there in the dust.

Slowly, I began to realize that my frantic activity, desperation and frustration were getting me nowhere.

Slowly, I realized I needed to pray, forgive my aunt and let go of all the anger and anxiety I was pouring into the search. So, I prayed, I took some deep breaths, I let go.

As I prayed, I began to experience deep peace. I realized I could search a little longer without all the angst.

And then, amazingly, within a few moments I found the ashes.

But I believe that whether I’d found the ashes or not, God gave me what I needed there in the dust. As I look back, I see that God met me there and changed me.

God in Jesus has entered into all the dust, the dirt, the struggle and sorrow of our lives and now meets us there, meets us here. Jesus meets us in the dust and reminds us who we are.

We are dust, we are utterly dependent upon God. Left to our own devices we will find ourselves stuck in sin and shame. All our striving, all our frantic activity will only lead us into deeper holes.

We are dust, and…God makes beautiful things out of dust.

In the beginning, God formed us all from dust of the earth and breathed into us the breath of life.

Still now, God continually gives us breath. In each moment, a breath is given without us having to earn it or do anything, without us even having to remember to breathe. And when we take our last breath, God gathers us up and raises us to new life eternally. God makes beautiful things out of dust. God also breathes the Holy Spirit into us, a new and right Spirit, as we prayed in Psalm 51 today. The word for spirit in Greek and Hebrew is the same as the word for breath. God’s spirit is as close to us as our breath and available to us in every moment.

Often, instead of breathing deeply of God’s Spirit, we inhale the toxic fumes of anger, anxiety, despair, pride, shame. We get filled up with things that leave us depleted and gasping for air.

God seeks always to cleanse us from all of this and to breathe into us the Holy Spirit. God does this for us personally and as a community all the time, but Lent allows us to intentionally seek that cleansing and renewing through practices of confession, fasting, prayer and giving.

The Lenten practices are not meant to get us more focused on ourselves, how we’re doing, how we look.

They’re intended to open us to the life-giving Spirit of God which is as close to us as our very breath.

They’re intended to draw us more fully into God’s work of breathing new life into the whole world – the work of loosening the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free and breaking every yoke.

In Lent, God works to renew us from the inside out and turns us toward the rest of this God-breathed, God-loved world. We are set free from a focus on self so that we might serve others – an insight Martin Luther lifted up from scripture that we will hear about throughout our Lenten journey.

In Lent, God works to make us who are dust a blessing to the world. Remember that you are dust. Remember, God makes beautiful things out of dust.

Let’s take a moment now to pray. Our prayer time will continue into the introduction to the Hymn of the Day.

Thanks be to God.

Transfiguration of Our Lord
February 26, 2017
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.

Peter’s time on the mountaintop with Jesus is a confusing, tumultuous time – not unlike the times we are living in now as a country. Of course, what happens to Peter, James and John on the mountain is a wondrous, unique experience. They see Jesus shining like the sun and talking with ancient heroes of the faith. Very few people have experienced anything that glorious. I don’t intend to draw parallels to that event but rather to the range of emotions and thoughts Peter must have had.

We are living in confusing, tumultuous times as a country. Some here are pleased by what’s happening, some dread it, yet all of us are living in a time of great disruption and change. So, the words spoken to Peter, James and John on the mountain are important for us today as well: Listen to Jesus, get up, do not be afraid.

Right before Peter heads up the mountain with Jesus, he confesses that Jesus is the “Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” He’s the first person to do this; Jesus praises and blesses him. But then Jesus starts talking about how the Messiah will suffer and die. This makes no sense to Peter so he rebukes Jesus. Jesus turns to him and says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me.” Talk about a roller coaster of emotions. Peter totally nails it and then falls flat on his face.

Soon after this, Peter, James and John go up the mountain with Jesus and he is transfigured right in front of them. He is still himself but he is shining like the sun. Then the great heroes Moses and Elijah show up and start talking with Jesus.

Peter is not at all sure how to respond to all this. He overreacts by trying to build dwelling places for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, but also seems reluctant to act – he seems to want to just stay on the mountain with Jesus.

In the middle of Peter’s confusion, God interrupts to say, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples hear this, they fall to the ground and are overcome by fear. But then Jesus comes and touches them and says, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

So, all told, on the mountain the disciples hear three messages: Listen to him, get up, do not be afraid.

These are words we need to hear now as well.

First, “listen to him.” When things are in flux and unclear, we need to try to hear what God is saying to us personally and as a community – God is still speaking and guiding us today. Of course, it is no small task to discern what God is saying; but the guidance God gives the disciples on the mountain is still true for us today. To understand God, we need to look to Jesus and listen to him. We need to pay attention to what Jesus says and does and to those he notices and helps. As a community, we will see and hear different things as we do this, we will disagree; but if we stay in conversation with each other we will get a fuller sense of what God wants to say to us through Jesus.

The second thing the disciples hear on the mountain is “get up.” Except it’s not just “get up,” like get off the ground. The Greek verb here is the one used to describe Jesus being raised from the dead. So, what Jesus actually says to the disciples on the mountain is “be raised up;” or even, “be resurrected.” When the disciples are overcome by the fear of God’s voice and by all the tumult they’re facing, Jesus touches them and resurrects them. He raises them into new life, into participation in God’s abundant life.

Jesus does the same thing for us when we meet him in his word, in worship, in one another, in those the world sees as the least and the last, and in holy communion as we meet him in his body and blood. He touches us and resurrects us and calls us beloved. He raises us up to share in God’s abundant life and to live out God’s love for all the world.

Finally, the disciples hear, “do not be afraid.” This is the most consistent message in scripture, it’s what the disciples needed to hear on the mountain and what we need to hear now more than ever.

We all have different reasons to be afraid – the threat of terrorism, potential deportation of friends, health benefits and medical concerns, changes facing state employees and Luther faculty and staff – to name just a few. To each of these different fears, the message of scripture is the same: God is with us and always at work to raise us up and bring new life; we need not fear.

This week at the Congregation Council retreat, our Vice President Megan Buckingham shared part of a Wendell Berry poem that encourages us to “practice resurrection.”

In times of tumult, we are called to practice resurrection by listening to Jesus, by being raised up and not being afraid. We are called to practice resurrection by praying a Psalm for Spring while surrounded by snow, remembering we have been touched by the palm of Jesus’ hand and raised to new life, and by praying Send Me, Jesus and then following where he leads.

Let’s take a moment for prayer now.

Sermon for Sunday, February 19, 2017 – “Practice Not Perfection”

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
February 19, 2017
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.

Be perfect therefore? Really Jesus? How does that instruction help us to love? When we try to be perfect we can get fixated on ourselves and how we’re doing and end up ignoring the people around us. We can get curved in ourselves. What about grace that sets us free so that we can love and serve others? What about forgiveness?

As it turns out, the Greek word translated here as perfect implies something different than moral perfection. The root word is telos which means reaching one’s intended outcome. Scholar David Lose ex- plains, “The telos of an arrow shot by an archer is to reach its target. The telos of a peach tree is to yield peaches. Which means that we might translate this passage more loosely to mean ‘Be the person and community God created you to be, just as God is the One God is supposed to be.’”

We were created to be people of love, people who live with love. And God intends for us to live out love to help bring in God’s kingdom – a kingdom where hatred has no place, where love permeates and trans- forms everything. Jesus’ call here is not to moral perfection but to love. But how do we live out love in this world of violence and hatred?

Jesus says, “do not resist an evildoer.” That sounds like we’re supposed to just let people walk all over us and never stand up to injustice, like we’re supposed to be passive in the face of those who do harm.

Here again there is a translation problem. The word rendered here as resist actually implies something more like violent resistance, revolt, or armed insurrection. So, a better translation would be “don’t react violently against one who does evil.” Or, as three other books in the New Testament advise, “do not repay evil for evil.”

It seems Jesus is not advocating just being a doormat in the face of evil. Instead, he’s advocating that we resist continuing cycles of vengeance and retaliation. We’re called to oppose violence by choosing to not violently oppose others. As scholar Matthew Myer Boulton writes, “Jesus advises defiance – but not defiance directed against the enemies themselves… rather a deeper defiance directed against the vicious, endless cycles of enemy making.” Jesus tells us not to fight fire with fire but rather to refuse to add fuel to the fire. Or as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “hatred cannot drive out hatred, only love can do that.”

In King and fellow civil rights leaders, in Mahatma Gandhi and others that teach non-violence, we have seen the kind of resistance and defiance that Jesus advocates. We see that it’s possible to resist and love.

Except King and Gandhi feel like examples of moral perfection; what they did seems so out of reach. Besides, their situations are much more extreme than what most of us face. In daily life, we usually struggle more with people who bother us than people who truly hate us. We deal more with annoyances and ideological differences than with persecution.

Yet all of us are called to practice love in all the mundane and difficult aspects of our lives. We can’t do this perfectly; some days we can’t even do it at all. But perfection isn’t the goal. Living into who God created us to be personally and as a community is the goal. This is a step-by-step, slow process.

It begins with prayer – praying for those who hurt us, those we fear, those in power over us. Prayer gives us the opportunity to take a deeper look at these people, to look at them with God. We will struggle to see them as God sees them, as beloved of God. But over time, if we practice looking at them with God in pray- er, our perspective will change. We will slowly begin to see that our struggle is not so much with particular people but with the brokenness that affects us all. Prayer can help us to look at ourselves differently – to see the hurt, anger and hatred we carry – and at the same time, to see that we are still and always beloved of God.

Prayer can also help us to discern what love looks like in a given situation. Does it look like forgiveness, or kindness or non-violent resistance to an unjust policy? There are no easy answers, but personal and communal prayer can guide us just as it guided Martin Luther King Jr.

The next step I think, is listening. This summer a video by a former undercover CIA agent, Amaryllis Fox, was widely shared. In the video, Ms. Fox advocates listening to our enemies. She says, “If I learned one lesson from my time with the CIA, it is this: everybody believes they are the good guy.” She continues, “The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them. If you hear them out, if you’re brave enough to really listen to their story, you can see that more often than not you might’ve made some of the same choices if you’d lived their life instead of yours.”                           

I think this lesson applies not just to our sworn enemies but also to that difficult family member or co- worker. When we approach people seeking to understand what matters to them and what keeps them up at night, it is much harder to hate them. It is easier to see that our futures are bound up together and that adding fuel to the fires of hatred will devour us all.

Most of all, I think we need to act loving even when we don’t feel like it. Jesus doesn’t tell us we should feel warm and fuzzy towards our enemies or think happy thoughts about them. Instead he calls us to practice love. The practices he describes can help us to live out love regardless of how we feel. When we chose to not respond to hurtful comments or to remain respectful when dealing with a politician we don’t respect; when we go the extra mile to resist injustice with love; when we choose to help a person in need rather than assuming the worst of them; when we share our food and clothing we are shaped into people who live out love. Again, perfection isn’t the goal; rather it is about being who we’re created to be – being people of love.

Martin Luther said that Christian life is not about arriving but always about becoming. In practicing the Christian life, we receive the love that makes us who we are and then we are sent out to be the love we have received.

Let us pray.

Hymn of the Day, #729, The Church of Christ, in Every Age