Reverend Amy Zalk Larson – Good Shepherd Lutheran Church   – Decorah, Iowa

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

Our righteousness must exceed that of very morally upright people, or we won’t enter the kingdom of heaven? I’ve been wrestling with that statement all week. For one thing, the word righteousness carries a lot of baggage. I sometimes feel very righteous and virtuous, like when I’m shopping at the Coop with my reusable produce bags. It’s good that I’m caring for creation by avoiding single- use plastics, but sometimes I’m also silently judging everyone who’s not. (Which is ridiculous be- cause half the time I forget my fancy reusable bags and there’s still a ton of plastic in my life.)

I’m pretty sure that a misguided sense of moral superiority is not what Jesus wants for me. That doesn’t feel good, much less like the kingdom of heaven. I think Jesus wants us to focus less on trying to be right and more on loving others. And self-righteousness is an obstacle to love. So why does Jesus say our own righteousness needs to be exceptional?

At the pastor’s Bible study this week, Pr. Mike Wilker, from First Lutheran Church, shared a story about real righteousness and the kingdom of heaven. The story has stuck with me ever since. He gave me permission to share it with you and I’m describing it the way I imagine it happened.

A woman, I’ll call her Mary, volunteered regularly at a shelter for women and children who were unhoused. It was Mary’s job to prepare and serve breakfast for the shelter residents. Mary was the model volunteer in many ways. She was always on time, never missed her shifts, followed all the checklists about health and safety and food preparation. But she never left the kitchen. She never went to sit and talk with the residents, never shared a meal or a laugh with them. Mary stayed firmly behind the counter.

Until one day there was a commotion beyond the dining area, a commotion that drew everyone outside, including Mary. The husband of one of the residents had been stabbed on the front steps of the shelter. Mary found herself holding this man as he lay there bleeding while they all waited for the ambulance to arrive. The man survived and recovered.

Yet he wasn’t the only one who experienced healing that day. As the ambulance raced away, the shelter residents grabbed each other’s hands and came together to pray for him. They drew Mary into the circle. As she held hands with the women, the barriers that she’d put between them fell away. As she joined their prayers, she experienced the kingdom of heaven. She felt the presence of God through them. She was righteous, in right relationship with the women around her.

This story is such a beautiful picture of  the righteousness that brings us into the kingdom of heaven. It isn’t about checklists or moral superiority or self-righteousness. When we hear about righteousness in scripture, it means right relationship. This story also reveals that entering the kingdom of heaven isn’t something that happens after we die. We experience the kingdom of heaven here on earth through right relationships with others – through relationships marked by mutuality and humility, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.

But it can be so hard to experience these relationships. Our baggage gets in the way. We get stuck behind our own counters, afraid to get too close to other people and their needs. The boxes on the checklists get completed, but we miss the person right in front of us. We side-eye each other at the grocery store. We beat up on ourselves for things like acting superior, forgetting produce bags, forgetting someone’s name. That gets us fixated on ourselves rather than the people around us. Our ways of worship and hospitality become rigid, as does our thinking, our politics, our preferences.

The good news is that these obstacles don’t stop God from making us righteous, drawing us into right relationship. Jesus is always working to break down what separates and to bring us together.

Jesus, in essence, takes our hands and draws us into that circle of prayer outside the shelter. We may not feel an actual tug on the sleeve, but Jesus uses concrete, physical things to grab hold of us and draw us in.

Jesus works through other people and stories, water, bread, wine, words of promise, music, visual art, creation and so many concrete things. Jesus works through these things to say to us: you are loved, you are forgiven. You don’t have to focus on yourself – on all your faults, on all your good deeds. You’re freed from worrying if you’re OK in comparison to everyone else, from trying to build yourself up at their expense. You are created good in God’s image. You are loved just as you are. You are forgiven and set free for life in the kingdom of heaven here on earth. 

You all are the light of the world. That light is in all y’all, Jesus tells us. Let it shine so that others know the love of God. Be a beacon of courage for that woman behind the counter. Put down your checklist and see the twinkle in someone’s eye. Let go of trying to be right, correcting others, reflect love instead.

These are important reminders on the day of Good Shepherd’s annual meeting. In all we do together as a congregation, we are to be salt, tending to relationships. We are to shine with the justice and joy of God, the righteousness of God that brings healing to human relationships, to relationships with creation.

Today, we experience the kingdom of heaven in Christ’s presence so that we might be who we are – salt of the earth, light of the world, bearers of love.

Reverend Amy Zalk Larson, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Decorah, Iowa

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

Good Shepherd member and seminarian Kathryn Thompson, her wife Sara Hanssen, and their daughter Greta have richly blessed this congregation in so many ways. One blessing Kathryn has given is something that I get to experience every Wednesday night. Each Confirmation class ends with a blessing circle, a practice I learned from Kathryn, a practice she learned from former Good Shepherd member and now Pastor Amalia Vagts.

At the end of each Confirmation class, the students, our Youth Director Kelli, and I stand in the blessing circle. One person at a time goes into the center of the circle. All the rest of us take turns blessing the one in the middle. We call them by name and say, “You are God’s beloved child.” So, when I stand in the middle of the circle, I get to hear the words “Pastor Amy, you are God’s beloved child” spoken to me up to nine times a night.

This practice is awkward and a little time consuming and sometimes I think, should we really do this every week? And then I stand in the middle and I’m blessed deep in my bones. I feel this good news: that I am loved by God, that God is with me, that God sees me and regards me with delight even when I’m tired, even when I’m feeling down, even if the Confirmation lesson didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I hear this good news from middle school youth who are steeped in our culture’s toxic messages about themselves, about other people.

I love hearing this. I love getting to remind our beloved youth of how they really are. It is one way we live out the words we say at each baptism here at Good Shepherd. We say, The world will call you many things. The world will try to rename you. Today we echo the voice of the Triune God. Today we call you beloved of God. When we see you begin to wonder if this name is really yours, we promise to remind you: You are indeed God’s beloved child.

I love this blessing circle. Wonderful Kelli, our Youth Director, loves it too. Kelli has now developed a secular version of this practice for her special education classroom. She does a “you matter” circle with her students. I also love that this practice came from Kathryn and from Amalia. They, and so many LGBTQIA+ Christians are helping the larger church to remember our blessedness, to know that we are all created good, all created in the image of God, that God does not make mistakes.

For so long, the church has tried to shame people into believing, into being what the church defines as “pure”, into being meek and humble. For so long, the church has emphasized original sin rather than what authors Matthew Fox and Danielle Shroyer name as original blessing. Original blessing is what is most true for each one of us, what is proclaimed in the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible: God creates us, gazes upon us, and declares us very good.

God views each one of us as God’s beloved child always and forever. Nothing about us ever changes that. Even when we hate and judge, even when we are stuck in prejudice and bias and fear of others, even when we struggle to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, God cannot be stopped from loving us.

Take what God does through the prophet Micah for instance, what we heard about in our first reading today. God has been hurt by Israel’s hard heartedness. God is frustrated and in pain. Yet still, God responds by reminding Israel of the ways God has saved them throughout their history, reminding Israel of God’s love and faithfulness. These saving acts, this love of God, is what makes it possible for Israel to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.

It is God’s blessing, not shame and blame, that allows us to live in God’s loving ways. And oh, does God shower us with blessing in every time and place, in all circumstances, and especially in times of sorrow and pain. That word blessing has been hijacked in our culture. We proclaim we are blessed when we share pictures of smiling families, as we drive new cars away from the lot, when that promotion finally comes through.

Yet to be blessed by God means to be seen, honored, regarded, cherished by God. And God’s blessing doesn’t bring us health and wealth, but rather well-being, peace and joy, no matter the circumstances we face. God’s blessing makes it possible for us to be a blessing: to show mercy, to make peace, to hunger and thirst and work for justice and righteousness.

This is what Kathryn, Sara, Amalia, Jonathon, and other LGBTQIA+ Christians show the church time and again. They each have experienced the failings and sin of the church that tried to separate them from God and God’s people. Yet, the love and blessing of God is stronger than the human tendency of separation. God’s love still gets through to these beloved LGBTQIA+ children of God, despite the failings of the church. Now, in their own ways, these children of God are working to help others experience good news and blessing. Thanks be to God.

Beloved of God, you are blessed by God.

God sees you, honors you, cherishes you, delights in you.

Soak up this good news today. Bask in it.

You are blessed. You are a blessing to the world.

Go and help others to know that they are blessed and loved.

Reverend Amy Zalk Larson – Good Shepherd Lutheran Church – Decorah, Iowa

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

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

The apostle Paul, in our second reading today, sounds a lot like a parent – especially one living in Decorah on say the fifth snow day by mid-January in a week that already had a planned no school day, just when the kids were finally getting back into routine after Christmas break. But I digress.

When Paul says, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, be in agreement, let there be no divisions among you,” I hear a desperate parent pleading, “Please be kind. Please, everyone, stop arguing! Why can’t we all just get along?” I think my 101-year-old grandmother has felt the same way after some Thanksgivings with all her children and grandchildren, especially after elections.

Paul is making complicated theological appeals in his letter to a newly forming church in Corinth, but sometimes it seems like he’s most concerned about crowd control for an unruly bunch. Some- times it feels like he’s just offering platitudes: “Let there be no divisions” can sound like “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”; “don’t rock the boat”; “go along to get along”.
The church is often expected to live by these platitudes. Be nice, be friendly, don’t disagree so that everything stays positive and upbeat. When there’s conflict in a congregation, the word on the street is often, what a bunch of hypocrites.

Paul continues, “Be of the same mind and of the same purpose.” What does that mean? How would that even be possible? Is Paul arguing that there is one faithful Christian perspective on immigration, or abortion, or how to care for creation? That the purpose of the church is to figure out that position and then get everyone on board with it? This approach seems to shape how we talk about Christians on the other sides of social issues these days. How can you be a Christian and think that? Why don’t they get it? People need to be more informed, then they’d understand.

I know I’ve said and thought all these things. I don’t think they’ve ever helped anyone around me to be of the same mind and the same purpose. They certainly haven’t erased the divisions within the body of Christ. So maybe we’re just back to going along to getting along?

Thankfully, the apostle Paul, led by the Spirit, is advocating something much deeper than crowd control. He isn’t advocating uniformity or conformity. And he certainly isn’t advocating niceness.
There are lots of ways you could describe the Apostle Paul – nice isn’t one of them. Instead, Paul is saying we belong to Christ, you belong to Christ, I belong to Christ. That truth, that good news can shape everything we do, everything we say.

We belong to Christ. We belong to the body of Christ. We are loved and forgiven and set free, called into lives of meaning and purpose in God’s kingdom. That is true for us not because of how we vote or our position on issues or what we believe or how well we play with others. We belong to Christ because God is so committed to love and forgiveness and being in relationship with us. This is the good news, and this is what unites us. This is what gives us purpose as the church, even when we disagree.

We’re called to get this good news out into the world to help people experience the belonging, love and forgiveness that is for them in Christ Jesus. When people feel loved, when we feel loved, then we’re able to follow Jesus who calls us to love. Then we’re able to follow Christ Jesus who is working to heal, renew and change the world. Then we’re able to be in relationship with others we find difficult and wrong. Even when we feel threatened by them, even when we feel frustrated, we are held in love always, they are held in love always. It isn’t up to us to change them. It isn’t up to us to get others in line. It isn’t up to us to change the world. Our purpose is to follow Jesus and to love.

Love doesn’t mean being nice. Jesus also wasn’t particularly nice. Love doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to injustice, not at all. It does mean that we’re called to see others the way Jesus sees us, as beloved children of God. It means we’re to approach others with curiosity, seeking to listen and understand, trying to explain our neighbor’s actions in the kindest way possible. It means we are to love people enough to stay engaged with them rather than writing them off, trusting Christ Jesus can change us all through love.

This is so hard, especially right now. Yet we can do this because we are loved, because we are forgiven, because we belong to Christ. We need to do this because it is the only way that change will happen in our world. We humans change only when we feel loved and safe.

Beloved of God, we belong to Christ – Christ who let go of power and control humbled himself and loved to the end, even to the point of death. Which means, belonging to Christ has nothing to do with niceness or group think or demonizing others. Belonging to Christ is about love. It’s about surrendering our own egos and agendas, trusting that the One who brings new life is at work far beyond what we can imagine or accomplish.

One way that this surrender happens for us is in congregational life. As we live in community and come up against people who frustrate us, people who think we’re wrong, people who won’t back down, we’re also confronted with our own brokenness. When this happens, rather than trying to avoid all the mess or trying to get other people to get in line, we’re called, again, to surrender our small, ego selves and remember that we all belong to Christ. We’re called to a costly love made possible because we are loved.

We belong to Christ.
You belong to Christ.
You are loved and forgiven. I am loved and forgiven.
Together we can trust and follow the One who loves.

Let’s take a moment of prayer.

Reverend Amy Zalk Larson – Good Shepherd Lutheran Church  – Decorah, Iowa

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

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

What are you looking for? Jesus asks the guys who’re trailing behind him, peering at him, maybe trying to figure out if he’s for real. What are you looking for? As in, why are you here? What are you after? What do you need?

Jesus asks us the same question today. What are you looking for, really? Why are you here? We’re not always sure, don’t always have deep thoughts on the matter. Since we’re talking about Jesus, maybe the best way to answer that question is with another question. That’s what Jesus usually did. 

Maybe to figure out what we’re looking for, it helps to ask, what’s saving your life these days?

This question comes as a gift from author Barbara Brown Taylor. What’s saving your life today, here and now, getting you through this particular time? This question invites us to take a long, loving look at all the down to earth gifts of God that save us every day:

The ones that get you out of bed on yet another dreary morning;

The ones that bring delight, that reveal what matters to you, and so call forth your care and generosity;

The ones that break through the fog so you can see there is more to me than the ways I consume, compete, and compare to others;

The ones that make you laugh until the tears come.

What is saving your life? I had a head start on this question, so I’ll share my list first. I hope you’ll do the same at coffee hour, at home, on the phone with a loved one:

These days, God is saving my life through tea a friend gave me, yoga, and the Masters Swim team I just joined;

The smell of sweet potatoes roasting;

Thursday morning Bible Studies here – we ask each other such beautiful questions;

Ross Gay’s challenging book Inciting Joy;

Communion services at the nursing homes;

Padraig O’Touma’s voice cracking me open through his Poetry Unbound podcast;

Your voices raised in song and getting to join you in that singing;

AeroPress coffee, house plants, corn sack bags to warm me as I read before bed.

What is saving your life? Where do you experience God’s goodness and grace? I think that’s what we’re looking for – God’s ordinary grace that gets us through, that lights us up so that we can shine.

It’s all around, all the time. So why don’t we recognize it? Why are we so often oblivious to these saving graces? What causes us to wander aimlessly, to seek what harms ourselves and creation, to miss the holy in the gifts and needs of others?

The Christian tradition describes all this as sin. That word sin doesn’t refer to the bad things we do so much as it describes all that keeps us curved in on ourselves: everything that separates us from God and the rest of the world that prevents us from recognizing what we need, what others need from us, and the grace right before our eyes.

“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks the two men trailing behind him. I imagine that question stops them in their tracks. Yet, being that it’s Jesus asking it, I trust they also feel seen and known and loved by the One who always looks at us with such gentleness and compassion. I imagine an even deeper longing arises in them, a longing for relationship.

“Where are you staying?” they ask him. Except the word they use can mean more than just are you at Joe’s house or at Pete’s? They use the Greek word meno which means stay, remain, dwell, abide.

So, they’re really asking, where do you abide? Where do you dwell, Jesus? We want to be there, wherever it is, we want to be with you. They can’t fully answer the question of what they’re after, but as Jesus gazes on them with love, they recognize who they’ve been seeking all along without even realizing it.

They, and we, need a Savior, the Messiah, the Lamb of God. The Savior says to those two seekers, says to us today, Come and see, come and dwell with me. You don’t have to find what you need on your own. It isn’t up to you to see clearly, to always be attentive, to have the right answers and the best questions. Just come and be with me, be part of the community around me, Jesus says.

You all come, come and feel my embrace of welcome and forgiveness. Experience the truth that I’ve taken on your sin, the sin of the world, so that nothing can separate you from me. Come and find your sin is released from you, that it’s lost its power over you. Come and see how I open your eyes, your ears, your senses and bodies so that you can notice what’s saving your life and tell others about it, so that you can recognize grace, receive grace, and reveal grace to others.

The two do come with Jesus, and in his presence they recognize and receive. We also hear they remain, they meno – abide, dwell, stay with him. From there they go and they tell others: we have found the Messiah. We’ve found the One we didn’t even really know we needed. As they go, they find that telling others saves them again. Their experience of God’s grace deepens as they recognize it and reveal it in the world by how they love, how they accompany those who are marginalized, how they forgive, how they shine as they follow Jesus’ way of justice and joy. They go and tell others, “This Jesus community is saving my life. I want you to have this joy too. I want you in this community because I need you.”

What are you looking for? What is saving your life? You’ve found who you’re looking for, the One who has already found you.

God’s grace is all around. Because of Jesus, you and I, all of us remain in this grace. In the Jesus community, we recognize, receive, and then reveal this grace.

Come and see. Go and tell.

Reverend Amy Zalk Larson – Good Shepherd Lutheran Church – Decorah, Iowa

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

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

An image that’s lingering with me as we begin a new year comes from the very first day of 2020. Our extended family was on a beach vacation in Florida after Christmas. Each day started with a walk by the ocean. The morning of January 1st, we were delighted to see that someone had used seashells to write the numbers 2020 there on the sand. The digits looked fun and funky and inviting. 2020 here we come.

2019 had been a rough year for my family as we faced some serious health issues for my son. The promise of a new year, a new decade, was most needed and most welcome. 2020 is going to be a great year I remember thinking that morning. It didn’t quite meet my expectations. I remember as 2021 began so many of us expected that year to be drastically different from the hard 2020. But then Jan. 6, 2021 happened.

What do we do with our unmet expectations? How do we live with disappointments? That’s a question I’m holding as we start another new year, a question that our scriptures today also raise.

John the Baptist has high expectations of Jesus who he knows is the Messiah. In the passage right before this one, he says of Jesus, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and … the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” John seems to think that Jesus is coming to burn it all down – all the wealth and greed and injustice of Rome. Finally, King Herod
and the Emperor are going to get what they deserve. Bring it on. This is going to be a great year.

John stands in a river yelling for everyone to be cleansed, repent, get ready. And just as he’s done speaking, John sees Jesus on the horizon coming towards him. I imagine him turning to the crowd saying, “See what I’d tell ya, here he is now.” Except, his hands are empty – no winnowing forks, no weapons. And he doesn’t look terribly fiery, more curious kid than fierce Messiah. What’s he doing now, walking into the Jordan? He’s the strong one, he’s supposed to change everything! If he gets baptized, he’s going to give away all his power!

John’s expectations of Jesus are left unmet, and not for the last time. Later when John is in prison, I imagine him remembering the words of the prophet Isaiah, words we heard this morning that describe God’s chosen servant bringing prisoners from the dungeon. Alright Jesus, here I am, literally in prison. This is it. This is your time. Could you start acting like a Messiah? Any day now would be great. Jesus doesn’t spring John out of prison. Instead, he is executed there.

What did John do with all his unmet expectations? How did he deal with disappointment? What do we do with this stuff in our own lives each day and as a new year begins? Should we try to manage our expectations so we’re not disappointed? Set the bar low so that we’re always pleasantly surprised by our own efforts, by the people around us?

This week I read a reflection entitled “Giving Disappointment Its Due” by theology professor Jonathan Tran. Tran writes, “We might think disappointment’s bad, but it ain’t death. [Yet] death has everything to do with disappointment. After all, what is death’s sting other than the loss of an imagined future?” He continues, “Our society lacks resources for acknowledging dis- appointment. We have rituals for mourning death but not for disappointment. Instead of acknowledging your disappointment, most people would rather deflect it or explain it away: ‘You dodged a bullet’ or ‘It wasn’t in the cards’ or even ‘That wasn’t God’s plan’. And, no one avoids acknowledging our disappointment as much as we ourselves do. It hurts too much. It’s easier to store up enemies and resentment.”

Yet unmet expectations and disappointments are a part of being human. When we deny those parts of our lives, we deny our own humanity. God does not avoid, deflect, or explain away the
pain of being human. Instead, God enters into all of it. That day on the Jordan River, Jesus enters the fraught waters of our humanity. He takes on our sin, our disillusionment, all that is disheartening and distressing and death dealing. Jesus wades deep into it, faces it head on. In doing so, Jesus assures us: You can be dripping in this stuff and still be beloved of God.

Not just at the Jordan long ago but now in the waters of our baptism, God meets us in all hard stuff and joins us. We are joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus in baptism. In the waters, we die with Christ and are raised to new life again and again. We can’t escape the pain, but God meets us right there. This means, we can face the death dealing disappointments of this life knowing they
do not define us, they will not crush us. We will rise again today, tomorrow, each new day.

We can expect good things today and in the year ahead, for even in the midst of death, God is with us and God brings new life. This new life may not look like what we expect, but it will emerge, it will spring forth. It may not always be fun and funky and beautiful beach weather with hope spelled out in seashells, but it will emerge.

And when our expectations are unmet and our hopes dashed, God comes alongside to grieve with us, to call us beloved, to raise us up again. God’s presence also allows us to enter difficult waters with others, acknowledging what is hard and looking together for what new life will emerge. God’s
presence allows us to work for justice over the long haul, even when our expectations are disappointed time and time again.

Today, each new day, hear this word of promise for you.
You are God’s beloved child.
God is with you in all that is, all that has been, and all this is to come.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.