Today is called Christ the King Sunday. But it would be more Biblical to call it Christ Not-the-king Sunday. Or maybe Who-says-Christ-is-King Sunday. For it is others, not Jesus, who call him king. In all four Gospels, Pilate asks in one way or another if Jesus is king. And in all four Gospels Jesus answers in one way or another “That’s what you say.”
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Read MoreForty years ago it seemed like the world was on a roll. It was the beginning, everyone thought, of a new age. The dawning of the age of Aquarius. The Berlin wall, a symbol of the old, national, hateful way of international politics, had fallen. And not long after, our scary enemy, the Soviet Union, would collapse. Possibilities were expanding. Humans were walking on the moon. Ancient limitations were yielding to human cleverness. The old generations, stuck in century-long patterns and traditions, were being replaced by a new, younger, smarter, more adventurous generation.
Read MoreOther texts: Wisdom of Solomon 3.1-9, Revelation 21.1-6a
How greedy life is. How greedy we are for life.
Life is good. We take pleasure in things. We are pleasure creatures, enjoying a good view as much as a good dinner. A good conversation, a good hug, and good handshake. A good friend. We are made to enjoy life, to enjoy living, to enjoy the company of others, to enjoy the beauties of the earth. It is our blessing that we love and are loved, that we create things and admire them, that we have aspirations and accomplishments, and also that we can overcome adversity and solve problems. We are clever and fun and complicated.
Read MoreToday we celebrate the Reformation and we remember our denomination’s name-sake, Martin Luther.
The story of Luther is well known among many of us but just to highlight a couple of his accomplishments lets start with the verse attributed with starting the Reformation. It is the last verse from the Second lesson, Romans 3:28 “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
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Read MoreA man approaches Jesus and tells him in so many words that he would like to live a good and Godly life. A noble goal. Since the man was already righteous, meaning he was following the rules of his faith, he no doubt expected a little mild coaching, or a tip of the day. Instead, Jesus tells the man he has to sell all he owns and give the proceeds to the poor. It is hard to follow Jesus. The man, who comes to Jesus eager and confident, leaves distressed, saddened, and uncertain. The story does not tell us what he does. Only that he leaves, not so much shocked as we heard today, but disheartened, downhearted. Having heard Jesus, whether he kept all he had or sold it all, his choices were discouraging.
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Read MoreOnce upon a time we were bigger. A lot bigger.
In the time of Moses, in the time of Jesus, even up to the time of Martin Luther, we were bigger. Human beings could walk from one end of the universe to the other. One end being the west coasts of Africa and Britain, the other end being the east coasts of Asia. Humans could cross the universe on foot in less than a year. And did. Luke tells us in the book of Acts that people came to Palestine to hear about Jesus from every place under heaven
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Read MoreAs Jesus starts talking in Mark’s Gospel about being first and last, there is a shift of character. If you listen carefully, you might hear it. If you were reading along you might have seen it. Jesus starts talking about servants but ends up talking about children. Hardly a big deal. But people have made much of this small change and have tried hard to reconcile it. They point out that the one who is the servant of all is even the servant of servants, and therefore the lowliest of all. And they point out that Jesus speaks often about his ministry to the poor and the outcast. And they point out that children, too, were considered the lowliest of all. Children had no stake, no power, and no voice in the culture of the age. In that sense, the servant and the child must be the same.
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Read MoreOliver Sacks, the observant neurologist, has spent most of his life trying to discover what it means to have a self. What is it about our selves that makes them seem to be continuous? What is it about our selves that makes them seem to be ours, to belong to us? If someone cannot remember anything that happened more than five minutes ago, does that person have one self or many? If someone can only remember what happened long ago, is that long-ago person the same as this present person? If someone who could speak now cannot, is that the same person as before? What if someone goes crazy? What if someone is drugged? What of someone loses part of his or her brain? What if someone, as a person Sacks describes did, mistakes his wife for a hat. What is a person? What is a self? What is our self?
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Read MoreOther texts: Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146
Matthew steals this story from the Gospel of Mark. Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and this stealing from him is common. Both Luke and Matthew take Mark as one of their major sources of information. And both then often modify what Mark has to say. As it happens here.
Read MoreA young woman, speaking on the floor of the Lutheran national Assembly last week, said that the church is losing young members. She meant not just the Lutheran church but most Christian churches. She said that the reason that was happening was because too many Christians seemed to be hypocritical. “We have very good hypocrisy detectors,” she said. She was talking about a particular and common hypocrisy. She was talking at the time about how often church preached love for neighbor and enemy, and how often at the same the church excluded whole populations and turned them away for one reason or another.
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