Sermon from March 11: "The Jesus Family Forgives Together"

Sermon for Third Midweek Lenten Service

March 11, 2015

“The Jesus Family Forgives Together”

1 John 1:5-10

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Matthew 18:21-36

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

So far in our Lenten journey as the Jesus family, we have first simply discovered that we are a part of the Jesus family because God has claimed us as God’s children.  We’ve then learned that as the Jesus family we are called to be followers together, despite what the world says about leadership.  Last week we talked about prayer, understanding that we are called to direct, honest communication with God as members of the Jesus family. 

This week, now nearly halfway through our Lenten journey, we turn to what could arguably be considered the central practice of the Christian faith: forgiveness.  We begin by acknowledging a simple fact that 1 John eloquently states for us: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  In other words, we are broken, our relationships are broken, and our world is broken, by sin.  When we think of “sin” perhaps we only think of it in terms of our relationship with God.  Certainly our relationship with God is damaged by sin, but we also hurt one another by our sins.  Maybe it’s obvious when you hear it, but it needs to be stated, so hear it again: we hurt one another.  Sometimes it’s in relatively minor ways, sometimes in deep and lasting ways, but every one of our relationships, even those with our closest friends and family, is marred by sin.  So as we talk about forgiveness, we’re not just focusing on our need for forgiveness with God, we’re talking about forgiveness as the means by which God seeks to make the world whole again, including our relationships with one another. 

It would be nice, I suppose, if we talked about the Jesus family in a more utopian way.  It would sound better to say, “In the Jesus family, we don’t hurt one another.”  But that’s not reality.  If your expectation is that the church is a place free of sin and brokenness, boy are you going to be sorely disappointed.  I hope that’s not the image that we’re projecting to the world.  There was a sign I saw a while back that was shared by a friend that said, “This church is not full of sinners, there’s always room for more.”  So we begin by recognizing our brokenness and our sinfulness.  If we do not acknowledge this, then there’s no reason to go on talking about forgiveness, unless of course all we want to do is point fingers at those around us.  That would seem to be the impression many non-Christians have about the Jesus family.  We are self-righteous, “holier than thou” hypocrites who do nothing but run around the world telling others how horribly sinful they are.  Let us stand firmly in opposition to this view of Christianity.  When we speak of brokenness and of sin, let us speak first of our own, as a church and as individuals. 

What are we to do with this brokenness then?  We see how it infects every relationship of our lives.  We see how much harm we do to one another.  We cannot delude ourselves into believing we will somehow create a utopia free from conflict.  The key question, then, is how will we respond?  Clinically speaking, there are two basic responses that our bodies have when someone hurts us.  One is to harbor resentment, to become overcome with anger, and even to seek vengeance.  This can be simplified with the phrase “holding a grudge.”  We know this feeling well.  It includes a measurable physiological response: our heart rate and blood pressure increase, we feel a flushing in our cheeks and a tightening of our muscles, and even the conductance of our skin goes up, giving us a warm, tingly sensation or causing the hairs on our arms and necks to stand up.  All you have to do is recall someone hurting you to draw out these responses.  These are natural feelings, built into the “fight or flight” response system of our bodies.  But there is a lot of psychological and medical research that shows that living in this state for long periods of time is detrimental to our health and wellbeing.  People who tend to hold grudges for months and years are more susceptible to heart problems, anxiety, and depression.  The Mayo Clinic also lists these possible effects of holding a grudge:

You might “bring anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience.  Become so wrapped up in the wrong that you can’t enjoy the present.  Become depressed or anxious.  Feel that your life lacks meaning or purpose, or that you’re at odds with your spiritual beliefs.  Lose valuable and enriching connectedness with others.”

We know that staying in such a state of unrest is unhealthy, but still we persist, mostly because we believe that revenge or seeing the other person brought to some kind of justice will give us satisfaction and make us whole again.  The problem is, revenge is not so simple.  The Chinese philosopher Confucious said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”  Too often, seeking vengeance ends up doing as much harm to ourselves as it does to the offender who has wronged us in the first place, and even when we do get some kind of revenge, it never satisfies us in the way we originally thought it should.  Psychological studies have shown that when there are two groups of people, both who have been wronged, and one is given the opportunity for revenge and the other is not, the ones who get revenge end up less happy than the ones who didn’t.  The crazy thing is that the ones who don’t get revenge think they would have been happier if they had been given the opportunity for revenge.  The data suggests exactly the opposite.  Researchers believe this is because those who seek revenge are dwelling on the situation more in their minds.  In other words, they were ruminating on the wrong.  When not seeking revenge, participants in the study were able to trivialize the situation and dismiss it more easily, moving on to more positive emotions. 

So if brokenness is bound to happen, and we know that holding grudges and seeking revenge are unhealthy practices, what alternative is there?  There is no over the counter or prescription medication for this condition.  The diagnosis is simple and is the alternative response to when someone does wrong to us: we can practice forgiveness. 

I suppose I could simply go on and list the health benefits of forgiveness that the Mayo Clinic gives:

“Healthier relationships, greater spiritual and psychological well-being, less anxiety, stress and hostility, lower blood pressure, fewer symptoms of depression, stronger immune system, improved heart health, and higher self-esteem.”

And we could leave it at that.  You should forgive because it’s healthier for you.  But as the Jesus family we have a deeper reason for practicing forgiveness than simply to be healthier people.  We are called to practice forgiveness because forgiveness is precisely what we have received in Jesus.  The parable of the unforgiving slave that we heard is powerful in its hyperbole.  The first slave has been forgiven a debt so large that he would have no hope of every repaying his master.  It is by pure grace that he has been released from that burden, and yet when it comes to extending forgiveness to his fellow slave, he turns again to the path of grudges and vengeance.  The point is clear: because we have been graciously forgiven, we are to be forgiving toward one another.  Failure to do so is an affront to God’s grace.  It turns forgiveness into yet another sinful and selfish thing that we love for ourselves, but refuse to our neighbors. 

Let us not kid ourselves, however.  Forgiveness is not easy.  It sounds nice for the pastor to stand up and say, “We need to be more forgiving.”  The truth is, it’s costly and it’s hard.  It’s hard because it means acknowledging that we hurt one another.  It by no means trivializes the harm that we do to each other.  It does not mean we shrug off the things that hurt us.  Quite the opposite, it means recognizing the pain and mistrust and brokenness that are all around us.  It means seeing that in this very room are relationships that have brought pain into our lives. 

Forgiveness is costly because it means letting our guard down, putting aside our desire for vengeance, and relinquishing the role of victim.  It means coming to a place where a relationship with another person means more to us than getting revenge.  It means at some level learning to accept the hurt that has been done to us, yet deciding to put aside the role of victim so that the other person might be restored to us. 

This can take time.  There is often no quick path to forgiveness, especially when others are continually harming us.  There is some brokenness in our world that will never be healed, and there are hurts that should never be tolerated. 

However, what the church stands for, what the Jesus family holds as its center, is a symbol of brutal vengeance and revenge that has been transformed into a sign of forgiveness.  It stands to remind us of how costly God’s forgiveness is.  We take the cross as the symbol of our faith to tell the world that God has spent everything, even God’s own precious Son, on repairing the brokenness that our sin has created.  God has done this because God’s desire for a relationship with God’s creation is deeper than God’s desire for revenge, and the only path to wholeness is through forgiveness.  When we would rather hold grudges and seek revenge, the cross stands to remind us that the price of forgiveness for our sins, the sins of our neighbors, indeed the sins of the whole world, has already been paid.  The path we are called to walk is the path of forgiveness, not simply because it’s healthier for us, but because it’s the path that Jesus is leading us along.  It’s the choice that God has made concerning our sins. 

It’s important for us to keep this as our central focus as the Jesus Family because the world is not good at forgiveness.  Television shows, movies, other media, even our legal system all seem to encourage revenge and retribution.  This is why the mission of the church is so important.  We offer something that can’t be found anywhere else.  At our recent “Equipping Congregations” event in Willmar, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber shared this idea in a powerful way by reminding us that the church too often tries to compete with the world in other tasks.  She essentially said, “There are good, secular day cares, good health clubs, good social service organizations, but nowhere else is there an organization whose central focus is proclaiming the forgiveness of sins.”  Forgiveness is not just one thing that we try to do as Christians.  It is our primary mission and calling as the Jesus Family.  It’s what Jesus gave his life for.  That’s why we say “We don’t care what the world says about holding grudges, in the Jesus family we forgive together.”

Sermon from March 5: "The Jesus Family Prays Together"

Sermon for Second Midweek Lenten Service

March 5, 2015

“The Jesus Family Prays Together”

1 Thessalonians 5:12-18

But we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Matthew 6:5-13

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

In the first week of this series, we discovered that we are a part of “the Jesus Family,” not because we have chosen or fashioned it for ourselves, but because we have been called children of God and made brothers and sisters to one another by divine proclamation in Holy Baptism.  We began to explore what it means to be a part of the Jesus Family last week by saying, “We don’t care what the world says about leadership, in the Jesus Family we follow together.”  We learned that, in a world that values leaders, we are called to identify ourselves first as followers.  The Jesus Family is not just another group or club to belong to.  It is a movement with Christ as its leader. 

This week, we turn to another aspect of the Christian life.  Ask any relationship guru and they will most likely tell you that the key to a healthy relationship is healthy communication.  Communication, at its essence, is the process of sharing information with one another.  It can be as simple as a nonverbal glance or gesture (think Robert Redford and Paul Newman placing their fingers alongside their noses in “The Sting”) or as complicated as what I’m doing right now: using a series of sounds organized into a complex pattern that we all have learned to associate with a particular meaning.  It’s incredible!   

When it comes to relationships, communication is essential because it’s how we build trust with one another.  From birth, we are wired for these kinds of connections.  Infants are the best creatures in terms of facial recognition on the planet.  One of the first skills they learn is how to recognize facial features and expressions.  Did you know this ability goes down as you get older?  I know my one year old daughter is going to be more exceptional than I am at pretty much everything in life someday, but already she’s got me beat at this!  As a parent, it’s hard to take your eyes off of this tiny child that is suddenly in your arms, but it turns out it’s not just because they’re so cute.  It’s also because we need to form connections!  As much as we change and grow over the course of our lives, these early communication skills remain essential for us, seated deep in our subconscious, unfolding without our even thinking about it or being aware of it. 

Just like human relationships require communication, so does our relationship with God.  Even as some would say that God is largely silent in our world, we know that God continues to communicate powerfully with us in a variety of ways.  Certainly we can receive messages from God through our experiences of the world around us (things like a beautiful sunset, listening to Beethoven’s 5^th symphony, or in my case, maybe even watching a train go by), but the clearest communication we have from God, we call God’s Word.  You may think that I’m referring to scripture, to the Bible, and I am, but only because it tells us about God’s Word.  We do not reverence the Bible as an object of worship.  Rather, these words (lower case w) are sacred because they reveal to us God’s Word (capital W): Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the Word of God, the divine communication sent from God to the world.  The words of the gospel are, as Martin Luther says, the cradle of Christ, but they are not Christ himself. 

We have received God’s communication and continue to receive it through daily devotion, through the Sacraments, through things like preaching and teaching. Prayer, then, is our communication to God, and it is essential for our relationships in the Jesus family  Martin Luther said of prayer, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”  

Prayer is not talking to our imaginary friend.  It is communicating with the deep, abiding, living presence within and around us all the time.  It is participating in the ongoing and unfolding conversation between God and the world.  It is essential for building and maintaining our relationship with God.  

Even so, we often find ourselves at a loss for how to pray.  Indeed, instructions for how to pray are as old as prayer itself, and there are many ways to pray.  The website beliefnet has an article “21 ways to pray” and it includes everything from praying while driving to praying while you brush your teeth in the morning to praying along to some of your favorite songs.  I also like Anne Lamott’s recent book “Help, Thanks, Wow”, where she divides prayer into those three basic categories: “Help!”  “Thanks!” “Wow!”  Help is that basic, desperate plea that we’ve all uttered when we’re feeling helpless.  Thanks is being grateful for a gift received, even being thankful for things it might not be obvious to say thank you for, even being grateful for difficult experiences.  Wow is when we are overwhelmed by what God has done and words almost fail us.

As helpful as all of these things can be, we also have received instruction from Jesus himself about how to pray, so it’s probably good to listen to him on the subject, too.  I could preach on the details of the Lord’s Prayer and each petition as I have done in the past.  This evening, though, there are two things I want us to see.  They are the instructions that Jesus gives his disciples before giving them the Lord’s Prayer:

First, prayer is not about putting on a show, for God or for others.  If your prayer is a performance, you’re not doing it right.  

Second, prayer is not about length or ostentatious language (like the word ostentatious).  God knows what you need.  Ask for it simply and directly. 

These instructions are good reminders for us, especially us pastors, who can easily see prayer as a performance and are prone to heaping up phrases when just a few words will do.  No, Jesus encourages direct, honest communication.  And so the prayer Jesus gives us is simple.  It can be memorized by children at an early age.  It is direct.  It doesn’t use flowery language or go on for pages and pages. 

These two instructions are also important because they address two issues that hinder us in our prayer.

 

First, we don't pray often enough.  We forget to pray, we get distracted, we convince ourselves that we should wait until we have enough time to pray properly, or we assign prayer to a particular part of our life, like only before meals or only at church.  Luther’s encouragement in a short instruction on prayer he wrote for his barber almost 500 years ago is to do it right away!  Don’t wait!  Consider it your most important task for the day and do it right away in the morning before you get distracted.  I’ll add that we ought to consider it our most important response to anything that happens during the day.  Keep the lines of communication open at all times.  Don’t worry about doing it perfectly. 

The second thing that hinders us in our prayer is perhaps even more serious, and that is we don’t know how to communicate honestly.  As great as we are at communicating, we’re also really lousy at it.  Most of us have all of the hardware in place to excel at communication from an early age, but for some reason we let all sorts of things get in the way of communicating directly and honestly with one another.  Every company and politician has a director of public relations where everything that is said by the organization gets filtered, run past lawyers, and scrutinized so closely that in the end you never really knows how much you can trust any of what they say.  

As much as we’d like to say it’s only a problem with corporations and politicians, we know that we’re not much better either.  We have our own internal filters that decide how honest we are with each other.  We face great obstacles in our lives to honest communication, and they’re only increasing in this digital age.  We communicate more frequently in short, shallow messages like tweets and texts.  Anything longer than a paragraph is met with the response of “tl;dr” (that’s "too long; didn’t read").  Yes, the age of the media soundbite has met our personal lives in a profound way.

The biggest problem we face with this is that honest communication requires vulnerability.  We see how people are torn apart on social media or in public because of one phrase that is taken out of context.  We know that being honest with someone means that we could be hurt.  As easy as communication is for us, vulnerability is incredibly hard.  We trust very few people to share the kinds of things that are in the darkest recesses of our minds and lives.  Honesty is hard because trusting others is hard.  It's easier to be closed off and guarded, unwilling to let anyone in on who we really are.  

Now I’m not saying we should start airing our dirty laundry to everyone we meet, but simply naming this as a hindrance to our prayer life.  You see, communication with God is supposed to be different.  Our prayers are not supposed to calculated and guarded.  So here’s the good news that frees us to communicate directly and honestly with God: God already knows!  God already knows more about you than even you do.  God knows absolutely everything about you. 

So “baring your soul” to God is not necessary for God, but it is necessary for us.  When we cling to the idea that we can hide something from God, we don't allow the light of God’s forgiveness and redemption into those places of our lives.  We deny ourselves the very salvation that God so desperately wants to give to us.  But trying to hide these things is a futile effort.  God already knows what you’ve done, what you’ve thought, what you’ve said.  God knows, and God has already promised you forgiveness.  God has already claimed you as a part of God's family, and that can never be taken away from you.  

You've been promised forgiveness, but it will not mean anything to you so long as you cling to parts of yourself that you'd rather God not see.  So don't hide behind the false veneer of perfection, acting as if we have it all together as the Jesus family.  We know the danger of "keeping up appearances" in our personal lives.  We don't want others to know that we're facing challenges in our marriages, or that we're struggling with addiction or alcoholism, or that we live in the shadow of depression or mental illness, or that our financial burdens are sometimes too great to bear.  This cannot be our motivation with God.  Making sure other people know that we have everything under control cannot be our goal as the Jesus family.  No, in the Jesus family we admit that we are broken people with broken lives.  We allow ourselves to be vulnerable before God.  When we do, that brokenness is taken up by Christ on the cross and in return we are given new lives of wholeness, forgiveness, and freedom.  It’s that promise of forgiveness granted in Jesus Christ that allows us to pray boldly the prayer that Jesus teaches us.  That’s why “We don’t care what the world says about direct, honest communication.  In the Jesus Family, we pray together.”

Sermon from February 25: "The Jesus Family Follows Together"

Thanks so much to everyone who attended our midweek Lenten service yesterday evening and to the Sorenson family for providing coffee and cookies following the service.  If you weren't with us, we missed you!  Also, remember that worship times switch for Sunday as it is the first of the month.  Worship with Holy Communion will be at 9:00 a.m. at West Lake Johanna and 10:30 a.m. at Trinity.  Following worship at Trinity we will be having a potluck meal and our first in a series of conversations about our Communion practices.  Bring a dish to share or just bring your appetite, curiosity, and questions.  We hope to see you there!  Here is the sermon from last night's worship service.  As always, your comments are most welcome!

Sermon for First Midweek Lenten Service

February 25, 2014

“The Jesus Family Follows Together”

Philippians 2:1-8

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
 who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
 but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross. 

Luke 5:1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Last week, as we received ashes on our foreheads and remembered our brokenness and mortality, we also remembered that we have been baptized, not just into a religion or spirituality, but into the very family of God.  We have been made a part of the Jesus family, eternally bound to Christ as children of God and to one another as brothers and sisters.  Now, we begin exploring what this means for our lives.  How are we to live as “the Jesus family?” 

The first thing to know is that, as the Jesus family, our lives are going to be different.  This claim on us changes us.  Just like being a part of your particular human family sets you apart from other families, being a part of the Jesus family sets you apart from the rest of the world.  I mentioned last week the phrase that is often repeated by parents to children: “I don’t care what they do at so and so’s house.  In this family, we…”  Have you heard or spoken those words before?  By relating to God as “our Father”, we not only recognize the dependent nature of our relationship to God, but also God’s authority over our lives.  As with any other family, there are expectations for how we live as the Jesus family.  So we are adapting this phrase to say, “I don’t care what the world says, in the Jesus family, we…” 

This week, we say, “I don’t care what the world says about leadership, in the Jesus family, we follow together.”  “Leadership” is perceived as a desirable trait in nearly every aspect of our culture.  From the athletic field, to the battlefield, to the business field, to college applications, as Americans we value and even idolize leaders.  We like to think of ourselves as a nation of pioneers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and risk-takers.  We associate leadership with strength, intelligence, and success, whereas if you say you’re a follower, you’re perceived as weak-willed or weak-minded or less successful.  This glorification of leadership is all around us.  As usual, the advertisers know what sells:

“Stay out in front when you choose Epax condition-specific EPA/DHA concentrates.  For over 170 years, we’ve led the pack in implementing global purity and quality assurance processes to keep our products ahead of the competition.  As a leading global competitor of Omega-3 marine oils…”  It doesn’t really matter what the product is.  Maybe you use fish oils, but I’m not entirely sure what Omega-3 marine oils are.  If I’m going to be buying some, though, I guess I’d prefer to buy them from the leading company. 

Or there was another one I found that includes just a picture of a watch and this simple phrase: “Engineered for men who don’t need a co-pilot.”  We could talk for a good long while about how many assumptions are working in that advertisement about what it means to be a man and to be a leader.  “Engineered for men who don’t need a co-pilot.”  It would be laughable if it didn’t work so well.  There was a part of me that thought, “Yeah, I don’t need a co-pilot, but I need that watch.”  (It was a pretty cool watch.)

Finally, I found another one that showed just the Cadillac logo (it’s sad that I recognized it immediately, isn’t it?) and these words underneath: “Mark of Leadership.”  How about that?  Buy this car (which isn’t even shown in the advertisement) and just the hood ornament will let people know that you are a leader. 

Maybe even worse than the messages about leadership in advertising, are how many things come up when you simply search for “leadership conference.”  There are leadership conferences on everything!  “Wharton Annual Leadership Conference: Preparing for Growth and Innovation in a Changing World”, “National Young Leaders Conference: Skills in Leadership for Change provides real-world experiences and strategies you need to succeed.”  There’s the “American Student Dental Association National Leadership Conference” and even the “International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Leadership Conference.”  Ok, so I kind of want to go to that one.  Who wouldn’t? 

Listen to this: “In today’s competitive arena, winning retailers and suppliers know that innovation is the essential building block to constructing a highly successful and profitable business.  But with today’s plugged in, connected consumers seemingly changing the game on a daily basis, today’s business leaders have had to take innovation to an entirely new level to stay ahead of the pack.”  Any guesses about what in the world they’re talking about?  Here’s the next line: “in recognition of this paradigm shift, Furniture/Today’s Leadership Conference, set for Dec. 2-4 at the Ritz Carlton Beach Resort in Naples, Florida, is appropriately themed: Are You In(novative)?”  Again, we could spend a long time unpacking everything that is swirling around in the assumptions about business, our culture, and leadership in this conference for furniture retailers.  Do you hear the mixture of anxiety over the fast pace of change coupled with that familiar buzzword: innovation?  And of course, above all, the goal is to be a “winner.”  We associate being a leader with winning and being a follower with losing.

One final place to note how prevalent all of this is in our culture is in the online community, where people have “followers” on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and who knows what else.  No one cares how many people you are following, they only care about how many other people are following you.  “How many followers do you have?” is a question attached to value and self-worth.  Have a lot of followers?  You must be somebody.  Are you only a follower?  You’re just one face in the crowd, a nobody. 

The church is not immune from these things, either.  We have our own leadership conferences.  We talk about building up “servant leaders” within the church.  At Wartburg Theological Seminary during my time there as a student, the tagline they formed from the institution’s mission statement was “Engaging God’s Future: Forming Valued Leaders.”  You hear that?  I am a “valued leader” (in case you didn’t know).

The temptation is so great, even within the church, to think of ourselves first as leaders instead of followers.  Jesus is clear, though.  His family is one of followers, not leaders.  There is but one leader of the Jesus family: God.  When we allow our own ego and ambition to get the best of us, we find ourselves trying to usurp God’s place as the head of the family.  The only way to keep this in check is to continually insist on being known as followers, to constantly recognize God’s ultimate authority in our lives. 

So what does it mean to be a follower?  Let’s put aside the negative connotations of that word that our culture would like us to buy into and think about how being followers together is a good description of being a part of the Jesus family. 

First, following means there’s movement.  You can’t follow someone if they’re staying in the same place.  If I say, “Follow me!” and then just stand here, it wouldn’t take long for you to ask, “Ok, where are we going?”  Being a follower means Jesus’ family, the church, is first and foremost a movement.  The church is not an institution or a congregation or a building.  It is a movement.  This is hard for us to hear because a lot of times we like it where we are.  Sometimes the problem isn’t that we want to go a different direction than Jesus.  Sometimes the problem is that we just don’t want to go anywhere at all.  We like things the way they are.  The calling of the Jesus family is to a movement, however.  It is a calling to leave the familiar, perhaps comfortable life that we’ve known, and follow Jesus.  The first members of the Jesus family literally did just that, leaving their boats and nets on the shore and immediately following him.  So it’s clear: we can’t follow Jesus and stay where we are and as we are. 

It’s not just about being a movement, either, though.  If all we said about the Jesus family or about the church is that it’s a movement, then there’s still the chance that we could be a leader of it.  By saying we are followers, we mean that we are a part of a movement that we are not fully in control of (if at all).  God is in control of this movement.  Instead of seizing power for ourselves, casting our own vision for what this family should be, or claiming our own authority, we relinquish all of those things to God as followers of Jesus. 

The famous Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has this to say about the temptation to such individual visions of what the church ought to be in his book “Life Together.”  I don’t typically include such a long quotation in my sermons, but I think what he says perfectly describes the danger of individual leadership in a community that is called to be full of followers:

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own laws, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Do you hear already the danger of what can happen when we insist on our own leadership ahead of God?  Do you hear how quickly we become the center of the community instead of Christ?  Hear, then, the promise of a community of followers that Bonhoeffer so eloquently describes:

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily.

Did you hear it?  Our animosity, our judgment of ourselves and others, our selfish demands: in light of God’s forgiveness of all sinners in Christ, these are replaced by thanksgiving for that which we receive only by God’s grace.  That’s not all, though.  He goes on:

And is not what has been given us enough: brothers (and sisters), who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day?

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother (or sister) still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his (or her) sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother (or sister) becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together--the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship . . .

And my heart sings, “Oh that it would be so!”  As members of the Jesus family, we must pray that our individual visions of what this family ought to be would perish, that the family with Christ alone as our head would emerge.  For Christ alone and the forgiveness found in him is the ground we stand on.  It transforms the way we view one another, the way we see our sins and the sins of others, and it transforms the role we play in this family.  We are set free from selfish desires for power and leadership and called to take on the role of followers, being humbly obedient to the one who gives us life and salvation. 

Even as we engage in various roles and responsibilities in the church and in our lives, we must remember that we are all followers.  Jesus himself provides the example for us by forsaking all power and authority that were rightfully his as God’s only Son and walking the way of the servant, of suffering, of the cross. 

In a culture that wants us all to be leaders, let us boldly proclaim ourselves faithful followers of the one who has given himself for the sake of the world.  Following, and especially following Jesus, may be seen by the world as a sign of weakness, but as Bonhoeffer later concludes: “What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God.”  That’s why we don’t care what the world says about leadership.  In the Jesus family, we follow together.

Your Mission: Jesus Family for the week is as follows:

For families with young children, play a game of “Simon Says” or “Follow the Leader,” then talk about Jesus calling us to follow him.

For families with older children or for adults, share with each other an experience you’ve had both leading and following.  Talk about what it means for you to say you’re a follower of Jesus.  

Ash Wednesday Sermon: "The Jesus Family"

Throughout Lent we are exploring what it means to be "the Jesus family." This series of reflections and activities have been developed by Pastor Bryant and will be posted here each week for those who cannot be with us on Wednesday evenings. Our next midweek service will be February 25 at 7:00 p.m. at West Lake Johanna. For our Ash Wednesday service, we focused on "The Jesus Family" as a way of understanding our relationship to God and one another. Here is the transcript of the sermon:

Sermon for Ash Wednesday
February 18, 2014
“The Jesus Family”

Ephesians 4:1-6
"I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all."

 Mark 3:31-35
"Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, 'Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.' And he replied, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking at those who sat around him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.'"



What does family mean to you? We all probably have our own answer to that. Sure, there’s the stereotypical “family household” defined by the census bureau this way:

 A family consists of a householder and one or more other people living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption.

 Family is a word tied to deep emotions for us, either positive or negative. The stale language of bureaucracy somehow fails to capture the depth of meaning these relationships have for us. Is it simply the people you live with? I think for many of us, we would expand the word family beyond the walls of our dwellings to include the closest relationships of our lives. You may have friends that you would say are “like family” to you.

 If the government can’t fully define family for us, maybe companies can. The language of family is pervasive in advertising. A quick online search of simple phrases like “From our family to yours” or “We’ll treat you like family” revealed companies selling everything from healthcare to tires to beef. There’s nothing like the purchase of all-weather radials and a big steak to make you feel like one of the family, huh? This kind of advertising works, though, because just the word family is meant to invoke images of warmth, welcome, and wholesomeness.

 Our faith is filled with familial language. We pray to God as “our Father.” We are called “children of God.” We call one another “brothers and sisters” in Christ. So what does all this mean? Is it like selling tires or steaks? Do we use this language just to evoke warm, fuzzy feelings? Or is there more to it? Is there something deeper going on when we refer to ourselves as God’s children and to one another as brother and sister? Can we grow deeper in our relationship to God and one another by exploring what it means to be a family? I think so, because using that specific language isn’t done simply to provoke an emotional response within us, but instead to tell us something about the nature of those relationships. It provides a framework for understanding the fundamental ways that we are meant to relate to God and to one another. In other words, just as we might describe family as our foundation in life: those who literally provided the building blocks of who we are through our DNA and by giving us the formative experiences of our lives, so too the familial language of faith is meant to profoundly shape us and our view of the world.

Take the example of praying to God as “our Father.” This language is scrutinized by some for invoking a male name for God, when of course God is neither male nor female in the biological sense. And it gets criticized at times out of concern for those who have experienced much pain at the hands of an abusive father. These are fair concerns, and not to be taken lightly, but we continue to use the word “father” for God first and foremost because Jesus uses this word when speaking to and about God, but also because it has profound implications for how we understand and experience our relationship with God. The Greek word is “abba,” literally “dada.” You can hear it as one of the earliest words a child could say. “Ah-ba.” It’s a simple, familiar word, meant to describe the close connection between a parent and child. When we pray to God, we pray as little children. We are as dependent on God as a little child is on their parent.

So one reason we use this language is because it helps us understand the depth of meaning that these relationships have for us. Just as we use the word family to describe those closest to us in the world, we use the word family to describe how close we are meant to be to our fellow Christians. We call one another brothers and sisters. As in the example of referring to God as “abba” or “dada,” our use of this language comes from Jesus and his disciples. In drawing followers to himself, Jesus makes it clear that he isn’t just forming an interest group or social club. God is his Father and his followers are his family.

In Mark’s Gospel we heard the brief story of Jesus’ biological family looking for him, trying to reach him through the crowds that are surrounding him. Earlier in the same chapter, they’ve tried to persuade him to stop teaching and healing, because they think he’s “beside himself” or, in modern language, going a little crazy. Jesus, of course, will have none of this, and when they persist in trying to reach him, he gazes upon those gathered around him and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers!” This isn’t meant to be an insult or dismissal of his biological family. We know from other stories that he loves and cares for them. He says it for the benefit of those gathered around him, for you and I, so that we can understand the depth of relationship that he seeks to establish with his followers. We aren’t just students or disciples, we are family.

It’s important for us to understand this. As the church, we don’t invoke familial language willy nilly or by our own choice. We use this language because it’s the language Jesus uses for God and for us. If we are Jesus’ family, if we are “the Jesus family,” it’s not because we at some point decided to be Jesus’ family or chose it for ourselves because it sounds nice and cozy. We are Jesus’ family precisely because he has claimed us as his family.

It’s appropriate for us to remember this on Ash Wednesday, as we mark the sign of the cross on our foreheads. The first time the cross was marked on our foreheads at baptism we were told “you have been sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” When something is sealed, it is official. God’s claim on you is final. On this day and in this season of penitence, we remember that we are nothing without God’s love and grace. We are dust. In the scope of the universe, we are less than dust. We are an infinitesimal speck on an infinitesimal speck in the vastness of the cosmos. And yet we are called beloved children of God, claimed by the one from whom all light and life come. God’s baptismal claim alone is what forms our family: the Jesus family. Nothing less than a royal proclamation of the king of the universe has called you God’s child and made you brothers and sisters to one another. You can fight it, run away from it, ignore it, or even despise and hate it, but you cannot undo it. You are a part of the Jesus family.

The question, then, is what does this mean for us? What difference does it make that we are in Jesus’ family? The answer, of course, is that it is supposed to make all of the difference in our lives. We don’t just say, “Well, it’s nice you’re a member of our church” the same way it’s nice that you joined the same gym as us or “it’s nice to have you in our club.” I wish I could tell you that being Christian is something that can be a passing interest or confined to just a select hour or two of the week. But it’s not. When we say we’re family, we mean it in the deepest sense of the word. It carries with it all of the obligations of family. It’s a job that you cannot quit or retire from. There are no days off and no vacation days. It is a lifelong, everyday, all-encompassing claim on you.

And just as our human families come with expectations, so does the Jesus family. A nearly universal experience of childhood, I think, is hearing your mother or father say something like, “I don’t care what they do at so and so’s house, in this family, we…” That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Again, we must be clear: it is God’s claim on us that forms us as family. Failing to follow the family rules does not mean you are not family.  The claim God has placed on you cannot be undone. As the Jesus family, however, we have been given a calling. There are family rules to follow. If we are, as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” then we must understand what it means to be a part of this family.

So, throughout the course of Lent, we’re going to explore what it means to live as the Jesus family through the foundational practices of the Christian life. We will use a variation of that simple phrase “We don’t care what the world says, in the Jesus family, we…” Each week, we’ll also be giving you a mission. We’re calling this Mission: Jesus Family. It will include a simple task for you to do either with your family or with a close friend. Your first mission is simply to remember that you are a part of God’s family. We do this by blessing one another. You can remember this on your own, of course, but there is power I think in hearing it spoken to you by another person. It reinforces the idea that this is not something that you claim for yourself. The words of the one blessing you stand in for God’s own word of promise: “Remember, you are a beloved child of God.” It’s exploring the truth of this claim that lies at the heart of this series of Lenten reflections and at the heart of our faith. Let them sink into your ears, your minds, your hearts, seeking to grow ever deeper in your understanding of the love that God has for the world and for you. Remember, you are a part of the Jesus family, now and forever. Amen.

(Video) Youth Group bowling challenge

Here's a glimpse of the fun had today at the Brooten Lanes for the B-B-E Area Youth Group bowling challenge:

Children's Sermon

Here's Pastor Kaden's childrens sermon from January 11:

(Video) Youth Bell Choir

Video from worship service at Trinity Lutheran Church on November 16: