sermon

Jesus Christ on the cross tells us that the present pain, death, and shame is powerless. But when the pain of this world feels too heavy, His scars tell us that’s okay.

Vicar Natalie Wussler
Holy Cross Day
Texts: Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 98:1-4; 1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-17

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hungry, tired, longing for rest, the Israelites did what many of us might do, they complained. They said their chains back in Egypt sounded like refuge compared to this wilderness. And instead of getting a solution to their problems, they received snakes. Snakes that bit and killed many Israelites. These people felt scared. Their lives were in danger. Some felt hopeless and believed that these snakes would be their end. But others turned to God, declaring their trust that they could be delivered. 

And God, in love and mercy, did. A bronze serpent lifted high offered healing to all those who had been bitten by just looking at it. God didn’t take away these snakes, their venom or even the pain from the bite. What God did do was take away the snakes’ capacity to kill. These snakes still bit and it still hurt, venom did still enter the people’s bodies, but with the bronze serpent lifted high, the Israelites had found a saving grace. Perhaps now, in the presence of these snakes, the Israleites felt less fear. Maybe when the serpents bit, the Israelites didn’t panic and fear imminent death as they once did. God gave them the promise that these snakes would not be their demise. Through God, the Israelites no longer had to fear their death by snakes, and were assured that God would sustain their life another day.

Cut several thousand years in the future, and Jesus is doing a similar thing. With God’s love for you and for me fully realized, Jesus Christ, the word of God incarnate, was lifted high on a cross, and died a criminal’s death. He rose from the grave, and all at once defeated death. Our gospel reading today says that all people who believe in Jesus will not perish, will not be lost, will not truly die, but will live eternally. Like the sting of snake bites having no hold over the Israelites, because of Christ crucified and risen, the sting of death has no hold over you. Yes, your body will die and you will feel pain in this life, but, if you look to Jesus and believe in Him, you too will be healed, from death, from sin, and all that separates you from God and from your neighbors.

You get to enjoy the resurrection, and once this life passes onto the next, you will have a seat at the feast that has no ending. AND, while you live this temporary life, you get to live in relationship with the Triune God. God’s spirit dwells within you, giving you a new nature. Daily you can lean on the Holy Spirit to direct your path, rather than relying on your own self-serving inclinations. Your new nature directs you to an abundant life of love for God and for all people.

This isn’t just some blessed assurance for after you die. It’s an invitation to daily die to the inclinations of this world and rise in Christ until you finally return to your heavenly home with the Triune God and all the saints that have gone before. 

Though death, sin, and the pain of this world might sting now, they truly have no power, against the backdrop of Christ crucified and risen. 

And, that sounds great, right? 

Until we feel pain. 
Until someone we love dies. 
Until we feel the shame of our sin. 
Until we feel betrayed by a friend, or receive life-shattering news. 
Until life hurts.

Yes, God’s promises through the cross of Christ are true, but in the face of a tragedy or any kind of trial this world throws at you, a victorious Christ might not feel like the balm for your wounds. If in the midst of a personal crisis, someone said to you, “Oh, the present pain doesn’t matter, because it has no power. Rejoice! Christ is victorious over everything. You’re going to live forever,” this kind of statement might feel they’re minimizing your pain, because even though we do have those promises, and they can sustain us, life still stings. Sometimes, we can feel like the Israelites in the wilderness being bitten by the snakes prior to the bronze serpent–alone, scared, hopeless, hurting, and in the midst of a whole lot of suffering. And, church, that’s okay. 

Jesus definitely has something to say about this. Jesus, God made flesh, lived a human life and experienced the world as we do. He felt weariness, anger, despair, and anxiety. Jesus was denied and betrayed by his closest friends. He died a human death, an excruciating one. The life and death he led left their marks on him, even after the resurrection. Fully redeemed and resurrected, Jesus’ body still bears the scars of the crucifixion. If Jesus’ very life was restored to his body, don’t you think the holes in His hands and feet and the wound in his side could have also been healed, too? Maybe, just maybe these wounds were meant to show us that life’s pain is not outside of the eternal, abundant life God has for us on earth. We can be risen with Christ, and attentive to the ways we and others hurt. 

God does not need you to check your pain at the door. God wants all of you. Yes, Jesus defeated sin and death, but death still scarred his body. It’s by touching these scars, and bearing witness to the trauma Jesus endured that the disciple Thomas comes to believe in the resurrection and good news, and it’s by believing in these same scars on the resurrected Christ that we can come to know God’s love for us. Jesus’ scars show us that he has been through the most difficult parts of life. Jesus knows pain. The word of God made flesh knows what a human life feels like. Through Jesus, the Triune God understands and empathizes with the way the world hurts. The Triune God understands and empathizes with the way that you hurt. Your pain matters to God. The Triune God cares so deeply about you and is with you through your hardest moments. There is nothing that you could ever experience that God won’t understand.

And in the midst of your hardest moments, God assures you that though pain may wound you, it is not the end of your story. Because to every Good Friday moment, we have a resurrection on Easter Morning. We still have hope that sustains us through this life. We have hope to live a life centered on Christ, hope that we can learn to walk in Christ’s ways better everyday, hope that we will live after our bodies die, hope that our present suffering doesn’t have the final say. It’s a hope that does not deny suffering. In fact, it looks suffering straight in the face, and assures us that this is not the end for us. As people of Christ, we can affirm our pain and Christ’s promises at the time, discounting neither. We can be bearers of this same hope to others. Sitting with people on their Good Friday’s, so that Easter morning’s hope might come.

Some days, you may need the image of a victorious Christ, who lives now and forever, who went to the grave and came out the other side, who redeems all your pain and declares it powerless, who sustains you until you’re on the other side of eternity. Yet other days, you might need the image of a suffering Jesus, the one who was lifted high on the cross, with his blood and agony visible for all to see; whose body, though resurrected, is still scarred, and sits with you in your pain. Yet other days, you may need a Jesus that lives in the liminal spaces between resurrection and suffering. Our resurrected yet scarred savior abides in all these places, declaring that there is hope for wherever you are. Look to Jesus Christ lifted high on the cross.

 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3G3xMgPX2I

In this weary world, we often struggle against powers and cosmic evils that wish to take us away from eternal, abundant life. The full armor of God helps us remember we are not alone in our struggles.

Vicar Natalie Wussler
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 21 B
Texts: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The beginning of my senior year of college felt a lot like the flaming arrows that Paul talks about today. Riddle with anxiety, I was constantly barraged by the questions of where my life was going the next year, and while I had a perfectly canned answer, I truly had no idea where I was going and found it hard to believe I would attain the same level of success my peers would. My self esteem was at an all-time low. Compounded on that, my junior year left me with some pretty traumatic scars that I had not yet healed from. Some days I barely wanted to get out of bed. I was confused, broken, and often I felt utterly alone.

I don’t remember exactly why I started doing this, but I began reading our Ephesians passage before I got out of bed in the morning and before I went to sleep at night. I made a point to not even let my feet touch the floor until I had read Ephesians 6, because I wanted to clothe myself in the armor of God before I did anything else that day. It wasn’t overnight, but gradually the pain and the anxiety subsided. I connected with dear friends that reminded whose I am. My path started to become clearer. Getting out of bed didn’t feel like a battle between the world and me. I started feeling like myself again and was more confident to face the day knowing that I wore the armor of God.

When I saw that this text was in the lectionary this week, I got excited to preach on the armor of God because of how personally meaningful it is to me. But I do understand that talking about armor and battle in church is a tenuous topic. It’s passages like Ephesians 6 that people used to write songs like “Onward Christian Soldier” which likens the church to an aggressive army instead of a community attempting to love God, each other, and the neighbor well. This kind of text has been used by Christians to justify doing horrific things, some of which we talked about last week. We see Christian nationalists today using this passage as permission to arm up and create violent chaos in our country. But, beloved, even though Paul’s address to the Ephesians sounds a lot more like something out of the Lord of the Rings or Henry V, if you dig a little deeper, it has truth and good news. I invite you to stick around with me and find out.

But, we’ve got to talk about the bad news first. There are powers and evils in this world that want to keep you and I away from eternal, abundant life. Paul says this is what we struggle against. It’s larger and loftier than one person or even a group of people. Our struggle is not with flesh, but with powers. Powers that seek to divide and oppress. They’re things that we encounter everyday. Greed, misogyny, homophobia, selfishness, racism, and sinfulness of all kinds. The prospect of resisting these cosmic evils might feel hopeless. But Paul responds “stand in God’s strength.” You are not helpless against these powers, no. You have a full set of armor to protect you.

You have the belt of God’s truth, which holds you together.

The breastplate of righteousness to protect your heart from all the cosmic evil in the world.

You can lace your sandals to ready yourself to proclaim the gospel–the present evils have already lost, Christ is victorious.

The helmet of salvation, reminding you of your baptism and your unconditional welcome into God’s family.

And finally the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God delivering both law and gospel. A word that can both cut and heal.

This is the full armor of God. They are the tools that equip you to do God’s work in an overwhelmed world. It unites people of faith, it does not divide. It responds in God’s love, not with the world’s hate and fear. It’s a protective agent so that you and I have the ability to withstand our world’s proclivity for violence and oppression, and do it with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The full armor of God gives us fortitude against sinfulness that keeps us separated from the Triune God and from our neighbor. It helps us with one voice denounce the systemic evils that keep God’s beloved children in oppression and we do all this knowing that it is not with our own strength, but by the strength of God.

Once dressed in this armor, Paul has this directive: Pray. Do it unceasingly. This is a deep kind of prayer, an abiding kind of prayer. A God in you and you in God kind of prayer that Jesus talks about in our gospel reading today. It is a total dependence on the One who has saved us and continues to save us, every moment of every day.

Beloved, you are not alone, you have never been alone, you will never be alone.

Yes, the weight and the pain of this wild world might feel like they are on your shoulders, but you do not have to face it by yourself. The same is true of our neighbors.

Paul asks us to pray for all the saints, including him, a prisoner of the Roman empire, fully dependent on God. This armor was never meant just for our own protection. Our neighbors far and near are experiencing the same cosmic evil as us. They need to know that the armor of God is for them too. We can go out and be God’s armor for people. Whether it’s being a helpful hand to a stranger, a random act of kindness, or advocating for the liberation of all people, we can take our armor to enter into this hurting world speaking love and justice to all. Paul’s directive to pray shifts our focus from our own protection to the empowerment of all God’s beloved children in a weary world that desperately needs to hear good news.

Friends, hear the words of the ambassador in chains: speak truth, guard your heart with righteousness, have faith in the Triune God, renew your mind and remember your baptismal promises, ground yourself in the gospel, for yourself and for your neighbor. But most of all pray, and do it abiding deeply in the God who abides in you so that all may experience the protection and empowerment of the armor of God.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We often can’t help but worry “Will there be enough?” but Jesus is enough, and all we need to do is trust that enough is enough. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 18 B 
Texts: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:16-35 

Beloved friends, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Now what? 

We’re standing in the wilderness.  Just weeks ago, God did something amazing!  God freed us from slavery in Egypt! God sent the plagues and parted the water and made the bitter water sweet and just days ago we were singing and laughing.  

And now it’s today.  And we’re hungry and tired and still have a long way to go.  Maybe it would be better if we had just died. 

Now what?

We’re standing on the shore of Galilee. Just yesterday, God did something amazing!  God fed us! Five thousand people, out of just five small loaves and two fish. Jesus turned the smallest of gifts into the greatest of blessings.  And then, miraculously, crossed the sea without a boat. 

And now it’s today.  And we’re hungry again and Jesus is nowhere to be seen. 

Now what?

We’re sitting in our pews. Just last Sunday, God did something amazing! And we ate our fill and we sang. I mean, we usually sing, but last week, we sang. As if we really wanted to make sure that Bach and Schutz and Handel heard us.  As if we really wanted to make sure that David heard us. And the Spirit showed up and last week we were fed and filled.

And now it’s today. And we’re hungry again.  And maybe, just a tiny bit, worried.

Now what? 

And sure the Holy Spirit showed up last week, and sure Jesus promised that if we trust we’ll never be hungry, and sure God is able to accomplish more, far more, abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine… 

But will that be enough?

It’s amazing how quickly that question comes to us. Amazing how quickly that full, fed feeling begins to slip away. Emptiness starts to creep in. And the hunger returns. It doesn’t matter how amazingly God has shown up or how recently–weeks ago, last Sunday, yesterday–it doesn’t take long and we’re looking around thinking “Now what?” Sure there was enough yesterday. There might even be enough today. But what about tomorrow?  Will there be enough?

Enough food? Enough money? Enough time? Enough talent?

Will there be enough health? Enough work? Enough rain? Enough votes?

Will there be enough leaders? Enough friends? Enough music? Enough church? 

Will we be enough? Will I be enough?  The fear sets in.  And the hunger. 

That feeling of lack – of craving…something.  That feeling that prompted the crowd to jump in the boats and go looking for Jesus across the Sea.  To ask with desperation when they had found him:  “What must we do to perform the works of God?”

There must be something we can do – something we maybe should have already done.  Because we are afraid and hungry, but maybe, maybe if we just try harder, be better, do more? Maybe if we work a little bit harder, stockpile a little bit more,  then there would be enough.  Maybe then, we wouldn’t be hungry.  

“What must we do?” the crowd asked, “to perform the works of God?”

And Jesus’s answer?  Trust.

That’s it. “This is the work of God, that you trust in the one whom God has sent.”

You don’t have to do anything. It’s not about what you do, it never was. 

“I am enough,” Jesus is saying. And enough is enough. 

So, trust. Trust that I know what you need, and I’ll give it. 

Trust that my grace is sufficient for you. 

Trust that there really is enough. 

And that enough is enough. For today. Enough really is enough.

This is the lesson that God has been trying to teach us since the manna in the wilderness.  “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.” “So,” the Psalmist picks up the story, “mortals ate the bread of angels; God provided for them food enough.” God, who is above all and through all and in all, who came as Christ to fill all things, gave them enough to fill them. And enough is enough. “So the people ate,” the Psalmist sings, “and were well filled, for God gave them what they craved.”

So why is it so hard to trust?  And why does that hunger keep coming back when Jesus said we’d never be hungry?

And as I was thinking about that this week, I kept thinking about this scene from an episode of Seinfeld.  Kramer and George are sitting in the diner and Kramer asks, “Do you ever yearn?” and George replies, confused “Yearn? Do I yearn?” and he takes a second to think about it and says,  “Well, not recently…I’ve craved.  I crave all the time – constant craving. But I haven’t yearned.” 

And Kramer gives him this look of pity and says “Look at you – You’re wasting your life.”  

And I keep thinking about that scene because it encapsulates so well what Jesus is getting at here.  Jesus is talking about two different types of hunger: physical and spiritual, and two different kinds of longing: craving and yearning. 

Craving is fleeting. It’s a longing for something physical and it can be satiated, but never for very long. You can crave a snack or a cigarette or a touch.  We often crave things that are comforting in the moment, but that we suspect in the long run might not be good for us.  But craving is also part of being human. And God cares about our cravings – sending the literal bread – giving us “what we crave.”

But yearning is something else entirely. It’s prolonged. It’s a longing that is earnest and sincere, often for something that can’t be touched or tasted. You yearn for love or for purpose, or for closure, for acceptance,…or for God.  And when yearning meets its object, it isn’t just filled, it’s fulfilled. It’s transcendent and holy in a way that satisfying a craving never is. 

And when Jesus meets the crowd that went looking for him in Capernaum, he’s asking the same question that Kramer asked George.  “You are craving the food that perishes,” he tells them. “But what are you yearning for?”  Are you listening to your deepest longings, are you searching for what you really need? The craving will come back, but your yearning, that can be fulfilled. If you trust. 

Jesus cared about their cravings, of course he did, he just fed all five thousand of them, but he wants to dig deeper, to their yearning.  Because he knew that they were craving the bread– but that they were yearning for life. 

“I am the Bread of Life” he says. And I am what you’re yearning for. You’ve found me. I’m here to give you life and give it abundantly. I am here to fill all things because I am enough and here’s the best news of all– you are enough too. 

Even with your hunger – all your cravings and yearnings. You are enough. Enough for God to live a human life for.  Enough for God to die a painful and humiliating death for.  Enough for God to go to every length to save you and gather you in and give you life. 

You are enough. Which isn’t to say you are finished. You’re still growing and becoming and being built up, as Paul says to the Ephesians, to the full stature of Christ.  You are learning everyday how to live that life in Jesus, to live a life worthy of your calling.  You are being equipped everyday for the work of ministry, for the work of caring for one another.  So that you can be God’s hands and you can rain down blessings, providing for each other, meeting everyone’s needs–satisfying every kind of hunger. 

Not because you have to perform the works of God. But because you trust.  You trust that in God there is enough.  You are enough. 

And I’ll say it again until you feel it in your bones. You are enough. And enough is enough. 

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 Like Herod, the good news might perplex us, but it also attracts us–and we are called to live into the fullness of God’s shalom by speaking peace and justice. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 15 B 
Texts: Mark 6:14-29; Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There’s not much good news in our gospel for today, is there?  

I mean, it’s a good story. It has all the elements: scandal, power, seduction, revenge, tragedy, death. The kind of story that gets told and retold, for sure. Painted and repainted. Adapted and re-adapted. It’s a good story – but is there any good news here for us today?

Because it sure seems like bad news. It sure seems like the power of the world wins. John the Baptizer was sent to prepare the way for the reign of God, but when the reign of God comes head-to-head against the reign of Herod, all it takes is one pleasing dance, and one foolish promise, and then there’s one head on a platter. 

What’s good about that? 

For me, there’s only a glimmer of good news and it’s in this one line that Mark includes: “When Herod heard John the Baptizer, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.”

He liked to listen, even though he was “greatly perplexed.” 

The Greek word for perplexed is ἀπορέω, which means to be at a loss – literally “to be wayless” – and translators go lots of different ways with it: “thoroughly baffled,” one version says, “miserable with guilt,” “greatly confused,” “much troubled.”  

And I don’t want to defend or acquit Herod, but I have to confess that I sympathize with him a little bit.  How often have I felt wayless, baffled, miserable with guilt, confused and troubled when I’ve heard the word of God? The Psalmist says, “Let me hear what the Lord God is saying, for you speak peace to your faithful people…” but it doesn’t always feel like peace to me. Especially when that word exposes the ways I’ve chosen the reign of Lauren, rather than the reign of God. 

But maybe that’s the point. 

Because, after all, Herod was supposed to feel troubled by the word from God that John was bringing to him: “For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’”  Commentators often say that the problem with this relationship was that it was considered incestuous and that’s why it was not lawful. But if you know the full story, you can see that the problem is bigger than that.  

The law exists to promote life, and this unlawful act brought a lot of death.

Not only John’s, as we heard, but countless others died later because of this marriage. It started a war! Herod and Herodias divorced their spouses in order to marry and this so angered Herod’s ex-father-in-law that he joined up with Herodias’ ex-husband, and they declared war and marched on Galilee. An untold number of soldiers and bystanders died in this conflict. And it didn’t turn out great for Herod and Herodias either, who both died in exile when they had lost the favor of the Roman Emperor. Death, violence, separation, all born from breaches of the law: from coveting, adultery, and lust.  

And John tried to warn them. God sent John to speak the words that Herod needed to hear, to offer Herod and Herodias an alternative path, to “speak the peace” that might have been. 

That’s what prophets always do, really. 

It’s certainly what the prophet Amos was doing. Over seven hundred years before John was sent to Herod, God took Amos from following his flock, and said to him, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’  And so Amos begged them: “Seek God and live! [Amos 5:4]”  He begged them to choose another path so they could experience the thriving, abundant life in God’s peace! 

Because if they didn’t, Amos had harsh truths to share about where that path would lead: that God would “spare them no longer;” that ”the high places of Isaac would be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste,” and that God would “rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”  And when the priest Amaziah heard these harsh words, he felt perplexed, baffled, confused and troubled; protesting: “The land is not able to bear” these words.  

These words didn’t feel like God “speaking peace” to God’s people.

But what was hard for Herod and for Amaziah to understand, what is hard for us to remember, is that speaking peace doesn’t just mean saying nice, comforting, calming things. Speaking peace isn’t just the absence of conflict.  Speaking peace is speaking shalom, speaking deep wellness and wholeness within and without and between. 

And shalom doesn’t just appear. 

Which means that speaking peace means speaking the conditions that are necessary for peace. It means speaking justice.  Amos sees the people “selling the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals…trampling the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and pushing the afflicted out of the way.”  There can’t be peace in these conditions, not when injustice is perpetuated, not when the poor are suffering, not when the powerless are exploited. 

No justice, no peace, Amos warns.  

This is what speaking peace looks like, it looks like Amos trying desperately to draw the people back to true peace that is available in the reign of God, but to get there, they have to live justly. To live in such a way that everyone has what they need. That everyone is loved just the way they are. That everyone’s tender wounds are transformed into sacred scars. That’s what it’s like in the reign of God. And if they seek the reign of God, they will find it. 

And I think that’s why Herod, even though he was troubled, baffled, confused, and perplexed, he still liked to listen to John.  

Because shalom is wonderful. Even Herod could recognize that. He liked the idea of it.  He recognized the goodness of the world that John the Baptizer was proclaiming. 

And we all like to listen when God speaks peace. 

Because there is something deeply appealing about the shalom of the reign of God. It’s what draws us to this room week in and week out. We long to listen to words like the ones Paul offers to the Ephesians: “With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will…to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” We like to listen to words like that.  

But it isn’t enough just to listen. 

“Repent!” John said.  “Repent! for the reign of God is near!” That’s the next step after listening, and it’s the step Herod never gets to. He is too afraid for his own status, clinging too tightly to his sense of power and control, and he’s too reluctant to challenge the injustices that benefit him.  He wants peace, but won’t help create it.  And, in the end, that’s why John died. 

Herod chose violence, but that still didn’t bring him peace. 

Because when he hears about Jesus – he thinks it’s John the Baptizer, the man he knew for sure was dead, come back to haunt him. Herod can’t experience the love of God-With-Us or the joy of God’s shalom in the flesh. And he can’t have peace because he is hounded by the memory of his own cruelty and cowardice, haunted by injustice:  No justice. No peace. Given the chance to seek God and live, Herod chose death instead.

We are all still processing the aftermath of the shooting at the Trump rally last night. 

Many of us are perplexed and baffled and confused and troubled. We mourn those who died and pray for healing for those who were injured.  And we fear for the fallout, because we can be sure that this act of violence won’t bring peace, even if the shooter, whoever they were, even if they liked to listen, liked the idea of peace, but chose death instead.   

Let us choose life. 

We are all called to speak God’s peace. There is no ordination, no roster for prophets – we are all prophets, plucked from our flocks. We are called to speak peace in Christ and to speak the justice that is its prerequisite. Not only to speak it, but to bring it into existence by loving God and loving our neighbors, and making sure that everyone, no matter who they vote for,  that everyone is gathered into the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  

It won’t be comfortable. We will have to repent again and again.  And it might even be dangerous, speaking truth to power often is.  But it’s worth it. For the good news.  The good news might perplex us but it also attracts us, like gravity pulling us to our God who loves us so much and wants to gather us into the fullness of shalom. 

Earlier in the book of Amos, the prophet says: “The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

Speak peace this week, beloveds. Speak justice. 

We need it today more than ever. Who can but prophesy? The good news is just so good. 

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Answers are important, but questions matter more — our questions for God, like “Do you not care that we are perishing?” and God’s questions for us, like “Why are you still afraid?”

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 12 B 
Texts: Job 38:1-11; Mark 4:35-41 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The gospel reading today reminds me of an improv game that I remember watching on “Whose Line is it, Anyway?”.

The game is called “Questions Only,” and in it, the players must act out a scene off the top of their heads, but they are only allowed to speak in questions.  So, it might go something like this:

Imagine a scene is set in a restaurant, one player might ask: “Are you ready to order?”

The other player can’t say yes or no, but they might respond with a question like: “What are the specials?” 

“Can’t you read the board?”

“Would I like the BLT?”

“Do you like Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato?”

“Who doesn’t?”

And it can go on and on like that until someone can’t think of another question or accidentally answers. 

It’s harder than you might think and the joy of it, I think, is when a player messes up. Not only because the mistakes tend to be pretty silly, but also because the format of question after question after question builds its own kind of tension, which can’t be resolved until one of the players finally makes a mistake and offers some kind of resolution. 

And, at least in Mark’s telling, it almost feels like Jesus and the disciples on the boat are playing their own mini game of “Questions Only.”  

When the storm blows up, the disciples ask Jesus: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Jesus doesn’t answer them directly, but after he calms the storm, asks: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And, like good improv players, the disciples don’t answer this question, but respond with a question of their own which they ask to one another: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Question after question after question – but the answers are left unwritten. The sea is calmed, but the tension isn’t resolved. 

And it reminded me of a quote from Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, who wrote that when it comes to studying scripture: “Answers are important, but questions matter more.”¹

Faithfully seeking God is not about knowing the answers, it’s about the questions. 

And nowhere is that more poignantly demonstrated than in the book of Job.

The entire plot of the book of Job hangs on one of the most difficult questions of human life: if God is good then why is there suffering?  And famously, “the answer” that God gives at the end, isn’t an answer at all. Just more questions hurled at Job from the whirlwind: 

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”

“Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together?”

“Who shut in the sea when it burst out from the womb?”

And we only heard the first part, it goes on and on with more and more questions like this for three more chapters! The questions are meant to enlarge Job’s perspective. To help him glimpse a God who is too big for storms and whirlwinds, and much too big for simple, declarative answers! God is beyond the declarative – beyond static description. The mystery of God’s being and reality can only be glimpsed in questions, in shifting images and dynamic metaphors–in a tension that can’t be resolved.  It’s the same idea that Augustine observed, when it comes to God, he wrote: “If you understand, then it isn’t God.”  

Which, to be honest, can be frustrating.  

It can even hurt to be reminded of our smallness, of our helplessness in the face of a chaotic universe and a God we can’t begin to comprehend.  And it sure doesn’t stop us from asking different versions of the same question from Job. 

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  That question the disciples ask in the boat sends a shiver down my spine. 

Because it’s the same question I’ve wanted to ask, during the storms I’ve weathered in my life, whenever I’ve watched whirlwinds swirl around my loved ones.

“God, don’t you care that we are dying?” 

“Don’t you care that we are being gunned down in grocery stores and in Gaza?”

“Don’t you care that we are drinking polluted water and choking on toxic air?”

“Don’t you care that we are so lonely, so hurt, so hopeless that we are killing ourselves?”

“Don’t you care that we are dying?”

These are the hard questions that I think. I wrestle with them. I rage over them. But I don’t often speak them. 

We’ve been taught not to speak these kinds of questions, especially not from the pulpit.  Not to betray any kind of lack of faith, any doubt in God’s goodness. We’re taught to say “Oh sure, I know that God cares,” we’re taught to pray on the assumption that God cares enough to listen, we’re taught to give the good Sunday School answers and never to flat out ask the question. “God, don’t you care?”

Maybe because we are afraid to.  What if we ask and God answers no?  What if God says: “Your mind cannot even contain me. I am the question that cannot be answered. I am the storm and the stillness, I am the thunder and the tempest and the whirlwind and the fire, I AM THAT I AM. How could I care for a speck like you?”

That’s what our deepest, darkest fears whisper to us. So, it feels safer to shove the question down in our hearts and fake an easy faith that we wish we felt. 

But the disciples didn’t do that. 

They were terrified and they asked the question out loud: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

And Jesus doesn’t answer directly.  He doesn’t say, “Of course I care, how could you even ask that?”

Instead he calms the storm. 

We can ask.  We can ask the hard questions. 

Because God speaks from the whirlwind.  Because God’s love is as big as God’s power and as big as God’s self.  Because answers are important but questions matter more. 

The questions we ask God. And the questions God asks us. 

That’s what those four chapters of questions that God asks Job show us.  They show us how much God cares.  How much God cares for the Earth, right down to its foundations. How much God cares for the sea, who God calms and swaddles with clouds. And if we kept reading in these chapters we’d see more questions that show in beautifully strange detail how much God cares for all creation.

“Where is the way to the dwelling of light?” God asks.

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?”

“Do you know when mountain goats give birth?”

God cares. God cares so deeply.  God cares for every photon and snowflake and baby goat.  And cares for you.  Cares enough to invite you into wonder.  Into mystery.  Into tension that cannot be resolved. 

God cares enough to ask the hard questions of you. 

“Why are you still afraid?” Jesus asks.

So often, we read this as a rebuke of the disciples, but if you go back and look again, it’s the wind and the sea that Jesus’ rebukes and commands, not the disciples. He doesn’t say “Don’t be afraid.”  He asks them: “Why are you still afraid?”

I bet Jesus knew the answer.  I mean, it seems pretty obvious. But it wasn’t about the answer.  Answers are important but questions matter more. 

Because the question is connection. Relationship. It’s a chance for the disciples, and for us, to search our hearts for where fear is coming from. It’s an invitation to swap that fear for faith. Faith in the God who cares enough for us to ask. 

Why are we still afraid? Engaging with that question is scary in itself. And we’re probably never going to be able to answer it fully.  Never going to be able to resolve the tension. But faith isn’t about knowing the answer.  It’s about opening wide our hearts, and asking more questions. 

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

^{1. https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/answers-are-important-questions-matter-more}

The scribes thought Jesus might be using the power of a demon, but spiritual evil can’t produce life and wholeness and community–that’s what the Holy Spirit does. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Third Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 10 B 
Texts: Genesis 3:8-15; Mark 3:20-35; also Luke 6:27-28 and Romans 12:21 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s only chapter 3, but Jesus has been very busy!  

So far in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has been baptized and has seen the heavens torn apart and Spirit descending on him like a dove, he has withstood the temptation of the devil in the wilderness, and has come out proclaiming that “the reign of God has come near.” He has called the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, to leave their boats and follow him.  He has cast out demons, healed the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law, and healed a man with skin disease. He has forgiven the sins of a paralytic man who was lowered through the roof by his friends, and also healed his paralysis. He has called Levi the son of Alphaeus, and has eaten with tax collectors and sinners.  He hasn’t fasted when he was supposed to, and he has plucked grain and healed a withered hand on the Sabbath when he wasn’t supposed to.  And he has gathered crowds so enormous that he had to preach to them from a boat off shore and he has found time in there somewhere to appoint the twelve apostles. 

No wonder Jesus went home for a rest! 

But he doesn’t get one. For one, the house is too crowded with followers for him even to sit down to get a bite to eat. And for another, some scribes, some religious authorities, have come down from Jerusalem and started throwing out accusations that Jesus is possessed by, or even in league with, spiritual evil. 

“He has Beelzebul,” they say, “and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 

Which can seem, to us, like a ridiculous thing for them to say.  

Demons don’t tend to be part of our daily vocabulary.  When was the last time you talked about Beelzebul the Lord of Flies? And even the more familiar figure Satan is more likely to inspire ridicule than terror.  Our cultural image of the Devil is one of red tights and a silly goatee and horns and a pitchfork and that makes it all the easier to mock anyone who starts talking about the Devil or demon possession. 

Oh those silly scribes. Imagine believing in Beelzebul.  Imagine worrying about the Devil.

And I don’t want to get too bogged down in spiritual metaphysics. The fact of the matter is that the people of Jesus’ day thought about the underlying forces of the universe very differently from us.  Our instinct, so often, is to lean away from the spiritual and toward the scientific. But what we assign to the random chance of a chaotic universe, the people of Jesus’ day usually assigned to spirits, busy at work in the world for good or for evil.  But this pre-scientific worldview – that’s not what makes this accusation ridiculous.  

Because though we may think of them in different ways and call them by different names, we do know the forces of evil.  And they aren’t silly.  

We know the hurts that turn into hate – the houses divided against themselves.

We know the fears that fuel isolation and violence.

We know the voids so vast and empty that they begin to consume everything. 

We know the greed that destroys and sucks dry in the name of amassing more, and more, and more. 

We know the spiritual evil that surrounds us. That possesses us. That binds us.  That plunders us. 

To use the metaphor that Jesus uses, we know the strong man that lives in our house. 

And, like these scribes, we know what it’s like to think that the strong man’s game is the only game in town.

When these critics of Jesus thought of power, they thought of the strong man’s power, the power they had experienced at the hands of their oppressors.   That was the kind of power they knew – the power to make others afraid and poor and hopeless. That was the kind of power that changed things.  

And here was Jesus – changing all kinds of things.  

So, it must be “by the ruler of demons that he was casting out demons,” they thought. Jesus must be fighting fire with fire, wielding the weapons of the strong man.  That must be where this power was coming from. 

And, you know, it is tempting to use the strong man’s power.  

It’s tempting to want it and to even think that maybe even some good could come from it.

It’s tempting to think that if that one guy you can’t stand was just out of the way, that then you might have peace. 

It’s tempting to think that if there was just one more zero at the end of your bank account balance, that then you could afford to be generous.

It’s tempting to think that if that one person who wronged you were shamed and shunned and hurt, that then you might be healed. 

It’s tempting to think that if you just eat that good-looking fruit that the snake is offering, that then you might be like God.

It’s tempting to think that you could fight fire with fire, that you could destroy the master’s house with the master’s tools. 

Even Jesus was tempted. 

But it’s a fantasy.  In fact, it’s ridiculous.  Actually ridiculous to think that you could use hate to heal. That fear or greed or violence could produce love or joy or peace. 

That’s the real blasphemy. 

The real unforgivable sin. Not unforgivable because it is so heinous or because God’s forgiveness has limits. But unforgivable because there is no forgiveness in the world of the strong man. There is no power to redeem or to reconcile. Just hurt upon hurt, hate upon hate, centuries of division and anger and revenge and plunder.

And that’s not the reign of God.  That’s not what life in the Holy Spirit looks like. Life in the Holy Spirit looks like everything that Jesus has been so very busy doing over these three chapters.  It looks like wholeness: healing fevers and skin diseases and paralysis and withered hands.  It looks like redemption: forgiving sins and facing those life-sucking demons so that life can flourish every day of the week. It looks like community: reaching out to those on the margins, to the poor and the outcast and to traitors and the immoral, calling them and gathering everyone in a crowd so big and so brimming with new life and hope and joy in the reign of God, that the house is overflowing.

Wholeness, redemption, community: you can’t get those using the power of the strong man.

You can’t get life by wielding the weapons of Beelzebul or Satan or Demons or whatever you want to call the forces that hate and hurt and destroy. You can’t fight fire with fire.  That’s the real blasphemy. 

You fight fire with water.  You fight hate with love. You fight fear with joy. You fight separation with connection. You fight death with life. And you end wars by waging peace.

This is what Jesus desperately wanted the scribes to understand – wanted all of us to understand – that when you are drenched in the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit courses through you – then you start doing what the world thinks is the most ridiculous thing of all: you  “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.”  You won’t “be overcome by evil but [will] overcome evil with good.”

And you will start catching glimpses of the reign of God.

There is spiritual evil in our world. We know it. But we do not lose heart.  Jesus has overcome the world, has tied up the strong man, and freed us life in the Spirit.

Freed us from blasphemy.  Freed us to fight fire with water. 

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit.