Pentecost 19 A A

Our old testament lesson today is great,there is a lot of humor in it and Jonah is mad that God sent him all the way to a city that he doesn't like filled with people that he has no love or respect for and makes him announce that God is angry at what they were doing. And then much to Jonah's dismay the people repent. They repent and God forgives them and Jonah yells at God.

He yells at God, "I knew it! I knew you were gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." I knew it you jerk! It isn't Fair! And so God looks down an Jonah and asks what business it is of his who God forgives and how God doles out his love.

It is easy to laugh at Jonah, we are meant to, anything with the language God appointed a bush is meant to make us giggle. but I have another story for you.

Once during my first year of college, I had this instructor who was pretty demanding especially for someone teaching a freshman class. We had a lot of reading and a lot of papers due. Our final exam was an in class essay exam. We would have to write four one-two page answers to four questions about the reading for the semester. We didn't know which readings and so we had to know it all. Some people set up studies group and traded the papers that they had written over the semester to review, others reread many of the required texts. Some just kind of thought back over things and crossed their fingers, having ended up too busy to do too much studying. If I recall correctly this final would be 40% of our grade. So test day came. We got to class first. We waited for the instructor to walk in. He came a little late. He had his hands full, a briefcase full of what we could only assume were the test questions and a bag. He apologized for being late to the final session of our class. He set his briefcase down and he wrote a name and date on the board. There was panic, no one knew what he meant by it, it wasn't from the class material unless we'd missed it. There were nervous glances around. Then he turned to his desk and took the contents out of his bag, juice and cookies. Then he handed out sheets of paper to everyone in class and we each got a pack of crayons.

Finally he went back to the front of the room and explained that, in honor of the birth of his new baby son the day before, hence the name on the board, we were all excused from taking the final but instead invited to remain for class session, have some refreshments and our only requirement for the final grade was that we draw a picture of any scene from any of the literature that we had read during the class and post it on the board. Stick people were okay, we would not be graded on quality. Easiest A I ever received.

But once we were dismissed from class and the instructor was out of earshot a funny thing happened. People started to grumble. They were mad that the birth of the instructor's son had made us all equal in his eyes. The people who had prepared the most complained the most. Especially those who hadn't kept up with the reading all semester had gone back over the last week and worked very hard to get caught up. The only people who seemed genuinely happy were the ones who walked into the classroom sure that they weren't going to do well enough on the final to get a decent grade. This had been a moment of pure grace for them, undeserved pardon for their short comings. In the end the truth was that we all probably got better grades in the class than we were going to, after all, well prepared or not it is hard to be absolutely perfect. Still people were mad, it wasn't fair!

I have a third story about this. It is the one Jesus tells his disciples about the same theme.

There was a man who needed workers for his vineyard and he went out early and he found some eager and ready workers, he negotiated a wage with them and they went to the field. Then later he saw more workers, we don't know where they were in the morning, maybe they were there, maybe they weren't but he sent them out to the field anyway and again later he did the same. What this resulted in was some people working a very full day, some working a half day and some working only for about an hour. But when time came to be paid, he paid them all the same! The same wage that he had negotiated for a full day's work with the ones who worked in the hot sun all day. And he paid the ones who worked the least first, in front of everyone else! And he paid them just as much! It wasn't fair!

Jesus says it is like this with the kingdom of God. This is how God reigns in our lives.

People hate this! They get angry at God about this, they try to make certain rules that everyone has to follow no matter what so that everyone gets the same. But this isn't how God works. God welcomes in the new folks with the old. God offers complete love and grace and forgiveness to the most eager and the most reluctant of us. God offers love and grace and forgiveness to the most frustrating of us. This isn't fair. It is hard to hear. But Jesus doesn't really care about that.

This is the scandal of the gospel for us. It is the reason we make so many unspoken and spoken rules about what a Christian looks or acts like. Why we are happy to welcome certain people through our doors and ready to exclude others. It is because we feel like we are the ones who prepared for the test and gosh darn it why should God be willing to love and pardon everyone the same? Why does God have to keep loving someone who unfairly moved ahead of me in the line for a promotion? Why does God have to keep loving a spouse who had an affair? Why does God have to keep loving someone who hurt my son or daughter or mother or father or me? Why does God love people who do terrible damage to our world just as much as God loves those who work for peace and health? It isn't fair! God isn't fair.

But God also isn't wrong. God knows how much it means for someone who couldn't find work at all day after day, after day some much that he is worn down, weak and tired to once get a full days' wage for just an hour's work. God knows how much it meant to a city condemned, without chance of pardon to be given a second chance. God knows how much it means to someone who came completely unprepared and overstressed to pass a test with an A. God knows how much it means to us on the day that we are that unrepentant city, or that jobless laborer or that misled soul; on that day, that we are completely unable to be worthy or ready for grace, love or pardon to receive it anyway.

As Lutherans we say that we are saved by grace. Grace isn't something that we feel like we need every single day of our lives but that isn't why it is there, it is there to save us on the one day of our life that we really need it, the day when it is all that we get to fall back on. When it is more than we ever deserved or expected. Grace is unfair because grace is God's gift to those who don't deserve it. I know that you are worried so I will say Grace doesn't give us an excuse to get off the hook, to stop doing what we know is required of us by God. I would have been a fool to never prepare for a final exam again, I wouldn't have made it far in college but on that one day I experienced pure grace. And I learned how to share grace with others. We would all be fools to remain lost and distant from God because we believe in grace but on the days in our lives when we can't find hope no matter how we search, we have the promise of pure grace. And on the days when we need it less we have it as a gift to share, we get to speak the words of pardon or of hope or of love. We get to be, we have to be, the man who pays all of the laborers the same in the name of our graceful God.

This is good news. Thanks be to God. Amen

Pentecost 17 A A

Where two or three are gathered truly I am among them. This is a great saying. we use it often to comfort ourselves when we have only a few present for something, low attendance, few people at a meeting, not many people at a funeral. And in those cases it is comforting but have you ever wondered about the phrase?

I mean it is great if God is present when we gather together but what about when we are alone? Aren't we assured that God is always with us? Maybe especially when we feel the most alone, the most without help or hope? So what's with the gathering of two or more?

I have a story to start with that might help us figure that out. It is about a popular topic this week, school! Ah...the beginning of the school year...filled with...tension! I know not everyone here has school aged children in their homes, I certainly don't but you didn't need to this week in order to pick up on the tension in the air. I could actually hear it out my window, now keep in mind that the area around the parsonage is a popular pathway for many school kids of all ages. Well as the day that school started got closer the noise outside my window got more and more interesting. All summer long we could hear kids at all hours but now there was a lot more little bickering.

Kids fighting over skateboards, quarters, basketballs, dirty looks, you name it. But the funny thing about these bickering kids is that for the most part they were self-regulating. The fights never got very far. Most times it was because a third or fourth party would step in. not another parent, not an authority figure per se but another kid, a peer. This other kid would walk up and be a mediator or a distraction, in some cases a tie breaker. What really happened is that the extra kid coming out to play reminded the first two what they were doing there in the first place. They were playing, together, because they were friends because they love and enjoy one another.

It worked in positive ways too, sometimes two kids would just be bored wandering around outside clearly with no real plan but hoping to soak up the rest of summer, when a couple more kids would wander up and suddenly they would have enough for a game or an adventure of some sort. Just the presence of the other kids would bring them back to themselves and their kid nature, ready to have fun and be creative.

This third kid idea is straight from the bible, at least in a sense. Our text today is, strictly speaking, all about conflict, discipline and forgiveness. But on a deeper level it is about the idea of community. It starts out by telling us how to handle conflict and make peace within our communities. If we have a conflict with someone it says that we should name that conflict, tell the person. But if we continue to have trouble we should bring one or two witnesses with us and to help sort it out. The third kid idea. Bring someone in to remind everyone of the bigger picture and see what happens. In this case the bigger picture is God and the Christian community.

And then a little later we are reminded that this is because: "Where two or three are gathered truly [God] is among them.

Which could mean of course that God is present when there are more of us than one. It could mean that we have special power to punish or forgive when we are in bigger groups, that would be related to the text. But it isn't just letting us know that it is okay to have two or three gathered together but indeed we need to be gathered and have fellowship with each other. Our community needs it. We need each other! Which is certainly why we worship and spend time together, why we are taking special time to eat and play together after this service.

But today as we people from two congregations across Schodack worship together for the first regular worship service in nearly a year I think of how we need each other as congregations, like those kids outside this week.

We remind each other of our very nature. We remind each other what it is to be church. I missed the very early relationship between you two congregations but I suspect that it was a bit awkward. No one knew just where to be or what to say. Then names started to be remembered. A pastor was called. Then came time to actually work together.

An activity for the kids here, a visit to one another's place for a fund raiser there. And now we have gotten to a point where we revitalize one another. We feed each other.

A great example of that is operation Christmas Child, something that St. Stephen's does very well. The kids from Trinity were invited last year and it was a wonderful event, a record number of boxes were packed to be sent away. Kids got to see what it means to give and to share and they were excited about it, people talked about it for weeks. Somehow pictures of it made it into the paper twice! And there must have been some special blessing there too because for the first time ever children who received the boxes responded as you heard earlier. Where two congregations are gathered together God is truly present.

So now we have a new tradition, something that we will do together with each side collecting items and money and then pooling their resources to share in fellowship and do a great thing for children half way around the world.

And St. Stephen's has borrowed from Trinity too, Trinity has a great system for worship planning. Where a group of five or six musically minded people and one pastor get together and look over the upcoming season. Together we all choose hymns, share input, sing little bars, get someone to play a piece on the piano once in a while in order to convince the crowd of a choice. It is a great system, fun, orderly sometimes and a little chaotic at others but it gets the job done and with fellowship. Recently St. Stephen's has participated in this. Leslie, jumped right into the fellowship and chaos and was welcomed warmly. Now because of that both places have just ever so slightly more diverse worship music and they share it! So sometimes that hymn that makes you tear up just a little might have been chosen by a brother or sister at the opposite congregation. And on most mornings though our worship is separate we are singing the same songs in the same spirit. What a lovely way that we can participate together in worship at both places!

These are not huge things, they are little baby steps but they are also just examples. I hear two things most commonly when these two congregations talk about each other. Number one is "how is the other congregation doing, we should get together more" and the other is "Hey! Why is St. Stephen's doing that and we aren't or why is Trinity doing that and we aren't! We want to do that too!" And so new ministries are born and the love of God is shared in new ways!

We need each other, not for financial reasons, not for support, not in order to share a pastor but because Jesus tells us that where two or more are gathered in his name there God is truly present. We make God present for one another, like that third kid wandering out on to the Street to remind the others how to play like kids. Trinity reminds St. Stephen's of it's very nature as a part of the church of Christ and St. Stephen's reminds Trinity of the gift of God's love that it was created to share.

Just as we need each other, as our Sunday Schools need their students and teachers and parents, as our congregations need our singers and musicians, and vice versa, as our buildings need our property people. As our families need one another. We congregations and people alike need each other. And because we have each other and are gathered together, Christ is truly present with us in new, different and exciting ways all of the time. This is good news, thanks be to God!

Pentecost 16 A A

I was sitting in the Empire Plaza this week and there were a few preschool groups wandering around. You've seen the kind I'm talking about, about twenty, three year-olds all holding hands or paired off in two or threes and walking together. Well one of the groups was just clearly having a bad day. They weren't staying in line, some were crying, none seemed to be listening. So the leaders got them into a different sort of line and had them play follow the leader. You probably remember the game from when you were a kid, you would all walk in a line, then the leader would skip and so everyone would skip. Then the leader would run and so everyone would run. This is what they were doing, it went on for a while, they had the kids doing some pretty funny stuff, walking like ducks, mooing like cows. Like Simon Says but the leaders were just as into it as the kids and there was no way to end up "out". By the time the game was over all of the criers were laughing, the line was perfect and everyone was listening. So they paired back up and off they went on their way.

In our lesson today Peter tries to change the direction that Jesus is going in and Jesus says no. You can't redirect me. As much as you want to, as painful as it is for you, as much as you just want to sit down in the path and cry. We won't have any of that. To highlight how serious he is Jesus then says "get behind me Satan" to Peter. A famous and well known phrase. Peter who just last week was called the rock, the rock upon whom the church would be built now gets a stern rebuke, get behind me Satan.

Here's the thing though Jesus wasn't telling Peter to leave and never come back. He also wasn't saying, by calling him Satan, that Peter was capable of only evil. Instead he was saying to Peter that it was time to follow and to do just what he was told for a while, no matter how strange and awkward it might look.

As adults we don't really play follow the leader anymore because while it holds the rapt attention of a three year old, if we all tried to play we would be bored out of our minds and possibly falling all over ourselves. But we learned something important from our Kindergarten teachers by playing that game. The same lesson that Peter learns in the gospel text for today.

Sometimes when things are overwhelmingly impossible what a person really needs to do is locate the leader and start following for a while. In fact we play grown up follow the leader all of the time. I was in a small group led by Bishop Burkat of the Southeast Pa Synod, at a synod event recently. She was talking about how we do effective work in the church. She claimed that almost anything that a church needs a leader for can be taught to a member of a congregation with little to none of the terrifying implications that taking over a task carries with it. You do it by following the leader and there is all kinds of evidence for this method in the Old and New testaments, including the in the lesson we read today.

The process starts like this: First you find someone doing what you need to learn and you watch once. Then you do it side by side with them once with them leading. Next you lead and do the task side by side again. Finally you do it by yourself and the former leader watches. You repeat this as many times and you need and poof you're ready to go, even to lead others. Follow the leader church style, for grown ups!

We can use this model to learn how to run a coffee hour up in the fellowship hall, we can use this model to learn to teach Sunday School, we can use this model to learn to preach. Jesus used a similar model to show his disciples how to teach, how to preach and how to heal. When he said follow me he meant it and he taught them how.

That might have actually been why Peter was so afraid in our lesson. He felt like he was on top of the world with Jesus there to lead him. He was the rock of the church. He had the power to heal, he could literally walk on water! But what Jesus was talking about in this lesson was not being there anymore. At least that is what Peter heard. He heard Jesus say I'm going to die and that is the last thing Peter heard. I'm willing to bet that Jesus wasn't even done speaking when Peter started to rebuke him. To scold him and plead with him to change what he was saying.

All of this because he had a very real concern. His leader was going away. He wouldn't be able to see him anymore. What happens when you are playing follow the leader and then, suddenly, you can't see the leader anymore?

A few things in this case.

First you have to change what you're following. If you can't follow the literal steps and motions of the leader you have to listen to their voice to see where they are going and where they are leading you. If Peter had listened closer he would have heard the good news that was directly linked to the bad news that Jesus was sharing. Yes Jesus said that he would die but he also said that through him death would be overcome. He said that within Peter's very lifetime he would see death overcome and subsequently the kingdom of God alive and growing here on earth.

In order to listen like that though there is an element of letting go that needs to happen. Peter was much too occupied with his own needs and concerns to even leave room to hear Jesus speaking.

In explaining more to Peter Jesus says pick up your cross and follow me for those who want to save their life must lose it. Essentially he is telling Peter to put down as much of himself, his own insignificant worries, pains, fears and concerns as he needs to in order to be able to listen and follow.

At one of the camps that I was at the summer we took a night hike around the perimeter of the camp. Through the forest and a meadow, over a couple of little streams. And it was very dark. No lights, just a sliver of a moon. But the leader had been over the terrain many times and she lead the line holding a hand of the person behind her and we all took hold of the hand of the person in front of us and were led through the dark. The leader could tell the people around her where there was a bump or drop or some other kind of hazard and the message would get passed along. She would squeeze the hand of the person behind her to indicate a need for caution and the message would go down the line.

As you might imagine holding both a hand of the person in front of you and of the person behind you meant that you really couldn't carry anything that you didn't need for the hike. Water bottles, sunscreen, toys, papers etc. all had to be put aside so total attention could go to following the leader and keeping the followers behind you safe and directed.

We also had to put aside any disputes that we were having, any dislike for the people around us, any worries that would keep us from paying attention, any fear of the unknown, of trying a new thing, of learning from someone else had to go too, because you really needed to walk with confidence. This is what Jesus meant when he said put down yourself, your life and take up the cross.

He wasn't asking that you lead a life of unimaginable suffering just for the sake of it, quite the opposite. He was asking that you put aside all of the obstacles that distract you and weigh you down. Anything that keeps you from living fully into his love. Anything that closes your ears to the good news of the resurrection and the coming of the kingdom of God. These words are a call to put down anything that keeps you from following the leader. Let go of anything that keeps you from hearing his voice in the night and walking on the path that he shows you. Amen

Pentecost12 A Matt 14:13-21

Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.

We're going to work through our gospel story backward this morning but I'm going to start by telling you a story.

I used to ride my bike past a tiny storefront church when I lived in Philadelphia called "the church of the broken pieces". I would ride by and wonder what they meant by that, what broken pieces? Were they referring to themselves? Did they all come with terrible traumatic stuff to the church and find some kind of healing and peace there? Was it a reflection on how they had been treated in society? I pictured a group of people all broken but uniquely fit to
eachother like origami folded together so that they were made whole. A nice picture but I never knew what exactly they meant and never asked. Then this lesson came up in the lectionary one Sunday. Saying: And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.

It says that there was so much abundance after Jesus fed a hungry crowd that the disciples went out and filled 12 baskets with the broken pieces of fish and of bread likely to send out into the world to keep feeding people who needed it.

The church of the broken pieces was talking about this. They were it turns out talking about themselves when they took the name broken pieces. But they weren't just broken pieces of humanity. They were signs of God's abundance. Signs that when God seeks to feed a crowd from just a few loaves and fishes, to break bread with us, to provide for us, his love is so abundant that even the scraps are overflowing with God's abundance.

Sure the people of the church were broken. We're all broken, sometimes by pain, fear, anger, grief, addiction and loss but this lesson made them realize that there is good in the broken parts. That even the broken parts were loved by God and precious enough to be gathered together and made into something new and nourishing. And that those broken pieces bear the message of God's love.

Now going back in the story a little there was broken bread and fish to pick up, ultimately, because Jesus had himself been feeling broken.

It all started at the beginning of our lesson with Jesus heavy laden with dark thoughts
and grief. The people closest to him, those who believed the most in him were
being swayed by popular opinion and were doubting his motivations and his
calling. And most present in his mind is that fact that his cousin and dear
friend, John the Baptist, has been beheaded by King Herod. Jesus'
closest companion is dead. And so he withdraws from the crowds to be by himself.
He wants to be alone. He wants some quiet time. He wants to mourn and be sad. He
wants a break from being the one that is in charge and the one people rely on.

The people of God who are following Jesus seemed to feel called in a different direction though. Just as he is seeking to be alone, trying to escape the eyes of the crowd for a short while they come to find him. They gather together in search of him, some of them healthy and able, others of them in hard places in life and in need of healing.

So the text says that when he saw them Jesus had compassion for them. He felt their pain with them, maybe even because of the pain that he had just been experiencing. And so he went to them and he taught them and he healed them and he brought God's love to them.
There is a kind of mutual ministry going on here. Jesus
was broken, sad and seeking to be alone after his cousin's death but the
Father saw that perhaps this wasn't best and so the crowds and the
disciples show up to "minister to Him" with their own brokenness.

I had an experience a few weeks ago that is a great example of this same type of mutual ministry.
I was visiting a member of another church in the hospital because her pastor was out of town. A woman who husband had suddenly become very ill and was in intensive care. I showed up with my little communion kit ready to help but when I got there someone else was already sitting with her, holding her hand and praying. After a bit of talking I learned that the gentleman sitting with her was not a realitive. He was not a close friend, he didn't really even know her that well. He was a fellow church member who has seen her situation and had compassion on her.

He explained that having recently lost both of his parents he was keenly aware of what a long hard thing it is to do, to wait in hospitals for days with little rest, little information and little companionship. So he decided that the best way to work through the painand brokeness that he still felt from that experience was not to bear it alone but to turn it into ministry to other people. So he takes it upon himself, when a fellow church member or friend has a very sick relative and few other people to be near them, to sit with them in the hospital.

He explained that he doesn't have much to say and what he does say might not be that great so he isn't really there to talk, certianly not to do any heavy lifting on the faith or the medical side of things. He doesn't have any trianing in either. Really he is just there because he knows what it is like to have no one and he is sure that God would want someone to be there. So he said he had little to offer.

That was his side of the story anyway. The report that I got from the woman with a sick husband was much different. In her eyes she had no one, she lives very far away. She was stuck and alone. Lonely, scared and broken down when he walked in. The walking, talking, love of God right there. She was the one who had so little but God took it and blessed it and multiplied it in this other child of God.

She says now there is enough love and peace in her heart that when the whole experience is over there will still be love, ministry and support to share. Broken pieces to pick up and gather together and send out again.

In his grief, Jesus took compassion on the people who were feeling pain like his own. He taught and healed them and when they were ready to leave hungry he took five little loaves, and two little fish and he made them so abundant that there were baskets full of precious broken pieces to gather together.

So too does God comfort and care for us and then gather us together, whole and broken, hungry and satisfied and make us signs for each other of His abundant love for us. Amen