Sunday, September 5, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 15:10; sermon starts around 22:50)

On Tuesday afternoons, almost every week, I drive to Fremont to meet up with other clergy folks from around the area for text study (as I’ve mentioned many times before).  And for me, it’s become a bit of a habit after text study to hit up one of the many drive-thrus in Fremont and bring home something for supper.  It’s just nice to get home and have supper ready and not have to cook.  

My go-to is usually Raising Cane’s, but this last Tuesday I was in more of a taco kind of mood, so I decided to head to Taco Bell instead.  I pulled into the parking lot of Taco Bell and was about to get into the drive-thru lane when I noticed something odd.  A couple of other cars had pulled into the lot ahead of me, driving toward the drive-thru, but at the last minute, they veered away and drove out the other side of the parking lot.  I got closer and realized that there was one lone Taco Bell employee out sweating in the sun, standing at the end of the drive thru lane and waving cars away.  

Sunday, August 22, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 12:43; sermon starts around 19:59)

Our readings for this morning actually begin with the end of a story.  The Israelites have been dreaming of the promised land since the days they were slaves in Egypt.  They followed Moses through the sea and into the desert.  They wandered for decades in the wilderness, where they buried an entire generation of their people.  They followed Joshua, son of Nun, into battle as they conquered the land of Canaan.  And now, at long last, God has “given rest to Israel from their enemies all around.”  They finally made it!  The promised land is theirs.

Now, in the last couple chapters of the book, Joshua gathers all the people together – he “[summons] all Israel, their elders and heads, their judges and officers, and [says] to them, ‘I am now old and well advanced in years; and you have seen all that the Lord your God has done… for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you.”  He reminds them: God “gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant.”  Now that all the tribes of Israel have settled into the land that they have been given, Joshua calls them together to remember that everything they have received is a free gift from God, and not something that they earned for themselves.

And so this story that we read today is a scene of thanksgiving and celebration, just as you might expect.  But there’s also more to it than that.  After Joshua finishes retelling all the wonderful things that God has done for the people of Israel, he says to them: “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve God in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.”  And together, Joshua and all the people of Israel pledge their allegiance to God, renewing the covenant that God first made with Abraham.

Sunday, August 15, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 14:37; sermon starts around 19:08)

I vividly remember the first time I ever tried to make guacamole.  I think I was maybe a sophomore in college – about 19 or 20 years old.  I’m pretty sure I had only just recently eaten guacamole for the first time.  It wasn’t something we ever really ate at home when I was growing up.  But for me it was definitely love at first bite.  So I wanted to try to figure out how to make my own guacamole at home.  It seemed pretty straightforward: mash up some avocados, add some lime juice, throw in some diced tomatoes and onions, a pinch of salt, and – of course – some garlic.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, if you’ve ever shopped for avocados, you can probably guess my first mistake.  I had no idea how to choose a ripe avocado – and even if I had known, the avocados I found at the grocery store were all hard as rocks.  But I didn’t let that stop me!  I got back to my apartment with my produce purchases and decided to dive right in.  The avocados I bought were so hard I physically could not mash them.  I just ended up cutting them up into tiny pieces before tossing them with the other ingredients.  It was really more of an unripe avocado salad than it was guacamole, and it was a disaster.  But I thought to myself: No worries, I know how to fix this – garlic!  Garlic covers a multitude of sins.  So I added some extra garlic.  I added a LOT of extra garlic.

I added so much garlic that it completely overpowered all the other flavors in the guacamole.  Honestly, that didn’t bother me too much – I like garlic a lot, so I didn’t mind some extra garlic flavor.  But when I woke up the next morning, I could still taste that garlic.  I brushed my teeth, and I could still taste garlic coming off of my breath.  And it soon became pretty clear that I didn’t just taste garlic – I smelled like garlic too.  Every Friday morning in the music department at Wesleyan, we had recitals – all the students in the department would gather down in Emerson Recital Hall to watch each other perform.  That morning, where I sat, there was at least a three seat buffer on all sides of me, because absolutely no one wanted to sit next to me.  Even after showering, I absolutely reeked of garlic.  

Sunday, August 8, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 14:52; sermon starts around 20:48)

When I was growing up, like most kids, I really liked candy.  I had a really big sweet tooth.  Some of my favorite candies were only available during the Easter season, so I was always really excited when Easter came around.  I mean, yeah yeah, Jesus rose from the dead and all, and that was great – but also, they have Cadbury Crème Eggs at the grocery store, yeah!!  

As Paul writes, “when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, and I reasoned like a child” – and in my childish reasoning, I thought: well, a little candy is really good, but a LOT of candy – that’s got to be even better!  And this candy’s only around once a year, so I’ve gotta make it count – so almost every Easter, I would go overboard, eating about as much candy as I could physically stand.  There was one year in particular that stands out – I don’t remember how old I was – I was so excited about the candy that I hardly even ate any real, substantial, nourishing food.  I just gorged myself on sweets all day – I couldn’t get enough.  By the time we got home from my grandma’s house that evening, I was not feeling very well – as you can probably imagine.  I vividly remember starting to walk up the steps to go to my room, when all of a sudden I was violently revisited by everything I had eaten that day – 🤮 – all over the stairs.  

The really stupid thing is that eating all of that candy didn’t even really feed my hunger.  As soon as I came down off the sugar high and got it all out of my system, I was hungry again!  But I definitely wasn’t hungry for more candy –I was literally sick of candy – instead I was hungry for something real and solid and nourishing.

Sunday, July 11, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 14:59; sermon starts around 23:28)

In our gospel reading from last Sunday, you might remember that Jesus sent out the twelve disciples on their first solo mission.  After a disappointing start in his home town of Nazareth, Jesus sends out the twelve, two by two, into all the surrounding area, to preach and teach and heal in his name.  And for once, the disciples totally nail it!  As Mark writes, “They went out and proclaimed that all should repent.  They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”  Jesus and the disciples are doing awesome stuff all over Galilee: they’re healing the sick; they’re freeing people from their demons; and they’re preaching good news everywhere they go.

This is the report that reaches Herod at the beginning of our gospel reading for today.  Herod had heard of Jesus – but now he’s hearing about all these incredible things that Jesus and his disciples are doing, and the way that massive crowds of people have started following them around.  And all this freaks Herod out. Herod feels threatened because he recognizes that there is real power at work here, real power in the things that Jesus and his disciples are doing.  And Herod recognizes this power because it’s the same power – God’s power – that was at work in John the Baptist.  So, logically, Herod concludes, “Well, the only possible explanation is that this guy must somehow be John the Baptist… whom I killed… who now seems to have been raised from the dead…  Crap.”

Sunday, June 27, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 11:46; sermon starts around 20:18)
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Our readings for this morning are all full of such good news.  As a preacher, it almost makes my job harder, because what else can you really add to great texts like these?  “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is God’s faithfulness.”  Mmm!  So good — end of sermon! (just kidding)  

The stories in our gospel reading are especially moving.  Jesus has just come back from the trip he made across the sea in our readings from last week, where he healed the man with the demons in the country of the Gerasenes.  And now, by the time Jesus gets back, word of his healing and teaching ministry has spread so widely that he barely steps foot off the boat before he’s mobbed by a massive crowd.  

One of the people who comes to Jesus is a leader of the synagogue named Jairus.  Jairus’s daughter is sick and at the point of death and he is desperate for any way he can find to save her.  He throws himself at Jesus’ feet and begs him to come and heal his daughter.  And without a word, Jesus follows him to his house.  By the time they get there, the little girl has already died and the people are already weeping.  But with just a few words, Jesus raises her to life again.

And Jesus heals another person without even trying!  As Jesus is following Jairus to his house, a woman comes up behind him in the crowd, just trying to touch his cloak.  Like Jairus, this woman is in desperate need of Jesus’ healing power.  She has been bleeding for twelve years, and nothing she has tried has helped her.  She’s spent all her money on medical care and has only gotten worse.  I can only imagine how exhausted and desperate she must be for help.  And, for that matter, how lonely and isolated she must be.  Her hemorrhages were more than just a medical issue – because of them, she would have also been considered “unclean,” forced to live in isolation from her community.  Yet here she is in the crowd, spurred on by the hope that Jesus will be able to help her.  And the instant she just touches him, she can feel in her body that she has, indeed, been healed.  

Sunday, June 20, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 13:01; sermon starts around 20:03)

Our readings for this morning are full of storms and calamity and terror.  I got to talk about these texts with a bunch of other clergy folks at our text study this last Tuesday.  We were trying to imagine what it would have been like for the disicples or for Job facing these dangerous situations.  None of us had ever been on a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee during a storm – and we’ve definitely never been scolded by God out of a whirlwind!  But we’d all had experiences of being completely overwhelmed or outright terrified.  

One of my colleagues talked about his first time being in a boat that was far enough out from the shore that he couldn’t see land anymore.  It was just this little boat floating on all this vast expanse of water.  It kind of reminded me of the story I’ve told before about the first time I swam in the ocean!

Another colleague told us about taking his first steps on the Camino de Santiago.  The Camino is a pilgrimmage walk – about 500 miles on foot over mountains and rough terrain – and he was awed and overwhelmed by the intense journey before him. 

I shared about the first (and currently only!) earthquake I ever experienced.  It was back in 2010, when that massive earthquake hit Haiti.  I was on the other side of the island, but it was still strong enough where I was to put a crack in one of the walls of my little house.  I remember the sound of the bars shaking in my windows and seeing the power lines outside swinging wildly back and forth along the streets.  And I remember feeling this sense of almost betrayal and just utter helplessness.  To me, having grown up in Nebraska, the earth was always steady and trustworthy, yet here it was literally shaking beneath my feet.  I felt like a flea hanging onto a dog’s back for dear life – just tiny and insignificant and powerless.

Sunday, June 13, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Third Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 13:33; sermon starts around 20:03)
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I made a couple of trips to Fremont this last week, and as I was driving by the fields, I was amazed at how tall the corn is already getting in some places.  This time of year especially, I’m always reminded of just how beautiful a place Nebraska really is – so lush and green.  And it will never not be amazing to me how things grow.  Planting and growing things is such an ordinary, mundane part of life in Nebraska, but it’s pretty incredible when you stop and think about it.  We take this tiny little pebble-looking thing and stick it in the dirt, and from it this whole plant grows.  It’s this everyday miracle of creation that we actually get to participate in.  How cool is that??

And agricultural science is amazing to me.  It’s amazing how much we can know about exactly what seeds need in order to grow – the amount of sunlight and moisture, the precise proportion of different nutrients, and how we can analyze the composition of the soil and amend it as needed to get the perfect balance.  Modern agriculture has produced incredible technological advances that make it more possible than ever to create the most optimal conditions for crops to grow.  

And yet, even though we have all these amazing advances, at the end of the day, we’re still a lot like the farmer in Jesus’ parable.  We prepare the field and we plant the seed, but we still don’t really know exactly how it grows.  Or to say it another way, we don’t know how to make a seed grow.  It’s not like you can just open up a seed and yank out a plant.  We can do lots of things to create the ideal conditions for a seed to take root and grow.  But none of us can make a seed grow.  Only God can do that.

Sunday, June 6, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Second Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 14:43; sermon starts around 21:21)

For the first few months that I lived in my site as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic, I was tasked with doing a diagnostic report in order to get to know the community.  One of the main things that this involved was a lot of going door to door to meet people, to interview them about their lives and about the town.  And to my surprise, at almost every single house I visited, I got asked the same strange question, which was:  Are you here to talk to me about Jesus?

Now, the Peace Corps is pretty explicitly a secular, government organization, so I was very confused as to why people kept asking me this.  But I found out why when, one day, someone else knocked on my door – and I learned that there was a large group of Jehovah’s Witnesses living in the community.  It was a fairly new congregation, so there were lots of missionaries there from the US and Canada and Europe who were trying to get it going – and so, naturally, many people in the community assumed that I was also one of these missionaries.

I had never met a Jehovah’s Witness before, and I quickly became friends with these missionaries.  It was just nice to be able to talk with people who spoke English and who came from a similar cultural background (speaking a second language all the time is exhausting!).  But even more than this, I was interested in talking about Jesus, even though it wasn’t the reason I was there.  I had been studying the bible on my own and I was hungry to grow in my faith, and so when they offered to study with me, I eagerly accepted.  

The two young women who came to visit me became really dear friends – and through them, I learned a lot about what the life of a Jehovah’s Witness missionary was like, what they had sacrificed to be there.  Almost none of them got paid for being missionaries (so, slightly less than a Peace Corps Volunteer, haha).  They would go home for a couple months out of the year, get a few jobs, and work their butts off as many hours as they possibly could so that they could save money to live on the rest of the year.  And they had all left behind their families back in the places they had come from, in order to do this mission work.  

Sunday, May 30, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Trinity Sunday
watch this service online (readings start around 15:37; sermon starts around 22:57)

I grew up mostly in the 90s – which was kind of a golden age of TV shows for kids.  Or, at least, it was a golden age of really, really weird TV shows for kids.  This week, I have been thinking about one of my favorite shows from that era – by far one of the weirdest shows ever on TV – this show on Nickelodeon called “The Adventures of Pete and Pete.”  

It’s a hard show to describe, if you’ve never seen it.  Essentially, the show is based around the lives of these two brothers, who are both named Pete Wrigley – and the show never bothers to explain why they’re both named Pete.  It’s not like they’re adopted or step/half brothers or brothers who didn’t grow up together or anything like that; they are full brothers whose parents apparently just decided to name both of them Pete.  And the show only gets weirder from there.  

Like, for instance, Little Pete has a tattoo of a dancing woman named Petunia on his arm and his best friend is a superhero named Artie – the strongest MAN… in the world – who always wears pajamas and helps Little Pete do things like beat up the ocean at the end of every summer.  Meanwhile, Big Pete has to deal with bizarre bullies like Hat Head and Open-Face, whose defining character feature is that he is always seen eating open-faced sandwiches.  It is such a weird show, and I love it so much.

Sunday, May 9, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Sixth Sunday of Easter
watch this service online (readings start around 17:51; sermon starts around 23:25)

What comes to mind for you when you hear the word “love”?  What thoughts or feelings or memories does “love” evoke in you?  Take a second and let the word wash over you: love.  

I imagine that, like me, you’re probably feeling kind of a warm, cozy, internal feeling, and you’re probably thinking about members of your family or your close friends, or maybe remembering how you met your spouse.  Or certainly today you might be thinking about the mother figures in your life, or about the people with whom you have a mothering kind of relationship.  Heh, if you’re really like me, you might also be thinking about your cats or your other pets.  These feelings of love are a gift – and they are such a central part of what makes us human.  

Love is also central in the bible, and it’s a major theme in our texts for this week, as well as in our texts from last week.  In fact, both our second reading and our gospel reading for today pick up immediately after our second reading and gospel reading from last Sunday.  Much like this week, the author of 1 John reminded us last week that God is love, and that God loves us and that we are called to love one another.  And this week, in our reading from (regular old) John, we find Jesus still in the upper room with his disciples on the night in which he is betrayed; he’s still trying to get them to understand what it really means to be his disciples – he’s trying to teach them that love is at the heart of discipleship.

Indeed, love is the foundation of our faith.  Jesus has told us that the first and greatest commandment is that we are to love God with all our heart and with all our mind and with all our strength – and that the second commandment is that we are to love our neighbor as ourself.  And here he says it yet again, in our gospel reading:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

John 15:12

Sunday, May 2, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fifth Sunday of Easter
watch this service online (readings start around 13:06; sermon starts around 21:27)
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I was in eighth grade when Holly moved to town.  Holly was outgoing and fun and super pretty – and she quickly made friends with all the most popular kids in our class.  I think all the girls wanted to be her and all the guys wanted to date her.  I, on the other hand, had never been one of the popular kids (shocking, I’m sure).  I was always bookish and chubby, and I’d take art class over sports any day of the week, which in my home town made me a bit of an outcast and a weirdo.  So I never really bothered to try to make friends with Holly – she seemed to be fitting in just fine with the popular crowd and had no reason to want to hang out with the likes of me.

You can imagine my surprise when one afternoon Holly showed up at my back door along with one of the most popular girls in our class.  Holly lived just a block north of us, so she knew that we had a trampoline in our back yard, and she and this other girl had come over to ask if they could jump on our trampoline.  I remember thinking to myself, “Well, that makes more sense – they just want to jump on the trampoline.”  So I told them, sure, that’s fine; go ahead.  But then Holly just stayed there standing in the doorway, looking at me expectantly.  And finally she said, “Well, aren’t you coming?”

I was totally floored by that.  I’d never imagined that the popular girls would want to hang out with me.  But I said yes to her invitation, and the three of us had a great time.  And it was far from being the last such invitation that I would receive from Holly.  She didn’t seem to care at all about our school’s rigid social hierarchy – Holly made friends with everybody.  And she hosted the most amazing parties.  Nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, band geeks, people from across many classes and social cliques – she brought us all together into one joyful community in her backyard.  Her parents would have these massive grill outs and we’d all eat hamburgers and hot dogs together and run around the backyard playing soccer and tag, and then we’d build a bonfire and roast marshmallows and sit with our feet stretched out around the fire until the soles of our shoes started melting. 

I will never forget those times, nor how good it felt to be included.  Holly had to have noticed how unpopular I was and how unwelcome I felt in most of the social circles at our school.  But she didn’t care.  She sought me out and made me her friend.  She made me feel like I was welcome.  Like I belonged.  

Sunday, April 25, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fourth Sunday of Easter
watch this service online (readings start around 14:11; sermon starts around 20:25)

I don’t know what kind of a week you all had last week, but I had the kind of week where I unexpectedly found myself crying in the card aisle at Walmart.  I’m okay – I think it’s just a combination of feeling really exhausted and burnt out, and the fact that Mothers Day always seems to catch me by surprise every year.  For some reason, this year it seems to be hitting me a little harder than usual – and, apparently, a couple weeks ahead of schedule.  

I have been thinking about my mom a lot lately, though.  She was a really cool person.  She was a second grade teacher and an avid reader, known for her sense of imagination and for her big laugh.  I was about six years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  And I remember how enthusiastically and optimistically we all prayed for her to get better.

That was what I had learned to do in Sunday school.  I had learned about God from texts like the ones we read today.  I learned that God was the Good Shepherd, who loves us like we’re all God’s own fuzzy little sheep.  I learned that God would lead us to nice places like green pastures and still waters, and that God would fill our cups to overflowing – which sounded messy, but, you know, nice.  And I learned that God would give us whatever we pray for – as long as we’re good and obey the commandments and stuff.  

So when Mom got sick, we prayed – hard.  And we had a whole community of people behind us, praying their hearts out that she would get well.  We did everything that we were supposed to do.  After all, my mom was barely 40 years old; she was a beloved teacher, a wife, and a mother to three young kids.  We needed her.  And I certainly thought, there’s just no way that the nice God that I learned about in Sunday school would ever let someone like her just die.

Sunday, April 18, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Third Sunday of Easter
watch this service online (readings start around 16:32; sermon starts around 22:50)
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In the ELCA, anyone who is going through seminary and working toward becoming a pastor is required to complete at least one unit of something called Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE for short.  Basically what this usually looks like is a few months where you work full time as a chaplain, usually at a hospital.  And along with the chaplaincy work, you also meet regularly with a small cohort of fellow students to process your experiences together.  It’s one of the more intense parts of our formation.  

I decided to go a slightly different direction with my CPE.  I applied for this great program in Chicago called the Urban CPE Consortium.  In Urban CPE, you do a lot of the same kind of chaplaincy work as regular CPE – accompanying people and their families through illness and grief and difficult times – but instead of being in a hospital setting, you’re placed in some kind of ministry in urban Chicago.  That might be with a food pantry or kitchen ministry, or a halfway house for HIV+ teens, or a homeless shelter, or something else along those lines.  And at the time it was also pretty much the only option in the Chicago area for doing CPE in a Spanish-speaking site, which is something I was really interested in.

I was so excited when I got accepted to the program.  I was going to get to do ministry that was totally up my alley – getting to use my Spanish and do ministry with people living in the margins.  Totally my jam.  But then I got the list of ministry sites and found out that – for some unknown reason – none of the sites that summer were with ministries in Spanish-speaking communities.  Bummer.

So I ended up doing some interviews at some of the sites on the list, but I had kind of lost a little bit of my enthusiasm for the program.  And on top of that, it was getting close to the end of the school year and I have kind of a tendency to procrastinate anyway – so the interviews just kind of kept getting pushed off.  With only like a week or two to go before the program started, I had still only interviewed at one or two sites, so I started looking frantically down the list for places to go.  I saw that one of the sites was a suburban hospital – which to me seemed like an odd choice for Urban CPE – but I was desperate to find a site, so I went.

Sunday, April 4, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Easter Sunday
watch this service online (readings start around 16:07; sermon starts around 23:16)

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!

It’s one of my favorite bible verses – partly because of the obvious: you know, “this is the DAY” and all.  But it’s also because this verse reminds us that today is indeed a day of great joy.

I’ve gotta say, though – if the only thing you read today was our gospel reading from Mark, you might not be left with the impression that this is a joyful day at all.  While the author of Psalm 118 is jubilant, joyously extolling the wondrous things that God has done, Mark goes in a bit of a different direction.  Mark’s account of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead begins with grief and confusion and then ends abruptly with terror and fear.  “Praise to you, O Christ”?

And this isn’t just the end of Mark’s telling of the resurrection – these verses are the end of Mark’s gospel, period.  If you look, your bible probably includes a shorter and a longer ending of Mark that were added in later, but the original ending of Mark’s gospel ends with this: the young man tells the women, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here… But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”  But instead of going to find Jesus and spread the good news, Mary and the others freak out and run away and they say nothing to anyone.  We don’t get to see Jesus after his resurrection – there are no encounters in the garden or lovely brunches by the sea or walks to Emmaus, or any of those stories in Mark’s gospel.  

Instead, it’s an ending that just kind of leaves us hanging.  The stone is rolled away, and there are rumors that Jesus has been raised from the dead, but that’s really about it.  There’s not the sense of resolution or satisfaction that we get with the other gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. 

Yet even so, this is the day that the Lord has made – and we know that eventually everyone will get to rejoice and be glad in it.

Friday, April 2, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Good Friday
watch this service online (readings start around 2:24; gospel starts around 12:56; sermon starts around 26:58)
(full disclosure, this is a reworking of a sermon I preached while on internship)
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The Passion of Jesus according to John

We’ve read and heard this story so many times that I wonder whether it still sounds as shocking to us as it should.  “Crucifixion” is a word that belongs to ancient history and church rituals; it doesn’t evoke for us the same kind of visceral reaction as “electric chair” or “firing squad” or “hanging.”  And yet it is also a method of execution by the state, one that is a hundred times more bloody, torturous, and painful.  Even before we get to the cross, there is an unbelievable amount of violence in this story.  Jesus Christ is struck across the face multiple times.  He has sharp thorns jammed down onto his head; this was after he was flogged, a practice in which one’s bare back is whipped with a whip that has small pieces of metal or bone embedded at the ends, to inflict the most damage possible.  This story is a horrifying testament to the creativity of human cruelty.

I can’t even imagine how terrified Peter and the other disciples must have been in the garden, when an angry mob armed with torches and weapons came looking for Jesus.  They already knew what was coming next.  But in his fear, Peter acted quickly.  He drew his sword and struck first.  Peter knew how things work in this world.  It had been wonderful and eye-opening studying the ways of peace and love with Jesus, but this was real life.  He knew that people who didn’t have weapons would just be sitting ducks for people who did have weapons.  He knew that only a good guy with a sword could stop a bad guy with a sword.

Jesus was also very much a part of this world, and he also knew how things worked – he knew what the consequences of his actions would be.  Jesus was well aware of the kind of gruesome violence the Roman Empire was capable of inflicting on him.  And so it must have come as a shock to Peter when Jesus rebuked him, and told him to put his sword away.  Instead of engaging in violence and fighting for the kingdom, Jesus peacefully submits to the violent crowd, and no one else gets hurt.  

Thursday, April 1, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Maundy Thursday
watch this service online (readings start around 6:07; sermon starts around 14:57)

One of the beautiful things about having four different gospel accounts of Jesus’ life is that it gives us glimpses from four different perspectives into who Jesus really was (and is).  It would be impossible for any one piece of writing to truly capture the fullness of Jesus.  But the gospel writers help us to see different sides of Jesus.  For example, Matthew often emphasizes how Jesus is rooted in Hebrew scripture and Jewish traditions (like the Passover which is being celebrated this week!).  Luke focuses on the political context of Jesus’ ministry and on his deep concern for justice for the poor.  And Mark shows how urgently and intensely Jesus is focused on his mission for the kingdom. 

Tonight, we encounter Jesus through John’s eyes.  In John’s gospel, we see Jesus at his most divine and heavenly and all-knowing.  Jesus is practically a superhero in John – his only weakness, his kryptonite, is that he loves so much – and even that, in the end, turns out to be his strength!  In John, Jesus knows exactly what’s happening, he knows exactly what’s coming, and he knows exactly who the people he’s dying for truly are, warts and all.  And Jesus chooses the way of the cross with both eyes wide open, never doubting for even a second that the outcome is in God’s hands.

John was actually Martin Luther’s favorite gospel, and I can kind of see why.  I mean, who doesn’t love a Superman?  I have to confess, though, that, personally, I sometimes find it hard to relate to Jesus in John’s gospel.  John’s Jesus often speaks at length about mysterious, divine, heavenly realities far beyond the daily realities of life of this earth.  His mind is always on the kingdom and glory of his Father, and he marches with confidence through his ministry, always completely certain of what he needs to do and of where this all is going.

It’s such a stark contrast with our gospel reading from Sunday, when we read Mark’s account of the Passion.  In Mark, Jesus grieves and suffers; he begs God to take away the cup of suffering that has come to him; and even though he accepts what he has to do, we see him struggling with what this ministry is demanding of him.  As an imperfect person who often struggles in ministry and in the path of discipleship, I find this side of Jesus a lot easier to relate to.  Jesus is perfect, but he’s also fully human; he experiences temptation and he wrestles with doing the hard things that he has been called to do.  I can definitely identify a lot with that struggle.

Sunday, March 28, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Palm Sunday / Passion Sunday
watch this service online (processional gospel starts around 5:37; readings start around 12:08; Passion narrative starts around 16:26; sermon starts around 33:48)
Follow along in the digital bulletin

The Passion of Jesus according to Mark

I’m gonna try to keep the sermon pretty short today.  Partly, that’s because we just read two entire chapters of the gospel of Mark.  But mostly it’s because these verses already speak so much for themselves, and there’s not really a whole lot more that I can add to them.  Today is the beginning of Holy Week, and it is all about the story.  Jesus’ remarkable life of teaching and preaching justice and mercy, of healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and leading with love has led him here – has led him to the cross.  

Jesus ends up on the cross not because of anything one single person did.  When we talk about Jesus dying for our sins, I think all too often we imagine Jesus dying because of our individual shortcomings – because we yelled at our spouse that time or because we told a lie that other time, or because we cheated on a test or on our taxes.  But what we actually see in this story is how the whole human enterprise has become so broken and corrupt that it rejects Jesus and his ministry outright.  Jesus comes into this world full of love, with unfailing grace and mercy toward the people he encounters, even as he calls them to account.  And in return, he is met with violence and dishonesty from the religious and political establishment, with derision from the general public, and even with betrayal by the people who were closest to him.  He is peaceful and unresisting to the end, allowing himself – love made flesh – to be crucified by human hate.  

The cross casts a long shadow – a shadow that, paradoxically, shows us, humanity, for who we really are.  It’s in this shadow that we are called to dwell this week especially.  Today’s hymn of the day – “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” – poetically reminds us that, as followers of Christ, we are called to stand always in the shadow of the cross.  It’s one of my favorite hymns – and one I’m sure many of you also know well – and it serves as a wonderful invitation into Holy Week as we live into the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection once again.

Sunday, March 14, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fourth Sunday in Lent
watch this service online (readings start around 14:21; sermon starts around 21:03)
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The people of Israel, in our first reading, have been wandering in the wilderness for a very, very long time, waiting and praying to see the promised land.  They are getting so close, almost on the home stretch of their journey, and the people are starting to get pretty impatient.  (Wow, who among us can imagine what that must be like?! (#sarcasm))

It’s certainly not a short walk from the land of Egypt to the land of Canaan, where the Israelites are headed – but they end up being stuck in the wilderness for a LOT longer than they had originally expected or planned.  It was enough time for them to forget the important reasons why they were there in the first place – they had fled slavery in Egypt, following God’s promises of safety and life in a country of their own.  

And in their impatience, the people start complaining – they complain to Moses; they complain to God; they complain about anything and everything.  In our reading from Numbers, we hear them complain that they have no water and no food – and then in the next breath, they complain that the food is terrible! 

The food they have been eating is the manna that God had sent them; and I guess, to be fair, I can imagine that just about any food – even food from God’s own hand – would get pretty old after forty years of eating it.  The people are still being fed in the wilderness, but even though the food they are eating nourishes them, it just doesn’t bring them the sense of satisfaction or fulfillment that they are craving.

Sunday, March 7, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Third Sunday in Lent
watch this service online (readings start around 12:35; sermon starts around 20:27)
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A long time ago, in a congregation far, far away, I was one of the leaders of the youth group at the church I belonged to at the time.  We had been trying to come up with ways to get the youth more involved in the life of the congregation, and one thing that we decided we were going to do was to have a “Youth Sunday.”  Youth would plan the whole worship service for Sunday; they would be the readers, the ushers, the worship assistants.  Youth would come up with whatever the message was going to be for the service.  And youth would also plan all of the music.  

That last part made the music director of the congregation very, very anxious.  She was an excellent musician, deeply committed to providing beautiful music for the congregation.  But she had very high and very narrow standards for the kind of music she deemed “acceptable” or “appropriate” for worship.  I actually heard my pastor describe her once as a “benevolent dictator” in terms of how she ran our music ministry.

So when we sat down with her to plan the music for this service, she brought the worship resources from Sundays and Seasons – like we use here – and told us: “Okay, these are your choices.  You can only pick hymns from off this list.”  So, basically, nothing off-piste – none of that contemporary music stuff or, God forbid, that noisy camp-style music!  

So we picked out some hymns from THE LIST.  And as we were looking at our selections in the hymnal, I noticed that one of the hymns we’d chosen had a couple of different versions in the ELW – and the version that Sundays and Seasons had specifically listed for that Sunday was not the familiar, traditional melody and text; it was the Spanish language version, complete with guitar accompaniment.  So I got really excited and said, “Hey!  We could totally sing parts of this in Spanish and I could even play along on my guitar!”  

That was enough to set off the music director’s alarm bells, because she quickly jumped in and said, “Well, we don’t haaaaaaave to go exactly by the list…” – but we were like, “Oh no, we should definitely abide by what’s on the list.”  And that’s what we ended up doing.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Ash Wednesday
watch this service online (readings start around 6:40; sermon starts around 15:44)
digital bulletin here
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It was the year 1875 that will long be remembered by the people of at least four states, as the grasshopper year. The scourge struck Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Western Missouri April, 1875, and commenced devastating some of the fairest portions of our noble commonwealth. The locusts came in immense clouds and literally covered the territory. Their appearance was that of a snow storm. They came in swarms, they came by the millions, they came in legions, they came by the mile, and they darkened the heavens in their flight, or blackened the earth’s surface, where in myriads they sought their daily meal. Their voracity soon made itself apparent; whole fields of green corn were destroyed in a single day; every spear of wheat, oats, flax and corn were eaten close to the ground. Potatoes and all vegetables received the same treatment, and on the line of their march, ruin stared the farmer in the face, and starvation knocked loudly at his door. Nothing escaped them; there appeared to be nothing they would not eat; and in their progress they left the country nearly as bare of vegetation as if it had been scorched by fire.

Excerpts from “When the Skies Turned to Black: The Locust Plague of 1875” compiled by Hearthstone Legacy Publications

“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near- a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.” (Joel 2:1-2)

Our first reading, from the second chapter of Joel, begins with these words – words of fear and trembling, of darkness and devastation.  If you read back to the first chapter of Joel, you can get the context for why this is.  The event that provoked all this alarm among the people was: a plague of locusts.  Joel describes it in a way that kind of evokes that passage I read just now about the locusts that descended on Nebraska back in 1875:

Sunday, February 14, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Transfiguration Sunday
watch this service online (readings start around 15:48; sermon starts around 22:44)
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The first time I ever got to swim in the ocean, I was 22 years old.  Like many of you watching this, I grew up in Nebraska – and, well, Nebraska’s not exactly known for its close proximity to the ocean.  So when I joined the Peace Corps and got assigned to live on a small Caribbean island (the Dominican Republic), you can probably imagine that I was pretty stoked to finally get a chance to go swimming in the sea!  

The very first time I went, I was visiting an older Volunteer as part of my training – I was actually visiting Jan Espinosa, who’s probably watching this video right now!  She took us up to the beach at Sosúa, on the north side of the island.  I put my swimsuit on and I waded out in the water to where it was deep enough that I could swim around a little bit.  I still remember the seawater splashing into my mouth for the first time – I was shocked by how salty it was!  Like, I knew in my brain that the ocean is made up of saltwater, but I was so surprised by that first taste of it.  

But the one part of that trip I most viscerally remember is when someone lent me a pair of goggles so that I could actually look around under the water a little bit.  I was so excited swimming out there with those goggles.  I’d seen beautiful photos of gorgeous coral reefs, with all those brightly colored tropical plants and fish swimming around under the water, and I was excited to get to see something like that with my own two eyes.  So I swam out to where the water was a little deeper; I strapped on the goggles; and I plunged my face under the water.  

Sunday, February 7, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
watch this service online (readings start around 19:01; sermon starts around 26:35)
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Our gospel reading for today picks up right on the heels of last week’s gospel reading – we’ve spent four Sundays just in the first chapter of Mark because so much happens in it!  Last week, we read about how Jesus cast the unclean spirit out of the man in the synagogue; and this week we read that, “As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.”  Jesus is not wasting any time on this important mission of preaching and healing; as we see in this reading, he’s getting right down to business.

The one line of this passage that grabs me the most is verse 33.  Word has gotten around that Jesus is at Simon and Andrew’s house, doing some healing, and Mark writes that “The whole city was gathered around the door.”  Now, I have no idea how big a city it was – whether they were still in Capernaum or if they’d gone somewhere else – but even in a small city, that’s at least a few hundred people gathered around this one door, if not a few thousand. 

It’s a striking image.  This verse makes me think of some of the images I’ve seen lately – like photos that I’ve seen of the vaccine rollout – photos in some places of hundreds of people, waiting in line for hours and hours, for that one small prick of a needle.  Or I think of all the people I see waiting in line at the food pantry every week – and the long line of cars that snakes through the parking lot down at the Oak Ballroom when we do the mobile food bank each month.  

This verse is just one short sentence: “And the whole city was gathered around the door.”  But in that verse, what I hear is a deep sense of need, a sense of desperation and hunger and longing that is deeply relatable.  

Sunday, January 31, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
watch this service online (readings start around 16:54; sermon starts around 24:01)

(full disclosure, this is a reworking of an earlier sermon I preached while on internship)

To eat meat, or not to eat meat – that is the question!  This controversy that Paul is writing about in our second reading sounds kind of strange and antiquated to 21st century ears.  We don’t really talk about or observe many religious dietary restrictions these days – and apart from being sure to give thanks, we don’t usually spend much time worrying about how the food we eat will impact our relationship with God.  But for the Christian community in first century Corinth, these were pressing and important issues.  And in his letter, Paul is addressing some serious concerns – concerns that went well beyond the question about food.

Corinth in the first century was a hopping place.  It was an incredibly diverse city, situated at the crossroads of several major trade routes; people from all kinds of cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds found their way to Corinth.  And this diversity was reflected in the early church.  The Christian community in Corinth had a sometimes volatile mix of believers from the Jewish tradition and Gentile believers who had converted from other religions and were unfamiliar with the Jewish way of life.  The first century church as a whole was, of course, rooted in Jewish religion and practice, but it struggled to establish its own identity and traditions as more and more people outside the people of Israel began converting to the Way.  And the community in Corinth was very much at the heart of that struggle.  

Food became a particular area of struggle because of what an important role it played in the life of their community.  Communal meals were a central part of their Christian practice – not just the bread and wine that we might imagine, but full, actual, community meals.  And the argument about whether to eat meat was especially contentious, not because of upset vegetarians or vegans, but because almost all the meat available to eat in Corinth was meat that had been ritually sacrificed to idols.