Erin Seigmiller

 It’s quite the collection of texts this morning! I struggled with this for  EVER, and I’m still not sure if my theme really works. But we’ll just use our  imaginations and a shoehorn to get them all to fit! Ultimately, my theme,  “Seriously, God’s in charge”  is quite nicely laid out  in our psalm.
In my favorite translation of the bible, The Message, the 5th psalm 1 - 8 runs  like this:

 Listen,  God! Please, pay attention!
 Can  you make sense of these ramblings, 
my  groans and cries?
 King-God,  I need your help.
 Every  morning you’ll  hear me at it again.
 Every  morning I  lay out the pieces of my life
 on  your altar and  watch for fire to descend.
 You  don’t socialize with Wicked,
 or  invite Evil over as your houseguest.
 Hot-Air-Boaster  collapses in front of you;
 you  shake your head over Mischief-Maker
 God  destroys Lie-Speaker;
 Blood-Thirsty  and Truth-Bender disgust you.

 And  here I am, your invited guest --
 it’s  incredible!
 I  enter your house; here I am;
 prostrate  in your inner sanctum,
 Waiting  for directions
 to  get me safely through enemy lines.

 You  can’t see it, but Wicked, Hot-Air-Boaster, Mischief-Maker and Truth-Bender are  all capitalized. They are like named characters in the drama that is our lives.
But God once again shows us who is in charge, who has real, and ultimate  authority. The psalm also lets us know where we are, and gives us some good  advice.  We are invited guests, unlike Wicked. An invited  guest who  is received into the “inner sanctum” and we’ve been promised a foolproof (thank
goodness!) plan to navigate the “enemy lines” of our lives. The second stanza  holds the advice (which is echoed in many other passages), leave the pieces of  your life on God’s altar, and keep watch.

 So,  God is in charge. And has the ultimate authority. And is in command of all  things. Right. Clearly this is the case in our first old testament lesson about  Ahab, Jezebel and Naboth. Ahab wants what he can not have. What I didn’t  understand at first about this was this - at the time, in Jewish tradition a
person couldn’t just sell their land, it was held by them in trust almost, for  their family’s sake. For future generations. So, selling it, or trading it was  out of the question. Naboth wasn’t just being fussy, he was on the right side of  the law on this one. Ahab, couldn’t have it, until Jezebel fixes it all up for
him. God is not impressed, sends Elijah to chat with him. and set him straight  on the consequences of his actions. Bam - where the dogs licked up Naboth’s  blood, they’ll be doing the same with yours. Ouch! What the lesson doesn’t tell
us is that Ahab goes on to be penitent, and God is merciful to Ahab. Jezebel,  not so much.  Anyway, once again, God is clearly in charge in this  passage.

 In  the second lesson Paul does go on a bit (as he is wont!) but the gist of this  passage - I think, anyway - is that God set this whole thing up, and we need to  have faith that God knows the business of being God. So, having said that, and
knowing that Jesus has paid up front for our tickets, there isn’t anything we  can do to drive this relationship. Once again, God has the key. We just need to  trust Jesus to get the job done, because clearly we are unable to get it  together, Law or no law, our efforts are not the key “because  no one will be justified by the works of the law.”  At  the time, Paul and the early christians in Galatia and elsewhere, were dealing
with the influx of non jews into the christian fold, and they were just trying  to work things out.  The last line in the passage, “for  if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”  reassures  us that we shouldn’t feel bad that we can’t save ourselves, the jews had The  Law, and if they weren't saved by that, then nothing but Jesus will! 
 
*
there is more interesting stuff here, but no time to work it in - so lets talk  about this sometime over coffee! 

Speaking  of Jesus ... Our gospel from Luke is a vivid story that uses a situation with  Simon the Pharisee, where Jesus is preaching to him through the genuine  gratitude shown by the woman in our story. She has been forgiven much, and is
moved to such depths of gratitude that she washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and  dries them with her hair. She anoints his feet with healing, and I’m assuming  wonderful smelling ointment. It’s messy. As living often is. And Simon, sits
back and judges her to be sinful, and he wonders why Jesus lets her even come  close  to  Him, let alone touch him, and contaminate him. Jesus feels that Simon clearly  doesn’t get it. Simon needs a story of his own. He learns. How often have we  played the role of Simon, judging others? The unnamed woman isn’t there to seek  something from Jesus, she was there to give Him something, her Gratitude. She  was in touch with it, and she willingly, overwhelmingly, shared it with Jesus.
Again, echoing our second reading, that rule-following, or subscribing to a  certain theology will not be saving us, but Jesus will. We are saved by Grace  alone. Once again, God’s in charge. Now, the first three verses of the next  chapter have been tacked on to this challenging story, and I had a hard time  figuring out why it was there. I listened to the podcast on the workingpreacher  that suggested that a whole sermon could be made of these three verses. One that
explored that women were everywhere in Jesus’ story - from Mary, his mother, to  Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna to the “many others”, Jesus was followed by,  supported, cared for and financed by women. It wasn’t as one of the podcast  commentators said, Jesus just going around doing his thing with these 12 guys.  There was a movement, and Jesus had more than just a few young men convinced!
One of the commentators suggested that if we were going to be familiar with the  names of the apostles, we should be familiar with the names of the women that  figured large in Jesus’ life and ministry! I quite agree.

 If  there has to be conclusion to this sermon it is to remind us all once again of  our psalm this morning. Lay it all out for God, trust that you’ve been given the  right invitation into the best house ever, and have faith that God has a plan
for you through the “enemy lines” of your life!

amen.

Mark 10:17-31 October 14 2012 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That is one of the basic questions that all religions try to answer. We want to know that we go to a better place when we die, and so religions try to give us some direction on how we should live to make that a certainty. But this young man was not convinced. Even though he had followed all the commandments of his religion faithfully, he still did not have the certainty he craved.

And many of us feel the same way sometimes. Many people, if you ask them if they think they are going to heaven, will say, “Well I think so. I hope so.” It is not a matter of certainty.

The young man said, “What must I DO?” You see, if it all hinges on what we do, there can never be any certainty. Because no matter how carefully we avoid doing the things we know we shouldn't, there are always accidents. And no matter how hard we try to always do the right thing, sometimes there are grey areas where it is very hard to see what the right thing is. And no matter how much good we try to do for others, there is always more that could be done. Have I done enough? Could I try a little harder? Yes of course. But no one has the strength to do all that could be done. That's why, in the prayer of confession we said at the beginning of the service, we confessed that we have sinned by what we have done and by what we have left undone. If it all depends on what we do or don't do, we fail every time.

This young man tried so hard, and Jesus looked at the young man, and loved him. It was not because he tried so hard that Jesus loved him, but in spite of the fact that he tried so hard. And Jesus said to him, “One thing you lack... come, follow me.” Oh yes, he said all the rest to him as well, all that about selling all that he had and giving to the poor. That would be necessary if he were to follow Jesus. But the whole point of the selling and the giving was so that he could follow Jesus.

You see, inheriting something does not depend on what you do. It depends on who you are. I inherited from my mother, not because I took her into my home and took care of her. Her will was drawn up long before I did that, and I didn't get a penny extra because of it. She left me my inheritance simply because I was her daughter. It was the relationship that generated the inheritance.

And Jesus wanted such a relationship with the rich young man. He wanted him to follow him, that is, to be his disciple, to live with him, to learn from him, to do whatever he did, and go wherever he went. This is what Jesus wants of us, too. To live with him, to learn from him, to do whatever he did, to go wherever he went. This is what is means to be a disciple.

And this is what gives us the certainty of eternal life. It's not because of what we do, it's because of who we are. And when we are followers of Jesus, we have this relationship with Jesus which is stronger even than death. It is eternal life, not only after death, but even before death, life in Jesus, life with God.

And what is true of individuals is also true of the Church. Does our congregation please God? Is God going to save our church? Well, it is not because of anything we do that God loves our congregation. It is because we belong to God, that we are Our Saviour's church, that God loves us. And it is because God loves us that God is showing us all sorts of things that God wants done in the world. It is because God loves us that God calls us to the enormous privilege of doing God's own work.

It is not because we are doing all these things that God loves us; we are doing these things because we are following Jesus. Yes, we have had to give up a lot of things in order to do this following. We even had to make up our minds to give up our building. We have had to have to give up our comfort zones and take on new challenges and new responsibilities. We have had to say goodbye to friends whom God was calling to go to other congregations. Sometimes giving things up is necessary in order to follow Jesus. But we have his promise: “There is no one who has left house, or brothers or sisters, or mother or father, or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold, now in this age.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Mark 3:20 – 35 

I was watching the TV show Downton Abbey the other day with Lucy.  It takes place in pre-World War 1 England.  It seems quaint to us to see a society where everybody had his or her own station, and knew just what society expected of them, whether they were a housemaid or a duke.  And when one of the housemaids dared to buy herself a typewriter because she wanted a career as a typist, consternation arose all around!  She was not following the script, the plan for her life that society had decreed!

We feel our society is not so rigid, and indeed it is not.  Yet there are still scripts that are given to us by society, by our families and our employers.  And woe betide us if we fail to follow the script, if we write our own scripts, or follow a different script!  Many families have been thrown into confusion when a daughter becomes pregnant without being married, or if a son declares that he is gay.  They are not following the script.  People become distressed and anxious, and even angry, when the approved script is not followed.

In our Gospel today, Jesus is not following the script.  Different people had different expectations of him, and he wasn't following any of their scripts.  He wasn't raising an army to become the kind of military king some people wanted.  He certainly wasn't being a good Jewish boy and marrying a nice girl and settling down and building up his carpentry shop.  He wasn't supporting his widowed mother the way the eldest son was supposed to.  He wasn't following the right script.

And so his family comes to take him home, to put an end to the craziness, to get him back on track again.  And the Jewish authorities speak against him, warning people that he can't be the Messiah, because he is not following the right Messiah script.

Whenever we deviate from the script other people think we should be following, strong negative feelings are thrown at us.  I'm sure you have experienced this in your own life.  Either other people criticized you harshly for your behaviour, or you have criticized others for their behaviour.  Because we all do it.  It's one way that society tries to make people conform to what is considered normal behaviour.  

And sometimes it's good, maybe most of the time it's good.  We frown on bullying.  When someone is verbally or physically abusive, we bring the full force of law down on them. When someone is wasting their money on addictions or gambling , familes resort to interventions, to bring them to their senses and impress upon them the damage they are doing, not only to themselves, but to the ones they love. This is what Jesus' family thought they were doing.

But sometimes, the script needs changing.  Sometimes the way it's always been done is not the right way for this time and this place and this person. Sometimes God has a different script.

In our first lesson we see a clear distinction between God's script and the people's script.  God wants Israel to be a different kind of nation, a nation that does not depend on the leadership of a king, but the leadership of God.  But the people want to follow the script that all the other nations are following; they want a king. And so they get a king.

And in our Gospel, Jesus is writing a different script, too.  It is a script where God has power over the forces of evil.  It is a script where people who do the will of God are bound together in a family that is even stronger than a family bound by blood.  It is a script which in the end will result in his death.  And in his resurrection.

We all have a choice as to what script we will follow.  Will we follow the script our families and society have given us?  Or will we follow God's script?  They are not always the same.  And especially when God changes the script on us, there is hell to pay. We will face a great deal of doubt and opposition.  Tempers will flare and harsh words will be said. There may even be ruptures in family relations. Sometimes it may seem that it is just not worth it.

God is changing the script in the world right now.  For 500 years the Lutheran church has followed a certain script, a certain way of being the church in the world.  This is what we grew up in, this is what we are used to and what we want.  But it's not working any more.  God has changed the script.  God is pushing us to become a different kind of church.

Now this leads to a lot of confusion, doubt, anger and dissension.  Even last Sunday we witnessed this. And what makes it worse is that it is hard to agree on what the script should be, even if we agree that the old script is not working any more.

It is easy to look at the story of Jesus and his family and see so clearly that Jesus was right and Jesus was following God's script.  And it is easy to look back at Samuel and his contemporaries and see that it might have gone a lot better for them if they had paid attention to Samuel and played it according to God's script.  I'm sure a hundred years from now people will look back at our struggles and clearly see that what we have done is right, or that we really missed the boat.  I wonder which!

But whatever happens, we have to remember that the script we are to follow, is the same script that Jesus followed. We follow the script of reaching out to the hurting and lost.  We follow the script of giving of ourselves in the face of criticism and scorn. When we were baptized, we were baptized into Jesus' death so that we would also participate in his resurrection. As Paul puts it, “We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.  So we do not lose heart.”  Now that is a very important point, because it is all too easy to lose heart when we are faced with confusion and doubt. 

Paul goes on: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” You could also say that of our congregation.  Our outer nature is surely wasting away:  our finances are faltering, our average attendance is slipping;  but our inner nature does not depend on these external signs.  The life of this congregation is still strong, the love we have for each other sustains us, and the hope for the future which God is giving us is carrying us along.

God has a future planned for us; a future with hope.  God is guiding us to discover how we can move into that future.  Between us, we and God are writing a new script for Our Saviour's Lutheran Church, a script that is loving and welcoming and challenging and inspiring.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.