Archive for the ‘Sermons’ Category

What Jesus said last Sunday on August 29, 2010

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

This is a talk (that’s what the word sermon means) sent to me last Sunday evening.  Pastor Ron Luckey of Faith Lutheran Church in Lexington, KY, said it outloud to his parishioners last Sunday, 29 August 2010, the 14th Sunday after Pentecost.   His words are based on the appointed Gospel for the day: St. Luke 14: 1, 7-14.  Be careful about reading it; it may transform your way of thinking about what it means to sit down and eat with people.   Here’s what Pastor Luckey said:                                

The first day of school is always a little scary.  Whether it’s pre-school, high school, or college—it doesn’t matter.  My first day of high school was the scariest experience I ever had in all my years of schooling.  Specifically it was lunch time that was scary on that first day of high school. In my high school the whole student body ate at the same time. So you had everybody at once in that cafeteria. The entire population of Decatur High School was in the same place at the same time. A miniature world.  With all of its variety of people. I can still remember going through the line at lunch. Putting the food on my tray and paying the lunch lady at the cash register.

And then came the moment. I remember shutting my eyes and taking a deep breath.  And turning around.  And having to make the biggest decision of my life up to that point.  Where would I sit?  In that whole world out there, where would I sit?  Or more to the point, who would have me?  Who would welcome me to their table?  In my high school, there was an unwritten seating chart.  It was unspoken, but it was very real.  You didn’t just sit anywhere in my high school lunch room.  You sat with “your kind.”  We all knew going in that certain tables were set aside for certain kinds of folks.

And it was important to know “your place.”  If you looked to the left, you’d see the tables where the popular kids sat.  The ones who had gone to the elementary schools in the upscale neighborhoods of Fernbank and Medlock.  These were the clean cut kids dressed in the newest fads who already drove their own cars. Who got elected to student council and homecoming court.  The football players, reeking of testosterone, had a table to themselves.  There was another table where the smart kids sat. The chess club members and the ones who always got the blue ribbons at the science fair.  And over by the wall in the back was a table for the guys with slicked-back hair who smoked behind the stadium.  And the girls who hung around with them.  The ones who piled their hair high up on their heads and looked as if they had put on their makeup with a brick layer’s trowel.

You were welcomed to the cafeteria at Decatur High School.  You just had to know your place once you were in there.  Find the right table and you’d be fine. Because the unwritten rule was:  “Who you ARE is defined not so much by who you ARE as by who is the person sitting next to you at lunch.” 

Whether I knew it or not, it was good practice for life out in the real world after high school and college.  Because I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.  The world welcomes you.  You just have to know where you belong once you’re here.

The world has its own unwritten seating chart.  And generally speaking, we sit at the table with folks like us.  Who look like us and worship like us and vote like us.  And the interesting thing is that we generally don’t feel a need to apologize for that.

Holly and I were in a group of pastors last week looking at the gospel reading for today about the poor and lame at the same table as the rich and the healthy.  And one of the pastors said:  “But isn’t it natural to want to be with people similar to ourselves?”  I sat there thinking:  “Yeah, I guess it is.”  “Birds of a feather” and all that, you know.  But it’s like a lot of things.  It may be natural.  It may be the way things are.  It may be the way we’ve been taught. 

But then, Jesus comes along.  And says: “Just because it’s natural doesn’t make it right.”  The world says: “You are what you eat.”  Jesus says: “You are WHERE you eat.”  He said that at a dinner table.  I’ve counted nineteen stories in St. Luke’s gospel where Jesus has a knife and fork in his hand and a napkin in his lap, and he’s teaching while he’s eating.

Luke seems to love catching Jesus talking with his mouth full.  And this text is one of those occasions.  Jesus has been invited to supper one evening.  And he notices how all the guests come in and look around and move up toward the front to get the best seats.  So he takes his butter knife and hits it a few times on the side of his tea glass and says:  “Can I have your attention for a minute?  Let me give you some advice.  If you think you’re smart enough to sit at the table where all the smart kids sit, you run the risk of them asking:  ‘What did you make in Algebra last quarter?’  And you have to get up with your tray and slink off to sit with the kids who smoke behind the stadium.”  But if you play your cards right, you can be the Big Man on Campus. 

Let me tell you how to do it.  After you’ve paid the lady your lunch money and you turn around, go sit with the folks everybody considers ‘losers.’  And you never know.  With a little bit of luck somebody from the table where all the popular kids sit will yell across the cafeteria, in front of everybody in the school:  “Come on over here and sit with US.”  And you’ll get to say in front of everybody:  “Aw, shucks.  Me?  Little old me?   Well, I guess if you say so.’ ”

Now, Jesus isn’t serious about that little strategy, of course.  And the people that night knew that.  They ”got it.”  They knew what he was doing.  He was poking fun at their behavior.  But more than that, they knew he was reminding them how ridiculous and stupid it is to structure society in such a way that we divide ourselves into different tables according to who we think we are or what we think we’re entitled to as opposed to somebody else.

Why does it matter where we sit?  That’s what Jesus wants to know.  Any old place is the right place, according to Jesus.  Just sit down.  And let other people just sit down.  Right now in this country, we’re divided over where a Muslim community center should be located in New York City.  I don’t know where you stand on that question.  And I don’t much care.  I do care, though where Jesus stands.  And based on the gospel reading today, I wonder what would Jesus say about this issue?  Where is it appropriate for Muslims to sit these days?  Where is “their place”?  Is it two blocks from “Ground Zero”?  Four blocks away?  A mile away?  And it’s not just in New York City where that question is being asked.

There’s a big controversy brewing in northern Kentucky these day where many of the citizens have risen up to oppose the building of a Muslim worship center near Cincinnati—hundreds of miles from Ground Zero.  I don’t know the political answer to any of that.  All I know is, Jesus says:  “When you give a dinner, invite everybody to your table.” 

To be honest, I wish he hadn’t said that.  Because I like to hang out with my own crowd.  It feels natural.  It’s much more comfortable to choose my own friends rather than have Jesus do it for me.  Because you know how he is.

That’s the thing about baptism.  The moment we are baptized we no longer have the luxury of choosing our friends.  Jesus does it for us.  He just puts us all in a bag and shakes us up and dumps us out.  Jesus doesn’t care about order in society nearly as much as we do. Whether it’s undocumented immigrants in Arizona or Vineyard Community Church in Lexington with its blacks and whites and Latinos, wanting to buy an old elementary school close to an old established neighborhood and turn it into a church, the issue is the same.

 Where are we going to sit and with whom?  We make it so complicated.  But in Jesus’ mind, it’s not complicated at all.  St. Paul understood that.  He knew Jesus as well as anybody when he wrote to the Galatians:  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.  For all of you are one and the same in Christ Jesus.”

We might divide into religious camps because it’s “natural.”  But in Jesus’ mind, there is no such thing as Lutherans or Baptists or Roman Catholics.  There is just “the baptized.”  In Jesus’ eyes, there are no “rich people” or “poor people.”  In his mind, we’re all poor in our own way in need of gifts only he can give.  Jesus never said a word about gays or lesbians.  It was a non-issue apparently for him.  Which means it’s safe to say, I think, that he sees no difference between a gay man or a straight man, between a lesbian or a heterosexual woman any more than he sees a difference between a Jew or a Greek. 

Look at Jesus’ eating habits.  The record is clear in all four gospels.  He ate with conservative Pharisees on Monday and folks completely unlike them on Tuesday.  Which, to me indicates that Jesus is equally comfortable with Tea Party folks as he is with Left wing Democrats.  To him, they’re all sinners.  And they all need his death and resurrection.  Which he is more than happy to give them. 

All of this is to say, we may struggle with where to sit, but we know where Jesus stands.  So, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors…But when you give a banquet invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed . . . .”

The preacher was right last week at that conference.  That kind of behavior doesn’t come naturally Monday through Saturday.  Which is why we practice on Sunday at Jesus’own table.  Where every week, even though he knows how blind we are, how we lame we are, how poor our efforts are at being his followers, he invites us to sit down with him.

When all is said and done, we Christian might as well rearrange the seating chart while we’re here on earth. Because we’re going to be sitting together for all eternity in heaven.

And that means, Glenn Beck and President Obama will be eating off each other’s plates one fine day.  “Here, try some of this, Glenn.”  Won’t that be a sight?

And what about the sight of a child who never drank a cup of clean water in her life drinking beside the little boy who never drank anything but filtered water from a tap.  That will be a day.

The day he calls “the resurrection of the righteous.”  And that day is coming when Jesus returns.  We might as well start practicing now.

Posted in Gospel of St. Luke, Pastor Ron Luckey, Sermons | No Comments »

Yesterday (August 8) and Next Sunday (August 15)

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Now that I’m settled (somewhat) in Georgia and have my books on the shelves, connected to the Internet, and my prayerbook where I can locate it, I’m finding that this Monday is a good time to reflect on yesterday’s Eucharist:  the liturgy, the Scripture readings, the excellent sermon given by Pastor Katie Pasch at St. John Lutheran Church, and the continuing gifted presence of Jesus in Holy Communion.  Last evening Pastor Luckey once again sent me his sermon from Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky, and after reading it, I’m convinced that you will want to read it too.  It’s based on the second reading, Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16.  Here it is:

I want to talk about faith this morning.   What it is.  And particularly what it isn’t.  And I want to use a verse from the letter of Hebrews.  Listen to this:  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

You might get the idea from that verse that faith is a feeling. That it’s a matter of the heart.  “Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for.”  That idea of what faith is, drives people into my office occasionally.  “I’ve lost my faith,” they say, by which they mean they’ve lost that feeling they once had.  We have the idea—and I blame preachers for this—   we have the idea that faith is something you feel.  A confidence you have inside.  No doubts.  Complete certainty.  You either have it or you don’t.  And if you don’t, there must be something wrong with you. 

But here’s the interesting thing.  And this is so important.  The word in this verse that we translate “assurance” doesn’t mean “to be sure.”  It is not describing a feeling at all.  It has more the sense of a verb, really.  It means to behave as if you are sure, even when you may not be sure.  Does that make sense? There are some times in your life when you are called upon to act “as if” something is true even when you have your doubts.  When your daddy or your mama stood in the water beside the edge of the pool with their arms up and said to you:  “Jump. I’ll catch you,” it probably didn’t feel safe.   You didn’t KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’d catch you.  But you behaved “as if” they could be trusted to catch you, and you jumped.

Sometimes I have someone say to me in a new members class or in a counseling session:  “I can’t in good conscience say the Apostle’s Creed because I’m not sure I believe it.”  And my advice to them is:  “Say it anyway.  Say the Apostles’ Creed as if you believe it trusting that there will come a day when God will bring you around and you will actually believe it.”

The Bible is not a book of psychology.  There’s precious little in the Bible about feelings.  Faith is not about what you feel.  It’s wonderful when you feel all “spiritually” warm inside.  But your faith should never be measured by how you feel.  In the Bible faith is not a feeling.  Faith is behaving “as if” the thing you hope is true, is in fact, true.

What I admire about some people is that there is an “as if-ness” about them.  All hell may be breaking loose around them, but they behave “as if” God has them in the palm of his hand.  And that makes all the difference in the world.  It’s what distinguishes them from other people.  That’s the faith the writer of Hebrews is talking about.  He’s not talking about a feeling of assurance.  He’s talking about a way of behaving.  “Now faith is the ‘as if-ness’ of things hoped for.”  Living “as if” God’s promises will come true.

Having given a definition of faith, the writer of Hebrews then uses the story of Abraham and Sarah to illustrate what faith looks like.  In the book of Genesis Abraham is almost a hundred years old when we meet him the first time.  He’s got Coke-bottle thick glasses and walks with a cane.  His wife, Sarah is in her nineties.  They’ve been married for decades and have never had a child. 

God visits Abraham one evening.  “Come outside with me for a moment,” God says to him.  He takes Abraham out under the night sky and tells him to look up.  “See those stars up there?” God says.  “Can you count them?  That’s how many grandchildren and great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren you and Sarah are going to have.”

And Abraham says:  “Lord, with all due respect, have you checked my sperm count lately?  Have you taken a good look at Sarah?  There’s not a snowball’s chance [on a hot dessert day] that she and I are going to have a child.”

And God says:  “I didn’t tell you to look down below your belt, Abraham.  I told you to look up at the sky.  Count the stars, Abraham.”  Start behaving ‘as if’ what I promise is going to come true.” 

And if you read the story in Genesis, Abraham starts behaving that way.  He may be on a cane, but after that evening when God stops by there’s a certain spring in his step as he travels toward the land that God has said will be his.  He behaves “as if” God can be trusted to make him the father of an entire nation.  A little later on, Sarah gets her own chance to behave “as if” or not.  Three visitors stop by one day with the news that Sarah will conceive soon.  Not surprisingly, she laughs at the idea.  Which gives one of the three visitors the bright idea that a good name for their future son would be Isaac, which means “laughter.”

So that forever thereafter, whenever they call their son to supper—“Isaac!”—they’ll remember how they were tempted once upon a time to second-guess God.  To behave “as if” God couldn’t be trusted.  Well, to make a long story short, nine months later Abraham and Sarah are getting up for Isaac’s two o’clock feeding.  “Now faith is the assurance—the ‘as if-ness’—of things hoped for.”

That was Abraham’s faith.  Not what he felt.  But what he did in spite of what he might have felt.  He behaved as if he were going to be the father of a nation, even if, by the way, he never got to see all those grandchildren and great grandchildren God said he’d have.

And that is the story of faith throughout the Bible.  Not feelings.  But behavior in spite of feelings.  Behaving as if God can be trusted even when all the evidence points to the contrary.  Refusing to act out of fear even when we feel afraid. 

It’s the kind of faith Moses told the people of Israel to have at the Red Sea.  Here they were with their backs against the wall.  They turn to face the most powerful army on the face of the Planet—the Egyptians.  The Hebrew people have no weapons. They have no boats to cross the Red Sea.  They’ve never learned how to swim.  They’re “done for.”  They start bawling and wringing their hands.  And what does Moses say to them?  I’m quoting here.

“Don’t be afraid.  Stand your ground and watch what God will do to save you today . . . . The Lord will fight for you, and all you have to do is keep still.”  Keep still “as if” God can be trusted.  And you know the story. 

The Bible is filled with those kind of stories about a God who makes a way out of no way.  And who asks only one of thing of us—“Trust me.”  Behave as if what I say is true.

It’s one story after another.  Culminating in the life of a man named Jesus—whom we call God’s son—whose last words on the cross were what?  According to Luke it was:  “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”  Abandoned by his closest friends and surely feeling that his mission was an absolute failure, he behaved on the cross “as if” God could be trusted to bring something good out of this “mell of a hess.”  He was behaving “as if” Easter had already happened.  That’s the kind of faith the Bible talks about.

And it is into this faith that we baptize.  We Christians refuse to live our lives in fear.  Regardless of what the voices from the right and left tell us on their talk shows about where our nation and this world is headed, we will have none of it!  Because we are baptized.  And that means we behave “as if” God holds the world in the palm of his hand and will stop at nothing until his will is done. 

Shel Silverstein says in one of his poems:

Listen to the mustn’t, child.
Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the never could bes.
Listen to the won’ts.
Listen to the never has beens.
Then listen to me.
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

In a world that constantly uses words like:  “Can’t” and “won’t” and “never will” and “never could be,” we are baptized.  And we live “as if” anything God says can be, can be because we’ve heard stories of what God did at the Red Sea and in a tomb outside of Jerusalem.  And we’ve looked up and counted the stars.  And we’ve seen an old couple rocking their baby boy and behaving “as if” this were only the beginning.

This morning Daniel B. Clendenin sent out his Monday morning announcement in Journey with Jesus about what to think about in preparation for next Sunday’s lectionary readings:  Here’s what he says:

There’s a remarkable admission in the reading for this week, that many believers who have died “did NOT receive the promises of God” (Hebrews 11:13, 39).  And so I call my essay “Believing Isn’t Seeing.”  This is a great antidote to all the many forms of the prosperity gospel that we hear.

Huston Smith of UC Berkeley, now in his nineties, has a new autobiography that I review this week: “Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine” (2010).

For movies I review the Argentinian title  The Secret in Their Eyes, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 2009.  And for poetry we post a piece by the Spanish mystic and priest Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), ” I Do Not Die.”

Posted in Abraham, Baptism, Daniel B. Clendenin, Faith, Pastor Ron Luckey, Sermons | No Comments »

Yesterday and Next Sunday

Monday, July 19th, 2010
Yesterday, July 18, was the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.
Next Sunday, July 25, will be the Nineth Sunday after Pentecost.
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I’ve not posted in a week or so because the circumstances in my life are changing.  I’ve just sold my Kentucky home in Richmond and am moving next Monday to Barnesville, Georgia.   As a consequence, as you might imagine, my wife and I are boxing up all our coffee mugs, books, and bed linens.  From now on I’ll not be traveling up and down I-75, living between two homes.  From now on, it’s mostly one home, just one study, one library, only one yard to mow, and merely one set of kitchen pots and pans to clean.  O yes, we have that little lake house near Jackson, Georgia, but taking care of that place will be something of a handyman’s side job.  And it’ll be only forty miles away. Managable.

To keep me intellectually alert (as far as that’s possible), I’ve been hired by Gordon College in Barnesville to teach several classes, most importantly American Literature I (Beginnings to 1865) and some freshman writing classes.  June’s son Stan is giving me a bike so that I can wheel myself to campus and back, and there’s a two-miles walking trail in a near-by woods that will give me a chance to stretch the legs and watch the birds.  Need I say that I’m looking forward to all of this? 

Importantly it’s my hope that in the weeks, months, and years to come–once settled in!– that on Mondays I can provide a posting that many of you will find interesting, provocative, and transforming. 

Last night after the Eucharist, my dear friend, Pastor Ron Luckey of Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky, promised to send me his Sunday sermons and has given me permission to publish them each Monday on this blog.  That’s a considerable privilege.   I’m quite sure Luckey will be diligent in sending me his homilies.  If, on my part, I can also be diligent in editing his seven- or eight-page “pulpit texts” into a readable ”blog texts,” then lots of you will be delighted to visit this blog at least at the beginning of each week on Mondays. 

You’ll notice that I’ve titled this posting “Yesterday and Next Sunday.”  “Yesterday” refers to what I will receive from Pastor Luckey, his Sunday sermons posted here on Monday,s a day later.  “Next Week” refers to Daniel B. Clendenin’s “weekly essay on the Revised Common Lectionary” readings for the coming Sunday, posted every Monday on The Journey to Jesus:  Notes to Myself.   Having read Clendenin’s essays for many years now, I’ve always found them insightful, challenging, and transformative, exactly like the sermons Pastor Luckey gives to his parishioners each Sunday.  By posting Luckey and Clendenin as Sunday and Monday witnesses to the Gospel of our Lord, I hope that I can alert all my readers to thoughtful re-listenings to yesterday’s Gospel lectionary reading and a preview of the lectionary reading that will arrive next Sunday. 

Here now is “yesterday’s” sermon by Pastor Luckey.  

If you were in church last Sunday and listened carefully to the gospel reading for the day, you have every reason to be a little confused this morning. Because in TODAY’S gospel reading Jesus seems to contradict everything he said in LAST week’s gospel reading.  

 

He Qi, The Good Samaritan

Last week Jesus told the very familiar story known as the parable of the Good

Samaritan.  A man is taking a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Along the way he is beaten up and robbed and left to die by the side of the road.  A pastor walks by reading his Lutheran prayer book and looks up long enough to see the man in the ditch.  But the good reverend is so engrossed by these beautiful old prayers he’s reading in his prayer book that he ignores the man and continues on his way.  No doubt making the sign of the cross and saying, “God bless you, my son.”

Not long after that a man walks by on his way to teach Sunday School.  He hears somebody moaning and begging for help, and he looks over to see this poor guy lying there in a ditch.  But he checks his watch and thinks to himself:  “I’ve got a classroom full of third and fourth graders waiting on me right now.  They’re going to be running all over the church if I don’t get there on time.  I’d like to stop, but I just can’t.”  So, he too walks on by. 

But then, the story goes, a foreigner drives by—a Samaritan—and quite unexpectedly, he stops to help.  All he has is some oil and some wine to clean the wounds and an old t-shirt to tear in two for a bandage.  And so (and I’m quoting here) “He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.”  And then he loads the poor guy into the back of his pick up truck and takes him to a walk-in clinic and hands the lady at the desk a “twenty” and says:  “Take care of this fella, will you?  And if you have to spend more on him, go ahead and do it.  And I’ll come back by in a day or so and reimburse you.”

 

Jesus says to the man he’s telling this story to: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  And the man says: “Obviously, the one who showed him mercy.” 

And Jesus says to him:  “Go and do likewise.”  Go and be like that man who served.  Not like those two people who were too busy doing “holy things”—thinking about God in their heads, talking to God in their prayers, and reading about God in their books. 

Now, that story ends with verse 37 of chapter 10.  Got it?  Verse 37.  The very next verse—verse 38—begins today’s gospel reading.  Jesus has just finished this story when he gets to the home of a woman who is a perfect illustration of what Jesus has just been talking about.  Her name is Martha.  

 

He Qi, Martha, Mary, and Jesus

You cannot find in all the gospels a better picture of someone trying to be a Good Samaritan.  She’s heard that Jesus is coming to her house for a visit.  He’s on his way to Jerusalem.  Martha knows this is a very dangerous time in Jesus’ life.  There are people who hate him in Jerusalem.  Who want him dead.  She knows what Jesus needs right now is a friend.  Someone who will take care of him.  And love him.  And pamper him. So she drops everything she’s doing, to concentrate on serving someone in need.  She polishes the silver.  Presses the linen table cloth.  She makes sure the good crystal is spotless.  Sets the table with the knife and the spoon on the right and the fork under the linen napkin on the left.  And when Jesus arrives, she goes to the door and kisses him on the cheek.  And says:  “Make yourself at home, Jesus.  Mi casa, su casa.  Dinner will be on the table shortly.”  And she goes into the kitchen.  Cuts up the chicken to fry.  Slices the tomatoes.  Snaps the green beans and puts them on to boil with a big hunk of pork meat she pirated in, in the dead of night.  Makes the macaroni and cheese from scratch.  Not that orange pasty goop from Kraft that you buy in a box, for God’s sake.  But the real thing.  She ices the chocolate cake she baked this morning. Puts the ice in the glasses for the sweet tea she’s made. 

She does it all.  Because she wants to serve this man in need who’s sitting in her living room.  She cannot do enough for him.  She knows that he’s on his way to Jerusalem.  For all she knows, his days are numbered. 

He may be sitting in her living room, but she understands that in his own way, he’s really lying wounded in a ditch.  And in HER own way, she’s bandaging his wounds and pouring oil and wine on them.  She’s doing everything Jesus just told a story about.  

And then . . . there’s Mary.  “Holy Mary, daughter of God.”  Not a hair out of place.  Not a bead of sweat on her brow.  If MARTHA’S hands smell like onions,  MARY’S smell like the pages of an old prayer book. Mary is sitting on the couch listening to Jesus while Martha serves Jesus.  And Martha’s a little ticked by that. She comes out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron and saying:  Jesus, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell this sister of mine to get up and come out here and help me.” 

Now, let me stop here for just a moment.  Imagine you’d never heard this story before.  Based on the parable Jesus had just told before coming to dinner, what do you think he is going to say?  Remember, you haven’t heard this story before.  What do you think he’s going to say?  After all, Mary is the pastor with his nose buried in his prayer book.  She’s the Sunday School teacher who’s weighed the two options and decided the well-dressed kids in church need her more than the guy dying in a ditch. 

Mary seems to be the very kind of person Jesus condemned in that parable he just told.  Surely, Jesus will say: “Mary, as much as I enjoy talking to you, you have work to do.”  

But he doesn’t say that.  He turns on Martha—a Good Samaritan—  and says: “Martha, Martha.”  Two times, he says her name, as if to make sure he’s got her attention.  “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by all the things you think you’ve got to do for me.  There’s really only one thing you’ve got to do.  The thing Mary is doing.  Come sit down and let’s talk.”    

Mary, the one who sits and listens, is the hero of this story.  And Martha, the one who breaks her neck for Jesus, is the goat.  

So, which is it? Which is better? To be Mary or Martha?  Last week, you’d get the impression it was Martha.  This week, it’s clearly Mary.  In Jesus’ words, she has chosen “the better part” in the two stories.  It just goes to show, you can’t necessarily take one story from the Bible and build your faith on it.  You have to read the whole shebang, cover to cover.  

If all you have is the story of the Good Samaritan, then the Christian faith is all about you and what you have to do for Jesus.  If all you’ve got is the story of the Good Samaritan, then the Christian faith becomes just one more burden to be taken on your shoulders.  That’s why Luke follows up the Good Samaritan story with this story of Mary choosing “the better part.” Listening to Jesus.  Talking to Jesus.  Singing hymns to Jesus. Eating a meal with Jesus. 

Luke puts these two stories back to back for a reason, you see.  Because he knows us.  Luke knows that you and I have a tendency to take the Christian faith about Jesus and what he’s done for us and twist it around until it’s all about us and all the things we must do for him to prove ourselves and save ourselves.  

Luke knows us.  He puts these stories back to back to remind us that as important as being a Good Samaritan is—working in soup kitchens, attending BUILD rallies, giving your money to church and charity, adopting orphans, visiting in jails, writing your representative in congress to ask:  “Why hasn’t our nation paid one penny yet of the 1.5 billion dollars we pledged to rebuild Haiti after the earthquake?” 

As important as service is, the Christian faith is ultimately not what about being a Good Samaritan.  It’s about Jesus being THE Good Samaritan. It’s about what Jesus has done for us.  And what, in our baptism, he allows us to do through the power of his Spirit.  We do not save ourselves by being Martha.  We are saved by grace.  And we remember that grace by being Mary.  Luke puts these two stories back to back to remind us that following Jesus does indeed involve hands that are busy like Martha’s.  But that in the end, it’s not about the meal we fix for Jesus.  It’s about the meal he fixes for us. That’s why we keep coming back to this place week after week after week.  To sit at Jesus’ feet.  To listen to the stories of the faith and in scripture and in the preaching.  To talk with him loudly in the hymns we sing and softly in the prayers we pray.  And to eat the meal with him that has cost him so dearly.  

It is only then—when we are reminded once more that it is by grace we are saved that Jesus says:  “Now, go in peace and serve the Lord.”  Find somebody in a ditch and be A Good Samaritan to them just as I have found you in a ditch and have been THE Good Samaritan to you. 

You see how it works?  It’s not Mary OR Martha.  It’s Mary AND Martha. But it’s Mary first. Because Mary knows when all is said and done, it’s really about JESUS first.  

And here is Clendenin’s essay alerting you to what you can look forward to next Sunday, the Nineth Sunday after Pentecost. 

If for next Sunday you have parish preaching or teaching responsibilities, you may want to prepare for your delivery of a sermon or Scripture lesson by consulting CrossMarks Christian Resources, especially Exegetical notes on texts from the Revised Common Lectionary by Brian Stoffregen.    Remember:  Next Sunday’s Gospel is Luke 11.1-13 (Proper 13, Year C).   Going to Crossmarks is well worth the visit.

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Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

ash wednesday 2Realizing that Ash Wednesday came to us almost a week ago, nevertheless I’d like to share with you the fine homily Pastor Ron Luckey at Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky, gave to us on the first day of Lent before we received the Imposition of Ashes and Holy Communion.

The Homily                            

ash wednesday     Christians are known for doing a lot of odd, eccentric things in church.  We cross ourselves.  We kneel.  We bow at the waist when the cross passes in procession.  We lay hands on people’s heads and pray for their healing.  But there is probably no more eccentric act in the church than the ancient practice that we perform on Ash Wednesday.

     The palms from last Palm Sunday have been burned and mixed with olive oil to make a paste.  And in a few minutes from now well-dressed, educated, relatively sane adults with their bright young children in tow and their beautiful babies in their arms will come forward to have their foreheads smudged with those ashes.

     A primitive act really—worthy of a spread in National Geographic.  When you think about it, it runs counter to everything we hold dear in this society.  We live in a society that idealizes beauty and flawless complexions.  We spend billions covering up wrinkles and hiding the dark circles under our eyes and getting rid of blemishes and even risking skin cancer to make ourselves darker than we are.  And yet, once a year what do we do?  We make a choice to get up from whatever we’re doing, drive on wintry streets and come to a place like this where we know good and well that somebody like me is going to undo what we spend so much time and money doing.

     It’s really quite amazing.  In a world that promotes cover ups of all kinds—from cosmetics to politics . . . In societies that encourage us to pretend to be what we are not, people have gathered in churches all over the world today as they have for centuries to drop their guard and stop their pretending for awhile and admit who they really are.  In a world where a good name means everything and where unblemished credentials are a ticket to success, we come here on Ash Wednesday leaving our academic degrees at the door and all the things we may have going for us—our our reputation, our jobs, our bank accounts.  And we become marked men and women   wearing our true identity on our brow.  

     The mask comes off on Ash Wednesday.  And the church tells us who we are and where we’re headed.  ”Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  The same words God spoke to Adam way back in Genesis, chapter three, God says to us.  God says it, not to make us grovel.  But just to set the record straight.  To get us oriented again.  ”Remember that you are dust,” God says.  Not self-made like we are so fond of saying in this country.  “Remember that you are dust.”  Not self-sufficient, able to make it on our own.  

     The ashes remind us that when all is said and done, none of us has anything to write home about.  Everything we have comes from God.  And any good thing we are is God’s doing, not ours. We are simply dust.  Fragile and easily moved this way and that depending on how the wind blows. “And to dust we shall return.”  Which is God’s way of reminding us that there are limits to this life.  Boundaries that enclose our years.  Soon or late, “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” Someday we will fall and not be able to get up.

     The ashes say we don’t have all the time in the world.  So we must not wait to tell our sons and daughters that we love them.  We must not wait to reconcile with someone with whom we are at odds.  We do not have the luxury of time to wait until it feels right to be compassionate to the poor and just to the unfairly treated.  We do not have the time to put off confessing some sin that separates us from God. “To dust you shall return.”

     The city installed speed bumps in our neighborhood a few weeks ago.  People were going too fast down a particular street a block from our house that has lots of children on it.  So, it was a good thing to do.  But at some level, I resent those speed bumps. They slow me down to ten miles an hour.  They get in my way.  But, if I were to complain, someone would say:  “They get in your way?  That’s why they’re there.  To get in your way.”

     Ash Wednesday is the speed bump the church puts in our way each year.  It’s the church’s way of blocking our path and forcing us to consider the danger our sin causes to ourselves and others.  It’s the church’s way o getting in the way so that God can have the last word with us and set us straight about who we are and give us a proper sense of urgency about our lives.  So that maybe…just maybe, we will pray and give alms and fast and work for justice and recommit ourselves to God and to one another.

     The church is not polite on this day.  It tells us in a blunt and curt manner things we don’t want to hear.  But things we need to hear. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  We can run from that truth on a lot of days.  But not this day.  And that’s a good thing, because then we’ll be in a position to truly appreciate and truly receive the fact that the mark on our brow is the mark of the cross.  The mark that keeps us under God’s protection even though, by our merits we don’t deserve it.

   This is not just any smudge we wear today.  This is a sign of who we are but also, thank God, of whose we are.

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The Third and Fourth Sundays after Epiphany: One Story, Two Sermons, the First One Here

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

jesus in synagogueFor whatever reason (perhaps because it takes two Sunday to do justice to Luke’s story in chapter 4), the appointed Gospel readings for the Third and Fourth Sundays after Epiphany are in fact one story, divided in half, giving pastors, priests, and preachers ample opportunity to clarify what Jesus did (and did not do!)  while giving his first sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, his hometown “church.”   Although I heard Pastor Katie Pasch of St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia, unpack the full meaning and impact of Luke’s story, her busy schedule (she was the grandmother of a new baby yesterday!) precluded her sending me her text; and as a consequence, I’m making available Pastor Ron Luckey’s two sermons.   Here is his first homily, based on Luke 4.14-21, as the people of Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky, heard it on the Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 24, 2010:

It’s a Friday evening.  Sundown.  The Jewish Sabbath has begun, and the town of Nazareth has gathered in the synagogue to worship.  Jesus, the hometown boy who’s been out in the world making a name for himself is in the congregation that night.  Before the service starts, the rabbi walks up to him.  “Jesus, I wonder if you’d be willing to be our assisting minister and read a portion of the scripture for us, and say a few words this evening?  I know the folks would appreciate it.”  (more…)

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What Pastor Luckey said today, The First Sunday of Advent!

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

01advientoC1Today I have had the privilege of two sermons coming into my life and heart.   During the early Eucharist at St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia, I heard a wonderful sermon by Pastor Katie Pasch.   Afterwards, during the Breakfast/Agape over coffee, apples, oranges, and sweet rolls, I worked up enough courage to ask Pastor Katie if she might send me a copy her homily so that I might share it with you.  She agreed!  So expect something quite wonderful later this week after she sends me her sermon as an email attachment.   You’ll be delighted and surprised at how she has woven in my favorite Flannery O’Connor story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”   (So Pastor Katie, if you’re reading this, be sure to send me the text of what you said this morning!).

Pastor Katie, as did most Lutheran pastors, preached on, helped us understand, and gifted us with Jesus’ “Advent” talk in Luke 21.25-36:

25 “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

    29 He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

    32 “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

    34 “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

What Jesus said in Luke is also what Pastor Luckey at Faith Lutheran Church in Lexington, Kentucky, proclaimed as he presented the Holy Gospel to his parish during the Eucharist.  About an hour ago, he sent me a copy of the homily so that even while in Georgia, I may be with him and his parish in spirit and prayer.   Pastor Luckey’s sermon begins this way:

So, Happy New Year.  

          The first Sunday in Advent is the equivalent in the church to January 1st.  The world out there has customs and traditions when it comes to ushering in a new year.  We gather in Time’s Square, and a big ball drops out of the sky.  We make New Year’s resolutions.  We eat certain foods on New Year’s Day to give us luck for the year ahead—cabbage or collards and black eyes peas.  We symbolize the new year with pictures of a plump baby in a diaper with a sash that says 2010 and an old man in a long beard with a walking stick symbolizing the old, worn out year that’s passing away.

           In the church, on the first day of a new year we have our own customs.  Instead of a ball, we have a wreath.  Instead of black eyed peas and collards we have bread and wine.  We even have our own version of the old man with the long beard and the walking stick.   Our version of that is a scripture text about signs in the sun and moon and stars and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the seas and the waves and the heavens being shaken.

           Signs.  Jesus says that the tired old world of war and hunger and injustice is passing away like an old man with a long beard leaning on a walking stick.  And the church’s version of a baby symbolizing the new year is the fig tree sprouting leaves.  “Look at the fig tree,” Jesus says, “and all the trees.  As soon as they sprout leaves, (more…)

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The Church Cemetary and All Saints Sunday

Friday, November 6th, 2009

44332311_GravestonesLutheranChurchEdenValley     The following is a sermon preached by Pastor Ron Luckey, my pastor at Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky.  On All Saints Day, November 1, 2009, Pr. Luckey got up and said what you’re going to read.

      Just before he preached, the Holy Gospel appointed for All Saints Sunday, John 11.32-44, was read clearly and heard attentively.  When Pastor finished the reading and said, “The Gospel of the Lord!” everybody together said loudly and clearly: “Praise be to you, O Christ!”  We Lutherans do this praising every Sunday after each reading of the Good News.  If you’re wondering why we praise Christ like that, read the sermon.

 An All Saints Sunday Sermon

             What I know in my head about life and death and resurrection and the saints I learned from the Bible. What I know about those things in my heart I learned from the little church cemetery behind the first church I ever served.  I owe a lot to that church cemetery.  Which is ironic, because I had been warned that church cemeteries are nothing but trouble.

      I had been told about what a headache a church cemetery can be for a pastor.  I’d been told I would get angry phone calls from time to time from some irate citizen in town saying he couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t allow his Aunt Doris to be buried in the Lutheran cemetery.  “OK, she was a Baptist all her life, but I think she attended your church a couple of times when she was a girl.  That ought to count for something, Reverend.”
(more…)

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Reformation Day: A Sermon

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

reformation day      Last week June and I drove down to Georgia from Kentucky, and right now I’m posting from the lake house, away from my home parish, Faith Lutheran Church, in Lexington, Kentucky.  It came as a surprise this week when I found out by email that last Sunday, known as “Reformation Sunday” among us Lutherans that my pastor had taken a breather from his pulpit duties and turned the sermon over to someone else.  Though absent from the pulpit, he was, however, gracious enough to send me one of his older homilies, one he preached on October 29, 2006.  Although it was delivered three years ago, it is as good as yesterday.  Based loosely on Romans 3.19-28 and St. John 8.31-36, the message of this sermon Pastor Luckey surely needs annual repeating, especially on what we Lutherans call “Reformation Sunday.”

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      There was a time when Reformation Day was a very big deal in the Lutheran Church.  Once upon a time, normally mild mannered, shy Lutherans went a little crazy and put a liturgical lamp shade on their heads and had a party once a year. 

     It was a custom back then typically for all the Lutheran churches in town or in the surrounding towns to get together for one big combined service on the Sunday evening closest to October 31st.  All the choirs would get together and practice ahead of time and sing a big song.  All the pastors in the area would process down the aisle in those black cassocks we used to wear with the million buttons down the front and the white flowing things that came down to your knees—surplices they were called.  Black and white—looked like the march of the penguins!  The altar was draped in red, and the pastors wore red stoles around their necks. 

     The preacher for the evening—usually the most eloquent of the bunch or some hired gun from out of town—would stand in the pulpit and preach his best sermon on salvation by grace through faith alone.

     Nobody said it out loud, of course, but in those days, as much as anything, Reformation Day was the day set aside to celebrate that we were not Roman Catholics.  We stood off by ourselves in those days, like the Pharisee in Jesus’ story, and prayed:  “Lord, we thank you we are not like others—like those Catholics down the street—who don’t read the Bible, and who worship Mary.

     In all too many cases once upon a time, the preacher in his sermon would take a jab at the Roman Catholic Church on Reformation Day.  I remember John Brokhoff  preaching a sermon one Reformation Day entitled: “We Listen Only To a Paper Pope.”   Everybody nodded.  We got the message.  We read the Bible.  They don’t.  We don’t listen to some little old man in Rome.  We get it straight from the horse’s mouth.  Reformation Day sermons back then sometimes spoke in hushed tones about whiskey priests and lusty nuns and secret tunnels that connected convents to monasteries. (more…)

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Pastor Luckey’s Pentecost 20 Sermon

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Pentecost_20_2009            Last Sunday, 18 October 2009, was the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, and the Gospel proclamation for the day was read from St. Mark 10:35-45.  It’s quite a story, and Pastor Luckey, having given it his best lectio divina–the practice of “sacred reading”–throughout the preceding week, gave all of us at Faith Lutheran Church  the Good News as taught and lived by Our Lord Jesus.  During the sermon Pastor Luckey refers to Marie, a woman from Haiti.  She was our parish’s guest on Sunday morning.  I’m enclosing a photograph of her at the end of the sermon.   First, the Gospel, Mark 10:35-45:

 35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”  3 6“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.  37They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”   38“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”  39“We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, 40but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

 41When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Now the sermon:

            I have a big, fat book sitting on the shelf next to my desk entitled “The Synonym Finder.”  You know what a synonym is.  A synonym is a word that means the same thing as another word.  Take, for instance, the word, “congregation.”  You look the word “congregation” up in my big, fat book and you find words like “gathering,” “assembly,” “parish.”  This week, the word “glory” popped up in the gospel reading for today.  And since the word “glory” only appears three times     in the entire gospel of Mark, I knew it played a big part in today’s gospel reading. 

             So I decided to look up the word “glory.”  I found words like “majesty,” “splendor, “honor,” “recognition.”  That’s what “glory” is.  That’s what we’ve been taught glory is.  Glory is something that shines.  That’s what James and John were after when they “came forward to Jesus and said to him:  ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you . . . . Grant us the right to sit one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ ”

             James and John wanted glory.  They wanted recognition.  They wanted to be honored.  And they figured a little splendor on the side wouldn’t hurt either.  You have to hand it to them.  They knew what they wanted, and they went after it.  “Teacher,” they said.  “We’ll cut to the chase.  We want the seat down front.  We want glory.”

             You know folks like that.  You remember that kid on the playground who used to hog the ball at recess and shoot every time he got it.  Nobody liked that kid in school.  After all these years, I still resent that kid.  I can tell you his name.  His name was John.  Or was it James? 

             The disciples didn’t like James and John for the same reason.  They were always hogging the ball.  Always wanting to be at the microphone.  They never wanted to be secretary of the committee.  There was no glory in that.  “Make us chairmen.”  Mark says:  “When the ten heard (this request), they began to be angry with James and John.” 

             I can understand that.  I never liked that kid on the playground.  But to be honest, as much as we pick on James and John for shooting every time they got the basketball, down deep we all wish we got a chance to score.  We all want recognition for something we’ve done.  We’d love to be honored.  Isn’t it true?

             Why do you think the other disciples got mad at James and John?  Because James and John were stealing their glory.  The fact is, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t want their moment in the sun.  There’s no better feeling than to be at the back of the room all humble and quiet, and the guy at the podium suddenly points you out to the crowd for something you’ve done.  It’s glory.  And it feels good.

             Yeah, we say:  “Aw, shucks.  It was nothing.”  Nothing, my foot!  There are few things more satisfying than glory.  We’ll go to war for glory.  We’ll die for glory.  Glory shines.

             That’s the reason Mark included this story in his gospel.  Because he knows that deep down we all want glory.  This story is not about James and John.  Mark didn’t tell this story to tell us about two historical characters named James and John.  He told this story, because it’s about us.  It’s about the James and John in all of us just below the surface. 

             Glory shines.  At least, that’s what we’ve been taught. That glory shines.

             But then, along comes Jesus—whom we call “Lord”—who has a whole different take on the subject of glory.  His book of synonyms is different from ours.  When he looks up the word “glory,” he doesn’t find the same words we do—recognition, majesty, splendor.  It’s obvious that Jesus didn’t care one bit for glory that shines.  Read the gospels.  He never flexed his muscles.  Never showed off his medals.  Never got mad when people didn’t notice him.  Never pushed his way to the front of the line.  Even at his baptism, he waited in line.  He didn’t cut in line:  “Pardon me, I’m the Messiah.  Let me go first.”  He was a strange man.  He wasn’t interested in recognition or being honored.  He just did his thing.  Went about the business of giving his life away on behalf of others.

             Majesty and splendor were the last things on his mind.  In fact, as we saw last week, when somebody even called him “good,” he immediately batted the compliment away and said: “Don’t call me good.  Only God is good.”

             This is a strange master we follow, you know that?  What makes this request by James and John so pitiful—so comical—is that right before they ask for glory, Jesus just told his disciples for the third time that he is on his way to suffer and die.  He and his disciples were on the road to Jerusalem, and he stops and turns around and says:  “I want to give you a heads up.  Where we’re headed I’m going to be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they are going to condemn me to death.  They will hand me over to the Gentiles.  They will mock me and spit on me, and flog me and kill me.”  Jesus is very specific.  It’s unmistakable.  And right after that. 

             I’m telling you the truth.  The words have hardly gotten out of Jesus’ mouth when James and John say:  “Well, that’s interesting and all, but if you don’t mind us changing the subject, give us the ball so we can shoot.”  They just didn’t get it, you see?  They didn’t understand this strange kind of glory that Jesus seeks.

             I can’t blame them.  Crucifixion was an outrageous path to glory.  When we think of crucifixion we think of the Romans just taking the prisoner outside and nailing him to a cross, and that was that.  But crucifixion was one long drawn out process of public humiliation—not glory.  The prisoner had all his clothes removed and paraded through the streets for everybody to point and laugh and mock.  The prisoner was beaten like a dog within an inch of his life.  The prisoner was hung out on a billboard like dirty laundry to bleed to death and suffocate while the crowds spit and jeered and booed.   This is glory?  That’s not what we’ve been taught.  But for Jesus, you can’t have any greater glory than to suffer and die for somebody else.  It’s a strange kind of glory Jesus calls us to. 

Marie_JK_IMG_6336_copya[1]             I have a dear friend named Marie.  She was born and raised in Haiti and lived her early life there.  Then she went to the United States to live.  She had a pretty easy life in “the States” nursing rich folks and being a housekeeper for them.  She did such a good job that one of those rich folks left her a house and a fine car when he and his wife died.  Marie was set for life.  But then one day, as she was praying Jesus offered her glory.  In her prayers she heard Jesus say:  “Marie, I want you to go back to Haiti and serve me there.”  And she said:  “But Jesus, I have glory here.”  And Jesus said:  “No, no, no. No, you don’t.  I’ll show you glory.  Go back to Haiti.  And drink the cup I drink.”  So, Marie left everything—the house, the car—everything—the full grocery stores, the nice restaurants, a safe, clean neighborhood—she left it all behind and moved back to Haiti.

             And today, she lives in Port au Prince.  Dangerous, dusty, poor Port au Prince.  And she runs an orphanage and a school for 200 little kids who would not last two weeks without Marie.  Like Jesus said:  “Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”  That’s the glory of God.  Because you see?  Glory doesn’t shine.  It bleeds.

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A Sermon about Divorce

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Dear friends and family,

     This posting gives you a sermon I heard at my parish’s  Contemplative Eucharist last Sunday evening.  The sermon was preached by Pastor Ron Luckey on October 4, 2009, the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, at Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington Kentucky.  The appointed Gospel reading for the day was St. Mark 10.2-16.

divorce     As Pastor Luckey indicates early in his sermon, in his previous sermons he had done his best not to preach on Jesus’ words about divorce.   In the sermon, however, he admits that while preparing for a sermon, he found himself  “thinking a lot” about that avoidance;  eventually he became convinced that he should honestly tell us how Jesus’s hard sayings about divorce ought to get themselves worked into our lives.  If you are a divorced person, you may want to read this sermon carefully.   And if you’re married, engaged, separated from your spouse, single, or whatever, read it too.  Everybody should read this sermon.

     An important note.  In the past I have blogged almost always at www.prayingdailyblog.blogspot.com.   I have migrated all postings on that blog to this one, and from now on I will place all my blog postings that have to do with prayer in its many forms, assorted theological musings, observations about the Church’s calendar, and future sermons on this blog.   Please feel free to comment on any posting.   If you have any questions on how to improve this blogsite, let me know.   And if there is any way I can help you, answer questions, or share my thoughts and life with you, feel free to write to me . 

Pastor Luckey’s Sermon 

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             I don’t know any preacher who likes to preach on this gospel reading about divorce and re-marriage.  Pray tell me, where is the good news in these words?  “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.  And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”  There’s no preacher I know who sits down at the desk on Monday and reads that text and says:  “Oh, goody!”  (more…)

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