To Know that We are Serving You is All
Isaiah 53:4-12; Mark 10:35-45
When I was in seminary, I remember attending a dinner party with Barry at the home of a University of Chicago professor. Over cocktails another graduate student asked me why I wanted to be a pastor. And I remember answering, “Because I think it will be fun.” Are we having fun yet?
I have to tell you I am having fun – most of the time --- or I wouldn’t still be here. Last Sunday’s congregational meeting was not exactly fun. But sometimes doing God’s work is not fun. Sometimes doing God’s work is about wrestling. Just look at Genesis chapter 32. A wrestling match was the locus for the birth of Israel. That wrestling match, like ours last Sunday, was not without its casualties. Jacob limped away from that encounter with an injury to his hip. Many of us limped away from here last Sunday afternoon. It was not the first time this kind of thing has happened in this community of faith. Mark Erickson recalled to me the time his father, “Saint” Berger, was so hot under the collar during a debate about whether to allow alcohol to be served in the fellowship hall that he had to leave the room.
Passionate wrestling shouldn’t be foreign to all of you football fans. And, like Michigan’s Coach Rodriguez said after the Michigan State game, “We’re upset for about twenty-four hours, and after that, we start looking forward to the next game.” And so today we look forward together. Not necessarily to our next congregational meeting, mind you, but to who and what we are most of the time. To our life together as a community of faith where people are inspired and equipped for a journey of living lives centered in Christ. I give thanks for all of you who had the courage to make yourselves vulnerable: to step out into the arena and ask good important questions, offer provocative observations, healthy cautions, and direct challenges – to risk rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty, to even risk being wounded, if not in the hip, perhaps in the heart. I give thanks for the task force that explored this opportunity and especially for Jeff Schuman, who invested so much of his time and talent in exploring this possibility for mission. During Holy Communion any of us who seek healing in body, mind or spirit are invited to stop at the head of either side aisle where Chuck Hunter or Linda Coran will be available to offer the laying on of hands, healing prayers and anointing.
We gather today, as we gather every Sunday, because our lives always have a way of getting messy and dirty, because we always seem to hurt and be hurt, even when we’re not about to vote on controversial decisions. In the messiness, in the raw, vulnerable moments, we often get dirty, we often become wounded. But we are claimed by a God who through Jesus’ death washes that dirt clean in the waters of baptism. We are met by a God who heals our wounds and straightens up the mess by inviting us into a process of forgiveness, whereby the past doesn’t have to determine the future. The cross that makes this healing possible wasn’t pretty either. And the ugliness of the cross reminds us that God will heal and redeem anything and anyone. Golgotha, remember, was a garbage dump. God will compost our garbage into heaven’s flowers – as long as we make the garbage available to him to work on; as long as we don’t hoard the smelly dung and use it to nurse our own bitterness. Out of Jacob’s wrestling, he was given a new identity, a new focus; he distilled his purpose. In short, he was given a blessing. And so it is for us!
So where do we go from here? You showed me this week. I walked into Bible Study and sitting there, as they always are each Tuesday morning, were Chuck Lindquist and Joan Onkka. Chuck and Joan were on opposite ends of that LSSM housing debate and there they were, sitting at the same table, with their Bibles open, ready to wrestle with today’s Gospel. That’s why this church is strong. Where do we head next? Right here, to the Word, in community. Even when we vehemently disagree, we submit and surrender to letting our life together be shaped by encountering the Word in community.
And what a word we get today. We meet Jesus witnessing a power struggle. James and John are lobbying Jesus for seats of power. “You really have no idea what you’re asking,” Jesus says to them. When the other ten get wind of this exchange, they lose their tempers. See, even Jesus’ first disciples didn’t hold it all together all the time. Don’t think for a minute that we’re special. And Jesus says, when it comes to kingdom living, if you want to be considered great you must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served – and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”
We are the heirs of this legacy, of this gift. Such a gift calls us to seek healing and to repent, to turn around and go in the opposite direction from all that holds us hostage. To turn toward that same God who came not to be served but to serve, and who calls us to do the same. So, such a gift also calls us then to lift our heads. This servant-God knows how to draw goodness even from our faults. Somebody named Dom Augustin Guillerand says, “Not to be downcast after committing a fault is one of the marks of true sanctity” (or of true holiness). We are called and sent to bear that same redeeming love to the world. We are called and sent to serve: to be, in short, a servant church. That we serve is non-negotiable. How we serve is absolutely negotiable.
Another non-negotiable is that we treat one another with mutual respect. That does not mean that we will not disagree. We need to disagree for the sake of faithful discernment. In fact, as someone who embraces a collaborative leadership style, that’s how I thrive. But we must find respectful ways to explore healthy differences. That means listening earnestly to one another rather than dividing into camps and closing our ears and our hearts. That means speaking directly with those with whom we disagree. Side conversations in staged whispers in the narthex, during meetings, and especially during worship are not acceptable, are not excusable, and they have to stop. Does anyone remember Luther’s explanation of the eighth commandment in the small catechism? We are to put the best possible construction on everything our neighbor does – to interpret his or her motives in the best possible light. I know this is not how they do it on FOX news or MSNBC, and we are called, remember, to live in but not of that world.
As we have been living into our mission, we have been trying on different opportunities to serve, kind of like trying on a pair of pants before we buy them. Sometimes these opportunities and experiments that we try on fit, like Kids Hope USA, and sometimes they don’t. There is a reason I don’t wear those pants that expose my belly button, or those tops that reveal what I don’t have. Sometimes an outfit is flattering and sometimes just trying it on brings out the worst as I look in that mirror. I can’t imagine what would happen if I brought all of you into that fitting room with me. That’s kind of how I see what happened last Sunday. Clearly, trying on that LSSM opportunity brought out the worst in us. So it is with opportunities to do God’s work. Sometimes they fit and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t fit or flatter, we hang them back on the rack and move on. Let the fact that we are so intentional about seeking ways to serve remind us that the best is yet to come.
We are a strong, resilient congregation full of dedicated people who sacrifice and serve faithfully. Last Sunday we were reminded of the passion with which God has blessed us -- passion for this community of faith and its mission. We are blessed with a strong, stable past and a bright, though challenging future. It is a privilege to serve with you and among you. We move forward today with thankful hearts, creating even more dreams for God’s future for us than we have memories of the past.
Speaking of memories, I have to share with you that on Monday morning – the day after -- I found myself singing a hymn I haven’t heard or sung in a very long time. This particular hymn was the hymn of the day at my ordination 23 years ago. I chose that hymn for that day because it reflected then and still does reflect my personal understanding of my mission as a pastor. We’re going to sing it momentarily. It didn’t make it into our new cranberry worship book, so we had to print it on that gray insert in your bulletin. I ask you to please pay close attention to the words in every stanza. It is quite a blueprint for us. It provides faithful focus and direction, especially today. I want to share the last stanza with you now. That’s the one that came to me in the shower. It got me through the week. And, incidentally, notice it describes the clothes we’re wearing today.
Oh, clothe us with your heav’nly armor, Lord. Your trusty shield and sword of love endure. Our constant inspiration be your Word. We ask no victories that are not yours. Give or withhold, let pain or pleasure fall. To know that we are serving you is all.
Let the fun continue! AMEN
Pastor Dana Runestad
18 October, 2009
Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church
Sources: The Message, Eugene Peterson, Mark 10:35-45
Eternal Ruler of the Ceaseless Round LBW #373
John W. Chadwick, 1840-1904, alt.
Eternal Ruler of the ceaseless round, Of circling planets singing on their way,
Guiding the nations from the night profound into the glory of the perfect day:
Rule in our hearts, that we may live anew, Guided and strengthened and upheld by you.
We are your own, the children of your love, As dearly loved as your beloved Son;
Descend, O Holy Spirit, like a dove And rule our hearts, that we may be as one –
As one with you, to whom we ever tend; As one with him, our brother and our friend.
We would be one in hatred of all wrong. One in our love of all things true and fair,
One with the joy that finds a voice in song, One in the grief that trembles into prayer,
One in the strength that makes your children free To follow truth, and thus in you to be.
Oh, clothe us with your heav’nly armor, Lord. Your trusty shield and sword of love endure;
Our constant inspiration be your Word; We ask no victories that are not yours.
Give or withhold, let pain or pleasure fall: To know that we are serving you is all.