Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song and Praise

Matters of the Heart

Please pray with me aloud or in your heart our Prayer of the Day:

Sovereign God, ruler of all hearts, you call us to obey you, and you favor us with true freedom.  Keep us faithful to the ways of your Son, that, leaving behind all that hinders us, we may steadfastly follow your paths, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen. 

I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; my heart teaches me night after night. I have set the Lord always before me; because God is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.  My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope…You will show me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, and in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.        Psalm 16:7-9. 11

I think I inherited it.  Typically, I’ll wake up one or two times during the night, often from dreams, sometimes disturbing, sometimes pleasant, always bizarre.  My dad was like that, waking up at 3:00 in the morning, lying on the couch, reading.  Often when I go to bed, I’ll recite an ancient evening prayer:  I give thanks to you, heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ your dear Son, that you have graciously protected me today.  I ask you to forgive me all my sins, where I have done wrong, and graciously protect me tonight.  Into your hands I commend myself: my body, my soul, and all that is mine.  Let your holy angel be with me, so that the wicked foe may have no power over me.  Amen.

Sharing the disturbing aspects of those dreams with a friend this past week, he suggested beginning with words asking God to totally fill me during the night.  And revisiting Martin Luther’s Small Catechism I found these instructions:  In the evening, when you go to bed, you are to make the sign of the holy cross and say “God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit watch over me. Amen.”  Then, kneeling or standing, say the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.

Following these prayers for protection, Luther writes, “Then you are to go to sleep quickly and cheerfully.”  J                                                              ELW, page 1167

So this week I was drawn especially to the words of the Psalm:  my heart teaches me night after night, and the opening words of today’s prayer:  Sovereign God, ruler of all hearts…

I’ve been thinking about the “wicked foe” in relation especially to those disturbing dreams.  I think about the question I will ask Granger’s parents and sponsors:  “Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?”  To which I hope they will answer, “I renounce them.”

Believing that God truly is sovereign, the [ultimate] ruler of all hearts, I believe that God allows Satan to wreak some havoc in my troubling dreams, those where I have lost my way and nothing in the landscape is familiar. But this sovereign God also awakens me with the assurance that I am in fact not lost, that Jesus holds me securely in his hands.

I wonder if my nighttime experience is not all that uncommon.  I wonder if you have experiences akin to mine.  Who of us is not troubled, whether by day or by night, by so much in our world that is corrupt.  It is not difficult to see abundant examples of the self-centeredness, of the self-indulgence of which Paul speaks in our Second Reading from Galatians 5: of enmity, strife, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy.  I found profound the two House Select Hearings this past examining the dark events leading up to and following the January 6 insurrection.  I listened to the intense polar opposite reactions to the overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday.

Paul’s words to the little church in Galatia are so timeless, so needed to be spoken today:  The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another…I am warning you, as I warned you before:  those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But hear the gospel:  Because Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” where he knew would suffer and die for all the world, for every child and man and woman in this country and throughout the entire world, because he was crucified and buried and rose again, everyone is precious, everyone matters, everyone is loved.  Everyone, including those we find so easy to hate.

Because Jesus died and rose again for Granger and Garret and Grayson, and for his mom and dad, Katie and Cody, and for everyone of us; because through Holy Baptism all of us are publically and eternally held and protected by Jesus in all our experiences of dying and of being raised up again, our hearts, in the words of the psalmist, are made glad, our spirits rejoice, and our bodies rest in hope.

No matter how corrupt and deeply divided our world has become, no matter how disturbing our dreams, no matter how stressed and worried we may be about what the future looks like for little ones like Granger and his siblings, the gospel, the good news, is that the Father, his Son, and the Holy Spirit are and always will be with us, with these little ones.

The job assignments for Cody and Katie and for all of us is to pray often for these little ones, and again in the words of Paul to be “led by the Spirit” in raising them, in due time teaching them the 10 commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

Following Jesus means that in the face of hatred and words and acts of violence, we commit every day to pray for the fruit of the Holy Spirit to be lived out in our hearts and in all that we do.  Following Jesus means never tiring of these nine words:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

None of us can honestly claim to embody all these words all the time.  But Jesus’ death and resurrection means that God, for Jesus’ sake, forgives us, over and over.  And the Holy Spirit, usually one little step at a time, enables us increasingly to bear this nine-fold fruit.

May God today and forever bless the heart of Granger.  And in this world, these days so fractured, may all of us live by the Spirit and by the Spirit be guided to nine-fold acts of love for our neighbors.

When I go to bed tonight, I intend to recite the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and words like the ancient prayer I shared with you this morning.  And at least tonight, these opening and closing words from Psalm 16:  Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you…You will show me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, and in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. 

Then, God willing, I will heed Martin Luther’s instruction:  “Then you are to go to sleep quickly and cheerfully.”

Amen

This is a special musical presentation of How Firm a Foundation by the Faith Bells at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

Luke 8:26-39; Pride Sunday; Pentecost 2; June 19, 2022

Rich Weingartner

Grace to you and peace from God our parent, Jesus our Savior, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Happy Pride everyone. Happy Father’s Day to all those who are father figures in people’s lives. And Happy Juneteenth Day. There is a lot going on today, which is great because it reflects the wide diversity of God’s creation - all of which deserves to be celebrated. As an RIC congregation we have committed ourselves to ensure God’s message of radical and unlimited love is shared and proclaimed to all. We committed to make ourselves better through learning, confession, and growth. In fact, it was 5 years ago yesterday that we at Faith celebrated our new RIC identity with our Diversity Sunday service. So Happy 5th Anniversary! We hope that today’s service and today’s message helps us more fully live into our promise as an RIC congregation. Parts of today’s service were specifically chosen because of our focus on celebrating Pride and to work to ensure the language we use is inclusive and reflective of all of God’s creation.

Now, let’s take a look at today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah. It starts out with God telling us that God is waiting for us to turn to them. No matter how much the people (and that includes us) ignore God and reject God and think they are too good for God, God is continuing to wait for the people to turn to God. All this waiting, and seeing God’s people reject God, understandably causes God to want to “repay into their laps their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together.” However, God’s grace is there and God doesn’t repay us what is due to us, as there is still a blessing in us. God finds the blessing in us, no matter how small the blessing is and no matter the sins we have committed. God is always there for us and knows the good in us outweighs any sins and faults we have.

This passage also ties into the Gospel with the description of ways people turn from God as those “who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat swine’s flesh, with broth of abominable things in their vessels.” These are all things that, according to Jewish law, make people unclean and thus not worthy to be close to God. We already see from this passage, that even these things cannot keep God from us.

When we turn to today’s Gospel from Luke one might want to focus on the demon possessed man and try to figure out more details about it. What exactly was the possession? How or why did it happen? Why did the pigs have to die? Or any other possible details in the story, but I want to focus on the whole story.

First, we must recognize that what Jesus did was radical. He was breaking so many “rules” of how to be a good Jewish man. First, he went into a foreign land among non-believers. He didn’t accidentally end up there and go “Whoops, my mistake”, no, Jesus purposefully went there, knowing full well he was breaking cultural norms. Then to break even more rules, he went among death in the tombs, being near pigs, which were considered an unclean animal, and in a town of people who raised and ate them.

Next, to make sure that we all knew that Jesus had no qualms about being radical, he went and talked to an unclean, demon possessed man. A person society had cast out as an “unwanted” or “other” - someone they didn’t want around them. All of these would certainly make Jesus unclean.

Why would Jesus do this?  Because Jesus was radical - he wasn’t here to follow the rules, the rules that society created, he was here to follow and show God’s love. This meant doing many counter-cultural things. Not only does Jesus associate with the demon possessed man - Jesus healed him and cast the demons out.

Jesus’s actions caused the people of the town to be afraid of Jesus. While the story doesn’t specifically say they were afraid of Jesus, it does specifically say they cast Jesus out of their town. If a person is afraid of something, you try to remove what is making you afraid. So, if the townspeople were afraid of something else, they would have focused their actions on something else, but they didn’t. They asked Jesus to leave.

Why were they afraid of Jesus? He had power over demons? He made the man clean and to his right mind? He upset their economy by having the pigs killed? All of the above? We may never know for sure, but I feel it was more because Jesus threatened their way of life overall - he shook up their beliefs. They had been living along just fine and Jesus comes in and changes things - makes them think new things - of a new way of life.

Taking a closer look at the end of the story, Michael Rogness explains:

“At the end of the story, the man “had been healed,” a word from the Greek sozo, which can also be translated “saved,” “delivered,” or “made whole.” He is not only delivered from the demon and not only “cured” of the terrible burden, but had been altogether “healed” and “saved.” That leads into the important last verse of the story: “He went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.” He has not only become a follower of Jesus, but a “proclaimer” as well.” (https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-luke-826-39-3 )

So - where does this leave us? Are we the demon possessed man who needs healing so we can be saved and made whole? Are we the villagers who are scared of Jesus and the change that comes with his radical new way of life? Probably a little of both.

How often do we not want to change our way of life, how we worship, who or what we view as acceptable in life?  How often is it just easier to continue to leave the “others” by themselves so that we don’t have to change to welcome and include them?  Do we do this because we are afraid of what the change will bring, and because of that, we cast Jesus out of our lives, our church, our community?

While we may do that, that is certainly not our calling. Our calling is to be a follower of Jesus - no, not just a follower, but a proclaimer of Jesus. To fully live into God’s promise of love and wholeness, we have been shown by Jesus that we need to be radical and do whatever it takes, even if it is against everything society expects, to fully proclaim God’s love to all.

This especially includes those who so often hear that God’s love isn’t for them - our gay, lesbian, and bisexual siblings, our Black, Indigineous, and People of Color sibilings, neurodivergent, poor, asexual and aromantic, gender queer, transgender, intersex, non-binary, agender, people with disabilities, and any other category society places on people to separate them from society and is used to deny God’s fully inclusive and wonderful love for them.

You might be wondering, well - how can I proclaim this? You might be thinking “I’m never going to be a preacher”, or “I’m not comfortable in front of a congregation”, or “I don’t have time to plan church events.”  Good news - we proclaim the wonderful Gospel of God’s redeeming love for all, through our everyday lives. It isn’t in the church that we proclaim, it is everyday out in the world.

When you use someone’s correct pronouns or include your pronouns in introductions to create a safe space for others - you are proclaiming God’s love. When you attend a rally or write a letter in support of marginalized people - you are proclaiming God’s love. When you donate to our food pantry, volunteer to be on the box brigade, or donate to help our refugees in our parish house - you are proclaiming God’s love. When you vote for candidates and ballot questions that work to protect and ensure equality and equity for all people, especially those who are often at a disadvantage - you are proclaiming God’s love. When you ensure a space or event is accessible to people with disabilities - you are proclaiming God’s love. When you educate yourself on cultures and backgrounds that aren’t your own, when you learn about the true history of marginalized people - you are proclaiming God’s love. When you attend events or do activities that you might be afraid of doing or makes you uncomfortable because it is stretching your understanding of God’s love and becoming closer to all of God’s creation - you are proclaiming God’s love.

We can do all this because we are freed from our sins by Jesus Christ. Because we are freed from our sins, we don’t have to focus on ourselves and being right with God, that is already done - we can focus on bringing God’s love and wholeness to all of God’s creation.

Which brings us to the new testament reading from Galatians - “Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.“

This is the good news - we are not bound by laws and being put under discipline - we are justified by Faith, through Jesus Christ. Jesus came to be the ultimate example of God’s amazing, inclusive, and redeeming love for all. This love is what makes us all equal, beloved, children of God. That love that always has been and always will be.

When the passage talks about “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female;” I don’t believe this is saying these identities of people no longer exist - that would be removing valid and valued identities of people. I am a male, I am a Lutheran, I am gay, these are all very important parts of who I am. Instead of denying that these parts of me exist and are valid, what this passage is saying is, these identities of people are not to be used to divide and separate people, and they aren’t to be used to determine who gets and who doesn’t get God’s love. “For all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise”.  We aren’t divided in God’s vision - we are all inheritors of God’s promise of love and eternal life.

So - in summary - Jesus, through his life, let us know that we do not need to be afraid to go against cultural norms, and to be bold to share God’s love for all. Through God’s love, the ways society divides people into us and them, haves and have nots, worthy and not worthy, sinners and saints - have been torn down for we are all one in Christ Jesus. Through Jesus we are saved from being judged and have been freed to be not only followers of Jesus, but proclaimers of Jesus and God’s holy and inclusive love for all. As proclaimers, we share God’s work through our Hands in our everyday lives. Thus ensuring that all we say and do reflects God’s inclusive love for all people, especially those that society margainlizes - our LGBTQIA+, black, indiginous, people of color, neurodivergent, and poor siblings, refugees, people who are food insecure or experiencing homelessness, people who have disabilities, and all other people in society that are often told they don’t matter or aren’t loved by God. Through our actions, as proclaimers of Christ, they will know they are loved by God, and by us.  Amen

Today, listen to a special musical performance of River in Judea from the summer choir at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

Today's sermon was provided by: C.J. Clark: Director of Living Water Ministries . 

Living Water Ministries is the Youth Ministry organization of the ELCA in our state. Living Water Ministries is based at Stony Lake Camp in New Era. It is a safe place for all of God’s children to experience intentional community centered in Christ where they are formed in their faith, developed as leaders, and equipped as servants of the gospel. This approach has world-changing implications as participants experience the love of Christ in each member of the community and return home to share that same love with others. This year, Living Water Ministries is offering a week of camp experience, free to all kids and youth in our Synod. If you are interested in having your child/youth participate, please speak to Pam Williams.

This is a special musical presentation of Fill Me Now by Bob Nelson at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan. 

Today, we celebrate the birth of the church. Today, we come and gather here in one place for a birthday party, and it is a dangerous one.  In fact, this party has been a dangerous event from day one.  

Our story begins on an ordinary day, roughly 2,000 years ago when a small group of despairing believers isolated themselves all together in one place. These disciples huddled together in isolation because they were afraid.  It is quite likely they were afraid of outsiders, so they stayed clustered and cloistered together as one group.  Now, honestly, had they known what was about to happen, they would likely have separated and spread out.  You see, after all they had been through, what was about to happen would have freaked out even the bravest amongst them.   As they clustered together in their small group, they were in danger but not from outsiders.  The danger they were in as they huddled all together in one place, was from a God who was about to crash the party and bring in everyone they were trying to avoid.

Yes, God did crash that party and, with the force of a mighty wind and flames and voices speaking in many languages, God brought into that gathering of early believers people from all nations.  And, in the midst of their bewilderment, their amazement, the chaos, and the cacophony of voices, that gathering exploded into the church – something the world had never before witnessed.  It was a whole new creation!

Quite frankly, I think the present-day mainline church has, at times, been gathering in fearful isolation from society, from culture and from the world.  By keeping ourselves isolated from the world and not connecting with others, we try to keep our little gatherings comfortable, cozy, neat and tidy.  In some ways, certain things have not really changed all that much from that gathering 2,000 years ago.  You see, people are people, and we still live in fear.  

We are living at a time when so many things about our culture and our world create despair and fear among us.  We fear gun violence.  We fear COVID-19.  We fear those we perceive as “other.”  We fear the changing climate and all that is coming with that change. We fear speaking out and speaking truth.  And, as we gather in our cloistered settings, we find all kinds of people.  We gather as the flawed, the broken, the smug, the self-righteous, the confused, the amazed, the hurting, and the fearful.  But, in this gathering of broken, diverse people and personalities, we discover we are the very people to whom God sends the Spirit.  And, guess what!  God has not changed!  And, God still crashes our parties, abolishes our carefully chosen guest lists, breaks into our despair, transforms our fears,  and invites into our gathering the people we often try to avoid.  And, yes, the people God brings into our midst are going to change us!  You see, when God enters and works in our midst, we are always going to be changed!   We may want to always have a nice, warm, peaceful, secure, fuzzy feeling kind of a gathering.  But, when God crashes our party, warm fuzzies are not what we get.  I love what Lutheran pastor, Nadia Bolz Webber, says about this.  She writes:

The Spirit, while called the comforter, does not bring the warm chocolate chip cookies and a night-night story kind of comfort.  The Spirit brings the comfort of the truth – and if you’ve had any experience of the truth whatsoever you can testify that it’s not exactly cozy.

Friends, as we gather, we are so much like those early disciples:  fearful, flawed, confused, and even amazed.  And, yes, we are the very people to whom God sends the Spirit to mess everything up!  God has not changed, and God is always going to be crashing our comfortable parties, messing things up, and moving us into God’s future where God’s guest list includes all people.  We, as a Faith community, are being changed as we open ourselves to welcoming the stranger, as we welcome and care for refugees, as we intentionally work to engage the greater community, as we feed the hungry in our community, as we open ourselves to diversity, as we celebrate our Reconciling In Christ identity during Pride month, as we intentionally work to do a better job at caring for creation and even learn about an amazing solar opportunity for this church, and as we speak out against gun violence, white supremacy, racism, and all the isms that permeate our culture. We are being changed by the Pentecost Spirit of truth that continually moves in our lives and draws us into God’s future.

Yes, God still crashes our parties and invites us to be changed as we live the truth of God’s love for this world.  As Nadia says, “This is the thing about the Pentecost Spirit of truth:  it feels like the truth might crush us.  And that is right.  The truth crushes us, but the instant it crushes us it puts us back together into something real.  Perhaps for the first time.  Because the radical and mysterious and dangerous thing the Spirit does has always been to form us into one the Body of Christ.  Sometimes despite us, sometimes against us, but always for us.  Because it is only the Spirit who can turn us from a ‘they’ into a ‘we.’” And, that we, the Body of Christ, can change this broken world through living God’s redeeming, transforming love.

Seniors, as you now graduate, as you go out into the world and move into a new chapter in life, remember that this same Spirit that crashed the party when the church was born became very present to you when you were born and when you were baptized. When each of you was baptized, that same Spirit was very much at work in your life.  When each one of you was baptized, the pastor prayed these words while laying hands on your head: 

We give you thanks, O God, that through water and the Holy Spirit you give your daughters and sons new birth, cleanse them from sin, and raise them to eternal life. Sustain, Adele, Owen, Griffin, ____ with the gift of your Holy Spirit; the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear (the love) of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever.

So, as you move into this new chapter in life, never fear going out into the world because that ever-present Spirit is with you and will never leave you. Never fear sharing God’s gracious and redeeming love with others. Never fear being open to others, those who are different from you, and learning from them. Never fear serving others in Christ’ name. And always, always remember your baptism.  Remember the Spirit of God who is so ever present and ever welcoming will never ever let you go.  

Today, God continues to crash our party to change us, love us, and work through us to make this world a better place. It is the same Spirit that crashed the party of that community of believers 2,000 years ago.  God’s Spirit has been loosed into the world.  And, that Spirit opens us to newness, challenges us, changes us, and utilizes our authentic voices, gifts, and skills to love and serve others.  

Acts 16:16-34; Easter 7C; 5/29/22

Paul and Silas bound in jail Had no money for to go their bail Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on Paul and Silas thought they was lost Dungeon shook and the chains come off Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.

Throughout history, praying and the singing of hymns have been subversive actions people of faith have taken to bring about change within the established order. These actions have moved people to engage culture, to act, and to work for change. We saw this during the Civil Rights Movement as people subversively worked for equality, civil rights, and policy change in society. People of faith routinely sang hymns like We Shall Overcome and Keep Your Eyes On The Prize, the hymn I just quoted. The time is upon us when we must do this again as we face our culture’s brokenness.  We must confess the idolatry of our worship of guns. We must confess our malignant ideology of extreme individualism and personal rights, face our captivity to guns, face the evil plague of gun violence in this land, and work for change. We have been acting subversively this morning as we began worship with a litany Lamenting Gun Violence and then sang the hymn If We Just Talk Of Thoughts And Prayers. We act subversively as we do this, while at the same time working for change within the context of the present established order of rule in this country.  Activities like these have been an aspect of the faith community for centuries. 

As the Jesus movement was born and began to spread throughout the Roman Empire, Christianity both helped to subvert the long Roman domination in people’s lives and at the same time preserve what was best within it.  In fact, as we think about Jesus’ own ministry, he was always subverting the established order – not only the civil order of the day, but also the religious order. Sharing and living the good news of Jesus has always been a subversive form of living because Jesus brings change to established order imposed by the world. And, today we find Paul and Silas living into this aspect of a life of faith as we hear more about their adventures while spreading the good news of Jesus. They are living into this aspect of a life of faith as they act to heal a slave girl, pray, and sing hymns while facing their present context within the established order of Roman rule.

          Having been led by a vision to go to Macedonia, this missionary team wanders into Philippi.  They begin engaging people with the gospel and engaging the culture in significant ways.  Last week we heard about one of their first encounters.  They had a conversation with Lydia who owned a thriving business in expensive purple cloth.  She became one of their first supporters and was not only converted to be a follower of this person, Jesus, she offered her home as headquarters for Paul’s Philippian ministry.

Today we initially find Paul and Silas having an encounter with another business, one that is fueled by a woman’s brokenness and captivity.  They encounter a slave girl who is possessed by a spirit not of God, but a spirit that could tell people’s fortunes.  This girl’s supposed “gift” meant she was owned and used as a commodity, providing her owners with a small, profitable business.  Finding herself drawn to Paul and Silas, she names who they are and what they are doing.  Much like a broken record, she repeatedly shouts her message saying, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, and they are telling you the way to be saved.”  Well, Paul finally has enough and becomes annoyed.  In frustration he turns around and performs an exorcism right there and then.  And, as he releases this girl from oppression, we find that economics and religious convictions collide. The owners of the slave girl and this “Psychics-R-Us” business become furious because they now have lost their lucrative income. The economic system they had in place depended on this slave girl’s illness, it depended on her not being well.  So, boom!!  When she becomes well, the system goes into panic mode.  Her owners gather the civic leaders to make sure they all understand the economic impact the actions of Paul and Silas are having on their lives.  They complain to the authorities that Paul and Silas are political subversives, undermining Roman order.   

Because the authorities agree that they are subversives, Paul and Silas are arrested and beaten with rods for setting someone free, someone who was captive to evil.  Then, they are shackled and thrown into prison. And what do they do?  Of course, they have a hymn sing!  Shackled and imprisoned they live their faith and subversively sing hymns.  You see, that is the character of those who are truly free.  Paul and Silas are so centered in God and in God’s reign and dream for this world they can sing regardless of their circumstances.  Their singing continues into the deepest darkness of midnight when, suddenly, the earth beneath them shakes and quakes so powerfully that their shackles fall off. 

As the earth shakes and quakes, the jailer awakes.  He awakes to find the doors of the prison wide open.  Terrified of what would happen to him when his superiors discover he has lost the prisoners; the jailer decides to kill himself.  Paul stops him just in time, calling out to the jailer with words that stop him short saying, “Do not harm yourself; we are all here.”  The jailer then asks one of Scripture’s most profound questions, “What must I do to be saved?” 

Now, the jailer’s question is key to this whole narrative.  Theologian Ronald Cole-Turner suggests, “Whenever the jailer’s question is asked, the obvious counter-question is, ‘Saved from what?’ Sword in hand, the jailer was probably thinking about how to be saved from the wrath of the authorities.  However, his question has come to mean much more, depending on who is asking it.” So, I ask, what must we do to be saved from bondage, from this country’s addiction to guns, from the oppression of this addiction?  What must we do to be saved from the bondage and oppression of economic systems that enable this addiction, from the seduction of authoritarian power, from the divisive hatred that exists in our present culture?  How much of our economic system, our political system, our judicial system, our local government systems, and even our family systems are dependent upon so many of us not being well? The reality is that any system that operates without compassion and commitment for the good of all is not only broken, it puts people in bondage. 

Paul’s answer to the jailer is deceptively simple as he takes the action to yet another level.  Paul’s answer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” is an invitation to the jailer and each one of us to tune in to the level of God’s action in this world.  As we tune into God’s redeeming action and God’s storyline, we are grasped and taken into the gospel story of transformation and redemption.  And, quite frankly, this tuning into God is also a subversive act, because to tune into Christ as the one with dominion in our lives is to subvert whatever earthly powers claim the same dominion over our lives.  To be a Christian is to be subversive.  In fact, that is the story of the subversive gospel of the cross!  God’s love was made manifest in Jesus’ death on a cross. When talking about living the subversive life of a Christian, theologian Douglas John Hall writes:

The gospel of the cross is not about rescuing us from our finitude; it's about a compassionate God's solidarity with us in our creaturehood and the slow grace of divine suffering-love which, without pretending finality, ef­fects its social and personal transformations from within. It is the nature of our subversion that makes us so unique.

We, as people of faith, live the subversive gospel of the cross.  We are changed from within, and we subversively live that change in this world. The change God will affect through us over earthly powers will come from our witnessing to the grace, healing, and love of the Lord Jesus Christ in our daily lives. So, centered in the gospel of the cross, we keep working for change. As we tune into God’s story of grace and redeeming love for the life of this world, we do not have to be overcome by fear or anything that would hold us in bondage.  And, like Paul and Silas, we subversively sing of God’s love and saving grace regardless of the circumstances of this present day and our present lives. “Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.”

This is a special musical presentation of Bless His Holy Name by the Faith Lutheran Chancel Choir at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

As I think back to when my kids were little, I remember times when I would leave them with a babysitter so I could attend an event.  I remember that, at some point in their development over those early years, each one of my kids experienced a form of separation anxiety.  They would cry big crocodile tears as I would leave, and I in turn would feel terrible that I was leaving them.  The truth of the matter is they stopped crying shortly after I left, and they were happy and content the rest of the time I was gone.  I am sure most of you who are parents have had this same experience with your children.  Separation anxiety is a normal part of development.  Sigmund Freud once said such “anxiety in children is originally nothing other than the expression of the fact they are feeling the loss of the person they love.”  I am also sure that most of you have some memory of what it was like to be the one who is left, and you probably have felt the anxiety that accompanies such an experience.  Some may remember feeling some form of separation anxiety when you were left to face your first day of school.  Some of you may have felt anxiety when you found yourself left alone at the end of a broken relationship.  And many of you know the grief and anxiety of being left when faced with the loss of a loved one.  It is quite likely all of us understand what it feels like to be left alone and the anxiety we feel when we face an uncertain present and future. 

In today’s gospel reading, we find the disciples facing a serious, severe form of separation anxiety. It is the last evening of Jesus’ life as he spends it with his disciples before his betrayal, before he is handed over to those who hate him, those who will take him away to be executed.  Jesus knows he is going to die, and he has been communicating this to his confused disciples.  I imagine they are quite bewildered as they struggle to understand what Jesus is saying. Their whole life over the last three years had been consumed by following Jesus – he has been and is their guide, their rock.  Without him they will be totally lost.  So, as Jesus is speaking these last words to them, he addresses their anxiety, their fear, and their troubled hearts.  He says, “I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you.  The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. The Holy Spirit will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole.  That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left – feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.” (The Message)

When Jesus says the Father will send them the Spirit, he also tells them the antidote to their fear is the peace that he gives, the peace he leaves with them. Jesus indicates that when the Spirit comes, they will experience the security of the ongoing presence of God and the Spirit will reveal to them the implications of what God has done in Jesus. The security of which Jesus speaks is not a security in the sense of physical safety, but a security that will enable them to courageously live into their calling and purpose. And if they have that security, they will be able to meet the threats they will surely encounter.  It is this presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit that will calm their troubled hearts when they cannot see a future without Jesus. This is the peace with which Jesus leaves them.

We live in a world that yearns for peace. We yearn for peace in Ukraine and so many other places in this world. We yearn for peace in our own country and our own communities. We long to see an end to conflict, an end to violence, an end to the gun violence that seems to erupt all around us. We live at a time when we are being called to face the truth that our country was founded on racism, something that cannot be denied, something that it is festering and bleeding over to the point that the sins of racism and white supremacy are blatantly pedaled and promoted in certain factions of our society.  We see our siblings of color consistently subjected to the violence of a system that says they are less-than. So, the world leaves us with shattering trauma, with the slow ache of depression.  The world leaves us with the grief we experience as we see those we love slip away into addictions, slip away into violence, slip away into death that eventually takes each and every one of us, always too soon. Frankly, the world with all its fragile beauty often leaves us feeling like the floor has fallen out from under us, feeling utterly alone, numb, and helpless.

We as a people desperately need to hear this promise of peace that Jesus gives to us on this day!  It is not the kind of peace the world can give. Jesus tells his huddled followers that he does not give as the world gives. He does not leave them the way they're used to being left. Jesus is offering them and each one of us a very different form of peace, something more than the absence of violence and conflict and hatred.  The peace Jesus gives is far more encompassing.  It is the wider, broader concept of shalom.  The peace Jesus is describing is about the total wellbeing and wholeness of the person and community.  And he promises the Holy Spirit will bring a peace that will quell the disciples’ fears regarding the impending, ominous future that is unfolding before them.  The peace that Jesus gives is nothing less than the consequence of the presence of God.  When God is present, peace is made manifest.

Any kind of peace the world offers only brings a brief pause from the anxiety we live with on a day-to-day basis.  It is a counterfeit peace that comes to us from outside our being.  But the peace Jesus gives is very different, and it is all gift.  The peace of which Jesus speaks comes from the indwelling Spirit of God.  As we bask in God’s love, let go of our need to control and turn our anxieties over to God, we can trust God’s presence to us and rest in Jesus’ gift and promise of peace.   Freedom from anxiety is directly related to putting our whole trust in God’s gracious, loving presence and experiencing God’s peace.  And Jesus freely gives us this gift of peace with no expectation in return, only a hope that, transformed by this peace, we might pass it on as gift to others. 

People, you have been baptized into the body of Christ, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever.  I know there have been times when some of you have faced anxiety and there will be many times in the future when you will face loss, challenge, and more anxiety.  However, Jesus’ words to his disciples two thousand years ago are words that speak to each one of us today.  The indwelling Holy Spirit brings Jesus’ actions into this very present moment, this present tense, and our very lives.  The same one who sent Jesus as the Word made flesh sends the Holy Spirit as the refresher of God’s presence to us on this day and in each moment of our lives.

Jesus’ disciples were experiencing fear and anxiety, a severe kind of separation anxiety, as they tried to understand and face the loss of the person they loved. We are no different than those early disciples.  In the quagmire of our anxiety, Jesus gifts us with his peace. As people who have been Eastered, we have the Holy Spirit in us and with us, the Spirit that is always at our back, the Spirit that is the very presence of God, the Spirit that is closer to us than our very breath, breathing peace and possibility into us, giving us calling and purpose as we face the challenges of this present time and live into God’s dream for this world.

Let us pray: O Holy Spirit, you were with the frightened disciples in that upper room. You were with the bereaved and traumatized disciples at the foot of the cross. You were with the abandoned disciples through Holy Saturday and with the amazed disciples on Easter Sunday. Thank you that you are with us now as we face our challenging and anxious times. Help us to trust and rest in the peace that Jesus has given us. Help us to truly be Easter people in this world. Give us courage to move beyond ourselves. Give us courage to walk in this world. Give us courage to love as Christ has loved us. We pray all this through the crucified and risen One. Amen.