January 6, 2013. Epiphany is the day we celebrate when the Gentiles came to learn of Jesus. Gentiles like us. Pastor Penny's sermon today is about the story of the Magi: why the writer of Matthew would include it in his gospel, and how God uses people with different faiths to reveal the truth even today. *** Transcript *** We begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Well it is Epiphany, January 6th, a day when we remember that Jesus was shown to the non-Jews, to the Gentiles, to the wise men. And there are lots of traditions connected with this story, and we know them. Like if I said how many wise men were there, you would say three. Of course, it's not in the Bible. There were three gifts. No mention of three wise men. But you know, that's part of our tradition. Or if I asked you did they have names, you would probably say yes. Can anybody name one of the wise men? Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar? Wow, you guys are good! Again, that's tradition. That's not in the Bible. But you know, we have a lot of traditions. Well, here's something that might surprise you: were they kings? No. No, I just gave the kids crowns, but they really weren't kings. They were Magi. Now, long before Jesus the Magi were given maybe a royal significance in Persia. But in Jesus' day they were not. Our word "magician" or "magic" comes from the same root as Magi. They were not very highly regarded. They were stargazers. Some would would say they were horoscope fanatics. I think today maybe eyebrows would go up, like maybe they do when people say they're a Scientologist or that they thought the end of the world was coming because of the Mayan calendar. These were not people of the faith of Judaism, and they were magicians. When Paul bumped into a Magi in the book of Acts he said, "You child of the devil, you are the enemy of every good thing." That's what he said. So we have to wonder, how did the Magi get into the Christmas story? Why would they be included at all? Why would God have guided them to find Jesus, and why would the writer of Matthew include this incident in the story of Jesus' birth? Well, I think the first reason they're included is because the kingdom of God is for all people. So of course it is for them, too. But I think that the Holy Spirit inspired the biblical writers to keep this account in the story for people like us, because we are surrounded by people who do not believe exactly the way we do, people with different faiths from ours and sometimes no faith at all. They are our relatives, our neighbors, our fellow students. They are our coworkers. We are surrounded by people who don't share our faith. And I think that this account of the Magi is very helpful in avoiding two pitfalls. One pitfall is to resent people who have a different faith, to kind of be guarded about it, to maybe not want our children (if we're parents) to learn about the other faiths -- and that's not at all what we see God doing here. God used these men, who probably worship Zoroaster, to give a truth to the world. They were these pagans. They would have been called pagans in those days. These non-believers were the first people to realize that Jesus was a king, and the first people to fall down on their knees and pay him homage. We kind of like to think the shepherds did that, but there's no recorded event like that. These were the people who could look at this little baby and believe that he had the authority and power of a king. So God used people with a different faith to reveal the truth. And I think that God continues to do that through all faiths today. I remember when I was a student chaplain in a hospital when I was in the seminary, and I was assigned to the oncology, the cancer ward, and I felt a great burden on my shoulders. I was visiting people who were struggling with life and death issues, and I had this word of joy and hope. But how would one person convey it? And of course they had to be open to it. And then one afternoon, I was having lunch with a friend who was also a student chaplain. And she said, "I just went into the room of a woman who said she wasn't Christian, but I've never heard such words of grace. I didn't have to say a thing." And I thought, that's it. The Holy Spirit is already out there in that hospital, working with the people through different faiths. It's not all up to me. And I think when we can set aside the political uses of some of the faiths in our world, we can see that God is using them to reveal truth. We think of the example of the Muslims, their commitment to their faith. They pray five times a day. They memorize the Quran from little on. We think of Native Americans, and how they are good models for us in how to take care of the environment, how to believe that it is God-given and not for us to abuse. We think about the great example of philanthropy in the Jewish Community, as can be seen by lots of Jewish names on different institutions and buildings in St. Louis. God continues to use people of other faiths to reveal the truth to all of us. But then that can lead us to yet another pitfall, and that is to say then it doesn't matter. Don't we all worship the same God? Aren't we all trying to go to the same place? It really doesn't matter. But do we all look at God in the same way? Do we all understand God the same way? Because if you look into Islam, you see that Muslims view God very differently than we do. They see God as merciful as we do, but as a master, not a father. They have no understanding of God as a loving father, and they certainly don't understand that God would allow God's self to suffer and to die for us. And the way that they feel they have a connection to God is through their knowledge. And so they're never really sure how strong that connection is, because it really depends on how well they understand the will of God. And we, on the other hand, know that we can never connect ourselves to God because we are just basically in rebellion. So we rest entirely on the life and death and resurrection of Christ. And so we don't worry about our connection. We don't worry that we are not saved. I assume that you, because you're here today -- and certainly I can say this for myself -- while we can revere and respect other religions, we feel that Christ has given us the best understanding, the best picture of God. And that's why we're here. And if that is true for us, and if we find in our lives that we are supported and comforted and allowed to be loving and kind people because of Jesus, then is it really right to just let other people who have never heard about him, or have fallen away from him, be on their own? I mean, should we really just say "to each his own" and "this isn't my business?" Now, I'm not trying to say we should be knocking on doors with a Bible under our hand. What I am suggesting is that we look at what God did in the story of the Magi. God drew them to Christ using the thing they were already looking for. They were looking for knowledge through the stars. Well what are the people looking for that are surrounding us, that maybe haven't found the grace of God? Well we know, what we're all looking for. And if you come to church when it gets a little warmer, you'll drive by lots of people who are jogging and lots of people who are riding their bikes, because one thing we all look for is a healthy, balanced life. Another value of our society is certainly to be part of a community. We see how popular social media is. Because we want to be known. We want to have people know us and know them. And the last thing that I think is a value of our culture is that we want to have control. You know, we have lots of self-help books to get our lives in order. We have a lot of tools to organize our lives because we want control. And I think what we want is to know that the future is safe. Now, all of those things -- a safe future, a need for community, a sense that there is a focus in our lives -- are given to us by Jesus Christ. So what happens is that our lives, the lives of all of us in this room, are the stars that draw people to Christ, whether we realize it or not. Now I'm not trying to say that's because they're so perfect, but it's because as we live out what we've been given, people notice. People sense, for instance, that when you're under pressure at school or at work, that you handle it in a different way. You don't throw everything to the winds. You don't only concentrate on your work. You're still able to give your time to your family and to your faith and to your community. They see that, because God is working through us. They understand that we have a connection that maybe not everyone has. We certainly know that we're connected as a family of faith. But we also create community where we live and work and go to school, by the way we treat people, by the way we respect them. And people see that. And people also sense if we have confidence and hope for the future. In all of these things, it is God working through our lives to draw people to Christ. The only thing we really need to do besides living the way we live is to have, in our back pocket, a few sentences we might offer if someone asks us, "Why do you seem so calm? I wish I had the kind of optimism you do." And then we can explain. The end of the story of the Magi says that they went home using a different route. They didn't go to Jerusalem because again the Spirit was working through these non-believers, and they knew that if they went back and told Herod where the baby Jesus was, he would not come to worship Jesus. He would kill him. So they went home a different way. I think that has a double meaning there. They went home with a different outlook on life. They came looking for a king and they went to the palace first, you remember. They came thinking there would be this child surrounded by riches and comfort, and they found instead a king willing to be a fragile, vulnerable baby in a poor family. And they must have realized this is the kind of king he would be all his life. He would always be one willing to give of himself. And of course he did. He gave up all those things that are near and dear to us: a balanced, calm life, the community, and even life itself, he gave up so that we would have it. And above all, so that we would know his love for all eternity. Epiphany. It's the day we celebrate when the non-Jews, when the Gentiles came to learn of Jesus -- Gentiles, non-Jews like us. It is a day to celebrate. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2013, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Penny Holste, Matthew 2:1-12

March 11, 2012. Pastor Penny preaches on the story in John of Jesus turning over the tables in the temple. The gospel is a warning. It's a wake-up call from God to help us take account of our lives, especially our time. *** Transcript *** We begin this morning in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, Greta loved going to church on Easter Sunday. She loved the Easter egg hunt and the Easter brunch and the Easter lilies. But she also loved sitting there with everybody singing those happy songs, and hearing the trumpet in the background. There was just one thing that Greta didn't like about Easter, and that was her mother was never there. Her mother was always home making Easter dinner. Greta's mother was a consummate cook, and the Easter dinner was her centerpiece — and she invited lots of friends and relatives to it. And it was a wonderful ham dinner with a cross-shaped cake for dessert, presented on a round mirror. And Greta always saw her mother presiding over the meals, sitting at the end of the table, glowing as the compliments would continue coming. But then one year on Good Friday, a wind storm came through her neighborhood and they lost their electricity for a few days. So, Easter dinner had to be canceled at their house. So that Easter Greta's mother came to church, and sat next to her of course. And as everyone was singing those hymns Greta was just beaming, because it was wonderful to hear her mother's lovely soprano voice joining in. And she looked up and smiled at her mother, and she thought to herself that her mother shared her joy in being there. And truly she did, because her mother was always there, every Easter, from that time on. Now in contrast to that happy story, we have a rather stark gospel lesson. Jesus is violent. Our Jesus, our peacemaker, is violent! First, we see him perform his only negative miracle: he curses a fig tree and it withers. And then he gets involved in a chaotic scene, an angry scene in the temple, at the height of Passover. Now, the cursing of the fig tree we understand a little more when we know that the fig tree was a symbol in the Old Testament for the children of Israel. And scholars tell us that what Jesus was doing was performing a parable. He was warning his disciples that there was something desperately wrong with the spiritual health (or lack of it) with the kingdom of Israel. And it was dangerous, and they would be cursed for it. And what was wrong with them would clearly be seen in the next event, when Jesus walked into this crowded temple — ten times as many people as normal (we're in Jerusalem at Passover) — and began throwing furniture around. I mean, you can imagine the sound of knocking down wooden tables on the stone pavement, and the crashing and the money being flown around, and the animals: the sheep and the cows that were there to be purchased for a burnt offering, the sounds in this chaos. And Jesus must have had a terrible look on his face. His eyes must have been flashing with anger, because people did what he said and he cleared the place out. But it's so unlike Jesus, and we have to ask: why now? Jesus saw many injustices, and he was troubled by them and sometimes spoke harshly — but never, never throwing furniture around. Well, he was witnessing the desecration of his Father's house — the temple, the meeting place of God and human beings — where there was a holy of holies, containing the Ark of the Covenant, containing the Ten Commandments. This was God's house. And he watched as people desecrated it in three different ways. First of all, they brought the smells and the sounds of the marketplace into the temple itself. And he said not only that, but secondly they were cheating the people as they did it. Those who were changing the money from the foreign coinage to the Jewish half shekel, and those who were selling the animals for a burnt offering, were cheating people. He said: you are making my Father's house into a den of thieves. But the third way they were desecrating the house of God — and maybe it's the saddest — is that they carried on this buying and selling in the only place where Gentiles were allowed to worship. It was the court of the Gentiles, and those people who believed in the Jewish god but weren't of Jewish background were allowed there and there only. They had taken it over — in other words, pushing these people out so that they couldn't worship at all. And Jesus' quotes Isaiah, where we hear God describing God's plan for the temple as it's being rebuilt 500 years earlier. God said: I want my house to be a place of prayer for all Nations. I want everyone, from all backgrounds, to be able to come and be part of my family. And so, because of the selfishness of the sellers and the money changers, and the leaders who allowed it and encouraged it because of their selfishness, because of their greed for money, they had turned God's dream for the temple into a nightmare. Now this didn't happen all at once. For hundreds of years this selling of animals and the exchange of money had been going on, and it was an important part of being able to worship on the Passover. It hadn't, however, gone on in the temple. But slowly, people began to be greedy. And they began to be selfish about what they did. And the leaders allowed it and encouraged it. But I'm sure it took a while to get to that point, and that's the scary thing: because we all know how easily we can make subtle changes for the worse. We can head to the store to buy one thing, one thing that we really need, and end up buying a lot of things we don't need. But it just happens a little bit at a time. You see one thing and well, that would go and that would go, and pretty soon you have a lot of things you had never intended to buy. Well, you know our banks will tell us when we've come to the wall on that one. We can't keep doing that. But time is a whole different thing. We can squander our time little by little, and no one calls us into account. I think that probably for many of us, we are like Greta's mother. We want to be good and perfect. We want to do things well. We appreciate success and the feeling it gives us, and the admiration of other people. And so we throw ourselves into what we're doing, whether it's our work or our school work or an athletic endeavor or even a hobby. We say well, if I do a little more, well then I can do it perfectly. If I take on a little more responsibility at work, then I will be more successful. Then I'll have a little more clout, a little more power, a little more prestige, I'll feel better about myself. Or if I write one more paper for extra credit, my grade point will improve a little more and it'll be perfect. Or if I get up earlier and do 20 more minutes of warm ups, I will be much better in my sport. And little by little, we squander our time. We take it all for ourselves so that there's not enough time left over for our family, for our friends, or for God. We're too tired at the end of the day for a time of prayer. We're too weary at the beginning of the week to be in church. And what Jesus is saying in this dramatic and vehement action in the temple is that it's dangerous. He's warning us that we are on the verge of giving away nothing less than our relationship with God. Giving away that experience of God's love, and forgiveness, and guidance, and healing, and the joy of repaying God by worship. That's what's at stake. Well our gospel isn't all bad news. There is hope. First, there's hope because we know that the very Jesus whose eyes flashed in anger continued on Holy Week, to the cross, where he died for the very people that were desecrating his Father's house — those people who, after his demonstration, began to plot to kill him. For those people and for us, he was willing to die to forgive our sins, and to give us power to change. He said: see that mountain that the temple is built on? If you believe and pray, God can even change that. In other words, God can take the biggest barrier in our life and help us reform it or change it, or even replace it. An example: I was with some pastors from Kansas City this last week, and they talked about some of their parishioners who were frustrated, because their sons were involved in hockey and all the practices and the games and the tournaments were on Sunday morning, and they never made it to church. They decided to change that. So they partnered with local clergy, who provided a worship service on the rink. There in the arena, in between games, they would gather for a time of prayer and singing and a short message. And the result they hadn't counted on was that it was a witness to all the other families who weren't involved with church, who saw them being that passionate about their faith, and who were then invited to join. Our gospel today is a warning. It's a wake-up call from God to help us take account of our lives, especially our time. To evaluate it, to open our hearts and let God tell us what God thinks of what we do — so that we, through the power of God, cannot be the tree that withers, but the tree that is fruitful and healthy and that bears the fruit of love, for our families and our friends, for our community. And especially for God, the one who loved us enough to die for us, to make us part of his family. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2012, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, John 2:13-22, Jesus Cleanses the Temple

January 8, 2012. To repent is to acknowledge that there is pain in the world, and admit that we are partly responsible for it. Pastor Penny preaches on the story of Jesus' baptism, and how Jesus' message to the world was not gentle. It was about both promise and repentance. But it's when we repent that we can really hear the grace of God in our baptism. *** Transcript *** We begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In the movie "My Week with Marilyn" we get a glimpse of the life of Marilyn Monroe, the glamorous movie star from the 1950s who shot into fame. She was a nobody, Norma Jean. And then she was found. Her life -- even though she was known throughout the world and people followed her around everywhere -- her life was not very joyful. She was married and divorced three times, and at the age of 36 she took her own life apparently, taking sleeping pills. I am sure that most people look to her early childhood for some explanation of the sadness in her adult life, because her early childhood was not very happy. She never knew her father, and her mother had a mental illness and had to be institutionalized. So Norma Jean, or Marilyn Monroe, grew up in an orphanage and in many different foster homes. And there's a very touching point in the movie, where she says she thinks that every little girl should be able to hear her mother say that she loves her. And you can only imagine that she never heard that, or heard it very seldom. What a contrast between her childhood and her life and her relationship with her parents, and the voice that Jesus heard in his baptism, the voice of his Heavenly Father saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased." You know, with words of love and support from a parent like that, what couldn't a child accomplish? Now Jesus knew that he had his Father's love and support. But his Father did not coddle him by any means. Along with this love and support was a plan, were expectations. And the way that the Father lent his support -- just as we were talking about up here in our baptisms -- the way the Father lent his support to the Son was through the Holy Spirit. And the description of the Holy Spirit in our text this morning is not a gentle force. It says that the Spirit "tore open" the heavens to come down in the form of a dove. This Spirit drove Jesus. It didn't compel Jesus or lead Jesus. It drove Jesus, into the wilderness where there were wild beasts. And there he was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights, or in other words a long time, by Satan. Now, the Father was there in the form of angels who ministered to him. But that time must have been like boot camp for Jesus. You know, his natural inclination to love was being refined and strengthened and focused. And when he was done, he began his ministry and began calling his disciples. And the Holy Spirit was not gentle with Jesus' disciples either. It was more like an eagle than a dove. Jesus walked up to Peter and Andrew, and it was as though they couldn't say no. It was as though the Holy Spirit wouldn't allow them to say no, because they dropped everything and followed Jesus. Or Jesus went up to James and John, and they left their father, they left the hired help. No handshakes to Dad or kiss Mom on the cheek or pack the bag. They were gone. And Jesus was not gentle with them either. When they came, he said, "I will make you fishers of people." He didn't say: I will teach you how to do this, I will encourage you, I will lead you. He said, "I will make you fishers of people." I always think that expression "fishers of men" or "fishers of people" is kind of interesting. And I always think of the book The Catcher in the Rye, and this little teenager Holden Caulfield is trying to find himself, trying to become an adult. He runs away from home. He tries to get street savvy. But the vision that he has for what he really wants to be in life is a catcher in the rye. He has this picture of a big field of rye, and all these children playing. But at the edge of the field there is a cliff. And he wants to be the catcher, the one to stand there and protect those kids and keep them from falling off the cliff. And maybe that's a good way to think of what Jesus is making his disciples into, and making us into: people who catch people and keep them from falling off the cliffs, spiritually and emotionally and physically. Well, Jesus' message to the world was not gentle either. He had two parts to it. The one was a promise. It was: believe in the good news. But the first part was a hard part: repent. That was the twofold message: repent and believe in the good news. And they go together. You really can't believe without repenting. Now "repenting" is a word we only use here and in these walls, and it goes with confession and sin. And we might feel that that word doesn't have much place in our ordinary lives. But repent is really quite a practical thing. It is simply acknowledging that there is pain in the world, and admitting that we are partly responsible for it. Acknowledging the pain and admitting that we are responsible. That's what it means to repent. And it's not easy to do even the first part, to acknowledge the pain in the world. In his latest book, the travel writer Rick Steves says that for most of his adult life he willingly chose to ignore the pain that he knew was going on in some places. Central America was one he mentioned. He knew there was a civil war in the 80s, and that the left was fighting the right, and that our government was supporting the right. But he didn't know where the truth lay. He didn't understand it. It was too complicated, took too much energy. He just said I didn't need that. And then he went there. He went actually to El Salvador, and that changed everything. When he got there he realized that he did have the power to begin to discern the truth, by talking to people and observing. And not only could he, but he believed he should start to understand what was happening there. It was important to him. And it became the beginning of his whole new way of looking at travel, which is Travel as a Political Act. That's his most recent book. And I think it's really easy for us living in this country to be like Rick Steves, and just sort of isolate and insulate ourselves from the pain in other parts of the world. We really don't want to think about it. But it's not just the other parts of the world that we like to ignore. It's pretty easy to turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to when people are being mistreated at work or in school. It's just hard to know what to do. It's just easier not to do anything. And sometimes it's true that we even try to ignore the pain that is right within our own families. The author of Almost Christian, a book that does a study of teenagers and faith, has a lot of critical remarks to make towards adults in mainline Christian churches. She says that we even make God into the kind of being who is removed from the pain of the world. She sees that so many churches teach about a God who is removed, who's distant, who's glad to see when things go well, wants us to be happy, wants us to feel good about ourselves, but doesn't really get involved. And there's no sin or responsibility involved with this God. And she says if you teach that kind of God, don't be surprised if your teenagers don't feel that that God is a part of their lives. So it's easy for us to fail to see the hurt in the world. But some people live in a world of hurt and they can't ignore it. Their temptation is to just say, "Well that's not my fault. I'm not responsible. You know, it's a dog-eat-dog world. Do it to them before they do it to you. It's not my fault that things are happening." So that idea of repenting, seeing the hurt, taking responsibility, is really hard for us. And yet it is so essential. And it was true, I think, at any stage in our lives that it's a hard thing to do. But the first time that we have an opportunity to do that publicly, to repent publicly, is in our baptisms. And it is so amazing, if we understand what's happening there, to see the blessing in it. I remember when our daughter was baptized. She screamed the entire time. And someone kindly afterwards said, "Well, it was just the devil coming out of her." I thought, it's not exactly comforting. On the other hand, it maybe is a good explanation. Maybe when there's a baptism, there's like a little fight going on, and God is finally booting the devil out and getting the upper hand. It's when we repent that we can really hear the grace of God in baptism. Because God is saying I know that there's a world of hurt, and I know you're responsible for it in your selfishness, you just are. But I am about to drastically change your status. The stink of your sin is going to be removed. The stain of your sin is going to be replaced. I am going to give you a new identity, that of a perfect person. I will see you the way I see my Son, pure and innocent. And so what happens in baptism for each of us is that God is saying the very same words to us that God said at Jesus' baptism: "You are my son, you are my daughter, the beloved. With you I am well pleased. For you I have a plan. I will make you to be fishers of people, to be catchers in the rye." With words of love and encouragement like that from our Heavenly Father, how could we not accomplish great things? Thanks be to God. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2012, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, Acts 19:1-8, Mark 1:4-20, My Week With Marilyn, The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger, Almost Christian, Kenda Creasy Dean, Travel as a Political Act, Rick Steves

*** Transcript *** We begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Some of you know that Keith's father died several weeks ago. The memorial service was last week, and as my son and I were coming back a little early on the plane, we discovered it was absolutely full and we were in the very back seat. But it was a really interesting opportunity for me to just look out over all the collection of people that were flying together with us that day. And I wondered to myself what was going on in their minds and what kind of hopes and dreams did they have. There was a young couple in front of us with a brand-new baby. There were three high school girls on a spring break across the aisle, a couple men up front of them talking sports, and the flight attendant was crammed into a little bench way in the back. And I thought, what faith we all have as we get in this fairly flimsy structure that planes are, and fly thousands of miles over the surface of the earth. And we have faith that this little plane and this little crew will get us where we want to go safely. And I thought, if only we had that same kind of faith in God. The story of the raising of Lazarus is really a story of faith — or a story of lots of different faiths. You've got Martha with a criticism as soon as she sees Jesus: "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died." And then we go on to hear about her faith. She confesses that she believes in resurrection at the end of the age. She believes and confesses that Jesus is the messiah. And yet, when Jesus takes her to the tomb and asks that the stone be rolled away, she objects. She says no, he's been in there four days. The body will smell. She believes, she has faith that Jesus could heal her brother, but that's kind of where her faith ends. She doesn't even imagine the possibility that Jesus could reclaim her brother from death. And then there's Mary. And we don't know much about her faith. She has the same lament when she meets Jesus — "if you had been here" — but then she falls at his feet in a worshipful pose and just begins crying. Again she's trusting him, but she doesn't know what for. And then there's Lazarus. And you wonder what it felt like to be Lazarus. He knew that his good friend who loved him, maybe his best friend, Jesus, knew that he was in dire straits and had been informed of that. And yet he wasn't showing up. How did Lazarus feel as life was slipping out of his hands, and he kept looking probably at the door thinking surely he will be here? Did he have faith right to the end that Jesus would be there for him? And then there's Jesus. And it's so mysterious at first as to why he did not show up. He loved these people. Why didn't he prevent all this anguish and the pain and the fear? Well, he explains in two places. He knew beforehand that Lazarus was going to die, and he said, "It is so that God will be glorified, and I will be glorified." Well, that sounds very self-serving. When we think of someone being glorified we think of a star athlete, carrying the the winning touchdown over the line or hitting the winning hit for the ball game. And we think is that what Jesus wants — all this acclaim and this honor and people fawning over him? No, that's not what he means by glory. Here he means he will reflect the glory of the Father. And we see that when he prays out loud and he says to the Father, "I'm praying so that they may believe" (all those people around him) "that you have sent me." He wanted to perform this amazing miracle — that he had never performed I think in this gospel; he had not brought anyone back to life yet — to prove to the people, to help them believe that all that he had said and done, his teachings of love and forgiveness: all of it was from God. So we see in Jesus the ultimate faith, because we know from reading a little further in the gospel that this miracle was the last nail in his coffin, that when he performed this miracle, his enemy says that's it, we are going to kill him. Jesus is the epitome of faith, as he entrusts his whole timetable, his whole life into God's hands. He didn't come back to Bethany based on the needs of his friends, as much as he probably wanted to. He didn't come back to Bethany based on the needs of himself, because he loved these people. How wonderful it would have been to rush to Lazarus' side and bring him out of this evil sickness. But he put his entire life, his entire timetable, into God's hands because he knew God would use it to bring life. That is the faith that we are called to. Saying it very boldly, we are called — like Lazarus or like Jesus — to die so that the power of God may work through us for life. We are called to die so that God can work through us for life. And it really begins right here. Olivia went through that process today. We have this ritual dying, a symbolic dying. We don't really die physically in baptism. But something more than ritual went on this morning. Something real happened. The Holy Spirit entered her in a way that the Spirit had not been there before, beginning this process of faith, allowing her to say no to the selfishness that we are born with, and to more and more place her life in God's hands. So we start with baptism and then that faith grows. And as I think about a life of faith, freshly back from my father-in-law's memorial I think about my father-in-law Art. There were so many things in his life that showed that willingness to give over his agenda to God. But I think one of my favorites is that when he retired at 65 as a civil engineer with the Soil Conservation Service in Kansas, he and my mother-in-law Doris could have had a nice, comfortable retirement. But instead they signed up to go to Papua New Guinea for two years to volunteer his work as a civil engineer, to go into the villages and help them. Well, it's not an easy place to live, in Papua New Guinea. It's more humid than St. Louis, and the terrain is quite challenging, if like my in-laws their responsibility was to go to these little villages in the mountain. They had to climb some really rough terrain, bringing their things with them. And there were diseases that we don't have or have as prevalently; my mother-in-law got both malaria and hepatitis while they were there. And there was the cultural barrier and the language barrier. And yet they were able to do so much. One of my father-in-law's projects was to replace a vine bridge, that crossed a roaring river far below, with a metal chain bridge, because several times a year people would fall off that vine bridge to their deaths. Another project he did was to bring water to a village so that the women would not have to walk for miles and hours carrying these plastic jugs of water, balancing them on their heads. They had fresh water right in the village. And the people were so thankful that when they would leave a village, the people would all line up with little gifts, things they had made or flowers. And my mother-in-law said, of those two rugged and sometimes dangerous years, they were the best years of her life. And I think my father-in-law would have concurred. We are called to die, so that God's power can work through us for life. So, back to the plane. You know, as I thought about it, I thought that the faith we have that this airplane and this crew is going to get us where we want to go safely is really not at all like the faith that God asks of us to believe in him. Because when we're on a plane, we expect it to land, and then we'll carry on our plans and our dreams and our responsibilities just as we had decided we would. But God wants us to let him be the pilot, to allow him to take our lives sometimes where we don't want it to go, sometimes where it is uncomfortable, to take our lives in places where God's power works through us for life. And if my father-in-law is typical, there is a great blessing in that kind of faith. Because as we entrust our life to God, we have this sense of abiding joy and confidence that God is with us every step of the way, loving us and caring for us. So that is the challenge and the blessing of faith. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2011, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, John 11:1-45, PNG

December 5, 2010. Welcome to the Christ Lutheran Church podcast. Each week we will bring you a new message, a new sermon. In this first episode, Pastor Penny Holste preaches on Isaiah 11:1-9 and tells us how we're meant to reach out to those who are different from us and live in harmony with them. *** Transcript *** We begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The waters of baptism. I remember you. Well, I don't really remember you, but I have a certificate that says I was baptized. I wonder if that's what you want me to do, just to remember that once you washed me and it's in my baby book, or do you want me to come back again and again to let you kill the arrogance within me, to let you put to death the ego in me, to let you wipe out all the things that make me think I might be a little better than the next person, a little smarter than the next person, a little nicer than the next person. Do you want me to come back again and again so that you can get rid of all the things that stand in the way and leave only what God has given me? In our gospel today, John the Baptist did a strange thing. He baptized people who already believed. It was not a conversion experience. These Jewish people were Jews and they came from all over. I don't know if you caught that, but there were crowds of them. And you have to ask what drew them to this strange man, this kind of wild man who wore the skins of animals and ate bugs and lived out in a desert. Why would people come and wade into the cold Jordan River and confess that they were sinners and have water poured on them? Why would they do this? Well, John said something that caught their attention. He said someone is coming. He said a man of God is coming with fire to be a judge and with the spirit, and that resonated with them because they had been waiting. Those were turbulent times. They were turbulent times politically and religiously, and the people were hungry for this promise to be fulfilled that they had been waiting for for many years. And when this man, even though he was strange, came and said, "Now is the time, he's coming, he will judge the world and set things straight," well, they didn't want to be caught unprepared. If God was coming to judge the world, they wanted to have their sins washed away. And so they came and confessed their sins and repented. Well, most of them. There was this little group of Pharisees and Sadducees, and they came too. And actually the interpretation that's more accepted says that they did not come to be baptized. They came to watch and maybe to criticize. But John really let them have it. He said, "You snakes. Just because your ancestors are Jewish and you are Jewish, or just because you keep the law so perfectly, you think that you have more right to God's love than other people and that somehow you don't need to confess your sins." He said, "You should be reaching out to the very people you feel better than, reaching out listening to them, caring for them. God wants the fruits of your life to show that you are Jewish. He wants your lives to bear fruit, not what you're doing." And you know, our lessons were all about the fruit that God wants, the harmony, that God wants us to reach out to those who are different, to listen and to care about them. We heard it in the Peaceable Kingdom in the Old Testament lesson, where even the animals will set aside their natural instincts to tear each other apart. We heard it when Paul talked about the Jews and the gentiles coming together, and you can imagine the hard feelings, the arguments, the bad blood between those groups. And yet Paul is asking them to set that aside and reach out to one another. That is what glorifies God, and you will be blessed. Our baptisms are not something to remember in the baby book. They are something to remind us daily to confess our sins, to come back again and again, to be ones who reach out to those who are different and make peace. And what a world we have. It's so divided, politically, racially, even in the world of sports if you listened to all the booing that LeBron James heard last week. There is so much division, and yet we are called as baptized Christians to reach out to those who are different. It's not easy. At our text study last Tuesday, a professor from Eden described a class that he's teaching now. The student body is very diverse. There are blacks and whites, and women and men, and gays and straight, and people from different denominations and different countries, all in the same class. Now, his usual method is to lecture, and then in the last part of the class he has them break up into small groups and discuss the lecture. Well, he asked them to do just that and of course they all went to people just like themselves. So you have the whites there and the blacks here and the gays there and the straights there, and he said that the discussions weren't very good. They disintegrated, they dissolved into talking about who won the game the night before. So he decided to do it differently. The next time he said I want you to divide up and and spread yourselves out. I don't want you to be with people just like yourselves. And they knew what he meant, so they did. And he said the discussions that came out of that heterogeneous group was so full of energy. So many ideas came out of those discussions. God wants us to reach out to people who are different. God wants us to live in harmony with them. That is what brings God glory and that's what blesses us. Last week, a professor from Webster University was meeting with some of us, and she mentioned her adult son who has extreme autism and he also has attention deficit problems. So much so that she said even now, as a young man, he'll never be able to live on his own or even in a group home. But when he was a boy in school she went to the school district, the administration at University City, and she begged them to let her son be mainstreamed as much as possible. That is, that he could take classes with kids who didn't have autism as often as it would work out. And they let her. And as a result of that, he was with the same people through all his years. Two of his classmates, a young man and a young woman, became close friends even though they didn't have autism. And now these many years after they've all graduated from high school, they still are friends. And the young man has gone into the health field because of his experience, and the young woman said to this mother: knowing your son has changed my life. When we reach out and live in harmony with those who are different, we bring glory to God and we are blessed. And that's why it is because of our baptisms that God expects us to bear fruit, so that at school where there are people that you aren't comfortable with, people no one else is comfortable with, they are the very people we are to reach out to. At work, those people who are abrasive. In the community, those people whose political views you do not agree with. They are the very people that God is asking us to reach out to, to listen to, and whether we agree with them or not, to love. These next few weeks offer so many opportunities, because we are getting together with friends and family. And we all know there are people in our families that we've had arguments with, people we no longer talk to very much. This is the time. This is the time when we reach out to them and listen, maybe for the first time, and forgive. This is the hard work, but the beautiful fruit that we are asked to do as baptized Christians, that brings God glory. Will we fail? Yes, again and again, we will fail. But that's why we come back to baptism, because it not only kills what is arrogant in us, but it brings alive what is good. Jesus was there when we were baptized, bringing us out of the water saying, "I love you. I've always loved you, even before you knew right from wrong." And as we come back and repent, Jesus is there again raising us up out of the cold water and saying, "I love you. And that's why I let people kill my ego and take away my livelihood and my comfort and my security and my friends, and that's why I let people nail me to the cross, hanging there almost naked as people mocked me. I did it," he said, "So that I could do this one thing: I could raise you up when you repent and say, 'But I love you.' I love you whether you fail or not, because in baptism I have made you my own." Thanks be to God. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2010, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, audio, transcript, Pastor Penny Holste, The Peaceable Kingdom, Isaiah 11:1-9