Reforming-Renewing: Unexpected Grace – The Struggle of the Faithful Part II

Rev. Michael Stadtmueller

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 11:1-45

¹Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ²Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. ³So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, ⁶after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
⁷Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” ⁸The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” ⁹Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. ¹⁰But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” ¹¹After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” ¹²The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” ¹³Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. ¹⁴Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. ¹⁵For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
¹⁷When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, ¹⁹and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
²⁸When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” ²⁹And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. ³²When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep. ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
⁴⁵Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Reforming-Renewing: Unexpected Grace – The Struggle of the Faithful Part I

Rev. Leta Arndt Behrens

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 9:1-41

¹As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. ⁸The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” ¹⁰But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” ¹¹He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” ¹²They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
  ¹³They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. ¹⁴Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. ¹⁵Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” ¹⁶Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. ¹⁷So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
  ¹⁸The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight ¹⁹and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” ²⁰His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; ²¹but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” ²²His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. ²³Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
  ²⁴So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” ²⁵He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” ²⁶They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” ²⁷He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” ²⁸Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. ²⁹We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” ³⁰The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. ³¹We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. ³²Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. ³³If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” ³⁴They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
  ³⁵Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” ³⁶He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” ³⁷Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” ³⁸He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. ³⁹Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” ⁴⁰Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” ⁴¹Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

Read the Sermon Here:

Our story today of a blind man healed is one of several throughout the gospels and It has been suggested that the origins of denominations occurred when the healed blind men met each other. At first they were all excited about the miracle of sight that Jesus had given them, but as they talked about how Jesus had healed them, they began to discover some significant differences. For some, the healing came with simply a touch from Jesus as in Mt 9 and 20. In Mark 10, Another proudly boasted that he had enough faith so that Jesus didn’t have to touch him to perform the miracle. In Mark 8, Another meekly exclaimed that Jesus not only touched him twice, but also “spit on his eyes” in order for him to see clearly.  The final one really felt embarrassed to admit that even though a touch wasn’t part of his healing, Jesus’ “spit” wasn’t enough. Jesus had mixed his saliva with dirt and put the mud on his eyes and then told him to go and wash in some pool of water. Since each one thought his healing was normal and better than the others, they divided into spittites and non-spittites; muddites and non-muddites; touchites and non-touchites. Thus- the denominations were born.

While this story is meant to be tongue and cheek and poke fun at ourselves for our different flavors of Christianity, it highlights the struggle of the faithful— the struggle that it can be to live, to tell, to articulate our own story and experience of God while hearing and honoring the story and experience of God in another. What do we do when our theology–how we think about God–runs into conflict with an experience of God? For instance, we may believe that God heals the faithful, but then our experience may not include divine healing — even after a multitude of prayers. The theology of others may believe that miraculous healings were things of the past (if they ever really happened), but they may experience unexplainable healings for themselves or for others. (Citing Brian Stoffregen)

This is the tension that the Pharisees found themselves in. The Pharisees were a part of a Jewish sect that had strict adherence to the laws. Through this, they had a lived experience of God, rituals and doctrines, and rules and ways of living that in their hearts and in their minds connected them and kept them close to God. These were not wrong in and of themselves. Jesus pushes back and calls them blind not because of their practices but because they cannot open their eyes to another lived reality of God in the world. The Pharisees draw the conclusion that because Jesus healed on the sabbath–and healed a man who had been blind from birth so it really was not any kind of emergency–he was breaking a law that was a part of throw they defined God and therefore he could not be from God. Notice that the majority of the story is not about the healing, but it is about the interrogation that followed. They looked for any and all reasons that this blind man was not who he said he was and that this Jesus was not from God and must be a sinner, one who has fallen away from God, and so must the blind man be a sinner because he and his experience did not fit into their definition, their box, their field of vision for how God acts in human life. And the blind man, he just simply answered, I don’t know if he is a sinner, I just know what happened–that I was blind and now I see.

While we are not Pharisees, we may find ourselves being pharisaic–those who live a shared experience of God as a community and uphold certain theologies and doctrines through the lens of our experience and may not be able to see, at least not immediately, the experience of someone new, or with a different background, or a different idea of who God is and how God comes to us in this world. One of the best parts of being a pastor is when we have the privilege of being with and getting to know someone new to our community. I had that gift this week as I had lunch with a couple who has been worshipping with us for some time now and plans to become members this spring. Hearing their story of how they came to be with us, what experiences of community, church, faith make up their past and what their hopes are for the future was a reminder that every time we worship or gather in Bible study or come together in service, we are inviting ourselves to be changed. Not just by those who join us as members or who sit with us even for those first time today in the pews, but by opening ourselves to the word of God that is still speaking today, we are open to be changed by those we encounter in our daily walk of life.

When I was in like my 6th or 7th year of seminary (long story, took me awhile to get that degree-I blame the children) I took a class at George Fox Seminary in Portland, Oregon where I lived at the time. I was the only Lutheran in the class, everyone else was a Pentecostal of some form or another. This was quite the experience because not only did I have to really know my theological point of view and be able to articulate it well, I also had to listen really well and find the places where we had common ground in some way. As a lifelong Lutheran, grace is a pretty big deal. And I remember clearly every time I started with grace, there would either be a sigh, an eye roll, or a blank uncomprehending stare. One of the ‘doctrines’ of my tradition that I am not going to let go of even in a room full of those who believed that we must live by certain laws or God will not accept us into heaven. And at the same time, since one of my core beliefs is that we are saved through Christ by grace, I had to practice it in every single class by extending grace to them in our interactions. But here is the thing, it was not that my classmates did not see grace. It is just not where they started. And once we came to a place of understanding, that I would start with grace every time and they would eventually get there, we were able to have solid, strong conversations that influenced and changed us all in a way that opened my eyes further into how the lived experience of God takes hold of hearts and actions and lives in different ways.

Another story for you of something that happened in your church today and I was lucky enough to hear about before giving the sermon! Today one of our high school students was hanging out with a friend a Starbucks. When they left, they saw a young woman, who was holding a sign that she is homeless. This is the text I was sent: we helped a homeless girl today who is pregnant. Jackie said we shouldn’t because she caused the problem herself. But I said, well she needs to know more about grace. So we went into Sprouts and bought her food and talked to her and wrote down the names and numbers of shelters and other places she could go for help and told her our church would help her too. This is being grounded in grace, theology, knowledge. This comes from worship, Bible study, confirmation, and having a community that walks alongside you teaching you and helping you live into the baptismal promises of working for peace and justice in God’s world. This is being taught not just about serving, but seeing it, knowing the agencies and who to call and having eyes open to the light of Jesus calling you forward to be brave enough to act on what you know and to start with grace.

This is living into the both/and of the struggle of the faithful. Because we are all spoken to in many and various ways by the Holy Spirit, because we each have ways that we see and ways that we are blinded, because regardless of what words we use what we respond to on the deepest level is what affects our own lives and who or what is put on our path.  For the blind man it was being able to see, for someone who is hungry is receiving food, for someone who is cold, a warm place to sleep, someone who is young, along and pregnant on the street it is a full belly and kind words and a direction of help, for someone who is in grief, a place to be heard and held. One of the key questions we are invited to ask ourselves is What will speak the loudest, tell our story of grace, faith and love from God the best to the needs of our community? And what is the one thing that our community will know best about us?

Perhaps the central place of blindness for the Pharisees in this story was their inability to allow their grounding and their roots to be a gift that would move them into the future. They never stopped referring to the man as blind, even after he had sight. They could not figure out how to reconcile their past experience with a new lived and seen reality. The man and Jesus were the only ones taking the risk of a renewed life with God. The unexpected grace for the blind man was his physical sight and his ability to walk into a new life saying, I don’t have all the answers, but I know where God was with me today and I will walk towards that light. The unexpected grace for us is that whether we are mudites or non-mudites, whether we are hearing our millionth sermon or our first, whether we practice our faith the same or in our way, we are claimed as beloved and Jesus does not deny our past but calls us into a future that step by step, little by little opens us to see God again and again–grounded in the gift of faithfulness and called forward, not to know all the answers or live in denial of where we are blind–but to walk in the light of Jesus and be brave enough to say, God help me see you today

Reforming-Renewing: Unexpected Grace – The Wonderment of an Outsider

Deacon Erin Power, Assistant to the Bishop – Rocky Mountain Synod

Sermon Scripture: John 4:5-42

⁵[Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
  ⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
  ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
  ²⁷Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰They left the city and were on their way to him.
  ³¹Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
  ³⁹Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of his word. ⁴²They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.

Renewing-Reforming: Unexpected Grace – Wonderment of an Insider

Rev. Michael Stadtmueller

Sermon Scripture: JOHN 3:1-17

¹Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ²He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” ³Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
¹¹“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Renewing-Reforming: Unexpected Grace – 40 Days ( Campus Ministry Sunday)

FOCOLU Intern Ally Williams

Sermon Scripture: MATTHEW 4:1-11

¹Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written,  ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,  ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,  ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.