"Confronted by Love"

To begin today's message, we first need to remember very important parts of our denominational baptismal services. In the UCC service of baptism, either the parents and sponsors answer for their children, or if the ones being baptized are of age to answer for themselves to these questions:

1. Do you desire to have your child, or do you desire to be, baptized?
2. Will you encourage this child to renounce the powers of evil and to receive the freedom of new life in Christ?
3. Will you teach this child that they may be led to profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
4. Do you promise by the grace of God to be Christ’s disciples, to follow in the way of our Savior, to resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice, and to witness to the work and word of Jesus Christ as best as you are able?
5. Do you promise, according to the grace given to you, to grow with this child in the Christian faith, to help this child to be a faithful member of the church of Jesus Christ, by celebrating Christ’s presence, by furthering Christ’s mission in all the world, and by offering the nurture of the Christian church so that they may affirm their baptism?

 
Then comes the Congregational Assent, where the pastor asks: Jesus Christ calls us to make disciples of all nations and to offer them the gift of grace in baptism.  Do you, who witness and celebrate this sacrament, promise your love, support, and care to those about to be baptized, as they live and grow in Christ?
And the People respond: We promise our love, support, and care.
 
Now hear how similar the words are in the UMC Baptismal Service:
 

1. On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you (to those who can answer for themselves): Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
2. Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
3. Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?
4. Will you nurture these children (to those who are baptizing infants) in Christ's holy Church, that by your teaching and example they may be guided to accept God's grace for themselves, to profess their faith openly, and to lead a Christian life?
5. According to the grace given to you (to those being baptized), will you remain faithful members of Christ's holy Church and serve as Christ's representatives in the world?
6. Will you (to the sponsors) who sponsor these candidates support and encourage them in their Christian life?
7. The pastor addresses the congregation, and the congregation responds: Do you, as Christ's body, the Church, reaffirm both your rejection of sin and your commitment to Christ?
8. Will you nurture one another in the Christian faith and life and include these persons now before you in your care?

 
This ends with a Congregational statement where everyone says: With God's help we will proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. We will surround these persons with a community of love and forgiveness, that they may grow in their trust of God, and be found faithful in their service to others. We will pray for them, that they may be true disciples
who walk in the way that leads to life.
 
 
You might be asking yourself why I am spending so much time today going through the baptismal liturgies of our denominations. And the answer has to do with our sermon title today, “Confronted by Love.” In both these liturgies, which mirror each other pretty closely, there is a call to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves and to live in a community that is one of love and forgiveness.

In our denominations, we only have two sacraments and I think it is purposeful that we celebrate one today and remember the other, because every time we are welcomed to the table of sacrifice and eat of the bread and drink of the cup and are reminded of just what Jesus went through to bring us from death to life, we should also be reminded of the other sacrament of Baptism that unites us in one faith and one love that we are called to confront our world with; we are called to resist the temptations of power and greed and evil that would rather divide us and teach us false gods to worship. We are called to confront the powers, be they what they are, wherever they are, because we are freed through the sacrifice of Jesus and united in the baptism of Jesus, to live lives just as Jesus. Which means, we are called to love as Jesus loved and go as Jesus went.

See, in our Gospel message today, this is exactly what Jesus is doing. He is confronting the town he grew up in, the people he has known his whole life, the tribe(s) where he would be best known, he is confronting them with love to tell them that the ways they are living is not the ways they should be living and that the scroll of Isaiah, from which Jesus read, and we heard from last week, which preaches sight to the blind and relief for the poor and love for all God’s children; is not happening in the world and Jesus has come to change that. In response, the people ask questions that doubt Jesus could be the Messiah and ask him to do miracles like they had heard of in Capernaum. To which Jesus replies that the ancient Israelites also called out for miracles, but because they did not listen to the prophet Isaish when he came to tell them the very same message Jesus is now offering, that when the prophet Elijah came to save the widow, it was not the Israelite widow, but a foreigner in Sidon.

Furthermore, Jesus says that even though there were many lepers in Israel, because they would not listen and did not obey God, when Elisha came to cleanse the lepers, it was not in Israel where he went, but to a foreigner in Syria. Jesus is confronting the very people who should know him best, the very people who should know that this boy who was raised in their midst was one who was called to be the light and love of the world and would come to preach the message that He was the Messiah and fulfill the prophets and the law through the love of God in and through him. But when he calls them to action and to work for the love of God in the world, their reaction is to be filled with rage and to carry him out side of town and attempt to throw him off a cliff to kill him!

Confronted with Love, confronted with the message of Christ, confronted with the call to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves, the people who should have loved Jesus and known him best, attempt to kill him because his ways are not what they expect, want, or believe. And although we know that Jesus does not die in this moment, we do know where his ministry leads and to what we are baptized into, and what we remember and partake in today at the table.

So, confronted by Love do we answer the call the very same way? Do we crucify or attempt to kill the message that Christ came to share with our world because it does not match up with our worldview, society, beliefs, or man-made gods and idols that have al our attention? And I get it, maybe we are confused because we do not know how we can confront our world with love or fulfill our baptismal vows to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. If only we have a way of knowing what way is the “right” way of confronting our world with love! Well, I have great news for you, Paul gave us just such a test for us to ask ourselves every time we speak, act, choose, or have to decide…If we do not have love, we have nothing. Hear again Paul’s list for us:
 

1. I may be able to speak any and every language of our world, but without love my words are just noise.
2. I may be able to tell the future, predict God’s will, or answer with all wisdom the mysteries of out world, but without love I am nothing.
3. I can have a faith that is so strong that it will move a mountain, but without love, I am able to move nothing.
4. I can be the nicest person in the world and give everything I possess to the poor, neglect my comforts for the benefit of others, yet without love these are empty actions void of meaning.
5. I can fast or diet or be physically fit, but if I do not have love, I am nothing.

 
And just in case we need reinforcement in our efforts, Paul gives us a checklist to define what love is, so that we cannot try to get out of doing what we are called to do by hanging our actions up on semantics:
 

1. Love is patient
2. Love is kind.
3. Love does not envy
4. Love does not boast
5. Love it is not proud.
6. Love does not dishonor others
7. Love is not self-seeking
8. Love is not easily angered,
9. Love keeps no record of wrongs.
10. Love does not delight in evil.

 
And now, let us move to a positive list:

1. Love rejoices with the truth.
2. Love always protects,
3. Love always trusts
4. Love always hopes
5. Love always perseveres.
6. Love never fails.

 
Because people the things of this world shall cease; like prophecies, language, knowledge, but God’s love will never end. And just in case we try to get out of Christ’s call by saying that we cannot be expected to do all of this, that we are just children, God reminds us through the Jeremiah prophecy and call narrative that we are no longer children because we are called by GOD!!! And what was incomplete before has now been made complete through our baptism through this table and through our acceptance of the Holy Spirit into our lives to place upon us and confront us with the call to love! Amen? Amen!
So nothing else should get in our way and everything we are called to through our Baptism to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves is met in the three things that remain; faith, hope and love. And without me having to say it, you all know what the greatest of these three is…LOVE!

Confronted by Love

Hmmm, can you feel the Holy Spirit here, now? Can you feel God’s love pouring over us? Maybe you are resisting though, because being confronted by this call to love can also not just be confronting, but convicting. It can make us reflect on all the ways we have not done what we know we should have; it can make us look at our lives and recognize all the times we met the call to love with the breath of hate. It can make us recall all those moments when we had a chance to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they presented themselves and to be a person who based their life on love and instead fell prey to the very forces we were called to confront. Or maybe we are conflicted because we do not feel like we have the energy, stamina, power, abilities, or wherewithal to be the love and light to our world even though we want to with all our heart.

That is why the Holy Spirit is with us right now! Because we can do anything by the grace of God. We can do anything by the love of God! We can fulfill our call and vows we have made in only the way we can because God has called us in our own special ways. As long as what we are doing answers the test of love, the Holy Spirit will be with us no matter what. And what you can do and I can do and whomever can do are all different things; remember, every part matters! This is why, when we take those baptismal vows, when we unite at the table of Christ, we are not doing so in a vacuum, we are not doing so alone; we are joining a multitude that knows that this world needs us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves, and does so by the help of God. In fact, remember the answers we say in those vows we take all are with God’s help, by God’s grace, as best I can according to God, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and so on. We are not alone so long as we do everything with love.

Confronted by Love, how will we answer? Are we going to be the people who take Jesus once more to the cliff and try to throw him off because what he says does not agree with our world? Are you going to take me to the cliff and throw me off because I am preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ who called us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves by loving all God’s children in our world? Are we going to meet the call to make love the test by which we make every action, every voice, every part of our lives align with excuses, negligence, false narratives, and false idols? Or are we going to be confronted by love and accept it as our call to remember, our call to resist, our call to go and be love ourselves to our world?

Confronted by Love can we indeed live into those baptismal vows, live into the call of Christ, live as we have been given life by the grace of God? Let us show our world, from every little corner to the universe itself, that when we resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves by confronting them with the love of Christ, that our actions are not empty or our speech hypocritical; but rather, we persevere, we hope, we never fail, because we love, Amen!
 
 
 
 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” - 03-19-2023 - Rev. Tony Romaine
 
Does it not bring you almost to tears, this phrase?  There is certainly no more harrowing phrase that Jesus spoke than this one.  That our Savior, the absolute closest being we have ever walked with on earth to our God, indeed God incarnate, would utter such a thing. 
There is a story about Martin Luther, the great Protestant theologian, that Martin Luther actually set out to study this profound cry of Jesus.  He studied for a long time, in solitude, without food, and in deep meditation.  And when at last he rose from his chair exasperated, he said, “God forsaking God; who can understand that?”  Friends, truly, “God forsaking God” is a concept so tragic and mysterious, how can we ever hope to fully understand?

Yet, I think we paint over the pain and agony that Christ was experiencing in order to theologically explain what is going on at this moment with Christ upon the Cross, when what we really need to do is to be able to sit with Christ in this moment when He obviously felt completely abandoned and, in His own word, forsaken.  To understand the depth that one must feel in the pit of their being in order to cry out to their Father, their Mother, their God, their everything and ask why they have been forsaken is difficult.  And within myself I go in two directions to speak about this; one is that our Savior would partake of the Cross, and the other is why.  Taking us in these directions I think will help us come closer, mind you I said closer because we will never be able to completely understand, to knowing this phrase our Messiah spoke so emphatically.

First then is that our Savior would partake of the Cross.  We have already spent time throughout this sermon series talking about the sacrifice that Christ made in order to go to the Cross, but here, today, because of this phrase that is a cry from our Jesus, we need to unwrap another layer and dig deeper into Jesus going to the Cross.

What journey would you ever begin if you knew that at the end it led to death?  You would not want to leave your house or the safety of wherever you may be if you knew that every step and every moment was leading up to the fulfillment of a mission which ended in death.  And yet, Jesus understood that this was the culmination of his mission.  Time and again, throughout the Gospels Jesus tells people to not share his miracles with others or to not spread the message quite yet, because of reasons like: his time had not yet come, or all would be revealed when it was time, or other reasons that pass our human understanding about the Messiah and what his reign would mean.

And while theologians and scholars debate about why Jesus did not want His Godliness to be shared or spread, what we come to know is that what happens upon the Cross is the reason.  Jesus knew that this was the end, in fact, time and again he told the disciples that He had to die and be resurrected.  To which they sluffed him off, or would get scared that their rabbi and Messiah was going to die, forgetting all the while the resurrective part of what Jesus said.

But before we go too much farther, we should take a moment to pause and understand ancient Judaic times, briefly.  Let us remember that the people who were seeing these miracles, hearing Jesus teach, waiting for a Messiah, thinking of what death meant, they are all doing so through a Jewish lens.  On the one hand then, they are awaiting a worldly Messiah to come and vanquish the Romans and re-place Jerusalem on the map as the center of the world, as a physical land holding presence, restoring the Israelite people as the chosen ones they were promised to be.  Moreover, that the Messiah would be God, and was going to upend everything they knew, would conquer death, and do all the things Jesus did.

In this manner, this cry that Jesus lets out is a cry perhaps about these very people that Jesus came to save, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” containing just as much about why God would let these people forsake him, as why God would send Him for this purpose, for the ancient people indeed forsook Jesus. 

They doubted who He was, they did not believe the miracles even when they witnessed them for themselves, they would not believe Jesus when he told them what was to happen, and they did not honor where Jesus came from or what his true purpose was, His lineage, or His divinity, and even His humanity.

But in this forsakenness, we must not judge the ancient peoples too harshly, for we too forsake Christ, and this takes us to our second point for this morning; why Jesus would go to the Cross for us and still does.  The first step in confession is acknowledging that we have something to confess, and when it comes to Jesus, we all have something to confess.  We have all sinned in one way or another, and no matter if your sin is major or minor, it is sin and in need of cleansing. 

But we often sequester sins to the major mistakes or crimes or mishaps of our life, when the way we forsake Jesus is by submitting Him to death by a thousand papercuts.  In other words, we forsake Jesus in each little thing we do that is not following his teachings, his way, his truth, his ministry.  Every time we harbor hate for an enemy, we forsake Christ again.  Every time we hold back the helping hand because we think people should be able to do things on their own, should help themselves, or are just abusing the system, we forsake Christ again.  Each time we look with disdain at the homeless and the widow, the prostitute, and the drug addict, we forsake Christ again. 

Each time we judge one another, gossip about one another, spread lies about one another, we forsake Christ again.  Each time we fail to listen because we have hardened hearts or allow those with evil intentions to do our thinking and acting for us, we forsake Christ again.  And on and on the list goes, which can be summed up in this line: every time we do something that is the opposite of loving our neighbor as we were loved, as Christ went to the Cross for us, as our Savior was forsaken for us, every time, EVERY TIME, we do that…we forsake Christ again and he dies once more in agony and pain a thousand times over, generation after generation, continuing to cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

So why would Jesus go to the Cross and be forsaken and do all of this for us?  Because He loves us.  And instead of hiding away in His carpentry shop, or never coming into the world, or never being among us; our God entered into our existence to the point of death and forsakenness upon the Cross because we are loved.

People, today is as convicting as it gets, this cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” should be an awakening to us that our God who gave everything because of a love which is beyond our understanding is Christ calling out to us and to God all at the same time.  Now, I do not know about you, but this brings me to the edge of tears, because of the cost of my sins upon the Cross.  But it also makes me want to try even more to counter that cry and offer my life over to Christ.  To confess, repent, re-turn, re-learn, and go out in love.

Because as harrowing as this cry is, as confusing and confounding of a theological quagmire is the question of God forsaking God, as guilt-laden and shame filled we may feel, especially in this season of Lent, especially when pondering the suffering of our Savior; despite all of this, there is hope and love in this message; us!  Christ did this for us…to save us…because He loves us!  And our world needs us as those saved, forgiven, freed, to love as Christ loved.

So, let us this day take this cry of Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and not waste any opportunity to hold sacred this sacrifice as we change our world from one of forsakenness into one of forgiveness, for-each-other-ness, for the love of God-ness; Christ make it so, Amen!
 

“Here is your son…here is your mother” – 03-12-2023 – Rev. Tony Romaine
 
Of all the words that Christ utters at the end of his life on the Cross, these are perhaps the ones most often forgotten.  And to be completely honest with you all, are the most difficult to unpack and explain in a sermon.  But we are going to walk through this, because Christ is actually using these few last utterances, these third words today to remind us of a great responsibility and need. 

The difficulty laid before us today can be assuaged partly if we look first at the humanity that these words convey.  Christ in all the pain and agony of dying a terrible death, sees his mother there weeping and wants to take care of her.  I cannot even begin to imagine the thoughts that Mary must have been experiencing in that moment.  To see her son who just a few decades earlier had been born in such majesty and splendor, there hanging on the cross could only bring unspeakable pain.  Her son who had changed her life forever from one of shame and public disgrace to one of marvel and magnificence, now hanging on a cross he did nothing to deserve, abandoned by the very people He came to save, and she could do nothing.  Yet, even this pain was foretold by Simeon in the temple when the baby Jesus was presented, in Luke 2:34-35, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

How could Mary possibly have known that Simeon’s prophecy would be so true?  In her motherly joy with her husband Joseph with her there, presenting Jesus in the temple, to receive this news which she herself had some foreknowledge of, but only what the angels had told her; how could she possibly know that this was the end of the pathway set before Jesus.  Everything Mary had learned or grew to learn about her son, our Savior Jesus, would have led her to believe that as the Messiah he would do great things just like were foretold by prophets of old.  And as the angels proclaimed His glory at His birth and Mary herself magnified in praise, Jesus would indeed grow to become the light which shone upon our darkness. 

But that darkness had now overtaken the human light that was Jesus and Mary was left to mourn at the foot of the cross her son Jesus.  As a parent, I struggle to even try to empathize with what she would be experiencing, and frankly, the thoughts of that very thing happening keep me up at night.  Those who have lost children know the pain Mary felt in this moment and know that it never leaves you.  And Jesus upon the Cross can see and feel and know everything his mother is going through and in a moment of humanity looks at his Mom and says to her, “Woman, here is your son,” as he looks to the disciple John and says to him, “Here is your mother.”  The humanity of that moment is one that in the wise words of James Stalker presents us with this part of Jesus’ life where we get to see the “blending of the majestic and the lowly.”  Jesus being born in a manger, while angels break forth in song from heaven above, Jesus asleep in a boat while storms toss and rage only to awake and still everything, Jesus crying at the death of Lazarus, while in the next moment raising him from death; fully human and fully divine, and so it was to his dying day.  
 
But why these third words, "Here is your son…here is your mother…"are so important takes us also from a very emotional place to a very practical place, and the discussion that I hope will open our eyes to the fulfillment of part of Jesus’ ministry.  For Jesus Himself chose this moment to teach us once more an important lesson; care for the widows, care for the forgotten, care for family.

You heard me say earlier that Mary had a husband Joseph, but he is no longer around at the time of Jesus’ death.  No one really knows what happens to Joseph, but after we hear mention of him at the Passover feast celebration when Jesus was about twelve or so, we do not hear of him again.  Not to mention, that whenever we hear of Mary, Joseph is not mentioned, and since this society was such a patriarchal one, certainly if Joseph were alive we would have known.  This is all to say that at the time of Jesus’ death Mary was a widow.

Therefore, what Jesus is doing at the time of his death is not only providing Mary a pathway to healing through the acceptance of the disciple John as her son, and subsequently all the disciples as her surrogate children; Jesus is also tasking John with taking care of Mary.  Jesus is once more using this time to teach a nation that had forgotten its true course that He was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.  We know this because the law says in Exodus 22:22-23, “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless.  If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry,” and from Isaiah, the prophet says in chapter 1:17, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”  This is not to mention the many examples during Jesus’ life of his own ministry to widows.

Moreover, we do not know why Jesus’ own brothers were not there at his death to be charged with the looking after and care of their mother Mary.  Not to mention that certain scholarship argues that Jesus did not have brothers, but that his brothers and sisters were those in faith.  Either way, we do not have the time to fully examine this here, but what we do know is that Jesus charges John with this honorable task, one that the self-proclaimed, “most loved of all the disciples” most gladly would have accepted.

What this connection that Jesus is creating between Mary and John, mother and son, also presents us with is an example that Jesus longs for us to fully understand by teaching us once more what family truly means.  That looking after family is so vitally important and our family is more than blood, it is more than lineage, it is the people who are united with us in faith.  It can be those we are related to, but it is also those whom we unite in faith with and who we are willing to go to the Cross to protect, preserve, serve, and love.
After all, here we have our Savior on the Cross who is shedding his blood for all of us, and in this moment, he longs for us to understand that this blood which is being shed is the very unifying grace that should connect all of those who will come to believe in just what Jesus’ life and ministry meant. 

​Not to say that we won’t struggle with family, friend, stranger, or foe; after all, Jesus Himself had his own difficulties with his family and the disciples and those who sought to persecute Him.  But what matters in the end is that we look upon our sister and brothers, mothers and fathers, family and strangers, and we see not a mixture of difference and disunity; but that we see those whom Christ died for just like us, and we could love them as we were so loved by our Christ who shed blood and tear for Mother and brother, sister and father.

We hear this again in 1 Timothy 5, “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers,  older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.  Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”  And our “household” is this church, this community, this state, this nation, this world!

Here is your son…Here is your mother.

Lastly, I must mention something else that we all too often paint over in these last words of Christ.  The people who were present at the Cross, the ones who were there listening, watching, waiting, crying at the foot of Jesus were not all of the disciples, but Mary Jesus’s mother, Mary’s sister Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John.  Where was Peter the rock on which the church was to be built?  Where was Mark the first one to write a Gospel, or Matthew whom Jesus loved despite being a tax collector?  The ministry of Jesus is done by those who show up.  Not just in the meeting places where we feel most comfortable, but at the foot of the Cross, where we face the peril of persecution, at the chance of losing all we have or are or the comforts of our existence, out in the world and right where we are at.  During Lent when it is fresh on our mind and the rest of the year too; not just on Sunday, but everywhere the love of Christ is met with fear, doubt, hate, violence, greed, envy, jealousy, or anything else our world would use to get in the way of the love of Christ for all his brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers.

Here is your son…here is your mother.  See the in the world this week, call them and let them know they are yours and they are God’s.  See Christ in the stranger and the forgotten and the widow and the fatherless and the motherless and the childless and all those our world would rather have you turn away from.  That the love of our Savior which He bled for our sins upon the Cross would not be a mark of heaviness or despair; but that we could take this moment when the Light of the World gave everything over so we would know and just maybe learn one more time, take that hope of His as he died for us and love our world.
 
Here is your son…here is your mother…Here is Christ upon the Cross in one another, Amen!

Our Lenten series for 2023 is walking through the last words of Christ upon the Cross.  This week's Gospel passage was from Luke 23:39-43 and contained the second words of Christ upon the Cross (NRSV), "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."

Rev. Tony Romaine – 03-05-2023
 
On the tomb of Copernicus, the great Prussian astronomer, is carved in Latin an epitaph said to be written by Copernicus before his death.  It can be translated as such:

I do not ask for Paul’s grace,
Nor do I ask for the forgiveness given to Peter;
But what you would give to a thief upon a wooden cross,
I pray for earnestly.
 
What is it about forgiveness that is so difficult?  Perhaps it is that we have not fully confessed and repented our sins?  Perhaps it is because forgiveness as a concept is so beyond what we are humanely capable of?  And yet, our Savior not only calls us to forgiveness, but teaches us through this passage we have for today, that forgiveness is as simple as accepting the contrite and repentant heart, no matter when.

This story we hear today is all too often played out in our lives.  The dying soul that is near the crucible of eternal life in paradise or eternal damnation in sheol can finally see the consequences of their actions and is presented with this moment of clarity and asks for forgiveness.  All too often we in our lives wait until the last possible moment to confess, we wait until the last possible moment to act, we wait until the last possible moment to reach out for help; when all along we could have been living lives fully forgiven, fully saved, fully helped, fully enacted. 

Many of us here today have actually resisted help to our detriment and have purposefully turned it down in order to preserve our sense of independence, pride, ego, or whatever else we have convinced ourselves of to make the refusal that much more palatable.  And when we are finally at that moment when we actually ask for the help, it is either too late or the help is so easily given and the solution so easily found that it makes us wish we would have accepted it all along.

Our Savior offers us this forgiveness always.  Hear those words again, because it is so important for us to remember and understand: Our Savior offers us this forgiveness, this grace, this love, always.  It is a matter for us then to confess and accept the forgiveness and to change our lives to live into that grace and offer it to others.  Sometimes, yes, our pride prevents us from being able to accept that we would need this grace.  Sometimes, yes, our ego makes us think that we can outthink or outact or outrun the consequences of our actions.  Sometimes, yes, the very gift that our God gave us of free will and intelligence, creates in us a spirit which makes us think we don’t need the grace or forgiveness and that it will just always be there if we need it, we can just go on doing what we want until we confess and then we will be okay again.

This is not true repentance and contrition, this is trying to legitimize our actions, our lives, our sins and use God’s freely given gift of grace to fit into our version of what we want to call faith.  When in fact, God’s love for us is so abundant, that indeed our Savior’s offer of forgiveness is there for us always, just waiting for us to turn toward God. 

That is what is so often overlooked in these second words of Christ upon the Cross, the scene and characters around Him, as He offers the one thief who repents and does not think up excuses, but fully acknowledges his guilt, his shame, his life that led him to this moment when he is there on a cross with Jesus and the other thief.  And in this moment when all that he had seen and heard and experienced about Jesus confronts everything that had been his life, his heart is softened and he prays a simple prayer to our Savior, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom.” 

And in the answer that Jesus presents to this criminal who is self-acknowledged as a sinner who deserves the crossly punishment that he is receiving, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise,” we are presented with three very important lessons about God’s grace. 

The first lesson we then receive is that the grace Christ offers is freely given.  This thief did nothing to deserve the grace that Jesus imparts.  This thief did not follow Christ as a disciple, was not a rabbinical scholar, was not a scribe or a Pharisee or an elite or a student of Jesus’ or a devout man of faith who had lived a pious life; no, this man was a convicted sinner who had stolen and was to be put to death.  And yet, in this moment upon the Cross where Jesus hangs there in pain and agony and is approaching the end of his earthly time as a human, in this moment when the thief realizes what is happening and prays to God for grace; grace is given.  How much more than for us who have this lesson, will grace be freely given?!

The second lesson is that there is immediacy in Christ’s forgiveness.  When will the thief be with Christ in paradise? Today!  Immediacy, then is what happens when we confess and repent and allow for God’s love to permeate our hardened hearts.  Immediacy is how God’s love takes over the sin-sick soul and heals all the corners where darkness exists.  Immediacy is the quickness with which the sin abandons the soul of those who believe and have faith and trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Immediacy is how fully and speedily God’s love comes to cleanse us from our iniquities and offer us eternal life.  When we confess and are repentant and truly contrite; when we give everything we are over to Christ, when we fall upon the foot of that Cross and lay everything down; we are saved immediately, today, now, forever!

Third lesson, there is paradise…yes, there is paradise!  There is a place that is not of this world, a place that Christ has prepared for us, a place where we find eternal rest and the pains and ills of this world can no longer affect us; a place where the sins which previously, and perhaps still do, weigh us down no longer wrack our souls or burden our hearts.  This place is a juxtaposition to the world in which we inhabit, where wealth and greed and want and pursuing what I want at the expense of other exist.  This paradise is free from all the schisms which separate us from race, creed, sex, age, religion, gender, economy, geography, and the list goes on.  This paradise is perfection, and it does exist. 

The sad part is that if paradise exists, then the opposite also exists.  This is what our world likes to paint over and not talk about; that there is an alternate option for those who do not confess and offer their souls in contrition to God.  There is something other no matter what name we give it to those who mirror the other thief upon the cross who kept deriding Christ, the soldiers who mocked him, the onlookers and naysayers who would doubt that Christ was the living God and came to offer forgiveness; there is another place and it is the opposite of paradise.

But hear this hope found in these second words of Christ upon the Cross, that when Jesus utters the words, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise,” He is telling us that when we offer ourselves over to Him and are confessed and contrite, that no matter how long we have been aiming for the opposite of paradise, no matter how long we have been in the muck and mire of the darkness of our lives, no matter how long we have been making up excuses for our sinfulness or avoiding confession or not offering up our souls fully to Christ, no matter how long we have been journeying away from the Cross; that in that moment we realize, like the thief who prayed to Jesus, like Paul when he was struck down on the road to Damascus, like you and I when we are confronted and convicted; that when we finally turn toward God and paradise and eternal life in love with God, we receive forgiveness, grace, mercy, love, and paradise. 

That as undeserved as we may be, as struck down with sin as our souls may be, that as far from any kind of warmth or hope or joy we may be; when we pray to our Savior, He hears our prayer, he longs for us to come home, and He is there just waiting for us to ask: “my Savior, when your Kingdom comes, remember me!”

I do not ask for Paul’s grace,
Nor do I ask for the forgiveness given to Peter;
But what you would give to a thief upon a wooden cross,
I pray for earnestly.
 
Amen

“Water into Wine?” – Rev. Tony Romaine
​
The Rev. Dr, Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.” (from “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” 1956)

When we think about all the miracles that Jesus performed, we always remember the turning of water into wine as the first we hear about in our Gospels.  But if we are honest, if we were to list the most substantial miracles that Jesus performed, we probably would not put this one very high at the top; well except for those wine lovers amongst us perhaps!  But this miracle is about so much more than we sometimes give it credit for; this miracle moves Jesus beyond reluctance and disdain, to action; this miracle moves our world from a place of water that was being prepared for a ritual, water that needed to be purified by the hands of men, and transforms us into the blessed wine that connects us with our salvation through our God whose grace is so much more than we could ever imagine.  This miracle shows us that Jesus came to remind us of the very miracle that exists in all our hearts; the miracle of love.

And miracles in the heart of humanity is exactly what this world needs right now, isn’t it?!  The fact that our world right now is more divided than ever, more divisive than ever, more focused on what extremes I can set up in order to be extreme from you and what you can bury your flag upon in order to supplant mine, belies the necessity that our world right now needs; the miracle that lies within the heart of not just every man, but every human being that was put there at their creation.  The miracle this world needs right now is the very thing that Jesus was, is, and ever will be, and that is love.

Yes, the end is reconciliation and redemption, a reconciliation that begins with you and me and every one of God’s children in this world.  A reconciliation that says that I may not agree with what you represent or believe or vote for or unite as, and you may not agree with me in the very same manner; and yet, there is something inside each of us that unites us in a deeper and stronger way than anything of this world can drive apart; what unites us is the very thing that will reconcile us, the very miracle which Jesus performed and we need now more than ever, the miracle of the love God has for us that was given for everyone, everything, all of creation, every tree in the forest, every fish in the ocean, every cloud in the sky, blacks, whites, republicans, democrats, citizens, immigrants, refugees, those who are settled, and those who are homeless; the wealthy, rich, poor, married, single, childless, widowed, and the list can go on and on and on.

Yes, the end is reconciliation, which is not a synonym for agreement, but a step toward a beloved community where people do not just live in echo chambers that repeat what we want to hear.  A beloved community where opposites can live in reconciled love; where those who are diametrically opposed can still see the value and worth and dignity of the human being that sits across from them, across the internet from them, across the world from them; that all can see the worth each of us brings to the common discourse and humanity that was and is and always will be the redemptive purpose of the very miracle that was Jesus Christ; that God so loved all of creation and everything God created as to sacrifice everything and send us the wine of salvation to transform and save. 

Water into Wine!

And just as the Rev Dr. states, it is this love that we cannot possibly see in the present gloom of our age that will transform our world and clear the scales from our eyes and the pain from our backs, the weariness from our days and the toil on our souls; it is this very transformative love which came through the shared humanity we have in Christ that allows us to view a humanity in each and every one of God’s beloved children that will take our world from one where we are waiting with baited breath for the next World War, for the next famine, for the next virus, for the next tragedy; to a world that has been transformed through shared community, through shared bread and cup, through shared experience and life, through shared economy and equality, through a shared love that builds a beloved community in which we live into the transformation began that day in Cana at the first miracle; a community that has been redeemed through the grace that comes only through Christ our Savior and has been reconciled because we want to be, because we strive to be, because we long to live in a world where each one of us can feel valued and loved, where each of us can drink of the wine that was offered through that table sacrifice millennia ago, where each of us who hold the sins of our past and the weight of this world can be freed through the miracle of God’s heart shared with all the world.

And just as Jesus was reluctant to perform this miracle, just as Jesus responds in contempt to a request for his time to come and for his mission to begin, we sit here today and are reluctant too, aren’t we?!  We are reluctant to hear this message and prophecy that we are to act and live into the call that God has placed on our hearts and the gifts that God has blessed us with.  Perhaps our reluctance comes from a fear that we might not do the right thing or say the right thing, perhaps our reluctance comes from the comfort in our status or place of privilege, perhaps our reluctance comes from misplaced hate and disgust for others, perhaps our reluctance comes from not knowing what our gift even is, or perhaps the reluctance comes from not truly feeling that we could ever be worthy of being gifted something from God.

Well, whatever it may be, whatever may be holding us back, whatever is separating us from taking that first step into the unknown of reconciliation, of action, of welcoming others, of loving as God loved us, of truly changing this world of water into the redemptive wine and beloved community that God longs for; whatever it may be hear me when I tell you that it is nothing compared to the gift itself that God has sent you and I and the gift that this world will receive when you act upon that call, that voice, that Spirit; the mission and gifts God is longing for you to use have already been sent and are just awaiting you to transform the world. 

Indeed, whatever is preventing us from living into beloved community is nothing compared to what will truly happen when we take the first steps in changing our world, when we take the first action here in Little Falls to make this city a better place, when we use our gifts to make Morrison County a beacon of God’s love, when we live into the call God has placed on our heart to transform MN into an example to our nation of what reconciliation and love can look like, when we take the very fabric of our being and transform the United States into the example of beloved community for the world.

You see and feel this don’t you?!  Can you not feel the Spirit in this place right now begging you to just accept and walk in that love that God has called forth into our world those many years ago when Jesus walked with us transforming the water in our lives into the blessed wine that is not reserved for the best guests or the wealthiest patrons or only available in the beginning, but a wine that is for all people and all times. 

And in case you need this metaphor stretched to its limits, the greatest part of this miracle that goes overlooked all too often is that you and I are the literal water that Jesus transformed into wine for our world to consume, for our world to be refreshed with, for our world to find God’s love in; that in and through the transformation you and I have already received thanks be to Christ is what God is longing for us to live into and share with our weary, gloomy world.

And when we do, this age which is bogged down with the dirty water of despair, death, division, and divide will be transformed by the light that shines through the wine of sacrifice; the very miracle that lives within our hearts, the gladness and goodwill that God sent to redeem us; the love and centeredness of God’s love at our core…That is the redemption people need to hear, that is what will bring us to reconcile whatever is between us, that is what will blaze with goodwill and gladness, and that love will be the lived miracle of the hearts of humanity that will finally transform our world from a place of brokenness, fracture, and displacement into God’s beloved community.

A miracle indeed, turning water into wine!  Amen!

What Is Truth? – Rev. Tony Romaine – 11-21-2021
​
One of my all time favorite movies is Rudy, the story about a walk-on football player at Notre Dame and his journey to beat all the odds.  In the struggle within his journey Rudy meets and befriends a priest named Father Cavanaugh, and as Rudy is working and attempting to do everything he can to get into Notre Dame University, there is this wonderful conversation when it seems like Rudy has reached the end of all his options where he asks Father Cavanaugh, “If I've done everything I possibly can, can you help me?” To which Father Cavanaugh answers, “Son, in thirty-five years of religious study, I've come up with only two hard, incontrovertible facts; there is a God, and, I'm not Him.”

I thought of this scene as we approach our topic today of Christ’s reign and in what we should be giving thanks, because of the answer that Father Cavanaugh gives about there being two facts or truths.  And how when it seems like we have nothing we can do or there is no where to turn, we must place our trust itself in the Truth of God.

So, just as Pilate posed the question to Jesus, we approach it today, What Is Truth?  How appropriate a question for us to ask ourselves today.  Especially as we face the multiple misinformation efforts and mis-truth efforts of our world.  Well, to begin, one truth is that Jesus is indeed, as we hear from the Gospel reading for todays, not from this world.  This truth means that what Jesus offers us is something more prophetic, more strange, more unknown to the world of the ancient Israelites and our modern society, because what Jesus offers as the truth about His Kingdom, about the reign of eternality He is about to enact, is that it is gained not through the violence of war, it is gained not through any act of humanity alone; rather, it occurs and comes to be, through the peace that is Christ himself. 

Perhaps this is why Jesus never truly answers Pilate question about being called the King of the Jews.  In that, Jesus was not just coming to be King of the Jews, but the eternal Prince of Peace for everyone and all God’s children.  And because Jesus’ reign is not from our world, it is going to look like something we are not familiar with, it will be perhaps even unrecognizable to us until it actually comes to be.

But let us not move on too early without keying in on another truth, that Jesus’ reign is one that comes through peaceful actions.  We are about to enter into the well-known season of Advent where we will hear all the Scripture and sing all the songs we have come to love and appreciate this time of year.  We are about to once again hear how an infant is what changes our world forever.  And yet, here we are on the cusp of this most celebratory season, and we once again need to hear the Truth.

The Truth that the peace-filled, loving, care for one another, look to the margins, socially upheaving, political replacing, world over-turning Truth was, is, and always will be, the love God has for us through Christ and the love we are supposed to show one another.  A Truth which begs the deeper question of when are we as a human race finally going to realize this Truth?

As a historian it is a question, I keep coming back to myself and I’m sure you hear me mention many Sundays out of the year.  Our God could do anything, and I mean anything at all.  Our God could and has in the past, destroyed our world and made a new people.  The only thing in fact from preventing this from happening again is that God made a covenant with Noah millennia ago.  And in place of doing this over and over again, God sent instead a Truth, the Truth, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God to live, teach, demonstrate, and die for all of us so that we could know the Truth which is God’s love.

And in our world which cannot seem to distinguish truth from fiction, fact from opinion, this Truth about God’s love is so important for us to hear, that I consider it my job as pastor to reiterate this until my voice is no more.  Because here is the real issue people, we are going to come to a time in our modern world someday, it may be sooner or it may be later, when we are going to have to face our worst demons once more.  We are going to come to a day when the Truth of God’s love is put on trial once more and we are faced with the choice between demonstrating the love God has for us to our neighbors or choosing the greed and power of being comfortable, wealthy, or “right” in our own minds. 

The day is coming when we are ultimately on trial once more and given the chance to answer the question of “What is Truth?” with a resounding, triumphant love like that which Christ shared with us.  And when that moment comes, do we shirk away into silence and allow our Savior to be crucified again?  When that moment comes when the fear-filled voices of those who are afraid of losing their power, privilege, or place in society are willing to kill our brothers and sisters to remain in power, are willing to allow the stranger that Jesus calls us to feed to die in hunger, are willing to allow the migrant whom Jesus calls us to welcome to die on the border, are willing to demonize and de-humanize blacks, browns, Asians, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, trans-folk, just for trying to live as God created them, are willing to de-moralize fellow Christians and call them hate-filled names because they are of a different political belief…when that moment comes and the world is struggling for the Truth of God’s love, what are we going to do? 

Are we going to shrug our shoulders and say, “Who really knows what the truth is?”  Are we going to turn a blind eye and let the world keep spinning out of control?  Are we going to remain in our place of privilege and comfort and complacency?  Or will we respond and answer the worst parts and practices and sins of our humanity with the one Truth we all know…

GOD…
 
IS…
 
LOVE!
 
And while we may not know much about anything in our crazy world, love we know.  Ironically, in a Hollywood-style epic turnabout, in this manner, we actually do know what Truth is.  We know it is the smile on a face of a child who was lifted up in love instead of turned away by hate.  We know it in the story shared around a warm meal by someone who the night before was freezing in the alley.  We know it in the thanks we receive from the person behind us at the grocery store when we paid for their groceries whether they needed it or not.  We know it in the embrace of a friend or family member.  We know it in the joys and celebrations of new birth, and we know it in the somber silence of death.

See people, we know love when we see it because deep down inside of each of us, we have once been loved so much that we were created.  We know it as Truth because deep down inside each of us, we have been loved so much that Christ died for us.  We know the Truth because God has loved it into us and longs for us to burst it forth into our world.  And the Holy Spirit is just burning inside of us try to get out and love our world!
So, indeed, “What Is Truth?” is one of those questions that Jesus does not really answer, similarly like when Pilate was asking whether He was King of the Jews, because it doesn’t require a literal answer for Jesus.  Why, because Jesus lived the Truth, Jesus’ entire mission was to save us so we would know the Truth, Jesus’ reason for being was that if we had the chance to see it, experience it, and learn about it, that maybe we too would live as Jesus lived and love as Jesus loved. And this is not opinion or personal belief, hearsay, a Tweet, or a meme, but God’s Word as written in John 14:6, John 16:13, and ultimately John 8:32, where we hear that when we follow the Truth that is God’s love through Christ, we are set free! 

But let’s be honest, we already know this, because when asked what is truth, we know that indeed God is, Jesus is, the Holy Spirit is, you are, I am, we all are together, as the love eternal from God our King, Queen, and Forever.  We know that this Truth is what we come and give thanks for not just one day out of the year, but everyday in our lives.  That we are alive by the love of God, forgiven by the grace of Christ, empowered by the strength of the Holy Spirit, and can hold fast to that Truth that is God’s love for us and the world.

There may indeed only be two things that one may know for certain, like the quote from Rudy I shared at the beginning today.  But I will disagree with Father Cavanaugh’s character, because I actually believe there are three things we can know for certain.  One is that indeed there is a God, two is most definitely that we are not God, but the third is that we know the Truth, the capital “T,” God’s honest, pure as the day is long, Truth; God is Love, Jesus came to bring about Peace, and the Spirit shows us this Truth always.  Thanks be to God, Alleluia, Amen!  

“Whatever May Come” – Rev. Tony Romaine
 
“The Gust” by Willem van de Velde the Younger, a 17th Century Dutch painter of marine art is my favorite painting at the Rijkstad museum in Amsterdam.  If you could see the painting (link in the endnotes[1]) you see a ship that has been caught by surprise in stormy seas and the gust that is now battering it came up so quickly, the sailors on board did not have time to square the rigging or put away the sails.  Or maybe they knew a storm was coming and were working to figure things out, but still were not prepared for the immensity of the gust.  Either way, the ship is now shuddering on stormy seas.

Fittingly, today’s Gospel is also about a boat being tossed about in a stormy sea, as the disciples and Jesus head to the other side of the sea of Galilee, and Jesus sleeps in the back, the winds and waves begin to rage and the disciples are caught off guard and facing what they presume to be a life and death situation all alone.  A little context here would do us well as we speak about this Gospel narrative.  You see, Jesus, in this part of the Gospel of Mark, had just finished telling of the parables of the mustard seed, the lamp under a bushel, and the Sower, and in fact has also told us that the parables are intended to instill trust in what Jesus is calling us to, or as Jesus says in Mark 4:12, “they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.”

So, after hearing all of this and being taught even the purpose of the parables, Jesus and the disciples encounter a storm.  Here we need even more context, because Mark is writing from a Jewish apostolic perspective and when he means storm, he literally does mean a life and death situation.  Briefly, so as to not cover apostolic teaching which would take more time than we have here today; in the world there is order and chaos, and whenever chaos comes about, God’s order works to counter it.  But, possibly more importantly for our purposes today, when one is said to be sleeping, like Jesus in this passage today, that could also be interpreted as dead.  And so, when the chaos or storm hits this boat that the disciples are in and they feel all alone, and Jesus is “sleeping,” aka not with them, they panic and wake him to save them.  And when Jesus awakens, or is resurrected, he stills the storm and calms the seas and then asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

Whatever May Come! 

See, this Gospel passage is more than just Jesus calming the seas and saving the disciples, but it is also a call to us to have faith and  to trust and believe.  Like the boat we see in the painting from van de Vilde, when life tosses us about and the storms of life are bringing chaos and disorder, where will our faith lead us?  And the real question is, will we let fear conquer our faith?  You see, fear is a powerful thing, because if someone can make us afraid, or if our fears can override our faith, then we will follow anyone or anything that we think brings us through.  We will put our trust in the boat, or the sails, or the oars, or our own abilities.  When in fact, God is calling us to a deeper trust, one where we indeed can rest with God and believe that He will calm the storms.

Moreover, when we let fear conquer our faith, then we move from a place where we are open to the love and forgiveness of God, to a place where we hold tightly to every little thing we have, thinking that is what God would want us to do.  When we live in fear, we shrink our imaginations of what God can accomplish; which would be contrary to the very thing God indeed is calling us to…to be open and love one another, to trust God in the storms, to live in faith with one another, and to rest in the belief that God has us whatever may come.

And you don’t need me to stand up here and tell you that storms will come, right?!  Many of us have already experienced the storms of life, many of us have already felt the pains that come through our human existence, many of us know chaos and disorder.  And not to be negative, but for those who have only known calm seas, storms will come.  So the real question for us is, when those times happen or those storms come, where do we turn? 

Do we turn in deeper faith to the arms of our God or do we run in fear to the earthly things that bring us comfort?  Do we walk out in front of the giant in front of us and stand in faith and trust in our God as David did against Goliath, or do we cower in fear like Saul?  Do we trust in the military might that we can produce as a nation and do we go to war, or do we trust in the love of God and the peace of Christ?  Do we endure in faith and truly believe in Jesus our Savior to come and save us from the hardships, from the labors, from that long list that Mike read from 2 Corinthians of afflictions, burdens, and calamities, or do we turn in fear to the first thing that will bring us what we think is order, only to be betrayed by the finitude of time; only to have a fleeting moment of comfort?

Whatever May Come!

God is calling us through whatever may come to put our trust in Him, that our Father will not abandon us to these persecutions, to the world, to the pains that may wrack our bodies or torment our minds.  Our God is calling us to slay the giants in our lives; the giants of injustice that prevent people from feeling or knowing the love of God, the giants of systemic abuses that only make people more afraid or make people turn away even more from the love of God, the giants in our lives of those who spit hatred and violence and fear in the name of God who are the hypocrites who prevent people from accessing the love of God, the giants in our lives which we face every day as we try to conquer our fears and face this world that needs our hands and feet of love even more…

Whatever May Come!

Whatever may come, our God is calling us to get into the boat and cast ourselves from the comforts of our shoreline, to trust that when the storm comes, hear me there, not if, but when the storm comes, that we will stand tall and proud and in complete trust of our God, our Father, who will not abandon us, but be right there with us in every chaos of our lives.  To be able to go forth and face our world and say to it that no matter what may come, no matter what you may throw at me, I am not afraid, for my God has conquered death, my God has forgiven my sins, and my God loves me into eternity…

Whatever…

May…

Come…!

          See, I hear the Gospel passage for today, and I see the painting by van de Vilde, and I do not see negativity, pessimism, or doubt.  No, I see a call to trust in our Father, our God, who has instilled in us the great lessons of perseverance, of faith, of trust, of hope, and thanks to Jesus Christ, love.

          So on this Father’s Day, think of your father, whoever or wherever they may be.  Think of how all they longed for was for you to be protected, provided for, and loved.  Now think of your God and the great love He has for you.  That no matter what may come, you can trust in his ever-loving arms to calm the winds, steady the seas, and love you eternally, Amen!
 


[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Willem_van_de_Velde_(II)_-_The_Gust_-_WGA24539.jpg

"Spirit of…" - Rev. Tony Romaine – 05/23/2021

The theologian Walter Kasper once said, “When the Spirit comes after Jesus' resurrection and exaltation, it is the fulfillment of the message of Jesus and salvation, as the Spirit is the way in which God is present in the world.”  The way in which God is present in our world…hear those words and let them sink into your heart.  The Holy Spirit, the breath of God, ruach Elohim, our Advocate, our Helper, God present in our world.  Sit with that for just a moment and invite the Holy Spirit into your world.

I make a big point of this, not just because it is Pentecost, but because we need to hear this more, that God is here in our world with us.  On that Pentecost over two-thousand years ago, the Holy Spirit which was promised to us by Jesus came upon the disciples and forever changed their lives and ours.  Yes, it was awesome and amazing that the Holy Spirit spoke in and through the disciples in various languages and filled them with the power to go and share the Good news with people all over the known world, but even more amazing is what the Holy Spirit coming meant to Christians. 

Remember, not too long before this, 50 days give or take, Jesus died and was resurrected.  Even more recently Jesus had ascended into heaven.  So, the disciples were without God, without Jesus, and in that moment of waiting as Jesus had told them to do, the promise came through and Our Helper came.  God coming present in our world once more, the Holy Spirit came to set the world straight about righteousness, about judgment, about sin, about power, about all the things we think we control in our world. 

The Holy Spirit came to remind us that we know the Truth of what Jesus taught, that we are to forgive as we were forgiven and love as we are loved.  The Holy Spirit came to intercede on our behalf, in the wonderful words of Paul’s letter to the Romans, “with sighs too deep for words.”  The Holy Spirit came to be the ever-strengthening arm of God that lifts us out of our muck and mire so that we can once again live into the call God has placed on our hearts.  And the Holy Spirit came to remind us that God is with us!

Theologian Thomas Aquinas reminds us that through the Spirit, humanity is one with God and God is one with humanity and that the Holy Spirit has used the church to prepare the way to receive the gift of the Spirit, eternal life, and salvation.  God is here with us and we are with God; united in and through the Holy Spirit and gifted with talents for our church and world.  But how to do we know our gifts?  How do we know God is with us?

In the UCC we say that God is Still Speaking.  The way that God is still speaking to us is through the Holy Spirit.  The way that God can affect change in our world without stepping all over the created free-will God has granted us is to direct us via the Holy Spirit.  And the way that we trust God is we stop and listen for the Spirit within us. 

Sometimes the Spirit comes across loud and clear and other times it takes some real meditative listening.  Either way, God is speaking to us and filling us, loving us, revealing to us, and trusting us through the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God revealed to us through trusting in that God will reveal God’s self.  In other words, God longs for us to know God and makes that knowledge possible through the Holy Spirit. 

In this manner, the Holy Spirit is both the easiest and the most difficult member of the Trinity to contemplate.  On the one hand, humanity has from the dawn of theological time argued for a Spiritual “otherness” that when attained will bring us closer to God.  At the same time, there is no tangible way to tell someone the Holy Spirit did this, or the Holy Spirit did that, in fact, some may call you crazy if you walked around saying you were listening to a spirit.  But what is so crazy about believing that God would want to forever be with you and inspire your days?  Perhaps then what it truly comes down to is trust in that God continues to be active in our lives through the Holy Spirit.

Walter Kasper also states that “Knowledge of God's incomprehensibility is the beatifying fulfillment of the human person.”  In other words, when we trust in the mysteries of God, we are forever changed as we put our faith in the very things which are most holy.  We are sanctified in the Greatness of God! 

Would it be great if God or Jesus were right here with us in physical form, sure.  But there is a very good reason they are not; us, we are the reason why God and Jesus are not physically here.  We have been given everything we need to live a life in following Christ.  We have all the tools we need to be the hands and feet of God to our neighbors, to strangers, to our world.  And we have the Holy Spirit breathing the power, the peace, the strength, and the love in and through us all the time as the very breath of God.

Brothers and sisters, this is why it is so important for us to be reminded that the Holy Spirit is the way in which God is present in the world.  Because the way that God is present to those in our world is through us.  Can and does God work according to God’s will, absolutely.  But you and I, we are part of God’s will and the way we treat one another is either a step toward healing and hope and unity and love, or it is a step in the opposite direction.  The way you and I worship and have faith is either a reminder to our world that the God of love still exists, that God is active in the world through the Holy Spirit and that no matter who needs to hear the Good News of salvation and grace through Jesus Christ they can, or it is a step in the other direction.

And not to be too pessimistic or cynical, but our world has been stepping in the other direction for far too long.  We see violence, hate, war, dis-unity, people vilifying others just for political gain, people killing one another for power and greed, people segregating and closing others off in order to protect unjust systems, people hanging onto the threads of an earthly existence which is doomed to whither and fail…Where is God in this world?  And we, the church, should not wonder why people are leaving the church, when the very people who should be sharing the Good News of the love of Christ are sometimes the ones preventing others from hearing the Good News of Jesus’ love. 

So what is the answer?  The Holy Spirit in and through us is the answer.  And if the problems of our world seem too vast to conquer, or the languages too difficult to comprehend, then whittle them down and speak the languages you know.  We know how to be neighborly to the outcast, to the homeless, to the widow, to the stranger in our own corner of MN.  We know how to welcome and be the hands and feet of hope for those who have none here in Little Falls.  We know when we listen to the radio or watch the tv or read the paper when we hear things that are not in line with Christ’s teachings about grace, mercy, hope, forgiveness, and love.  And we know that God is here with us, present in our world because we can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in and through us always if we only but stop to listen and hear and act, Amen!

“That I Know Very Well” – Rev. Tony Romaine – 05-09-2021
 
One night a woman went to bed and was trying to fall asleep.  She was having trouble though, as all of her interactions, thoughts, and experiences were being re-lived like her mind was giving her its own version of the nightly news.  While lying there, struggling to fall asleep, she was suddenly surrounded by the brightest of lights and seemingly transported to another world.  Wondering what was going on she called out for someone to hear her, but no one else was around.  And then as she began to become frightened by the emptiness and fear that this was something beyond earthly, a voice came out of the light, “My child, do not be afraid, it is I.”  Hearing this, she was frozen in complete awe and fear, her memory searching for something to assign this strange occurrence; to what could she draw upon to find herself in this moment of trepidation.  And then the voice spoke again, “My child, do not be afraid, it is I.” 

​Something different happened after hearing the voice a second time, suddenly a calm and awareness surrounded her, she felt goosebumps all over and an all-encompassing warmth filled her soul.  The voice was both one she now recognized and yet still did not know; like a strange, yet familiar kind of comfort.  She begged for her voice to find its chord as she struggled to say, “Is that you God?”  Nothing happened after she said this, so in only the way we humans think, she thought maybe I should say it louder, so she summoned her strength once more and said it louder, “Is that you God!?” 

And in that moment, the realm of light answered, not with voice, but with a wind that blew over her and filled her with such a sense of belonging and purpose she knew the answer to her question.  When she gathered herself once more, she felt another question burning inside of her, so she blurted out in complete anticipation, “Is this heaven?!”  The Light again did not answer, instead holding her in complete love, as if awaiting the question she really was going to ask.  Well now she had all her faculties about her and she began to wonder what this was all about and why God would be speaking to her in the first place. 

But before she could even pose the question, a voice came from the Light once more to say, “I have approached you in this way because I need you to do something for me.”  Excitedly again, the woman answered before even thinking about her response, “Yes, whatever you ask, I will do it!”  Then the voice said to her, “I need you to be a mother to my people, to all my people, so that they will know that I am a God who loves unconditionally; loves all children, loves those no one would ever love, loves those who no one will ever know, loves those who do not love me, and longs for all my children to know how grace-filled and loved they are.”
 
The woman was almost speechless, but she summoned enough will to ask,  “Um, God, how am I supposed to do that?  I am only one person, one of many women, one who has not always lived well, one who sometimes gets angry, one who knows love, but not that depth of love.”  The Light answered, but this time it was different; the voice had changed to become something incredibly familiar.  Now the voice was of her own mother and said to her, “Love others as I have loved you.”  The woman began to cry, as memories of her own mother filled her.  Immediately she knew she could protect as her mother had protected her, she could teach as her mother had taught her, she could indeed love naturally for her mother naturally loved her. 

Then the Light spoke again, this voice she recognized as her friend’s mother saying, “Love others as I have loved you.”  This time, she felt a sense of duty come over her and she knew she could love even those who were not her own children.  That she could be the love the world needs whether she could ever have children or not.  Just as her friend’s mother had loved her at some of the most important times in her life, she felt she could also be a love for those who were in need.

Yet again the Light spoke, “Love others as I have loved you.”  This voice was sweet and tender, because this was the voice of her grandma who had been the strength for her during times and through things which she could not herself share with her mom or her friend’s mom.  And just as her grandma had been a love for her through times of good and times of difficulty, she then knew that she could be the soft voice, the warm hug, the patient ear  to help all those who needed someone to turn to when they felt they could go nowhere else.

Then she heard yet another voice, “Love others as I have loved you.”  This voice she did not recognize, and so she asked the Light, “Who are you this time?”  The answer was calm and pleasant, “I was the stranger who gave you that hug when you were crying without speaking.  I gave it without question and without any need in return.  I gave you love for a moment and then was gone.”  A memory flashed before her eyes, and she suddenly remembered the time she was in the store after she had just lost her job, and as she tallied the groceries to see if she could afford everything, she broke down and began sobbing.  As she stood there crying, a woman approached, who it was she never knew, but she gave her a hug, said “everything will be okay,” and then was gone in an instant. 
At this memory of the love of a stranger, perhaps one of the greatest loves we can offer our world, for everyone needs our love whether we know them or not, she knew she too could offer others love, regardless of knowing them or not.  And she thought to herself that when we offer that love, without strings attached or love needed in return, well then, we are truly being motherly!

But something was bothering her, a burning question that she did not know quite how to ask, because she knew that some mothers are incapable of love and some people feel they never truly had a “mother.”  Unexplainably, a wave of fear came over her, as she thought to herself, “What if I am that mother, the one who harms instead of loves; who hates instead of nurtures; who despises instead of cares for; who does not love as I have been loved?”  And in her moment of fear, another voice came from the Light, this time the most familiar of them all, for it was her own voice saying, “You are enough, you are every part of perfect the world needs.  You are the love that you have heard in all these voices, you are the love that has been shared with you, for you are God’s light to your world; have no fear.”

Then God’s Eternal Light spoke once more to say, “You see my child, I have given you everything you need, and this you know very well.  I created you to know what love is in your heart of hearts, so that when you feel it, it would become so comfortable and amazing you would instantly know it was me.  You know of the prophets and the law; you have heard them speak of how you were made wonderfully and made in complete awe in your mother’s womb.  That is because you were created by me with my God spark inside of you for this very purpose.  For I am the Great Mother and have loved you into being.  So, everything you will ever need, I have given to you, and this you know very well!”

“Will you make mistakes; sure.  Will you not always love perfectly; absolutely.  But you have heard my Son Jesus share the message with you of forgiveness through the cross, of love beyond love, and grace beyond grace.  You know of His conception by the Virgin Mary, who too struggled with the very same questions you ponder now.  But just as she answered in deep faith, I covenant with you and trust that your faith will guide you, a faith you know very well.”
 
“You must follow my commandments and believe in what my Son has shared with you.  Trust in what you have heard about all of the loves I long for you to show my world as a mother, and I say ‘mother’ for woman is too specific.  See,  I am calling you and everyone to be a mother in all the ways you have experienced tonight.  For while Jesus speaks of me only as the Father, I am also the Mother for I have conceived the whole world and created all you know and see.  Everything you can touch and feel, and everything you can imagine, or have yet to imagine…And this you also know very well!”
 
As she heard these words, she fell to her knees and began to cry.  From behind her tears, she asked God, “How can this be?  It is too much.  I cannot be a mother to the whole world.  I cannot even mother my own world sometimes!”  Suddenly, as if lifted into the arms of all the voices which spoke to her that night, she was embraced by the Spirit and felt a love that words cannot do justice.  Then the voice, now speaking softly, so softly it felt as if it were coming from inside of her, said,

“My child, be who you are, where you are, for you are more than enough.  Share that wisdom I hear in your prayers, that patience I see in your days, that hope you give your family and friends, the compassion you share with strangers, the love you find with me in all times, and you will indeed change the world.  And if you ever need me, if ever things become too difficult or you need to be strengthened anew; turn to the one thing I hope you know most of all…my love for you!”

And just as quickly as she had been swept away, she was now back in her bed.  She closed her eyes, longing to be in that place of peace and comfort again, begging herself and God to be conversing together again.  But as hard as she tried, she could not make it happen, and as she lay there remembering all she had just experienced, she lifted a prayer from the depths of her heart whispering, “God of my days and nights, of my wakefulness and of my dreams, thank you for loving me, so that I can love…and for all the things that I know very well, Amen!” 
 

"Immediately” – Rev. Tony Romaine

One anniversary, my wife and I were out to dinner at a fancy restaurant on their busiest night and our waiter, understanding it was our anniversary, offered us a European style experience.  Neither of us knew exactly what he was offering, but in the spirit of adventure, we agreed because he was the expert after all.  For the next 2-3 hours, we experienced what has, in my memory, gone down as one of our favorite anniversary dinners.  Our waiter was attentive, never in a hurry.  Bringing out the appetizer and each subsequent course not a moment too soon; allowing us to have a slow paced dinner, wonderful conversation, enjoying every moment of our dish or drink before us without being in a hurry so the restaurant could flip our table or we could hurry back to whatever was awaiting us outside those walls.  And as we slowed down and spent that time with one another, our waiter immediately gave us an anniversary gift of presence, purpose, and love.  See, in an interesting way, by slowing down we were able to enjoy that gift, that moment, that love immediately!

Immediately

We are a people who want things immediately aren’t we?  We want the internet to work lighting fast so we can download and do the things we are accustomed to doing.  We want the light to change so we can get on our way throughout town.  We want others to apologize when we feel harmed or hurt in anyway.  Shoot, we even want our food to come immediately; hence the term “fast food!”  And if we are honest, we want God to hear our prayers and immediately respond.  Yet, the thing we fail to remember is that if this is how we long for others to respond to us, why are we surprised when they have the same expectations?!  If this is how we want God to respond, then why are we surprised when God longs for us to respond in the same way?!

Immediately

We hear in our Gospel passage today how Simon and Andrew were casting their nets and Jesus spoke to them calling them to be His disciples and they responded immediately.  We hear of James and John sons of Zebedee, who are apparently so excited at the call of Jesus that they leap out of the boat and leave their father there with the hired men.  And yet when we hear the call of God in our lives, are we this quick to action?  Do we leap up and respond immediately?

The difficult truth for us in examining our relationship with God is that we ask much and often do not offer much in return.  We ask God for the call in our lives, we ask Jesus to be present and help us, we ask for the will and the way; and yet, when we receive the answer we sometimes balk and pray that there has to be another way.  We ask God for countless blessings and yet forget to thank God for what we have.  We pray for God to act immediately in our lives and when God does by presenting us with opportunities for action, we pray for God’s will to look different, be different, or be more aligned with what we want.

          This is why Jonah is one of my favorite books of the Bible; because we are all so much like Jonah.  I don’t need to give the entire backstory of Jonah, as we did a wonderful four week journey with him last year.  But just as a reminder, Jonah was called by God to go to Nineveh and preach repentance so that the people and city would be saved.  But Jonah did not want those people to be saved, so he tried to run away and when we catch up with him in our passage today it is the moment when God calls him yet again to go to Nineveh and save the people through prophecy.  And even after self-acknowledgement that this call is true and this way is right, Jonah still fights God’s will and becomes a reluctant prophet.

          Think about that, Jonah knows that what God is calling him to do is the right thing, Jonah knows that God will save the people of Nineveh, Jonah knows that the reason for the storm on the oat is because God was calling him elsewhere.  Just like so many of us have done; knowing what we must do, who we must save, where we must be, and yet longing for it to be another way.

We have all prayed for God’s will and work in our lives and then when God sends us the people to care for, or tells us where we must go; we run away or tell God, as if we were wiser than the Almighty, that those people do not deserve our prayer, our prophecy, our love.  Even more specifically for us who call ourselves Christian, is that we hear the words of Jesus, we know that we are called to be His disciples, and we know that Jesus and the Good News we are called to share, is all about loving one another and loving ourselves.  And yet, when presented with those in our lives who we deem unlovable (sometimes looking in the mirror when we make this austere judgment) we tell God that there has to be another way and this cannot possibly be the “immediately” we are being called to!

Which is why I do not think the passage we have today from Psalms is a prayer in resilience, but rather a prayer of reminder that the Psalmist is almost telling himself as he was writing it, like a mantra for all to remember: “For God alone my soul waits, for my hope is in God.”  “Trust in God at all times.”  “The riches of this world are just that, riches of this world and no matter the estate of a person, God is with them.”  “Power belongs to God; steadfast love belongs to the Lord.” 

See, as much as we pray for our God to be immediate, we must also trust in the timing and the call.  And in this there is not desolation or demise, but hope and love.  Because, God does not give up on the Jonah’s of the world.  God does not stop calling us, God does not stop loving us, and God does not stop presenting us with opportunities to match our calls for immediacy with moments and people of action.  For God knows that the difference between a Jonah and a James, between a person who is running away and someone who will immediately run towards, is a divide that God’s love bridges.

As you are all well aware of, my own life bears this out as a witness to how we are Jonah and how we are James.  For God called me at a young age through a prophetess called my Grandma Ruby to enter into a life of ministry and I ignored the call.  In fact, one could even argue that I ran away from the call trying and seeking and attempting all kinds of other dreams and wants in my life.  And in those moments, God did not abandon me, God did not let me go and forget me.  No, in fact, in many of those moments, God held me even closer and loved me more than I could ever imagine; otherwise, I never would have made it through.  But finally, when the storms of life had cast me upon the shore and I was there bereft and broken, thinking that my God had left me to just drift listlessly through life, God spoke the call again and my immediately began; and I have been stumbling towards ever since…note I said stumbling, for we are not perfect, and sometimes jumping out of the boat means we fall face first into the water!

Immediately

But this is why we have both the Jonah stories and the Good News.  We experience both in our lives and are complex creatures that God knows are complex creatures.  We are both the ones who run away from where we are being called and also the ones who run into the places where God needs us the most.  We are both the person who slams on the horn and yells profanity at the person who cuts them off in traffic and also the person who waits patiently for someone to cross in the crosswalk.  We are both the person who has devoted our lives to following and having faith in God, and the person who when God calls us to action takes a back seat and does nothing. 

Through it all, God is with us.  Through it all God is calling us to share our lives with one another and connect with that which connects us all; God’s love.  Through it all, god is calling us to be so present with one another, and with God, that when we are presented with the very opportunities we asked for, we could respond immediately.

I wish I could say that my wife and I have been able to replicate that dinner from so long ago over and over.  Unfortunately, hurriedness seems to be more of a norm that slowing down and being present.  But that is why we have memories, that is why the Psalmist asks for hope in waiting, that is why we gather on Sundays…for God to remind us of life’s true pace, God’s true call, and the moments when we are so present that we can feel God’s love; to be reminded that we are sent to Nineveh to share the Good News, we are sent to the world to be God’s love, and to be reminded that Jesus is calling us presently, lovingly, immediately, Amen