February 17, 2019. Jim Bennett's sermon today is about the call to discipleship of Isaiah, Peter, and Paul, and how each of them responded. How have we heard that call? And how have we responded? *** Transcript *** Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, today you're hearing a sermon that I intended to preach last Sunday. I'm getting the feeling that maybe Mother Nature never wanted me to deliver this sermon, but I hope none of you feel the same way after you hear it. But I have to admit, right from the start of this message, that I'm not a fisherman. I've never enjoyed fishing. I can remember as a little boy my father taking my older brothers and me to Lake Springfield, about a hundred miles north of here, and trying to teach us to catch fish. I never caught a thing. It was so boring. So I can relate to Peter in our gospel lesson today, when it says he and his fellow fishermen came in after a long night of fishing with empty nets. They didn't catch a thing either. And they were professionals. Now I realize, in sharing my lack of enthusiasm for fishing, I risk alienating some of our good church members who enjoy drowning worms and telling great fish stories, real or imagined, about the ones that got away. However, as much as I try, there is no way of escaping the topic today as our gospel reading is baiting us to engage the more contemporary significance of the story about how Peter became a disciple of Jesus. And the theme of responding to God's call is also echoed in our first lesson -- the call of the prophet Isaiah -- and in our epistle lesson where Paul recounts his conversion from being a persecutor of Jesus' followers to one who proclaimed the Gospel. So the lure is unmistakable. At our time in history, when researchers are telling us that fewer and fewer people are hearing and responding to the call to become disciples or followers of Jesus, perhaps a closer look at today's readings might help us better understand why that might be the case, and also be instructive as to how we might impact that trend. First I'd like to take a closer look at our lessons, and point out some of the similarities that are found in these three readings, and then secondly to talk about how they offer different perspectives about how one might respond to the call of discipleship. And thankfully, we have more options than just fishing. Most of you know that I was a hospital chaplain for 25 years. And one of the opportunities I had in that vocation was to encounter and learn about many different faith perspectives that allowed me to compare and contrast them with my own. Now educated as a Lutheran Christian and as a pastor, I was well-indoctrinated with an orthodox theology that helped me understand that I needed Jesus in my life, because of my human shortcomings. No matter how hard I try, my humanness gets in the way of being the kind of person God wants me to be. Now, the three characters in our lessons today -- Isaiah, Peter, and Paul -- when confronted with the call to follow, each responded similarly: with fear and a confession that they were less than perfect men. Isaiah responded to God's call by saying, "Woe is me. I am a man with unclean lips." Paul, in his letter to the Corinthian Church, recounted his place in the hierarchy of apostles saying, "I am the least of apostles, unfit to be called an apostle." And Peter, in our gospel when he realized he was in the presence of God and Jesus, called out, "Depart from me. I am a sinful man, O Lord." So the common theme in all of our lessons today points out that to be a follower of Jesus meant that I must acknowledge my sinfulness and humble myself before the Lord. That's why each Sunday, I take part in reciting the confession and receiving absolution, and taking part in the grace of God that comes to us through the sacrament of Holy Communion. Doing all of that doesn't make me better than anyone else. It just reminds me of my need for God in my life and makes me more grateful that God forgives my sins. Martin Luther reminds us that as Christians, we are both saint and sinner at the same time. In our current culture outside of our churches on Sunday mornings, it's hard to find good public examples of humility and gratefulness that inspire faith in God. That might be because we too often privatize our faith on one hand, or perhaps we elevate it as something special and put it on public display, when really humility and gratefulness and faith might otherwise inspire action. Maybe, to use another fishing analogy, we choose to stay on the dock or fish from the safety of shore, or maybe we pride ourselves with the most expensive bass boat with all the technology and then show off with the size of our catch. If we do that, rather than putting on our waders and getting out into deeper water and simply do the work of God, we are missing that opportunity. Now, we saw just a glimpse of these characteristics of humility and gratefulness and trust being put into action a few weeks ago, in the news cycle during our government shutdown, when restauranteurs and business owners and agencies and volunteers were moving to action to help those who were furloughed and not receiving paychecks. There were reports of great generosity and humility and gratitude. And now that the government has reopened and individuals are now receiving those paychecks, there's less reporting of that activity. And I'd like to think that that activity is continuing, but just not being recognized on national TV. God knows there are still plenty of people without work, without food, without homes. But you see, that is the thing. Recognizing my need for having God in my life, and knowing that my sins are forgiven, is really only half the story in our lessons today. Believe it or not, it was the easy half: acknowledging one's sinfulness and need for God in our lives is the easy half, because cheap grace would tell us that that's all we need to do, is acknowledge it and receive it. But if we're going to exercise that grace, we have to hear the more costly message in our gospel lesson. It's about how we respond, once we've recognized that need for God in our lives. And again, our lessons are illustrative of how we might learn from Isaiah and Peter, each responding differently after recognizing their call. Isaiah was already a court prophet. Now in Isaiah's days, there were many different kinds of prophets. And in his day the court prophets were the kinds of prophets who worked for the government, and simply told the king what the king wanted to hear. We probably still have some of those kinds of prophets in our day. But we hear that Isaiah was at risk, if he were trying to bring the king closer to God. He could have not only lost his job, but he could have lost his head. But Isaiah stayed true to his calling and remained a court prophet after receiving his call to discipleship. Now in the same way, I suppose when you or I respond to God's call to discipleship we might continue in our same profession. We might live in the same place. We might do many of the same things. But we also might do some things differently. Our motives and our values may change. We might witness to our call to discipleship by being better stewards of our environment, or our resources. Our gratitude or humility might lead to more acts of kindness, or lead to involvement in volunteerism or social justice issues. This kind of discipleship is epitomized, I believe, in the words of the good Roman Catholic St. Benedict, when he proclaimed to his hearers, "Preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words." What he was saying is that the way we live our lives can speak volumes. Today, St. Benedict might have been known as an environmentalist. Now in contrast to Isaiah's response to God's call, Peter's call to discipleship led him to respond differently. He left his former profession as a fisherman to become a fisher of people. Jesus later taught that Peter did that so well that he was going to choose Peter to be the rock on which he would build his church. In the generations of followers since Peter, we've had varying degrees of success in building the church. We struggled sometimes to understand what it means to be an evangelical church, charged with sharing the Good News of Christ as if it was more like a fishing derby, requiring a certain technique or a secret science around how or where to fish, and what bait or lure to use, to reel in the biggest catch. But perhaps this is where this analogy between discipleship and fishing needs to break down, because I don't believe that Christians, as followers of God, can be hooked like fish. The success or failure of building our church, or of witnessing to God's love, will not depend on gimmicks that lure people by using the right bait or catching them in nets. 21st Century Christians cannot be captured. Our confession today talked about how we instead have been captured by sin, but we cannot be captured into staying here at 8:00am or at 10:30am every Sunday morning. I haven't checked lately, but I don't think they lock the doors when you come in for church so that you can't leave. But we have, I think, need to adopt a newer philosophy. I call it "Catch and Release." The love of God can catch us, and then we are released to share that Good News with others. In scripture, the Apostle Paul tells us that faith comes from hearing. The church of Jesus Christ calls us to be disciples, and in some cases like Peter, to leave whatever we're doing to become followers, to share the Gospel in word and deed, or responding to God's call by changing our priorities or values. What we hear and experience is God loves us, and that our shortcomings are forgiven, and that there is a community of faith that cares about one another and about all of God's creation. So today, Isaiah, Paul, and Peter hear the call to discipleship and respond. How have you heard that call? How have you responded? Are we going to fish or cut bait? Amen. *** Keywords *** 2019, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Jim Bennett, Isaiah 6:1-8, A Vision of God in the Temple, Luke 5:1-11, Jesus Calls the First Disciples, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, The Resurrection of Christ

June 3, 2018. Our sermon today is from Jim Bennett, who is a hospital chaplain. He preaches on the metaphor of earthen vessels, healing, and how leaving the hospital is like leaving church on a Sunday morning: you come out better than when you went in. *** Transcript *** Grace and peace to you from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Now, some of you may be thinking to yourselves, "What is he doing up there?" I have to tell you that's a question that's gone through my mind a few times this week too. I'm a pastor. I'm a Lutheran Pastor who's served congregations for about ten years, before I responded to what I felt was God's call for me to move into chaplaincy ministry, and eventually education. And so it's been many years since I've preached a sermon, contrary to what my wife tells me every now and then. But when I was contacted and asked to preach today, I was a little nervous because I'm out of practice. And so that's why I'm going to stay up here in the pulpit. The pulpit's nice and protective. But I was also really excited when I read the lessons for today, because the lessons are just filled with great preaching themes. You know, we have the gospel lesson where Jesus heals the withered hand of a man in the temple. We have the Old Testament lesson that depicts God bringing God's people out of slavery in Egypt with a mighty hand. And in our second lesson, God has bestowed a treasure in earthen vessels. And the psalm, "You called out in distress and I delivered you." Great preaching themes. But there's an overarching theme that I really want to focus on today, and it follows what I said with the children this morning about the people of God being the church, and how God cares for his people. That ought to be reassuring, right? It is for me, most of the time. Yet if we read the entire second lesson that Paul was sharing with the people in the Corinthian Church, he goes on to write as servants for Jesus' sake we are afflicted, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are struck down, but not forgotten. So even as we may be reassured that God cares for us, we may not always feel that care in a way that we expected or hoped. And that is exactly where a lot of my ministry comes into play. I try to show people that God cares, when they don't really feel that God cares, when they feel perplexed or afflicted, when they feel struck down or when they're persecuted. Because you and I and many of the people that I minister to, we are these earthen vessels. Earthen vessels. I noticed in the lesson today that the version of this translation said we are clay jars. And you know, I was thinking about earthen vessels and clay jars, and which would be a better metaphor today. Last evening my wife and I and some friends went to the Webster art show at Webster University in Eden Seminary. And my wife and I are always drawn to the artists that do clay jars. They have earthen vessels there, and they're beautiful. And we always think about perhaps buying a piece or two. And as I was there I remembered the second lesson for today, that we are like earthen vessels. You know that earthenware is very durable, but sometimes it gets cracked. Sometimes it may get broken, chipped. And it wears out over time. That's like the metaphor of our bodies as earthen vessels, that sometimes we abuse our bodies, or over time they're worn out. And we are breakable. So when those parts wear out or we break, we need to be fixed. And it's amazing to me. I think about when those body parts wear out or we need a new part. (I myself have had a knee replacement. And I know of others here who've had the same, or a hip replacement. Some of you may even have had an organ transplant.) I'm simply amazed that when our bodies are broken, they can be repaired. There are times when I converse with others and the topic of vocation comes up and people say, "What is it that you do?" And I say I'm a hospital chaplain. And they look at me and say that must be a really tough job. And I say to them, sometimes it is. But you have to keep in mind that many more people leave the hospital in better shape than they arrived in, than otherwise. And you know, I feel kind of the same way about church on Sunday morning. When I come here to worship, sometimes I'm still a little bit asleep and I'm not too sure about things. But I always leave church better than when I first arrived. More often than not, when I see people in the hospital they are hoping for healing. Some of them may even hope for a miracle. But healing miracles today are more often performed by modern medicine. We place our trust in the wisdom and knowledge of God as bestowed on physicians. Yet healing is a process that even modern medicine is not an exact science. So I have found that people of God may be challenged when those purveyors of modern miracles acknowledge that nothing more can be done to heal or to make one whole. Now, there are times when people then turn to God and they want a miracle more like what occurred in our gospel lesson today. The section of Mark. If you had read earlier portions of Mark you might realize that our gospel lesson today comes at a time after Jesus had performed many healing miracles. He had cast out demons. He had healed the leper and a paralytic. And you may remember that one of the titles that Jesus was known by was the Great Physician, because he healed people. Jesus was God. But today, even though we have some very talented physicians whose work sometimes seems miraculous, they are not God. We wait for the Good News to come to us from God to proclaim a miracle like Jesus did. Healing a withered hand. Or, as the writer of Deuteronomy says, God brought you out of the land of Egypt. Or the psalmist, "In distress you called and I delivered you." A responsive God that seems to answer our every need. But then I'm reminded of an old tune as a child that I became familiar with. It's about Humpty Dumpty. And it says Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. So where is God when we need God most? Jesus taught us that, "Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there with you." I didn't ask the children today in the children's sermon where they thought God was. It might have been interesting to hear some of those responses. It might have been a bit too confusing, but I can ask you: where is God? If you think about it, maybe you'll come to the conclusion that it's not as confusing as one might first think. Where is God? Actually God is right here. When I'm doing my other job as an usher here on a Sunday morning, or when I'm reading the lessons, or when I'm taking up the collection -- you know ushers have the responsibility of counting the number of worshippers on a Sunday morning, and I'm in the practice when I'm doing that at the end -- I always add the number three. Why would I do that? I add the father. Why would I do that? Yes, because of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I'm not just padding the attendance record. It's theologically sound! Just think about it: God is with us on Sunday morning. And God is not with us just on Sunday morning. God is with us wherever two or more are gathered in God's name. A few weeks ago the church celebrated the holy day of the Ascension of the Lord. It's when Jesus was taken up into heaven. The disciples were worried that when Jesus would go away they would be left alone. But Jesus told his disciples not to worry because he would be sending them the Holy Spirit. Another name for the holy spirit is the Great Comforter. And the Great Comforter, the Holy Spirit, would be with them. Now, the Holy Spirit has a role in our lives as well. Just like it's been a long time since I've preached, it's also been a long time since I taught confirmation. So I may need some help from some of you. In terms of what we learn about the role of the Holy Spirit In our lives, any recent confirmations here who can name off the four or five things the Holy Spirit does for us? Uh oh, somebody in the back. Yell it out. What does the Holy Spirit do? Okay. The Holy Spirit calls us. The Holy Spirit gathers us. The Holy Spirit enlightens us. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us, and keeps us. The five things: calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps. All of you coming up for confirmation, remember. That's a good thing to remember. It's good Lutheran theology. But I practice my ministry in a setting that is multi-faith or no faith at all. So I don't serve just Lutherans anymore. So I practice what we call more of a practical theology. And there is, in practical theology, several roles that God serves. And that is to sustain us, and to guide us, and to reconcile us, and to heal us. These are actions that show that God cares. Now, I have to admit if my loved one was sick and they could not be made whole again, I would expect the function of God's healing to take place. And if it didn't I would be angry about that. In our lesson today, Jesus was angry at the Pharisees. Well, I would expect I would be angry. Any one of you probably would as well. But once I could move past my anger, my hope and prayer would be that God would sustain me or God might guide me or God might in some way reconcile me to those I love. Those would be actions that God could show God's care. In my years of ministry, I have witnessed great resilience and courage, both in parishioners and patients who may be in pain or suffering for days and and weeks, and maybe even years, waiting for God's healing. Or maybe knowing that that healing may not take place. And sometimes I talk with people who feel hopeless. Hopelessness can be a disease. It can be a disease almost as bad as many others that we are aware of. It can lead us to despair. So I sometimes tell people as sincerely as possible that as a pastor, my chief title is I'm in the hope business. I'm in the Hope business. Now, I don't mean that I'm going to try to dispense some pie-in-the-sky hope. But what I try to do is to resurrect hope -- that hope that is within us, the hope that is what Paul talks about in our second lesson, the treasure that is in earthen vessels. You know in Corinthians, Paul talks about faith, hope, and love. These are treasures that we possess within us as earthen vessels. We all have it but sometimes it needs to be resurrected. Those earthen vessels that may be afflicted but remember, Paul said, not crushed. May be perplexed but not driven to despair. May be persecuted but not forsaken. Or struck down but not forgotten. God will not leave us alone. When we pray to God, we often want God to change things. And sometimes God does change things, but sometimes God changes people. And that's what happens when I come here on Sunday morning. I am changed. I leave better than when I arrived. I teach as part of my ministry. I just recently completed a class on pastoral care skills for community clergy, and one of the clergymen who was enrolled in the class, he was a pastor in the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. That pastor's denomination is known to have a rather conservative theology. And part of the training of these clergy who come to me, they are required to visit patients in the hospital. And six months ago when his training began, the pastor wrote that "I've always worked toward the goal of ministry where a person is brought to their knees to the point of asking Jesus into their heart so miracles can take place." Well, I want to reassure you, I would never allow him to do that to patients in the hospital. But that is the mindset in which he entered this training. But when he left just a few weeks ago, he wrote something very different that almost brought tears to my eyes. He wrote, "In the end, the most important things in life have been relationships with people." In the end, the most important things in life have been relationships with people. And I believe if we look at our lessons again for today, God feels the same way. God cares for God's people. God is with God's people. And we are the church together. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2018, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Jim Bennett