Tom Schoenherr, September 6, 2015

Pastor Penny, August 23, 2015

May 3, 2015. Pastor Keith preaches on John 15. Jesus is the vine, we're the branches, and God is the gardener. *** Transcript *** We further reflect on this passage in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. It's sometimes difficult, when reading the New Testament in English, to know what is meant by the word "you." We don't have a good way in English to describe a singular "you" from a plural "you," and so sometimes we don't know if we mean a group or one person. A friend of mine has suggested maybe we should always use the word "y'all" for whenever we mean "you" for "bunch of people." Well, today's gospel has one of those "y'all" kinds of meanings when it says "you." When Jesus says, "Abide in me as I abide in you," he means, "You all abide in me." Well when Jesus spoke these words, it wasn't a happy time. It was a meaningful time and a serious time, because he was at the Last Supper with his disciples. It happens early enough in John that Jesus is preparing his disciples for what will happen the next couple of days. He has a long talk, before they break from this Last Supper, go to the Garden of Gethsemane, and he goes on trial. But this speech, including these words "abide in me," is at the heart of it. He's saying as a group they need to remain together. He will remain or abide with them, even as he parts from them, and they are to abide or remain with him. It works both ways. But they are to be close together. And he knows it's going to be a hard time for them, and they will need each other and they will need him. It was hard for them to do right away. Jesus knew how hard it is to keep up this kind of spirit of love and abiding in him. Right away he was betrayed, and right away he was denied. So right after he gave the speech, they were in this risky time and they failed to do that. And so it points out, even for us, how difficult this is to do — to stay close to Jesus and to stay close to one another — given the hardships, the temptations of life, whether we're in a very tense situation, whether we're in a life-threatening situation, or whether we're just in a matter of convenience or public reputation. Maybe it's hard to pronounce, be bold with our Christianity. It can be hard to be a follower of Jesus. He knows we will need his life to support us. We need him. But we are the ones he depends on to get his spirit into the world. When John writes this, some 50 years after this, the issue is before them as much as ever. The question is of tense. There is no Jesus present with them then to ask about it. So they have to remember these words of John and Jesus. What does it mean to be a community of the Christian faith? What does it mean to be a person of the Way, as they called the church in the early days? John is saying that it means being together as a community, and it means being connected to Jesus. They as a group are like a bunch of branches on a grapevine: they have a common source of nourishment, and they're all subject to the vinegrower — the one whose vineyard it is. They produce for the vinegrower, but their branches are so intertwined when they're on the trellis, when they're on the fence, that it's hard to tell them apart, because all the branches get intertwined when you get out to the ends of it where the grapes are. You think about when you have a grapevine you have the basic trunk that comes out of the soil. Then you have the larger branches that come from that. Then you have these vines that go out further and then drop the drapes down. And as it goes out they become smaller and smaller, but the bunches of grapes are large. They're all pretty similar. There's not one that's bigger than another. They all kind of look alike. They are intertwined and it's hard to tell one from another. The clusters of grapes hang down from the various branches, but they're all kind of mixed up together on the vine. The grape picker comes to the vine and picks the one that's closest. He can't stand there a long time and say well, this is the one I want to pick. They just pick them all and put them in the baskets and go on. They're all together there. No one is greater than another. That's the kind of image that John and Jesus want us to have of the church. It's about thinking of the fruit we produce as a community in Christ. But it's not so much about what I produce or you produce. It's what we do together as we live close to the one who gives us life. It's not that I produce fruit for the church or you produce fruit for the church, but we do this together as a community. In the early church there was a lot of duress. Christians weren't normally welcome with the Jews. Nor were they welcome with the Romans. And it's commonly thought that John was in exile as he was writing this. The best way for Christians to make it and to have an impact was to be in community together, and that way they could not just survive but often thrive. They belonged to an organized community shaped by the love of Jesus. What they did as a community was more important than what they did as individuals. As a Christian community, the members were known for the acts of love they did in common with the other members. In those early days they lived together, and then they acted together. They were one community in Christ. When a vine grower looks at the vineyard and the grapevines within it, the target that the vine grower has in mind is a whole target. What will my harvest be this year? How many gallons of grape juice or how many pounds of grapes will I get from this vineyard that I have? The crop will be measured by the overall yield, not by what this plant did or by what that plant did. All of it is together. The gardener will pay attention to each plant during the year so that it's tended to and it's pruned, for the sake of the whole vineyard, so the whole overall yield is good. But the primary concern is the whole crop. And so with the church, each person is tended to by the Lord, and all are equal before the Lord, each producing the fruit. Each has a place in the faith community as a whole, all living with this common goal of living in the style of Jesus, the style of love. All are accountable to the standard of love set by Jesus, making decisions together based on the love that Jesus taught. Jesus paints here a picture of a community of faith, embodying the love of Jesus, acting as a community, producing the fruit of love. The mark of this community lives faithfully and loves the name of Jesus, rather than identifying itself by the individual member saying, well we have this member, we have that member. No, it's about how the church acts together. It's so tempting, so often we hear this passage and think of it in individual terms. We think of it as kind of a motivational shot to get me or you to do more good works, to produce more fruit individually. It's helpful to remember that we are in a vineyard together. God looks at us as a whole vineyard tied together in Jesus. As a whole we produce the fruits of the spirit. We do some individually, and individually we act on behalf of the community of faith. But it's good to step back and take stock of how we are doing together as the vineyard of the Lord. Are we together as a community in Christ doing well at producing the fruit of the spirit in love? Each one of us of course has a place in this vineyard. There are different gifts. There are different circumstances we each have which make a difference on how the love of Jesus is lived out. Some of it is done as members of the church in various life circumstances, with one's family or at work or in the community. Some of it's done though acting in community with others of the congregation, to live out the love of Jesus, doing things like going down to Humanitree or whatever, doing these things together. Just as the vinedresser pays attention to each plant and the vines of the plant, nurtures and prunes that plant as appropriate, so each of us has a responsibility for the good of all to live and act in ways that work for growing the love of Jesus. Well this love of Jesus that we live with and by shows itself in two ways in the congregation, the community of the beloved, as John's community was often called. It's a love that's lived out inside the congregation and outside of the congregation. And it's kind of encapsulated in the vision statement that has been discerned over the last couple years and been adopted by this congregation. And part of that vision statement is to live well within the community of this congregation, to develop meaningful relationships, and to care for one another as a community of people loved by Jesus. But this vision also looks to take this love out and to share the love of Jesus with the surrounding community and reach out to bear fruit in love. When we do this it brings meaning to life, life as it was intended by God, fulfilling our purpose and our need for meaning by producing the fruit of love in the vineyard of God. A news story, I think it was last weekend, of local interest caught my attention. It was about the Magdalene House. Some of you have an association with it, I think have done some work with Magdalene House and know maybe more about its operation than I do. But it is a Christian-based organization which helps young women who are victims of human trafficking to find refuge, and to get out of it and to learn a new way of life. A new shelter is being constructed for this organization in St. Louis. And the topic of the news story was that this new shelter being built had been robbed, and that thieves had come and stole many of the building materials so that the project was hampered in being finished. They couldn't go on. And the young men were apprehended who had taken the stuff, and the normal conclusion was, you would think as the story progressed, that they would be arrested and dealt with by the justice system. But I think the key part of the story was that Magdalene House took a different approach. The thieves were young men of the neighborhood, and the leadership of the house reckoned that the young men were victims too in a sense. Just as they cared for young women who were victims, these were young men, victims of the poverty and the tough life circumstances of their neighborhood. And the house said they need help too and declined to press charges, demonstrating to the young men the same kind of grace and love that they hoped to give to the young women, which is the work that Magdalene House stands for: caring for, helping young people — women normally, in this case men as well. But it was a demonstration of a Christian-based organization, a whole community making a stand, instead of one or two people saying this is what we'll do, acting as a group to say, this is how we are discerning the love of Jesus for us at this place. They acted together. In a way that's what we're talking about this morning. How do we as a congregation, as a group, make decisions that reflect the love of God? There's a yard on the opposite end of the block where we live which I like very much. It has kind of an oriental theme in its landscaping. Both by tree selection and by pruning I would say it's in Japanese style. I've been by it many times and seen it but never noticed before this season how beautiful the redbud tree is in that yard. And it's not just that it's a great burst of lavender and purple and just has lots of flowering buds. But it's pruned in such a way that the shape of the tree is beautiful in itself, with the tree branches very visible themselves. And they in turn enhance the beauty of the redbud blossoms. It's a beautiful sight. The pruning makes the tree's shape nice as it displays the redbuds of this season. Well I think in a way, that tree can kind of capture or symbolize what our gospel's about today. It's a thing of God's beauty to see a congregation live out what it's called to be in Jesus. It has many parts, many people who blossom in different kinds of ways. But the shaping of these people, to serve an overall goal of being beautiful and producing fruit in the eyes of God, requires thoughtful and loving attention. We can be people who come together. We receive the Lord, and then return to blossom in our individual ways. But when Jesus calls us we are really vine together. How do we shape things together as a group? As our community is shaped together, we are that much more effective as ones who inspire others to think: isn't God's vineyard beautiful? I want to be a part of it too. We can do even more together than we do individually. Each one of us as individuals have done personal pruning in our lives. We have habits. We have attitudes that we've let go of so that we can embrace better ones. And we're usually glad about that. We say: I'm glad I left that behind so I can live my life more richly now. We also look at ourselves today and we say: what changes do I need to make even now to make myself a better person, to be a better branch in the vineyard of Jesus? We can do that same kind of pruning as an assessment of our community of faith, too. Are there habits, are there behaviors, attitudes our congregation has let go of that we feel good about, that we've moved to a new place? But in the present we ask what are the habits? What are the behaviors? What are the attitudes now that need to be pruned away, so that we can produce more fruit for the good of God's vineyard? It's never easy to do this. It's always been a challenge for the church. And so often the decisions we make, the decisions that reflect the love of Christ are resisted, because usually it means reaching out to people who aren't popular in other places. The disciples got to know this very well. But it was the resurrected Lord who gave them the promise and the faith and the hope to go forward. In this Easter season, we're reminded of the same Easter promise of the resurrected Lord, who gives us the promise, gives us the hope and the faith so that we can remain in Christ as he remains in us in love, and we can go forward as well. In Jesus' name we pray this will happen. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2015, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Keith Holste, John 15:1-8

March 8, 2015. We're tempted to fall into thinking that our relationship with God is something that we earn. But we know better. We know that God has come to us and given us not only the wonderful gifts of creation, but also the great gift of Jesus. Pastor Keith preaches today on the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. Jesus' body is the new temple, he is with us, and we receive him in the bread. *** Transcript *** On this weekend if we note the 50th anniversary of the march in Selma, Alabama, we know that that first march was met with high resistance — and that further attempts led finally to the completion of the march to Montgomery, and that changes eventually came in the voter rights that the people were seeking. But even though that march was 50 years ago, we hear from today's lesson how prophetic protests in public places are not very new. We know from the Old Testament that prophets like Jeremiah did public actions to bring attention to the waywardness of the people of Israel. And today we hear of Jesus as a protester. Jesus comes to the most visible place in the country — the temple grounds in Jerusalem at the season of high festival — and overturns the tables of the money changers, and drives out all the animals that they had there. And he speaks about this too. At Passover time, these are very critical things to have going on: you needed to have the sheep there to have the proper sacrifices for Passover. And the rule was that you needed to change your money from impure Roman money to the right kind of money to be acceptable in the temple, to make the exchange, so you could buy your sheep, so you could have your sacrifice. So, both these things that were going on were important to keep the Jewish festival in this holiest of Jewish places. Yet Jesus disrupts both of these things at the highest time of the year. He criticizes deeply what's going on and what they're doing, and announces that he is the key to a new way of relating to God, a new way of worship, and a new way of community. To make the point about Jesus is about new beginnings, the gospel writer John puts this at the beginning of his gospel. It's already in Chapter 2 of the Gospel of John. Jesus has only done one miracle before this: changing the water to wine at a wedding. In the other gospels this incident is at the end pretty much of Jesus' life, as it's the thing that really gets people angry so that they want to kill him and crucify him. John wants his readers to know from the beginning that Jesus is about new things, doing things in a new way. The changing of water to wine right before this shows that Jesus can do greater things. They were using ordinary water, but he changes that water into wine, showing the extravagance of God's love, and how he brings better quality to things. And the water that they're using for purification at this point, he says we can do better than that. He says, there's something greater than their purification rite. It has to do with the wine. And the criticism and the challenging the ways of the temple, along with his statements about who he is as the new temple himself, moves all this ahead dramatically. Times were changing. It's a new beginning. Everything is new with Jesus. Well, to look at the challenges and then the replacements that Jesus offers, let's kind of divide this into three things. First, it is the trading that's going on in the temple grounds. Here in John's gospel, Jesus doesn't criticize the morality of the people saying that they're cheaters or anything like that. What he's objecting to is the religious system and the temple system that reduces the high holy days to matters of doing the right things with money and animals to satisfy God. This turns a relationship with God into kind of a bartering process. It's something that you do to try to stay on God's good side, rather than to be in a loving relationship with God, realizing that all good things come from God and that God is extravagant in giving good things. It's about responding. It's supposed to be about responding and thanksgiving and gratefulness, rather than being a time to try to earn favor with God. Well, this tendency is something that has continued through the ages and continues even into our time. We're so tempted always to fall into this thinking that our relationship with God is something that we earn, it's about earning a place, being good enough so that God will regard us well. We know better. We know that God has come to us and given us not only the wonderful gifts of creation, but also the great gift of Jesus. As Jesus says, Jesus is the new temple. And he brings with that the new way of doing things, the gift to us of his raised body and the promise of life with God is a most wonderful thing that is promised to us. All this comes with Jesus. And just like the wine is way better than the water, so Jesus is way better than the temple system that was there before. But we know how tempting it is to fall back into this kind of bartering system with God, this marketplace idea. And it's tempting for us and it was tempting in Luther's day too. We know that Luther began to see that the church in his day was kind of in this barter relationship with God. He saw people around him literally paying money to the church to be given the promise of the forgiveness of sins. So he wrote and put up a written protest on (we might call the Facebook of the day) the church door, to tell people this wasn't right. He'd seen enough of this bartering. He lived through it, you might say in himself and the monastery, where he would punish his body at night. He did excruciating things to his body to try to earn favor with God, because that was the prevailing theology of the day. But then he realized in his studies that the Bible was telling of a different way, the way of grace and God's love and God's receiving people to himself. But we know how easy it is to bring that marketplace economy into our own thinking too. And sometimes in this Lenten season, we're most prone to that. We think in terms of giving things up so that God will like us more. We know that there are ways, good ways, to think about that, to give things up, and to be more disciplined in this season so that we can think more about God's goodness to us. Or somehow have a deeper relationship with God. Or maybe strengthen our relationships with other people in the world. They're all good things we can do in Lent as we give things up. But it's part of our human nature, to think that if I'm doing these good things, or if I'm giving this thing up, God likes me more. Some of you may know a friend of mine Steve Albertin, who is a pastor in metro Indianapolis and has some relationships with this congregation, and happens to be serving a congregation in Zionsville (but in the Indianapolis area) called Christ Lutheran Church too. I've never seen them, but he tells me in this congregation that they have T-shirts for their Christ Lutheran Church that say, "Christ Lutheran, where you get to..." They are adamant in making the point that our good deeds are not what we do to earn God's favor, but what we do in our joy because God has favored us with the love of Jesus. So we get to do all kinds of things. And it's interesting, on his Church website you can get to a whole sheet of about 10 or 12 things — things we get to do at Christ Lutheran in Zionsville. It's much more of a joy and privilege to serve the Lord than it is to see it as a duty that we do for God's favor. The second thing we learn from Jesus' protest of what was going on in the temple is that what is central is he, not the temple. It's widely thought that when John wrote these words, the temple had already been destroyed by the Romans. So the first hearers of the Gospel of John probably would have said yeah, the temple is gone and now Jesus, the new temple, has risen — and what is important is to worship him. And that's probably part of the reason why John writes these words the way he does. As I said to the children, Jesus is everywhere and not localized at any one place. And so the Christian church needed to hear this word. They could be okay without the temple. Because wherever Jesus was, wherever they were together in Jesus' name, there God was. On Ascension day, that's the main thing that we celebrate: that Jesus has ascended to heaven so that he can be everywhere, with everyone in the world. And he says wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. So, our presence around him is what makes us be in worship — not to be in any certain building. Churches can be handy. They can even be inspiring (church buildings that is) but they aren't the main thing about our relationship with God. Jesus says that as the one in Jerusalem will be demolished, what raises in its place is his body. And that's what's important. The third thing we learn from this protest of Jesus about the temple is that even as the temple was the main place for the Jews to gather, to come together on holy days, Jesus now says we gather about him. We call ourselves as a church. We say we're the body of Christ. His body is risen, and we are his body as well, as we call ourselves the body of Christ. As we are gathered about his word, as we receive his meal together, as we are baptized in his name, we're in union with him. We're one with him and with one another. We can hold hands with one another, saying we're all together in him. It's widely thought that many Jewish groups in older days would all face the direction of Jerusalem when they worshipped together, much like the Muslims do today when they face Mecca when they pray together. But for Jesus there is no one holy place. He is the Holy One, and where people gather in his name, that's a holy place for those people. Because he is there. The community of people gathered about him is the important thing — not the place, not the building where that occurs. You may have seen in yesterday's Post Dispatch a front-page article about Sister Antona Ebo. Fifty years ago she was working as a nun at St. Mary's Infirmary for the African Americans in St. Louis, and she was asked to be part of a delegation from St. Louis that would go down to Selma, Alabama to the second march, following the Bloody Sunday march. And she did so. She went with them. She's now 90 years old, and she was telling about that experience in the article. But she also tells in the article about her childhood growing up in Bloomington, Illinois. Her mother died when she was very young, so she was placed in the McLean County Home For Colored Children in Bloomington, along with her brother and her sister, at a very young age. Her family had been raised Baptist, and that was her religion. But she met a boy who was Roman Catholic in this children's home. But he couldn't exercise his Catholicism because they forbade him from going to the Catholic Church. But one day she and he were out and there was a Catholic church open. So they snuck into the Catholic Church themselves, and she listened as this boy told her the Catholic faith and doctrine, including the phrase that she remembered: Jesus is in the bread. She was taken by this and became a Catholic herself, she says because of this theology of the Eucharist. When she was 18 she converted to Catholicism. In the 1950s she became one of the Franciscan sisters of St. Mary. She continues to be active and will be leading a vigil on Tuesday sometime in Ferguson. But what I want to highlight from this very short biography is the life-changing lesson she learned from that boy who was with her: Jesus is in the bread. Jesus says in our text that his body is the new temple. We also know that he gives us his body, in the bread of the Eucharist. When we receive him in our communities of faith, we're with him in a new temple. He's with us, and we receive him in the bread. We're all together in him. He is in our midst as we're gathered around his word, and sometimes we highlight that — on Easter and other special Sundays, when we read the word out in the middle of the congregation, to say we're all gathered about him. He is the center. Wood and masonry are nice, but gathered around him is the important thing. Jesus said the temple had become the marketplace. In his body religion is restored. It becomes a gathering of people, gathered about him in thanksgiving, receiving him with joy in the bread, and going forth then to share the word about him and to share him in deeds with other people. Amen. Now, may the peace of God which passes all human understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. *** Keywords *** 2015, Christ Lutheran Church, Webster Groves, sermon, podcast, transcript, Pastor Keith Holste, John 2:13-22