Sermons – House of Prayer

Pentecost 18 C
October 9, 2022
Made Known in the Breaking of the Bread

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Pentecost 18 C October 9, 2022

Genesis 28:10-17 Pastor Susan Henry

Romans 12:1-5 House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Luke 24:28-35 Hingham MA

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Made Known in the Breaking of the Bread

When my parents made the eight-hundred-mile trip from Salem, Ohio to Northfield, Minnesota to bring me to St. Olaf for my freshman year, at about mile seven hundred and ninety-nine, my father cleared his throat and said, “Now, you know the difference between right and wrong . . . .” What I knew was that I didn’t want to hear whatever came after that, so I shut the conversation down by obnoxiously saying, “Hey, if you think you did a good job raising me, I don’t what you’re worried about.” In retrospect, I’m mortified by that.

Only later – maybe only now – do I have some empathy for my parents’ last-ditch effort to ensure that I’d be okay on my own. Did I have my priorities straight? When I was in a place I’d never been before, would I make good decisions? When they weren’t nearby, would I thrive or would I crash and burn? They were worried about me, concerned for me, anxious about what would be happening eight hundred miles away from them.

This embarrassing memory showed up about a month ago, maybe to discourage me from doing today what my parents tried to do many years ago. I have found myself tempted to make sure I didn’t leave out anything of critical importance to you. I want you to be grounded in faith, to thrive, to be courageous and creative as you find yourselves in a new place – a place where we won’t be together.

I caught myself worrying about what I might have left out or neglected in my preaching of the gospel. Did I remind you often enough that you are beloved of God? Did enough stories from scripture make their home in your hearts so that you can draw on them to make meaning in your lives and so you can listen for God’s leading through them? Can you sense when Jesus is loving you out of something or loving you into something? What did I miss? What should I clarify or correct in the very last sermon I’ll preach to you?

Well, what a rabbit hole that was! In truth, to quote King Lear, “That way lies madness.” Fortunately for you, God seems to have released me from my perceived need to preach some imaginary, perfect, last sermon. Really, God seems to have said, an ordinary sermon will do.

When I let you know that I would be retiring, I reminded you that God was with you before I came, God has been with us while we have been together, and God will be with you after I go. The first reading today includes the verse that I’ve written in the Bibles we give to our second graders: “[God said,] Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Jacob was in a place he’d never been before and he was anxious about the future. In a dream, God stood beside him and made that promise. It's for you and for me, too, wherever we go.

In our readings today, I included a passage from Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome. One of those verses came up during the council’s discernment work, and it might be a guiding verse for the weeks and months ahead as you prepare to call a new pastor. Paul encouraged the community of believers to “not be conformed to this world” – a world that measures what matters in terms of quantities and dollar signs and influence. Instead, he counsels the faithful to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” One of the excellent things about being the Lutheran kind of Christian is that we don’t have to check our brains at the door. It serves us well as people of faith to ask questions, to live with doubt, to tolerate ambiguity and paradox, and, without being tied to a literal interpretation, to study the scriptures together. That way lies the potential for growth and transformation and renewal that will align, as best you can discern, with what God desires for this congregation.

Our gospel reading today includes only the end of a story we usually hear during the Easter season, so let me remind you of what has happened. On Easter morning, at dawn, the women come to Jesus’ tomb and discover that the stone has been rolled away. They are perplexed when they don’t find the body of Jesus there. When two men in dazzling clothes ask them why they are looking for the living among the dead, they are terrified. They are told, “He is not here, but has risen,” and they get reminded of all that Jesus had told them. When they return and tell the disciples what they have seen and heard, nobody believes them. What they report is dismissed as not the least bit credible. Peter does go to the tomb, finds it empty just as they said, and goes home afterwards, amazed by it all.

That same evening two of Jesus’ followers leave Jerusalem and head home to Emmaus, a village about seven miles away. As they talk about all that has happened over the past few days, Jesus joins them, but they don’t recognize him. He asks them what they’ve been discussing, which stops them in their tracks. Looking sad, they ask if he’s the only person who doesn’t know about the things that have gone on the past few days. When he asks, “What things?” Cleopus says, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word,” and then Cleopus describes the arrest and the death of Jesus. He says, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” And then he tells Jesus what the women experienced at the tomb and what they reported to the others.

Jesus replies, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” And then, as they walk together, he opens the scriptures to them, connecting all the dots that point to him.

When they get close to Emmaus and to their home, and it looks like Jesus is continuing on down the road, they invite him to stay with them. “It’s almost evening and the day’s practically over,” they say. “Stay with us,” they pretty much insist. And so he does. He accepts their hospitality, and when supper is ready and they are together at the table, Jesus – as though he himself is the host and not the guest -- takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. And in an instant, they recognize him as the risen Jesus, and he vanishes from their sight.

Despite the hour and despite the seven-mile walk, they return to Jerusalem and to the other friends and followers of Jesus. They find them all confirming what the women had said and talking about how Jesus has appeared to Simon Peter. The two from Emmaus tell how their hearts were on fire as Jesus talked with them on the road and “how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

Tradition and most artwork portrays the two as men, but it seems to me more likely that they are husband and wife. Only one, Cleopus, is named, while the other is not -- perhaps because women are much less often named in scripture. The couple invites the stranger who has walked with them to come home with them, to stay and accept their hospitality. In my office, I have a large print of an icon of this story. I love it because one of the two whom Jesus joins on the road to Emmaus and at the table is a man and the other is a woman. Jesus opens the scriptures to both of them. He reveals himself to both in the breaking of the bread. You have a place in this story, and I do, too. In that icon, we can see ourselves in the good company of Jesus on the road and at the table.

What I think I will miss most of all when I am no longer your pastor is the privilege of presiding at the table, of remembering with you how Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread that still reveals his presence among us. When you come with your hands and hearts open to receive what Jesus so freely gives, I get to say, “The body of Christ, given for you.” For you. For each of you and for all of you and for me, as well.

As we take to heart God’s promise to keep us wherever we go, and as we seek to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, we also get to just come empty and be filled. We come hungry and are fed, no questions asked. We come as we are, content or questioning or weary or just a mess, and Jesus says, “Here, this is for you.” It’s just grace upon grace at Jesus’ table.

To proclaim that in this ordinary sermon is enough – and more than enough. It has been a great privilege to proclaim the grace of God made known in Word and sacrament, in scripture and water and wine and bread, as your pastor for the last fourteen years. As you continue to “receive what you are – the body of Christ,” may you become ever more fully and faithfully what you receive.

Amen

Pentecost 17 C / Proper 22
October 2, 2022
How Much Is Enough?

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Pentecost 17 C / Proper 22 October 2, 2022

1 Corinthians 3:4-9 Pastor Susan Henry

Luke 17:6-10 House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Hingham MA

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

How Much Is Enough?

At Bible study this week, after we read today’s gospel, a couple of us remembered that we once wore jewelry with a tiny mustard seed enclosed in a little transparent sphere. A quick search reveals that you can buy all manner of mustard seed jewelry today, too. One necklace, a narrow, dime-sized ring of silver, has an outline of a mountain with a real mustard seed in the space below it. Relatively speaking, it’s a pretty big seed and a very tiny mountain, which makes mountain-moving faith actually seem possible. Jesus’ startling image here in Luke’s gospel is, shall we say, a bigger reach. He says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.’”

Granted, Jesus is a master of hyperbole, but all I’ve ever taken from that observation about faith is that I clearly don’t have enough. No trees will get plucked up by their roots so they can make themselves at home in the ocean if it depends on my faith. Maybe you know what I mean.

Those who are closest to Jesus elicited that response when they said to him, “Increase our faith!” Increase our faith – exclamation point! So -- why do they ask for more faith than they have? Because, on this journey toward Jerusalem and to the cross, Jesus has been teaching them about what it means to follow him, what it means for them to live as he would have them live. To love God more than anything – more than their possessions, their wealth, their power, or their own desires. To love their neighbors. To be compassionate. To do justice. To get their priorities in line with God’s own priorities. It’s a lot.

And in the verses just before today’s gospel, he tells them to be careful not to stumble along the way – and woe to them if they’re the cause of somebody else’s stumbling. He insists that if someone sins against them and genuinely seeks their forgiveness, they need to forgive, even if that happens a bunch of times in a single day. Well, if they’re pondering their flaws and their dumb decisions and their possibly-negative influence on other people’s behavior, no wonder they ask for more faith. If they’re remembering how annoying or unkind their sibling or spouse or neighbor can be and considering how many times a day Jesus might expect them to offer forgiveness when it’s asked for, no wonder they say, “’Increase our faith!’ Increase our faith because we think this is more than we can do with the little bit of faith we’ve got.” We might be able to relate to that. How much faith do we need to live as friends and followers of Jesus? Do we have enough?

When pollsters ask people about how much money is “enough,” no matter how much people make or have, “enough” is almost inevitably “a little more than I have.” If pollsters asked us how much faith is “enough,” maybe we’d answer, “a little more than I have.” We might think we have to work on that or come up with that increase in faith on our own. Jesus’ closest followers don’t seem to make that mistake, but they do think that what they have isn’t enough.

But what if it is? What if a little bit of faith suffices? What if faith like the tiniest seed – the kind that a mere breath of air lifts and carries – is enough? Maybe we’re called to stop bemoaning our lack of faith and instead live out the little bit of faith we do have. What Jesus asks of us is that we have compassion, that we share, that we forgive, that we love as we are loved -- that we who are made in the image of God live as though that’s really true.

One of the joys in being the Lutheran kind of Christian is that we understand faith as a gift. It’s the Holy Spirit’s work in us at our baptism and throughout our lives. It’s not our own doing. And even if it feels like we only have a little faith – the teeniest, tiniest bit of faith – it is enough and more than enough to move us in little ways to share, to love, to forgive, to be truly human.

Writer Heather King ponders Therese of Lisieux’s “little way” of faith as she lived in a cloistered community in the late 1800s. King describes how Therese “stifled her almost compulsive desire to turn around and glare at the nun behind her in choir who made a clicking noise (apparently by tapping her rosary against her teeth.” Instead, Therese decided to imagine that the sound was “music to Christ’s ear,” which surely was an act of faith. She wrote, “When I am feeling nothing . . . then is the moment for seeking opportunities, nothings, which please Jesus . . . . For example, a smile, a friendly word when I would want to say nothing or put on a look of annoyance.”

King found herself wondering how this might apply in her own life. She writes, “I began to see the almost superhuman strength required to refrain from, say, repeating a juicy bit of gossip, or rolling my eyes, or allowing my voice to get harsh when I was upset. I began to sense as well that, just because they’re so difficult, such acts perhaps do more good than we can ever know. Standing patiently in line helped the other people in line to be patient as well. Blessing the other person in traffic, even though nobody heard or saw, somehow encouraged someone else to bless the next person.” There was nothing particularly heroic about doing these little things, but they were intentional acts of love and a living out of faith. Even a little faith.

In the second part of today’s reading, Jesus tells what seems to me a pretty joyless story about a master and an enslaved person. We’re still coming to terms with our country’s history of slavery, so this feels like a problematic text, and I’m not sure what to do with it. If Jesus is telling this story to remind us that we shouldn’t expect stars in our crown, to speak, for doing what we’re meant to do, I guess I get that. We love and serve God and our neighbors not so we’ll be recognized and applauded for it, and not because we think we’re climbing some ladder to heaven, but because we’re called to it as a way of life. Our little bit of faith helps sustain us and encourage us in the daily-ness of life at work and at school and at home.

In this little story, it sounds like drudgery, though. Just plod through your day, do what the boss says needs done, and don’t get full of yourself over just doing what you’re supposed to do. If this is supposed to be an incentive to live a life of faith and obedience, it’s not very alluring. I’ll say, “Thanks, but no thanks” to identifying myself (or any of you) as a “worthless slave.” However, here, “worthless” might better be understood as not being owed anything or as not being worthy, which opens up the story a little. The love we receive from God isn’t because we deserve it, it’s because God has just decided to love us. That’s the nature of grace. The faith we have – whether a lot or a little -- comes as a gift, not because we earned it. It seems to me that being loved when we’re not very lovable and getting to live by faith and not by works ought to fill us with joy.

In truth, I think they do fill us with joy. As a community of faith, to have compassion, to share, to love, to live justly, and to forgive is life-giving! I’ve got fourteen years’ worth of examples of how a lot of grace and even a little faith continues to move us closer to living as Jesus would have us live. It was a not-so-little thing for this congregation to see itself as a teaching congregation, a community of faith that has helped prepare six interns for service as pastors in the wider church. No drudgery, lots of joy.

It's a not-so-little thing to have, over the years, deepened our relationships with others who do God’s work in the world: Father Bill’s, Ascentria, Wellspring, Calumet, Habitat, and more. Maybe you remember one Mothers’ Day when it was an act of faith to take on providing new crib mattresses for Ruth House – and marvelous coincidences and great generosity led to new crib mattresses for another teen parenting house as well, along with new high chairs and outdoor play equipment. We were loving our neighbors and finding a lot of joy in doing so.

It’s a little thing to show up faithfully at Anderson House where tater tot casserole serves up God’s love and God’s care for the veterans who live there. It’s a little thing, a little act of faith, to make our building available to folks who meet here in recovery groups. Every now and then, someone who comes to meetings here will thank me on everybody’s behalf for our hospitality, and they’ll assure me that it's not just those who meet here but also their families and the people they work with whose lives are affected in healing ways.

It's a little thing to show up in person or on the live stream for worship on Sunday mornings. When we honor the Sabbath, our souls are fed and our faith is nurtured and our joy is renewed. The Christian story is all about death and resurrection, and there is a kind of dying that comes with my leaving as your pastor. However, you have among you more than enough mustard seeds’ worth of faith to trust the resurrection that is to come as you move toward calling a new pastor.

The life we’re called to live as faithful friends and followers of Jesus is not an easy life, but it is a life of meaning and purpose, of loving and sharing and forgiving, and – even if we are unworthy servants just doing what we ought to do – it’s a life of deep joy. We are blessed to have had so much time to share it together.

Amen

Pentecost 16 C / Proper 21
September 25, 2022
O, Rock-a My Soul

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Not too long after Jesus tells his listeners that they have to choose between serving wealth and serving God because they can’t serve both, he tells the parable we hear today. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus often suggests that money itself isn’t the problem. It’s what people do with their money that might reveal how close or how far they are from what God would have them do with it.

Pentecost 16 C / Proper 21 September 25, 2022

Amos 6:1a, 4-7 Pastor Susan Henry

1 Timothy 1:12-17 House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Luke 16:19-30 Hingham MA

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

O, Rock-a My Soul

Sharing what we have, seeing that people don’t go hungry, caring for those in need, showing compassion, and living justly reveal a life of loving God and loving our neighbors -- a life that finds us drawn close to God’s heart. On the other hand, clutching what’s “ours” tenaciously or consuming conspicuously day after day while refusing to see or know or help the hungry or hurting people who are practically on our doorsteps reveal a life that keeps God’s desires a theoretically safe distance from our own. A life that keeps God at arm’s length, just beyond a gate, or safely across a chasm. A life of entitlement and selfishness that reveals a life withheld from God.

In truth, there might as well be a chasm between the rich man in Jesus’ parable and Lazarus, the poor man who lays outside the wealthy one’s gate. The unnamed rich man comes and goes, shops and dines, lives his best life – while Lazarus, hungry, hurting, and seemingly invisible, is hanging by a thread. Lazarus’ name means “God has helped,” but the rich man has certainly not been a channel through whom God has been able to help.

When Lazarus dies, he’s “carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.” It’s actually more than just “being with.” A translation less inclined to censor intimacy might help us picture Lazarus leaning in close and resting against Father Abraham’s chest -- you know, like, “Rock-a my soul in the bosom of Abraham . . . .” We might picture a child snuggled up against a loving parent or that intimate moment when, as the King James version puts it, “. . . there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.” Rock-a my soul in the bosom of Abraham. O, rock-a my soul.

The rich man, who has also died, observes this intimacy from a great distance and calls, “’Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus . . .’ to bring me just a sip of water because it’s beastly hot here, and I’m in agony.” “Send Lazarus,” the rich man asks, as though he is still wealthy and powerful and entitled to be served by someone like the guy he thought had a lot of nerve taking up space outside his gate and spoiling his view of the neighborhood. “Send Lazarus,” the rich man asks – and reveals that he knows that guy by name. He saw him and knew him and withheld what would have helped him, despite knowing what the faith he traced all the way back to Abraham asked of him! “Send Lazarus,” he implores, apparently still clueless or unrepentant about the chasm he had created between his wealth and greed on one side of the gate and Lazarus’ poverty and need on the other side. The chasm he now perceives mirrors the one that was of his own doing – or undoing.

“Father Abraham, send Lazarus . . . at least to my brothers so they don’t end up where I am.” Notice that Abraham hasn’t cut off their relationship – he calls him “Child,” – but he reminds the rich man that his siblings already know how God calls them to live. They don’t need an Marley-to-Scrooge visitation from Lazarus. “They have Moses and the prophets,” Abraham tells him, “so they should listen to them.” “Let them pay attention,” Father Abraham says, “and then let them share what they have, see that people don’t go hungry, care for those in need, show compassion, and live justly. Let their lives and the way they use their money reveal how they love God and love their neighbors. Let them lead lives that draw them close to God’s heart.”

If that sounds like the way we’re called to live, too, perhaps Jesus means for us to identify with neither the rich man nor Lazarus. Maybe we’re meant to relate to the rich man’s siblings. They can still open the gates at their own homes and open their hearts to those on the other side who are hungry and hurting. They can become channels of God’s help for them. As a congregation and as individuals, our relationships with Wellspring, Habitat, Ruth House, Father Bill’s, the veterans living in Hingham, and our giving through Lutheran Disaster Relief and ELCA World Hunger are channels through which God’s help can and does come through us. I’m thankful for that.

I’m mindful, though, that while we’d like to see the rich man in Jesus’ parable as Jeff Bezos or another billionaire, almost all of us are among the wealthiest people in the world. If we’re a family of four with $50,000 of after-tax income, we’re on the rich man’s side of the gate and we’re in the richest 10.6% of the global population. Broadly speaking, almost 90 out of a hundred people around the globe have less money than we do. If you’re curious about where your household falls relative to others’ wealth, you can go to the global wealth calculator at How Rich Am I, and you might be sobered by the result you find. We may not be “dressed in purple and fine linen” and “feast[ing] sumptuously every day,” but we are siblings of that rich man, people who are hopefully less self-involved, hopefully less entitled, hopefully more generous than he was because we are listening to Jesus and wrestling with his call to live justly and generously. Who is at our gate, longing to satisfy their hunger and to find hope and healing? Who are we tempted to not see and not help?

This parable is not so much a story about what happens after death as it is a story about what happens while we are still living. I’m pretty sure that Jesus is loving us out of loving our wealth and privilege and loving us into loving whoever’s at our gate. It’s always good, but it’s not always easy to be loved by Jesus, is it?

We who are siblings of the rich man are challenged by this parable, but I’m also consoled by the relationship between the rich man and Abraham, between a child and a father. I think there may be more to this story. There is an ending that bridges the chasm, and ending that opens the gate and that creates an intimate, life-giving relationship. Jesus himself builds a bridge right across every chasm. We trust that Jesus seeks and finds the lost, and we confess that he even “descended into hell.” And Jesus says that he himself is the gate through which all his sheep come safely into the sheepfold.

So, while Lazarus rests on the bosom of Abraham, I imagine the rich man resting on the bosom of Jesus, knowing himself to be so beloved of God that he is in agony over his selfishness and greed, his arrogance and entitlement, his unwillingness to let Lazarus or God into his life. So beloved of God that he pleads, “Help me. Forgive me.” So beloved of God that he lives into the gift of new life that we too receive through the chasm-crossing death and resurrection of Jesus.

O, rock-a my soul.

Amen

Pentecost 15 C / Proper 20
September 18, 2022
As Good As It Gets

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Pentecost 15 C / Proper 20 September 18, 2022

Amos 8:4-7 Pastor Susan Henry

Luke 16:1-13 House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Hingham MA

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

As Good As It Gets

To say that biblical scholars are not of one mind about the meaning of this passage from Luke is to put it mildly. Words like “baffling,” “confusing,” “difficult,” and “perplexing” abound in commentaries and articles about this story, so if you’re hoping for a simple explanation of it, I’m sorry to tell you that there is none. At Bible study this week, Kris said that there was just empty white space in her study Bible alongside this text. No notes, no explanations, no references. Bewildering as this patchwork of a story and some sayings of Jesus is, there is good news here, at least for me. That good news is that I never have to preach this text again!

Years ago, I knew a spunky, faith-filled woman named Mabel who now and then would quietly but firmly say that when she got to heaven, she had a few questions for Jesus. Maybe this story was on her list of things to ask him about. For the moment, though, here and now, we’ll have to settle for “seeing in a mirror dimly.”

Jesus’ parable and teachings here are clearly about money, but they’re not just about money. They’re about relationships, too. In this parable, there’s a rich man, the master; and there’s a manager or steward – likely a slave -- who has been entrusted with oversight of everything that belongs to the master. Charges are made about the manager’s mishandling of the master’s property, but it doesn’t seem like the master investigates whether the accusations are true or not. When the manager is called on the carpet to account for his stewardship, he realizes that he’s going to be fired. And he knows he doesn’t have a lot of options for his future. He’s not strong enough to do manual labor, and he’s too mortified to even think about begging, so he devises a truly ingenious plan.

He cleverly gets the people who owe money to the master to be indebted to him. “You owe the master a lot? Just write down half of that amount.” “You’re indebted for how much? Make it a little less.” This way, even after people hear that the manager has lost his position, he hopes he’ll still be welcome at each of their houses. After all, look what he did for them. And if the master undoes what he has done, people will get mad at the master, not at him. That’s about as good as it gets. Pretty shrewd, wouldn’t you say?

Even the master thinks so, and he commends the steward for how cleverly he has managed to look out for himself, for how worldly-wise he has been in his wheeling and dealing so he can secure a future for himself. Part of what’s so baffling, confusing, difficult, and perplexing in today’s reading is that Jesus then says, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Now, I really wish we could have heard Jesus say this, so we’d have a better idea about whether he was being serious, ironic, or sarcastic.

Taking Jesus’ words at face value here doesn’t fit very well with his other stories and teachings. I’m inclined to think that Jesus is saying, “Kudos to that manager for lining up a life that’s maybe as good as it gets for a do-it-yourself project.” And maybe Jesus is also not-so-subtly wondering whether those ordinary, everyday houses the manager will be welcomed into have some kind of back door, some secret passage that leads to “the eternal homes.” A house, Jesus seems to be saying, isn’t necessarily a home -- or, maybe more accurately, it isn’t necessarily the real home God has in mind for Jesus’ listeners and for us.

“The eternal homes” is an odd phrase, isn’t it? It’s one of the most perplexing things about this passage. It’s not really a word for heaven or for the kingdom of God. That Greek word is specifically used to describe where the people of God worshipped when they were wandering in the wilderness and, really, where they worshipped until the Temple was built. It’s the word for the tent of meeting -- for the tabernacle, as it’s sometimes called.

The manager in Jesus’ parable was shrewdly working toward a secure and comfortable existence for himself in other people’s houses when he no longer had one of his own, but Jesus is talking about a very different kind of security. The security Jesus alludes to isn’t tied to a particular place or to anybody’s own cleverness or to the stuff that fills up the spaces in our lives and schedules and houses.

When the people of God were in the wilderness for forty years, their security didn’t depend on anything they had or anything they did. It depended on God. God went ahead of them in the wilderness, making God’s presence known in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God fed them with manna that appeared new every morning and that got disgusting if they tried to store it up. “The glory of the Lord” filled the tabernacle when they camped for a while, and the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, was always in the very center of the camp. Everything else radiated out from it.

“The eternal homes” of which Jesus speaks are wherever God is at the center of people’s lives and wherever people know that God is where their real security lies. “The eternal homes” can be in Hingham or Weymouth or Pembroke or Rhode Island. “The eternal homes” can be in houses or in hearts. “The eternal homes” can be in the worship life of this congregation, in any meeting or act or event with God at its center, in any work or relationship that is God-serving rather than self-serving, in any situation which reveals us to be faithful stewards of all that belongs to God. All those places are where, God knows, we’re really and truly “at home.”

Left to our own devices, however, we’re not always so much “at home” in these things. We’re often out and about. We get caught up in what we want or what we have. We get overly attached to what we believe is not only ours but rightfully ours, to what opens doors for us and makes for a pretty good and comfortable life. But somewhere in today’s story we can hear Jesus’ desire for us to have more than “a pretty good life,” more than the kind of life we can make on our own, no matter how clever or ingenious or shrewd we are.

The good news, of course, is that we’re not on our own. We are the people of God no less than those who camped around the tent of meeting long ago. God led them, God has led us, and God will continue to lead you. We are children of God, sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, the one who, as the gospel of John says, “pitched his tent among us.” We are beloved children of the God who in Jesus has made God’s home with us and in us, welcoming us to Jesus’ table, feeding us with his body and blood, securing a future for us, and loving us into trusting God more and ourselves less.

We’re left with all kinds of questions about this difficult story, and we might always find it challenging to live ever more faithfully in our here-and-now “eternal homes.” But no matter what our questions or our challenges, one thing is sure and certain: in Jesus, we come to know life that’s really and truly “as good as it gets.”

Amen

Pentecost 14 C / Proper 19
Lost, for Now
September 11, 2022

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One is missing. That is what’s at the heart of the actions taken in Jesus’ two parables today. There’s a third story that follows these two – and there as well, one is missing. We most often call that third parable The Prodigal Son, but it’s more truly about a lost son – and whether that’s the younger or the elder is a good question.

Pentecost 14 C / Proper 19 September 11, 2022

Exodus 32:7-14 Pastor Susan Henry

1 Timothy 1:12-17 House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Luke 5:1-10 Hingham MA

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Lost, for Now

We’re still moving through the travel narrative in Luke’s gospel, as we have been all summer and now into the fall. Jesus is headed toward Jerusalem, and a lot has already happened along the way. Most recently, we’ve heard Jesus teaching the way of humility and asking those who want to follow him to get their priorities straight. Now he has some stories to tell. It’s tempting to read them as allegories, but they’re really parables – simple, down to earth, sometimes opaque stories that keep people pondering what they’re really about. We might find that a parable speaks differently to various times and circumstances, and that there might be more to discover when we hear it today.

What might those who heard Jesus in his own time be thinking about the lost sheep and the lost coin, our two parables today? They could no doubt relate to the shepherd and the woman. Maybe one of their chickens got out of the family compound recently and had to be searched for – and found – before some wild creature had it for dinner. Or maybe a necessary tool of their trade got misplaced, and it took forever to find it. We today can relate, too. When’s the last time you found yourself looking everywhere for your keys or your glasses or . . . your phone?

Jesus knows that sometimes things aren’t where they belong, that missing something important can create anxiety, and that people will feel relieved and will rejoice when what was not whole is made whole again. The writer of Luke has Jesus tell these stories to two groups of hearers. “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” Tax collectors were looked down on because they worked for the hated Romans, and some of them collected some extra tax money to line their own pockets. And while we’re used to thinking that we’re all sinners, most often in the gospels, to be a sinner is to only look out for yourself and to ignore the poor and the well-being of the whole community. These are the people who are coming near to listen to Jesus.

They’re not the only ones. Some Pharisees and scribes are there, too. Although we often see them criticizing Jesus or in conflict with him, they’re not villains. They care about God’s people. They’re the learned Jews of their day, and they’re not of one mind about Jesus. Just a little bit ago in Luke’s gospel, some of them were warning Jesus about Herod, who’s intent on doing him harm. Here some of them are complaining about the company Jesus keeps and the people he has dinner with. The Pharisees and Jesus see things about Jewish life differently, but how the gospel writers portray the Pharisees and scribes has precipitated a lot of anti-Jewish thought and actions through the centuries and, increasingly, over the past few years.

So, tax collectors, sinners, Pharisees, and scribes are all listening to Jesus. He tells them a parable that begins, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them . . . .” Well, it’s pretty unlikely that any of them have such a large flock, but a parable engages the imagination, so they go with it. Maybe they wonder how the shepherd could possibly have noticed that one was gone, when there were so many. Jesus says that the shepherd went looking for that sheep, and wouldn’t they do the same thing? Well, maybe. Or maybe not. That would leave ninety-nine sheep on their own -- in the wilderness, no less -- and would it be worth it to take the risk of something happening to all of them? One in a hundred might seem pretty insignificant.

“Maybe to you,” Jesus says, “but that shepherd leaves the rest, and he goes and searches everywhere for as long as it takes to find the one that’s lost.” And then he rejoices! He carries it home across his shoulders and invites his friends and neighbors to rejoice with him. In the gospels, “rejoicing” likely includes offering hospitality to those who rejoice with you. So maybe there’s a feast. One sheep was missing, but now the flock is whole again. Hallelujah for that!

The second parable is about a woman who has ten coins. Now, one is missing. A drachma might be worth a day’s wages or half a day’s wages, but it’s not like a penny rolled away and wasn’t worth looking for. The woman seems to have a home of her own, so she’s not poor, but that one coin matters to her. Listen to what it takes to find it: she lights a lamp, looks in every corner, takes her broom, and sweeps everywhere. She looks and sweeps for as long as it takes to find that coin. And then she invites her women friends and neighbors to rejoice along with her. Maybe there’s a party. Nine plus one is all ten together again. Hallelujah for that!

The writer of Luke slips a little allegorical reading in at the end as Jesus says, “Everybody rejoiced over the one sheep and the one coin that were found, but there’s way more rejoicing in heaven over a sinner whose life gets turned around.” To be honest, that focus on repentance has never felt quite right to me. The sheep didn’t repent. The coin certainly didn’t repent. I’m not sure the younger son in the next parable actually repented. But I do know that when something has been lost, we get anxious and maybe even fearful. When what’s been lost is searched for and sought after and, hopefully, finally found, it’s a relief. And when what was not whole feels whole again, it’s time to rejoice.

We don’t much like losing what matters to us, and we don’t much like feeling lost. There’s a lot of loss to contend with in the world right now -- the death of Queen Elizabeth and the end of a complicated era, the increasing loss of our leaders’ ability and willingness to work together for the common good, the devastation and losses due to climate crisis, and way too many more losses. Let me name one more: the coming loss of our time together as pastor and people.

I’m personally feeling some of that loss already. When I wrote my sermon yesterday and put the date, the readings, and “Pastor Susan Henry, House of Prayer Lutheran Church” at the top of the document, I thought, “I’m only going to type that on four more sermons, and then, who will I be?” I feel a little lost. Congregations whose pastors take new calls or retire can feel a little lost, too. “Without our pastor, we won’t exactly be who we were, so then, who will we be?” The anxiety and the fear that come with feeling lost can tempt us to want to quickly replace what is missing. A recently retired colleague of mine was lamenting how quickly he has filled up his schedule because he found it so anxiety-provoking to no longer be a parish pastor. I’m trying to be mindful of that and not act out of my own anxiety about the future.

When I first talked to Kim Bergstrand, the Associate to the Bishop, about retirement and said I would move to Rhode Island since my kids and their families are there, she said, “Oh, I have a lot of trouble getting supply pastors in Rhode Island. Do you want to do that?” I laughed and said, “Whoa! For six months at least, no. Absolutely not. I need to settle into a new way of life and figure out who I am when I’m not somebody’s pastor.”

House of Prayer, like every congregation I’ve known, would like to have a new pastor right away, would find it a relief to fill in that space where something, someone, has been lost. But there’s a lot of searching to be done, in various ways, before you find a new pastor. Anxiety may well tempt you to rush the process, look for shortcuts, or propose solutions that may not serve the long-term well-being of the congregation. Jacqui Lyons was on the search committee when I became your pastor, and she sighed as she remembered this about the process of calling a new pastor: “It’s a lot of work.” It is, and because we’ve all been worn down or worn out by the demands the pandemic imposed upon us, it might feel like really a lot of work to do.

Maybe it will be helpful for you to remember how much work it was for the shepherd and the woman in today’s parables. The shepherd was in it for the duration, sticking with it until that sheep was found, going into unfamiliar territory and hoping he didn’t get lost himself. He probably got tangled up in thorns and briars, felt hungry and thirsty and weary, alternated between worry and anger at the lost sheep, and just wanted the situation resolved. The woman had to light her lamp and hope the oil didn’t run out and leave her in the dark before she found what she was searching for. Maybe she had to scrunch herself into uncomfortable positions as she searched, or maybe she got annoyed by how long the search was taking. And yet . . . in time . . . after a lot of work, what each was searching for was found.

There’s a process that leads to calling a new pastor. It will be a lot of work – and some of it will be a lot of fun. There will be stories to tell, plans to make, insights that come, and discernment to enter into. The process will call for patience and courage and deep trust in a God of abundance. There may be briars that poke, and fears about running out of oil, and uncomfortable positions to be in, but you won’t be out there on your own. You’ll have each other, you’ll have my prayers for you, you have some guidance from the synod, and you’ll have the Good Shepherd – the one who knows his sheep by name, the one who love them and leads them, the one whose sheep can’t get so lost that he can’t find them and bring them safely home. And then . . . then, beloved people of God, there will come a time for rejoicing together, for a great celebration, a feast, a party. You’ll call a new pastor! You’ll get to be pastor and people together, and what hadn’t felt quite whole will feel whole again. Hallelujah for that!

Amen

Pentecost 18 C October 9, 2022

Genesis 28:10-17 Pastor Susan Henry

Romans 12:1-5 House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Luke 24:28-35 Hingham MA

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Made Known in the Breaking of the Bread

When they get close to Emmaus and to their home, and it looks like Jesus is continuing on down the road, they invite him to stay with them. “It’s almost evening and the day’s practically over,” they say. “Stay with us,” they pretty much insist. And so he does. He accepts their hospitality, and when supper is ready and they are together at the table, Jesus – as though he himself is the host and not the guest — takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. And in an instant, they recognize him as the risen Jesus, and he vanishes from their sight.

Tradition and most artwork portrays the two as men, but it seems to me more likely that they are husband and wife. Only one, Cleopus, is named, while the other is not — perhaps because women are much less often named in scripture. The couple invites the stranger who has walked with them to come home with them, to stay and accept their hospitality. In my office, I have a large print of an icon of this story. I love it because one of the two whom Jesus joins on the road to Emmaus and at the table is a man and the other is a woman. Jesus opens the scriptures to both of them. He reveals himself to both in the breaking of the bread. You have a place in this story, and I do, too. In that icon, we can see ourselves in the good company of Jesus on the road and at the table.

Amen