With the 20th anniversary of that awful day known as "Columbine” falling on Holy Saturday, I offer this final reflection in this year’s series for Lent.   

Final Reflection for Lent - April 17, 2019

You who are reading this reflection already know the outcome of this week.  The Great Three Days – from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday – take worshippers and followers of Jesus on another annual journey from the hell of the crucifixion to the triumph of the empty tomb.  Almost all attempts to “explain” the Sunday triumph over the awful Friday fall short.  Easter is not a springtime ritual where crocuses blooming, Georgia azaleas being in their brilliant red, and the warmth of the sun are somehow synonymous with the third day.  Easter lilies may beautiful the church chancel area and may be a prop for many children’s sermons, but they cannot explain Easter.  Even the most used metaphor of all, the little caterpillar morphing into a chrysalis that then transforms into a butterfly, is inadequate. 

 The story of Easter is about a dead Jew whom God raised from the dead.  Easter is new.  Flowers blooming and the life cycle of insects are not new.  Neither is resuscitation.  Resurrection is.  Resurrection defies all attempts to explain.  To be clear, Easter is not about a happy ending to an awful tragedy and miscarriage of justice.  Easter promises no happy endings to the tragic stories of our lives, even though we may want to cling to such naiveite of faith.  If Easter is a promise of happy endings then what do we say about that awful day in Littleton, Colorado 20 years ago, forever known as “Columbine?”  Twenty years later, folks still long for answers.  Twenty years later, there is no happy ending to many whose lives were shattered.  Evil still exists, and there is no need for a list of examples here.

 Soaking up the brokenness in the world around us in these times, cynicism is perhaps the prevailing attitude of people.  Only for a few days does the magnificent comeback of Tiger Woods at the Masters divert our attention away from the hate, injustice, divisiveness, fears, and tragedies in this world.  Perhaps to really be grasped by the peace and promise of Easter is to know that cynicism is not new.  If you were living in Jerusalem on that first Holy Saturday, you would have had a right to be cynical.  You could be cynical against religion because, after all, it was the religious authorities who plotted to have Jesus arrested and destroyed.  You could be cynical against political leaders.  When forced to decide, the governor Pontius Pilate chose to cave into the pressure of the crowds rather than trust his instincts that Jesus was an innocent man.  You could even be cynical against those claiming to be followers of Jesus.  After all it was his disciples who betrayed him, denied him, and ran away when Jesus needed them the most. 

 But Easter comes.  You can justifiably be cynical against religious leaders, political officials, and so-called followers of Jesus, but you cannot be cynical towards Jesus.  Jesus keeps his promises.  Remember how he told you, the voice in the empty tomb said to the women who came looking for Jesus’ dead body.  Easter is God proclaiming to the world through the resurrected Jesus that God has already overcome everything that would fragment us, demean us, or crush us.  Evil, sin, and death have all been robbed of their ultimate power.  Despite all evidence to the contrary love and life do win.  Christ has triumphed.  He is risen.

So, with Easter we are not talking about Pollyannaish happy endings.  We are proclaiming freedom.  Death, hate, heartache, and injustice may visit us.  They do not own us.  God and God’s resurrection promise do.  Martin Luther taught about Jesus this way: 

He has freed me from sin, death, and the power of the devil, not with silver and gold, but with his holy and precious blood and innocent suffering and death.  All this he has done that I might be his own, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally.  This is most certainly true!

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

This Week’s Reflection for Lent - April 10, 2019

Sunday of the Passion approaches.  Congregations who use the Revised Common Lectionary, as we do, will be presented with Luke’s version of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.  On a day that is commonly known as Palm Sunday, there are no palms in Luke.  People in the story do not have palms.  They do not wave palms.  They do not spread palms on the path on which Jesus rides into town.  They spread their garments instead.  There is another aspect that is unique to Luke.  When the multitude of disciples are praising God and cheering Jesus’s entry, the Pharisees in the crowd beg Jesus to tell his disciples to knock it off.  Jesus responds to the Pharisees, “If my followers stayed silent, the stones would cry out.”  That’s right.  The stones would cry out.   

Guess what, folks.  As people gather for worship on this first day of Holy Week in the year 2019, the stones are crying out.  The land is crying out.  Deluged by floods, the heartland is crying out.  Migratory birds are crying out.  Salmon and steelhead in the Pacific northwest are crying out.  As the acidity rises in the oceans, the coral reefs are crying out.  Yellow fin tuna and their cousins, as well as all sea life, are crying out.  The forests in the west in constant danger of wild fires are crying out.  The glaciers in Alaska’s inside passage are crying out.  Mt. Kilimanjaro is crying out.  And the billions in the global south living in abject poverty near bodies of water are crying out.  As Paul once wrote in Romans 8, the whole creation is crying out. 

So, what are followers of Jesus to do in the face of an entire planet that is suffering under the effects of climate change and with scientists painting an ominous picture of the future if we cannot dramatically change our ways and reduce our carbon footprint?  I believe the primary answer lies in the reading from Philippians 2 appointed for Passion Sunday.  Paul writes, “Have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus.  He did not count his equality with God as something to be exploited.  Rather he emptied himself.” 

 Our having an ecological future will not be the result of some top-down program or the result of something that somebody else does.  The government or industry or politics or other schemes are not going to solve this.  We have a shot if we have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus who emptied himself for the sake of the world.  Church, as we approach the most Holy of Weeks and relive the astonishing death and resurrection story of God’s solidarity with the earth and all of life, what is our response?  For the sake of the world, can we as citizens of the most privileged and blessed people on the planet empty ourselves for the sake of the world?  Can we empty ourselves for the sake of our children and grandchildren, for the sake of those living on the edge, and for the sake of all living things?  Will we empty ourselves of our attitudes of entitlement, privilege, and sense of cosmic specialness that we believe sets us apart from the rest of humanity?  Can we empty ourselves of over consumption and consumerism?  Can we empty ourselves of the notion that the most important aspect of any society is to have a strong economy and instead recognize that some things that make for a strong economy are simply bad for the planet?  Can we empty ourselves of our egos and pride and the need for the immortality symbols of supersized houses and the like?  Can we empty ourselves and live simply so that this planet and the billions can simply live?  Can we empty ourselves of looking for life in all the wrong places and find our life in Christ?

 The church has been taking a beating (and rightfully so) because of the actions and voices of some who have committed terrible abuses, condemned persons of other faiths, devalued those identifying as LGBTQ, and stood against Christ-like mercy and kindness towards refugees and immigrants.  Wouldn’t it be something totally unexpected – like a crucified Jesus being raised from the dead – if it turned out that it was the followers of Jesus who fostered a critical mass of people who emptied themselves and led the movement to regenerate the earth? 

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

This Week’s Reflection for Lent - April 3, 2019

 What is the most ridiculously foolish thing you have ever done because you were crazy in love?  I don’t mind admitting that there was this day in my life when I had an encounter with a certain young lady who would one day be my bride, and I was thunderstruck.  In the following weeks while I was 400 miles away at another school, I did crazy things every day to communicate to her that I had fallen for her.  In the pre-Internet-Facebook-cell phone-Twitter age where we have microwave communication, you either called using a rotary dial phone or you wrote real letters that went by what we call snail mail.  But in those days, there was a way to get a message to someone quickly and it was called, “Air Mail/Special Delivery.”  I wrote such a letter every day, walked it to the campus mail depot, bought the stamps, filled out the special delivery instructions, and the postman on the other end would personally deliver it to her.  I got her attention!

But you know, that was such poor stewardship of resources.  The cost of an air mail/special deliver letter was ten times the cost of a simple first-class stamp.  I could have saved my money and been more prudent.  In John’s gospel, chapter twelve, Judas Iscariot chastises Mary for being a really lousy steward.  She had just taken a pound of costly perfume – that’s 16 ounces, for you who are familiar with purchasing perfume – and poured it all out on Jesus’ feet and wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair.  Ridiculous!  But that is the way that love operates.  Mary wasn’t thinking about the value or what other ways she might use the pound of exquisite perfume.  Knowing that there were powerful people seeking to kill Jesus, Mary loved him, and she wanted to show it.  To heck with being a “good steward.”

I think that the way the church talks about stewardship is a bad idea.  Stewardship talks too much about percentages, the percentage of one’s resources one ought to allot for certain expenditures, and the percentage one ought to allot to charity and other “causes.”  It can be very clinical and sterile.  If you listen to a lot of folks who talk stewardship, Mary should have taken 10% of her perfume and used it on Jesus’ feet, sold 10% of it and given the proceeds to the poor, and kept the other 80% for herself.    

But love doesn’t work that way.  And for all the ways we talk about being a good steward and use stewardship as a litmus test for how good of church folks we are, stewardship is not a spiritual gift.  At best it’s a money or other resource management tool.  On the other hand, generosity is a spiritual gift. Generosity doesn’t operate from percentages and clinical formulae.  Generosity flows from love and the joy of pouring out to another something of value.  God does not want our stewardship.  God wants our generosity, a generosity that is willing to empty everything we have and are for the sake world.  After all, Jesus emptied himself, withholding nothing, and our call is simple – to be the hands, feet, and heart of Jesus, pouring ourselves out for the sake of the world. 

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

 

This Week’s Reflection for Lent - March 27, 2019

The word, “grace,” captures the ground zero starting point for our relationship with God.  In its essence, grace is definitive of God’s unconditional, unrelenting, extravagant, and tenacious love and favor towards us.  It was the energy that initiated the big bang and God’s first recorded speech in scripture, “Let there be light.”  It is most fully disclosed in Jesus the Christ, his life, death, and resurrection.  As my friend, Jacqueline Bussie, wrote in her fabulous recent release, Love Without Limits, there are no exceptions to grace.  Yet, in our humanness we have reimagined God in our own image and somehow have convinced ourselves that God must think, act, and love like we do.  Perhaps the oldest heresy to contaminate our faith and hijack the message of the risen Christ is that of a transactional God.

The transactional God is like this:  God will love me if I do good things.  God will punish me if I disobey God.  When I am having a really hard time because of the consequences of my own choices and behavior, I must do everything I can to regain God’s favor. 

In the 15th chapter of Luke, Jesus takes on the religious leaders who tenaciously cling to and protect the notion of a transactional God. They are outraged that Jesus welcomes “sinners” and “eats with them.”  In response to their objections, Jesus tells three parables in a row.  The parables serve as windows into the heart of God.  The first has to do with a shepherd who will leave ninety-nine sheep and go hunt for the one lost sheep who ran astray.  This short story ends not only with the shepherd finding the lost sheep but also with the unrestrained joy associated with it.  The second parable is similar with a woman who will not relent until she finds just one lost coin that is lost.  Then there is the parable of one of the most familiar stories in all of scriptures.  It is the story of a father who has two sons.  The older is incredibly obedient and responsible.  The younger is not.  He takes off and makes a complete mess of his life, bringing great shame to his father and family, and ends up in dire straits as the consequences of his actions.  In desperation he decides to come home.

When the lost son comes home and the father runs to him, embraces him, and showers on him extravagant love, it is tempting to assume that it is the father’s transactional response to the young man who must have said or done something to earn his father’s good graces.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Before the kid ever decided to come home, the father loved him… without limits.  It did not matter what the son had done.  The father’s love was greater than the son’s shameful behavior.  It is the same with us.  God’s love is stronger than anything we might do to hurt God, others, and even ourselves.

In this day of name calling, labeling people as our enemies, hate-crimes, and shameful treatment of refugees everywhere, we, as the ones who bear the mark of the cross of Christ on our foreheads, are called to live differently – to think and act like God.  And that means that we too offer grace and love to all people… without limits.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

 This Week’s Reflection for Lent - March 20, 2019

On the evening of April 20, 1999, the first question Catherine Crier asked me after I was introduced as a guest on her television show was this: “Reverend Barger, would you please tell the American public why God would allow what happened today.”  The reason for my being on her show, albeit remotely from my location in Littleton, Colorado, was because I had been the first non-law enforcement responder to the event known as “Columbine.”  I actually arrived at the school at the same time as the first officers.  When I was asked if I would appear on the Crier show, I thought she wanted to get a first-hand report of the terrifying and heart-breaking day at the school.  It did not even cross my mind that I might be being set up for a theological question because I was a pastor. 

Her question is a question for the ages.  Why did God allow Columbine?  Why did God allow the Holocaust?  Why did God allow the hate crime against worshipping Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand?    Volumes of books and articles have been written about God and human suffering.  Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote perhaps the most well know book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People.  Timothy Keller, a Presbyterian pastor in New York City, wrote another well-received book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering.  For many of us the question has not always been asked only in the face of ghastly evil.  It has been generally been more personal.  Why did God allow my cancer to come back?  Could God not have stopped my dad from killing himself?  Let’s face it.  It is probable that at one time or another we have all asked such questions.

For those of us who worship in a congregation that follows the Revised Common Lectionary the lesson from Luke 13:1-9 for the 3rd Sunday in Lent raises the question of shocking human suffering of innocent people.  Perhaps in no other context are such questions apropos than in this Season of Lent when we are drawn into renewal of our baptisms and, at the same time, are journeying with Jesus to Jerusalem through the gospel texts we encounter.  The two are interconnected – the suffering that awaits Jesus in Jerusalem and our baptisms into his death and resurrection.  The question of being the victim of undeserved evil is not foreign to God.  Whenever we ask the “Why?” question, two things are helpful as persons of faith.  One, life is not fair.  Two, the betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday represents unspeakable evil at its worst. 

We do not know why bad things happen to good people, why innocent people suffer or why life can be terribly unfair.  We do know what God’s response to it is.  It is the first sermon ever proclaimed.  Jesus is risen.  The tomb is empty.  God has raised Jesus from the dead.  In Jesus, God has already entered our most desperate stations in life, into the darkest places of human existence, and into complete sorrow and despair, and he has risen beyond all of it.  And because he entered it and is risen beyond it, God has already defeated everything that would cheapen us, fragment us, or crush us.  Whether we are traveling with Jesus to Jerusalem or on our own journey through our own trials, we know the outcome.  Love and life win.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

This Week’s Reflection for Lent – March 13, 2019

 

During this Season of Lent, our worship begins with these words, “Remembering the astonishing promises of God in Baptism, we begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit.”  To which we all respond with, “Amen,” meaning “so be it!” 

The Season of Lent is a time to reflect on our baptisms in order to draw us more deeply into an awareness of just how astonishing God’s love and claim on our lives is and how that claim is a daily call to see, dream, aspire, and live as children of God grasped by God’s unshakeable love.  During Lent we sing of God abounding in steadfast love, which is a translation of the biblical Hebrew word, hesed.  Hesed describes our God as always faithful to us even when we are not, even when we are even rebellious or recalcitrant.  Even when we reject God all together!  The Apostle Paul spoke about such love when he wrote that such love, “bears all things, believes all things, believes all things, and endures all things,” (I Cor. 13:7) and that everything else that may matter to us may one day die, but such love will not – not ever!  Paul would later write in Romans that nothing could ever separate us from the love of God.

The word, “grace,” encapsulates the various dimensions of such love.  It is God’s love and favor toward us that is unmerited, undeserved, and comes without our even asking.   When Marin Luther taught that we should daily remember our baptisms, and even make the sign of the cross on our forehead when we do, and if we have water with which to do that even better, he was asking that we begin each day aware of God’s grace.  Think about it.  We were born into this world as an act of pure grace.  One day we weren’t and the next day we were.  We did not ask to be born!  So, every day is a gift of pure grace.  And if we were to stumble this day, if we were to act in ways that are displeasing to God, we will awake the next day still grasped by God’s grace.

On this coming Sunday, the 2nd Sunday in Lent, we are presented with vivid portraits of grace.  There is Abraham with whom God made a unilateral and unconditional covenant with many promises attached.  He asked Abraham to trust those promises even when present circumstances would cause him to doubt.  We will also find Jesus being threatened by the powers at be to abandon his mission of love and fidelity to us all.  They threaten Jesus with death.  It doesn’t matter.  God’s love for us is stronger than death itself.  

Long before we ever chose God, God chose us, and that choice is forever!

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

 

 

 

This Week’s Reflection for Lent – March 7, 2019

 

Yesterday’s ancient words for Ash Wednesday were spoken on us all.  Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.  It is a truth-telling statement.  The death rate has always been and still is one death per person.  Whether one is six years old or ninety-six, one day we will all return to dust.   This reality should be a reminder to us.  This day that we are given is precious.  Life is precious.  Because life is precious, we should not spend one moment of it consumed by the wiles of the Evil One. 

The biblical authors knew of the existence of evil forces that influence us, sometimes even consuming us. The authors personified what they experienced into the reality of Satan or the Devil as he is known in the New Testament.  This coming Sunday, the 1st Sunday in Lent, we are presented with Luke’s version of Jesus’ temptation by the Devil in the wilderness.  Luke, Matthew, and Mark are all consistent in reporting the temptation of Jesus as immediately following his baptism by John in the Jordan River. 

The late Walter Bouman used to teach that only those who have been seized by the promises of God expressed in baptism can really be tempted.  In this sense, temptation is not really about caving into something enticing that one knows is inappropriate or something mischievous, like sneaking a cookie out of the jar.  In essence, to be tempted is to turn one’s trust toward something other than the promises of God.  When we trust in wealth or power more than in God to provide life meaning, when we trust in holding grudges more than the grace of God, when we become jealous or entitled or petty rather than trusting in God’s goodness for each one of us, we have been trapped by the Tempter. 

Jesus withstood the astonishing temptations of the Devil in the wilderness because of his love for you and for all of creation.  God sent Jesus with a mission – to take back what belongs to God, and everything belongs to God, including you!  Nothing – not the enormous temptations of the Evil One, not the lies of those who had him arrested, not a trial, not even death by crucifixion – would work to get him off mission.  He trusted the One who sent him.  He knew that the worst thing that could possibly happen to him would not be the last thing.  He knew that the One who sent him would not abandon him in death, and we all know that on the third day God raised him up. 

And God will not abandon you.  Through the changes and chances of life, we are sometimes tempted towards doubt, discouragement, or despair.  But God is faithful and calls us each day to trust, to live each day fully, and to allow the goodness of God to bring about wholeness and joy in each of us through the peace and promises of the risen Jesus.    

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,