Wednesday Words December 17th, 2014

Christ is the Key to Unlocking Our Hearts

On the fourth Sunday in Advent the church turns to Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, as an example of humility and obedience.

Mary is obviously stunned by the message of the angel that she has been the favored and chosen one who will bear a son and will call his name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

Mary is most likely young and if discovered to be pregnant out of wedlock could be subjected to an honor killing, like the ones that we have heard about in the news recently. In fact she questions the angel, “How can this be, because I have no husband?”

She is assured that the Holy Spirit will provide the answer and Joseph will step in and take Mary under his wing to protect her and give her aid and comfort.

Our focus on Mary always leads us to Mary’s song, the Magnificat. In this song Mary sings God’s praises and describes herself as a lowly servant. She describes God as turning the tables on the world and in this miracle of the Word made flesh brings all people, especially the hungry and poor what they need, while those who see themselves self-sufficient find themselves empty.

This week we are called to follow Mary’s example of humility and obedience, we are called upon to give thanks and to serve the one who is born in a manger in Bethlehem and who goes to a cross in Jerusalem.

Pr. Len

Wednesday Words, December 10th 2014

Pastor Len Hoffmann

Thought for the Day

“The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.” Psalm 126:3

This Sunday at Bethany:

In the past this Third Sunday in Advent was titled “Gaudate Sunday” or “Rejoice Sunday.”  It is the theme of the lessons for this week. Yet, we know that there are many who find it difficult to rejoice this time of year because of injustices and loss.

In the past weeks we have seen many U.S, citizens lifting up their voices in protest over the uneven application of the law, particularly as they are enforced by some members of law enforcement in some of our communities in the U.S. Some of those who are using this protest as an opportunity for violence and destruction are to be renounced and prosecuted. Yet, those who are legally expressing their first amendment rights speak out on behalf of those who feel that justice in this country has failed them and are seeking a long term solution to this age old problem of inequality.

Also, this week, we have as a nation confessed that it was outof fear we that took unjust and unwarranted measures as we tortured those suspected of having information that may have been useful to us in fighting terrorism. We violated our values, but we were willing to let the world know that justice also requires mercy.

Obviously, these are not stories about which we rejoice, just as there is little rejoicing among those who have lost loved ones, those who have lost employment, those who have experienced broken relationships, and those who have experienced a variety of other kinds of losses.

In the midst of all of this bad news there is the good news of Jesus advent among us. The Lord has done great things for us and so, we are glad indeed.

One of my favorite quotes has been attributed to a number of people, but the one I have is attributed to St. Teresa of Avila, and it goes like this,"Joy is not the absence of suffering, but the presence of God." Yes, there is joy in the midst of suffering and loss because the Lord has done great things for us. We take comfort in the peace, love and joy that comes to us in Jesus now and each day, even in the midst of sorrow and loss. So, we rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice.

Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!

Pr. Len

Seize the Day

Sermon - November 16th, 2014

Matthew 25:14-30

Carpe Diem

Grace and Peace…

A week and a half ago, my brother and I took a little trip to Cincinnati.  We had tickets  to watch our favorite football team the Bengals take on the in-state rival Cleveland Browns.  

Those of you who follow football, already know it was a rough game.  And the trip didn’t get off to a good start either.  We checked into our (finger quotes) non-smoking hotel room, and when we opened the door it smelled like we stepped into an ash tray.  In hindsight, we probably should have taken it as a bad omen.  

Of course, it didn’t get any better after that.  We arrived at the stadium, got our seats, only to find out that somehow we were surrounded by a pack of obnoxious Browns fans. Great.

The game was horrible.  The final score was 24-3 and the Bengal’s quarterback delivered the worst performance ever. And I’m not exaggerating. Bears fans, if you think Cutler was bad on Sunday, our quarterback literally had the worst statistical game in team history.  (And did I mention it was cold and windy?).  GREAT!

But at least I can say I saw history being made!

We got back to our hotel room feeling dejected and a little beaten.  But we decided - right then and there - to make the most of our trip and find something (anything!) interesting to do the next day. That way, when people asked us why we went to Cincinnati we wouldn’t have to talk about the real reason.

We decided to seize the day.

We googled Cincinnati attractions, and found something called the American Sign Museum....whose website proudly boasted to be the only sign museum in the whole country! It couldn’t be any worse than the game was, so we went and goofed around and took funny pictures.  And I have to say, the American Sign Museum was by far the highlight of our trip.

But we weren’t done seizing the day.  When our GPS led us to a Starbucks that no longer existed, we wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.  We drove 5 miles out of our way to find a decent coffee shop where we commiserated with a Batista named Kelly who was also a Bengals fan.  

When we saw a sign for Bob Evans - one of our mother’s favorite restaurants - we stopped for lunch, even though we weren’t hungry, to take a selfie by the sign and send it to her!

And I have to say, that despite the horrible, no good, awful game, we ended up having a lot of fun.  It was a resurrection kind of turnaround for us.  We had an unbelievably depressing start to the trip, but we finished it with a flourish! We seized the day!

Well, I got a similar kind of feeling when I was going through our readings for this week, because they all use this ominous, depressing “God-is-coming” language, but when you stick with them, they end up in a hopeful, seize-the-day kind of place.

The first two readings, are about God’s judgment on the earth.  

The prophet Zephaniah is talking about the “The Day of the Lord” when God will come to bring doom and gloom!

And in case you think, oh, that’s just an angry God, Old Testament thing, Paul writes to the Thessalonian church - a church grieving the death of some of its members. He writes, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”  And “then sudden destruction will come upon them...and there will be no escape!”

Wow, that’s dark!  God would seem super scary if you stopped reading there. And if that were the end of the story it would have been just as depressing as my Bengals game. But Paul and Zephaniah aren’t writing warning stories, they are writing a call to action.

Paul tells the church in Thessalonia to “stay alert.” In the margins of my Bible I wrote “carpe diem,” seize the day.  Don’t fall asleep.  Be ready.  

Here you have this church in Thessalonia that is grieving the death of some members, and Paul is telling them, don’t worry! God has come for those people, and God is coming for you, and that is a hopeful sign.  

Paul concludes that the way to be ready - the way to seize the day - is to encourage each other, and build each other up. Stop the bickering.  Stop the fighting.  God is coming, he says, and therefore we should respond with faith, love and hope. We should look out for our the people around us.

His conclusion is to seize the day.  Don’t sit around being idle.  Go out and do something positive with your time, because it might be short...because it might be short.

Isn’t that what the gospel story is about today?  Jesus is telling the parable of the talents.  A master gives one servant 5 talents - more money than a normal laborer would make in a lifetime!  Another receives two talents - 30 years worth of income!  And the last received one talent - 15 years of wages!

The first invests the 5 talents and makes 5 more talents!  The second invests his two talents and makes 2 more.  But the third takes his talent and buries it in the ground, because he’s afraid of what the master will do if he loses it.

But when the master comes home, he tells the first two - well done, good and faithful servants!  But to the last one who did nothing with the talent, he threw out into the darkness.

I want to be clear - Paul reminds us that we have nothing to fear.  We are children of the light - already saved through baptism and faith.  Our work isn’t urgent because we need to save our own skin.  Our work is urgent because our time is short and God’s world is in need.  

Make the most of what you’ve been given. Don’t bury your gifts in the backyard. Don’t sit on your hands.  Don’t be idle.  

And there are so many ways that you can do that!  It doesn’t matter how old or young you are, how able or disabled, how busy or tired - you have all kinds of opportunities to seize the day - all around you, all the time.  

Last thing: I want you all to take a look at the Bethany Weekly that you should have received when you came in today.  Go ahead and pull that out.  And I want you all to open it up to the middle pages.

There’s a ton going on at this place, and the stuff on the list isn’t even the half of it.  But what I want you to do now is to take out a pen or a pencil and circle something that looks interesting to you - something that you’d want to be a part of.   

• Look at the Thanksgiving dinner boxes - you can provide somebody a Thanksgiving meal through our community food pantry.  
• The Family Christmas Project is coming up - they need shoppers and donations and wrappers and deliverers.
• Attend a fellowship event, and lift up each other through love and friendship and laughter - that’s just as big a part of what we do as anything.  
• Check out the community harvest food drive - Give some struggling folks in our community a boost by donating food.

Our gospel tells us not to put this stuff off until tomorrow. Don’t put it off.  God is coming - life actually is short!  So let’s spend our time lifting up our neighbors.  Let’s spend our time giving back.  Let’s spend our time being joyous and loving.

Let’s seize the day.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Free at Last

Sermon - October 26th, 2014

Affirmation of Baptism Service

Free at Last

Pr. Paul Cannon

Grace and Peace Bethany Lutheran, a special welcome to all our guests ... and to our Confirmation class of 2014, I say,

Free at last, you are free at last!

Confirmation students, you guys are now free!  You’ve written your essays, you’ve done projects, been to camp, you’ve acolyted and turned in sermon notes, you’ve completed service hours and been to fellowship events - you’ve done a whole lot of stuff!

Some of you have younger brothers and sisters going through confirmation right now.  Feel free to laugh at them.

But YOU, you are done! You are free!  

• You don’t have to acolyte from today onward. In fact, this might be the last time in your life that you ever have to wear a white robe again!  
• You don’t have to listen to my sermons ever again.  You can sleep right through them, and unless you snore - nobody will know.  
• Nobody at church is ever going to make you volunteer for stuff, which (in any case) is kind of an oxymoron if you think about it.
• And you don’t have to go to fun youth events anymore - like Mega Trampoline.  You are perfectly free to stay at home and do your homework if that’s what you prefer.

Freedom is awesome and you guys are just starting to get your first taste of what that means.  Most of you are now in 9th grade.  You’ve started high school, which means that when your parents try to tell you what to do, you respond with an eye roll.  I get it.  You are longing for your freedom.  You don’t want your parents telling you to clean up your room.

But parents, if you think it’s bad right now, just wait, because in a year or so, a lot of your kids are going to go through driver’s ed (a terrifying thought if you know these kids!) - and when they do, freedom will take on a whole new meaning!

Freedom is a beautiful thing!

And so, not surprisingly, Jesus has a lot to say about freedom too.  He’s talking to his followers and he tells them, If you follow me, “you will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free.”

That’s what today’s all about.  It’s your day to say that following Jesus is something that you want for your life.  Today you get the opportunity to say that this faith journey you’ve been on is something that you want to continue.

And Jesus says that when you follow him, he will make you free!

But let me be the first to tell you that Christian Freedom is a strange kind of freedom.  It doesn’t mean you can do whatever the heck you want.  Martin Luther, and I hope you all know by now that I’m not talking about Martin Luther King, the original Martin Luther once famously said this:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.  (And...)

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.  

Or in other words, you are free and you’re not free. Get it? I didn’t think so.  Luther’s favorite thing to do was to confuse people with paradoxes.  

So let me try an analogy.  Has anybody ever seen that TV show, “Undercover Boss?”  

If you haven’t, it’s a pretty simple premise. It’s a reality TV show, where CEO’s from big companies like Subway would spend a week working in some of the lowest level positions that the company had to offer.

It’s a fitting analogy for what Christian freedom is like.  As followers of Christ, we are free.  We’re like the CEO.  We can kind of do whatever we want, and nobody is going to fire us.  We’ve been baptized.  God isn’t going to kick you out of the family when you mess up - even if you mess up big time.  

We’re the undercover boss here. Nobody is going to force you to do good things in your life.  God is not going to ground you if you don’t show up to church every week - though I can’t say the same for your parents.  You’re the CEO of your life.  You are a perfectly free Lord of all.  Subject to none.

And yet...there’s the other side of the coin. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant to all, subject to all. As followers of Jesus, we think of freedom differently than the rest of the world, because we know what we are being freed from.  

You see Jesus tells us that we are being freed from sin.  Sin is kind of a loaded word, because it can mean a lot of things, but at its most basic, sin is simply selfishness.  And that’s what I mean when I say sin, I mean selfishness.

In Christ, you’re free from sin. And if sin is our own selfishness, then what that means is that the thing that keeps you from being truly free, isn’t your parents, it isn’t school, it isn’t church or confirmation classes, it isn’t that you can’t drive yet - the thing that keeps you from being truly free is you.  

Jesus saves you from yourself - so that you are free to live as unselfishly as you can. And in that sense, freedom is service. Think about that.  If you had to do good works in order to get into heaven, ultimately all those good things you did, would be selfish. They would just be for your own good.  

And so, our Lord Jesus, died on a cross so that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. If that’s true, then heaven is no longer a bribe to make us do good things. And so, as Jesus said, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

And that’s what today is all about.  You are free.

You don’t remember it, but when you were babies, you were all baptized.  And when that water was sprinkled on your forehead, a bunch of people made promises to you - your parents, the congregation, and the most important of which, was God.

God’s promise, was that you was that you would be connected to the death and resurrection of Jesus. You would be a part of his family - and being a part of God’s family means that you are free; You’re not a servant anymore.

You might remember that I asked each one of you in your interview if you wanted to be Confirmed.  And the reason I asked you that is because now it’s time for you to make those same promises that were made to you when you were baptized.  This isn’t your Mom’s choice.  It’s not your Dad’s choice.  It’s not your grandparent's choice. It’s not my choice.  It’s yours.

Class of 2014, you are going to make some promises.  

• You’re going to promise to continue this life of faith with the church - not alone (because alone is ultimately selfish), but with this community of people.  
• You’re going to promise to listen and share God’s word, to listen to the voiceless and to pray for the people around you.
• You’re going to promise to live Christ-like lives to the best of your ability - and that means to live unselfishly,  serving others and working to make this world a better place.  
• And when you realize you screwed up, like we all do, you are going to promise to seek forgiveness at the communion table and do it all over again.

To live free means to live unselfishly.  Confirmation class of 2014 - Do you think you can do that? If so, give me a “Yes.” Are you willing to follow Jesus even if it takes you places you didn’t want to go?  If so say “Yes.”  Do you think you can live for others, even when it’s not in your best interest?  If so say, “Yes.”

Then, Confirmation Class of 2014, you are free indeed.

Come Holy Spirit, Come.