Sermon September 21: Jonah, the Whale, and the Workers

THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Year A, Lectionary 25

September 21, 2014

Jonah 3:10—4:11

Matthew 20:1-16

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God is fair. No one knew that better than Jonah.

“Jonah! Go to Nineveh, that great and wicked city, and declare the Word of the Lord that I will give you!”

Now Nineveh lay to the east, some 560 miles from Jerusalem. It was the largest city in the world, in present-day Iraq. Nineveh, capital city of the hated Assyrians, had brutalized Israel, brought it to its knees, and deported most of its citizens. The Ninevites rejected Israel’s God, and they were notorious for their violence.

“Jonah! Go to Nineveh, that great and wicked city, and declare the Word of the Lord that I will give you!”

Jonah loved his God. But he hated the people of Nineveh. So, instead of heading east, he headed west, as far west as the known-world could imagine, towards Tarshish, on the tip of southern Spain. He booked on the first ship that sailed, getting away as fast as he could.

But God was not easily eluded. God sent a storm on the sea. The crew members cried out to their own gods, but nothing happened. They appealed to Jonah, who managed to sleep through the storm—he knew it was from God—and the sailors had figured out that Jonah was the cause of all of this. Jonah instructed them to throw him overboard and, reluctantly, they did. Immediately the storm ceased and the sailors began to worship the God of Israel.

God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah, to save him from the depths of the sea. As that great fish took Jonah to the depths of the sea, Jonah prayed to God as if from the depths of Sheol—the depths of the underworld. Joel praised God for God’s deliverance.

After three days, as if on cue, God delivered Jonah, causing the fish to regurgitate Jonah on dry land.

Now, if Jonah thought he was going to receive a sabbatical to rest and recuperate from his strange and strenuous ordeal, he had another thing coming:

“Jonah! Go to Nineveh, that great and wicked city, and declare the Word of the Lord that I will give you!”

Jonah had learned from personal experience that it does not pay to try to take the call of God into his own hands, or even to ignore that call. This time, Jonah goes to Nineveh and declares the word of the Lord: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” It takes Jonah three full days to walk through the city, and by the end of the third day, his voice is hoarse and parched.

To Jonah’s great amazement, the people of Nineveh believe in this word of the Lord. They repent—everyone from the king on down to the animals. The king declares to his people: “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.” The people cry out to the God of Israel.

And God forgives them. In biblical language, “God changed his mind.” God forgives Nineveh.

Jonah is furious with God. We can overhear his protests: “What are you thinking?! You know what they did to our women and children! You know how they slaughtered in cold blood. You know how they dragged our people away, never again to return home.”

Jonah goes on with his real complaint: “I ran away from you the first time because I know that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

“Take my life away. I’d rather die than see our enemies forgiven!”

Jonah is pouting now, and he goes out into the hot desert, builds for himself a shelter, and waits to see what God will do to the city.

God appoints a bush to grow over Jonah’s hut to give him shelter and shade from the scorching heat of the day. Jonah is happy about the bush.

As if playing with Jonah’s sensibilities, the next morning God appoints a worm to destroy Jonah’s bush, and God sends a scorching wind, and Jonah is suffering under the heat. “It is better for me to die than to live.”

God challenges Jonah: “You seem to care more about your bush, which sprang up yesterday and is gone today, than you care about the people of Nineveh, a city of 120,000 people.”

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God is fair. No one knew that better than Jonah.

We are just as indignant about this story as Jonah: those people do not deserve to be spared. Those people do not deserve God’s forgiveness.

This takes us to the heart of the matter: no one, not one, not now, not ever, deserves God forgiveness. No one deserves God’s grace.

In our Gospel for today, the parable of the workers in the vineyard from Matthew, the workers who came at 5 in the afternoon receive the same as those who started at 6 in the morning. It’s not fair!

Now if our parable were about economics, we might say that God intends for some workers to earn twelve times as much as others. Indeed, some folks might try to make the Bible endorse and even bless the incredible gap between the rich and poor.

But our parable is not about economics. It’s about God’s grace, about God’s mercy, about God’s forgiveness.

God wants all people to live in the joy of the kingdom, where there is no violence, no retribution, no “getting even,” where former enemies share God’s peace, where former killers and those they killed dwell in the peace of God, which passes all human understanding.

Today is the International Day of Peace, established by the United Nations in 1981. On this day, let us all turn our hearts and our minds to peace, the peace of God that passes all understanding.

We sing:

Eye has not seen, ear has not heard

what God has ready or those who love him;

Spirit of love, come, give us the mind of Jesus,

teach us the wisdom of God.[1]

---

     [1]Marty Haugen, “Eye Has Not Seen,” Gather (Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc., 1988), 275.

"Where two or three are gathered . . ."

Scripture

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20)

Reflection

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes explicit, more than once, that he is with us and will remain with us. We see this in our verse for today, from the Gospel for this coming Sunday. We hear it in Jesus’ last words to his disciples in Matthew: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). In the first chapter of the Gospel, Matthew quotes the prophet of Isaiah: “‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, “God is with us” (Matthew 1:23). Thus, not only is Jesus with us, but, in Jesus, God is with us.

The context for our verse for today has to do with accountability within the Body of Christ: “If another member of the church sins against you . . .” (vs. 15a). Jesus is realistic in that enmity and division exist within the fellowship of believers, and he offers us a process for reconciliation. Jesus’ promise of his abiding presence provides both the catalyst and the power for that reconciliation.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, Thank you for your promise that you are with us. Keep us in harmony with one another. Continue to be with us at Concordia. In your name we pray. Amen.

Commemoration: Nikolai Grundtvig

Commemoration

September 2

Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Bishop, Renewer of the Church, d. 1872

Reflection

Nikolai Grundtvig, son of a Lutheran pastor, left a lasting legacy on his native Denmark. He wrote more than one thousand hymn texts, including “Built on a Rock,” founded folk high schools, which raised educational standards throughout Scandinavia, worked toward the introduction of parliamentary government, and resisted the prevailing spirit of rationalism in theology by leading a revival of orthodox Lutheranism, restoring the creeds and confessions to prominence. In his probation sermon preached before church officials in 1810, he wrote, “Holy men of old believed in the message they were called to preach, but the human spirit has now become so proud that it feels itself capable of discovering the truth without the light of the gospel, and so faith has died.” A contemporary church building in Copenhagen is named after Grundtvig (I played the organ there in 1976).

Danes who immigrated to the U.S. eventually formed two separate church bodies, one the “happy Danes” and the other the “gloomy Danes.” The “happy Danes,” reflecting the more liberal outlook of Grundtvig, eventually merged into what was to become the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) in 1962 (of which Concordia was a part) which merged with other church bodies in 1988 to become the ELCA.

Prayer

God of grace, Thank you for your servant, Nicolai Gruntvig, for his living faith and broad learning. Thank you for his love and respect for the tradition of the church, enlivening the church of his day with new hymns that still speak to us today. We give you thanks for all those who have given us song, that we may continue to lift our voices in praise. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon August 31: "Your Words Were Found, and I Ate Them . . ."

THE TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Year A, Lectionary 24

August 31, 2014

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Romans 12:9-21

Matthew 16:21-28

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

Folks like you who show up on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend probably are the last ones who need to hear Jesus’ admonition to deny yourselves and to take up your cross and follow him. No doubt, all of you might have chosen to do other things this morning than to attend worship.

But I wonder if Jesus’ words might sound and feel different if we were to hear them, not as admonition, but rather as invitation.

More on that later.

I have always been drawn to our prophet Jeremiah’s somewhat strange image:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16)

I cannot but help to hear Jesus’ words to Satan, who is tempting Jesus in his hunger to turn stones into bread: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart . . .

The image of eating the words of God evokes the adage, “We are what we eat.” If it is true with nutrition, that “We are what we eat,” how much more true might it be that “We are what we eat” when what we eat is the word of God?!

I am reminded of Psalm 42: “As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you” (vs. 1).

Our souls hunger and thirst for God.

For our prophet Jeremiah, it is not enough to read God’s word; it is not enough to hear God’s word; it is not enough to sing God’s word. Jeremiah longs to eat God’s word.

“We are what we eat.”

Jeremiah goes on, “. . . for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.”

By what or by whose name are we called? Would anyone know to call us Christians? Would anyone know to call us Christians by our words? By our actions?

What is our “diet”? What words do we read? What words do we hear? What words do we sing? What words do we eat?

“We are what we eat.”

Jeremiah, who lived one of the loneliest and most tragic lives in all of Scripture, found joy in the word of God:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16)

The older I get, the more convinced I am that people are desperate for a measure of joy in their lives, and they search desperately trying to find it. Tragically, we tend to look in all the wrong places. Often, our desperate but misguided search has devastating consequences on those around us. I believe that people are desperate for a measure of joy in their lives. Jeremiah knew where to find it.

Maybe the Apostle Paul had discovered what Jeremiah had also discovered some 600 years or so earlier. Paul had also found that joy. Paul and Jeremiah shared in being persecuted for their faith in God. Yet Paul could write: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Romans 12:14).

In this light, Paul could go on to declare: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (vs. 21).

How different might the world look if we responded to evil with good? How might God work though good rather than through evil?

I’d like to return to the question I threw out at the beginning of my sermon: I wonder if Jesus’ words might sound and feel different if we were to hear them, not as admonition, but rather as invitation.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” (Matthew 16:24-26).

What if we heard these words as invitation rather than admonition?

I heard an interview on the radio yesterday with Jeffrey Kluger talking about his new book, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed—in Your World. He asserts that narcissists are extremely sensitive to criticism because their self-esteem is brittle, contrary to the mask narcissists put on to conceal their extreme self-loathing. But it’s not only narcissists who are driven by self-interest. It’s human nature to be consumed by self.

What might it be like to be set free from obsession with self? Is freedom to be found in self-denial so that we might embrace something larger than ourselves?

One of the potted half-barrels in my garden is filled with Coreopsis “Summer Punch,” an annual with a beautiful, small, bright yellow and deep burgundy flower that resembles a miniature Denver Daisy. Last weekend it seemed all the plants had stopped blooming; all that was left were the many brown and dried up blooms. I decided to cut the plant way back, hoping it would come back yet this fall to bloom again. I remember it was dusk, almost dark, and we were getting ready to go out of town for several days, and I left the cuttings lying on the grass around the barrel. Yesterday afternoon, after I had returned, when I walked through the garden, I saw all these bright and beautiful flowers seemingly blooming in the grass. When I got closer, I discovered they were blooming on the remnants of the cuttings I had discarded earlier in the week.

I thought of Jesus’ words in our Gospel for today: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Let’s go back to our prophet, Jeremiah, who found his life, though to the outside world it seemed he had lost it. He had found the source of true joy in the midst of his persecution:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.

The Gospel writer John insists that Jesus himself is the Word made flesh. In the Lord’s Supper, we are invited to partake in eating and drinking of this Word: “This is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you.”

When we partake in the Lord’s Supper, we become the Body of Christ, individually and collectively.

When we eat of the Word of God, which is Jesus himself, we become what we eat.

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

Thanks be to God!

Sermon August 24: "Built on a Rock . . ."

THE ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Year A, Lectionary 21

August 24, 2014

Isaiah 51:1-6

Psalm 138

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

“. . . on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

This rock is the faith of Peter, the faith of the disciples, the faith of the gathered congregation, the faith of the church through the ages!

“Built on a rock the church shall stand, even when steeples are falling . . .” (ELW 652).

Our prophet Isaiah shares the image of the rock:

Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug. (Isaiah 51:1b)

Isaiah is comforting a besieged and beleaguered people, a people who have suffered catastrophic calamity and exile. We can’t help but think of the destruction being suffered now, this day, in numerous places throughout the world. A headline in today’s Duluth News Tribune reads: “UN: 4 Countries Face Humanitarian Crises; Worst Since WWII.”

These situations are not unlike what Isaiah’s people had endured. Even as the rocks around them have crumbled into ruin, our prophet reminds them from whence they have come:

Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.

They were hewn from Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Samuel and David, and the whole host of God’s people, nurtured by the covenant of God’s unfailing promise, which had been with them for centuries.

Our psalmist sings a song of thanksgiving in the midst of trouble and distress. Our psalmist invites us to join in the song: “Lord, I thank you for your faithfulness and love” (Psalm 138, paraphrase). Our psalmist knows the rock from which we were hewn and the quarry from which we were dug.

The Apostle Paul knew the rock from which he was hewn and the quarry from which he was dug. Paul himself experienced endless hardship: unending rejection, arrests, floggings, stoning, shipwreck, trials, left near death. Yet Paul admonishes us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

Paul knew the rock from which he was hewn and the quarry from which he was dug. It was the rock of Jesus Christ; it was the quarry of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we do not conform ourselves to the world, but rather we conform ourselves to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They reply, “Some say John the Baptizer, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

Then Jesus asks the question that he asks of each of us: “Who do you say that I am?”

This is the question that has served as the guiding and driving principle of our year in the New Testament in our Confirmation curriculum: “Who do you say that I am?”

I believe it is the most important question any of us will ever answer, and we answer it every day of our lives. We answer it with our decisions. We answer it with our words. We answer it with our actions.

Either Jesus is Lord of our lives or he is not.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Peter speaks for all the disciples: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”

And on this declaration of faith, our Lord will build his church: “. . . on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

“Built on a rock the church shall stand, even when steeples are falling . . .”

This hymn is often considered second only to Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The lyrics were written by Danish pastor Nicolai Grundtvig, and steeples were literally falling in Copenhagen in 1807 when the English bombarded the city. The title of the collection of Grundtvig’s hymns refers to the carillon that hung in the tower of the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, which was destroyed in that bombardment.

Grundtvig experienced steeples falling around him throughout his personal life. In his trial sermon as a pastor, he challenged the establish church, insisting that the word of God had departed from the house of God and that human pride and confidence in reason were preached in its place. He was censured by church officials. He suffered what was called a “nervous collapse” due to what appears to have been “manic depression,” or bipolar disorder. He was married three times. Through it all, it was the rock of the word of God, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Sacraments, that sustained him in his suffering. In his life he penned 1500 hymns, served in the Danish parliament, and founded folk schools, from which the Danish folk school movement was born. One of the churches he served was Our Saviour’s in Copenhagen, which spire we could see from our apartment while Lynn and I lived there for a year.

When steeples are falling around you, remember the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug.

Remember Jesus’ promise: “. . . on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Thanks be to God!