"What if She Said No?!"

THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Year B

December 21, 2014

Luke 1:26-38

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

What if she said No?!

“The Angel Gabriel from heaven came . . . with eyes as flame . . .”[1] Though the sight of him brought terror to any who might lay eyes upon him, it was he who trembled at the news he brought. She was young, oh, so young. And so unlikely, so un-noteworthy, so out-of-the-way, so much less than ordinary. How could she be the one? Could such a one as she even begin to comprehend the profound and eternal consequences of his almost unspeakable announcement? Could she know that the future of all of creation hung in the balance?

What if she said No!?

And so it was that, at his fiery appearing before her, he could not determine which of them was the more amazed—she at his blazing glory or he at her diminutive humility. Would she notice the heavenly messenger trembling with anticipation as he towered over her, as if it were he himself who bore within himself the Child-in-waiting that he came to announce?

“How can this be?”

What if she said No!?

Joseph learned of Mary’s state and was beside himself with indignation and bewilderment. How could she have deceived him? How could he have been so wrong about her? And who was the other man? Joseph’s lineage had been littered with too many such encounters—how could it be that he would be yet another victim of the lurid curse? He was resolved. He would put her away, but he would do it quietly. He would not stoop so low as to expose her and humiliate himself.

But then there was this vision—or was it a dream?! In his restless half-sleep a blazing figure from another world came to him—was he real or only his delusion? “Joseph,” he said. “Do not be afraid to take Mary to yourself. Her Child-in-waiting is of God!”

“How can this be?”

What if he said No!?

It was a dark night and all the world asleep. Only the occasional baying of a lamb for its mother broke the stillness of the night. Suddenly the sky was filled with a radiance more brilliant than the noon-day sun. The shepherds awoke with a start and covered their eyes from the blazing. The visitor hung as if suspended from the heavens and spoke a resounding word that is still searing the universe: “The Child-in-waiting is born! Go and see this thing that has come to pass!” Then the sky was filled with a multitude of other fiery creatures like the first, more than they could count, and they sang, “Glory!”

As soon as it all began—or so it seemed—the sky was dark again and silence replaced the heavenly chorus. They pondered the invitation: “Go and see this thing that has come to pass!” Could they believe what they saw and heard? Or was this some kind of cosmic joke? “Go and see this thing that has come to pass!”

What if they said No!?

The stargazers from the East saw the magnificent blazing at its rising and they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Never had they seen the likes of it. It was beyond anything their wildest imaginations could conceive—and their imaginations were wild indeed. “How can this be?” they asked each other. They consulted all their books and all their scrolls and nothing could compare.

What happened next astounded them even more—that star began to move, as if leading them. It beaconed them to follow. It compelled them to follow. And they were drawn to its light, leading westward. But what of their lives? What of their homes, their families, their livelihoods? What of everything they knew? Where might that star lead them? Might it lead to their destruction? Or would all their acquaintances ridicule and rebuke them for their foolishness in following a star? Would they follow?

What if they said No!?

That Child grew to manhood. The one who was sent before him to prepare his way was in the River, and all the people were going out to him, being baptized by him. Then the One to come after him presented himself to the one to prepare the way, to submit himself to the water. The one to prepare the way could see deep within those intense and piercing eyes a deep pool containing all the hopes and fears, all the griefs and despair of all of humanity, and he all but recoiled from knowing the toll it would take, not only from this One to come after, but also from himself. For he knew that the one to prepare the way would also partake of that way.

What if the one to prepare the way said No!?

He walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He saw two brothers in their boat, fishing. “Come, follow me,” he said. Then he came across two more brothers, mending their nets. “Come, follow me,” he said again. They had their boats. They had livelihoods. They had others at home waiting for them. “Follow him where?” they thought to themselves. “What might become of us?” “What about our father alone now in the boat?”

What if they said No!?

He came to his beloved friend Lazarus, already four days dead in his tomb. His sisters lamented, “Lord, if only you had been here . . .” Was it their grief? Or were they taunting him? “Where have you laid him?” “Lord, come and see.” He himself began to weep. “Roll the stone away!” he commanded. “No, Lord,” his sister protested, “already there is a stench.” “Roll the stone away!” Then he spoke with the same authority that brought into being the sun and the moon and the earth and the stars: “Lazarus, come forth!”

What if Lazarus said No!?

“He comes to us as One unknown . . .”[2] How might we know him? How might we recognize him? He comes knocking at our door. He comes seeking a home in our heart. He desires us to know him as he knows us. He longs that we might love him as he loves us. He calls us to follow him.

What if we said No!?

---

    

[1]“The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, no. 265. 

    

[2]”He Comes to Us as One Unknown,” ELW, no. 737.

"I felt a shadow pass over me . . ."

THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Year B

December 14, 2014

Psalm 126

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

I felt a shadow pass over me,

though not a shadow of foreboding.

So fleeting it was that had I blinked

I might have missed it,

and the thought of missing it

made me grateful that I had not.

The eagle sliced a shadow

through the otherwise brightly lighted landscape

that I had grown accustomed to.

I needed the shadow to remind me

that I dwell in radiant glory.[1]

Today is the commemoration of John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic and poet, who lived a generation or so after Martin Luther. As was and still is typical practice for members of a Roman Catholic order, John took the name of a person he admired from the Bible or from history. He chose to name himself after John the baptizer, in part because he was born on the day of the commemoration of the forerunner of Jesus. So it seems doubly fitting that we might consider something of the life and writings of John of the Cross as we wade into our texts for today.

John was born in Spain in 1542 into dire poverty, and his father died when he was but a child, leaving his mother and her three sons destitute. When John was a teenager, he worked at a hospital and also receive his first formal education at a Jesuit school. He became a Carmelite friar, and shortly after met Teresa of Avila, noted for her religious fervor and zeal, especially in instituting reforms in her order of nuns, reforms that reverted back to some of the more austere practices of renunciation of earlier times. John came under her reforming influences and began instituting some of the same austere practices, which alarmed some of the religious powers-that-be opposed to the reforms. In 1577, at the age of 35, John was arrested.

He spent the next nine months in hellish conditions [in a 6’x10’ cell]—damp frigid cold that winter, stifling heat in the summer, darkness which badly strained his eyes (the only opening was a two-inch horizontal slit near the ceiling), lice infestation, dysentery from the stale scraps of sardines and bread, and vomit-inducing stench due to the fact that his hateful jailer would only change his waste bucket every several days. Not least was the constant humiliation and frequent torture from fellow “Christian” friars, who took him out a few times each week into the rectory at mealtimes, where he was made to kneel like a dog and endure much verbal scorn and bodily flogging and caning for daring to help launch the reform with Teresa. . . . The period was especially hard on [John] because his own great humility made him begin to seriously doubt himself . . .

Yet it was during this Dark Night of the Soul (he apparently coined the phrase), this period of being stripped of all material and spiritual consolations, this being “totally undone and re-fashioned in God,” that [John] issued forth the early verses of some of his major poems. A new jailer had come in after six months, and given John a fresh tunic and a pen, ink and small notebook for “composing a few things profitable to devotion.” . . . The first part of his Spiritual Canticle poem and other verses soon followed, [expressing] his intense realizations of the transpersonal God, his love for the personal Lord, and the blazing power of Spirit, which had stoked a profound fire in him, overcoming the interior and exterior darkness of his dire situation.[2]

We will return to John of the Cross. But now to John the baptizer, after whom John of the Cross took his name.

For the second Sunday in a row we hear from John the baptizer—last week from the Gospel of Mark, today from the Gospel of yet another John, John the Evangelist.

In today’s Gospel, John the baptizer points directly to Jesus: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light” (John 1:6-8).

John the baptizer also went to prison, to King Herod’s prison. However, unlike his namesake, John of the Cross, John the baptizer never got out of prison alive. You recall the story of King Herod’s beguiling niece demanding the head of John the baptizer on a platter during the King’s birthday party. Despite his imprisonment, John remained faithful to his message and to his Lord.

The Apostle Paul also knew imprisonment, beatings, even being stoned and left for dead. Yet Paul could astonish fellow prisoners in his singing for joy in the Lord. In his letter to the Philippians, in whose midst Paul had been imprisoned along with Silas while they were in Philippi, Paul writes: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). In our Second Reading for today, Paul writes, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

We talked quite a long time during Sandwich & Scripture Bible study this past Wednesday about this last verse: “. . . give thanks in all circumstances . . .”

Paul could rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances because he knew the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, his Lord (Philippians 3:8). John the baptizer could rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances because he knew that he himself was not the light, but that he came to bear witness to the light. A verse that is omitted from our Gospel for today follows: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9). John the baptizer could rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances because he knew the true light of Christ Jesus.

John of the Cross could rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances because he knew the true light of Christ Jesus. John wrote that, just as the moon does not have light on its own, but receives and reflects the light of the sun, so, too, do we receive and reflect the light of God:

Would not the sun have lost its mind if it said to the moon,

“Dear, give me more light.”

For does not all the moon’s beauty and charm come

from the sun’s existence;

could we even see the moon if it was not for the sun’s being?

Is anything we see of earth and sky and each other not dependent

on the Sun, on the real Sun—God?

Are we not some extension of His Being?

Does not all form have its life in reflecting Him? It does.[3]

“Does not all form have its life in reflecting Him?” John of the Cross could rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances because he lived in and reflected the light of God, in the light of Christ Jesus.

Do we not all live our lives within the context of the radiant light, the radiant glory of Christ Jesus?

I felt a shadow pass over me,

though not a shadow of foreboding.

So fleeting it was that had I blinked

I might have missed it,

and the thought of missing it

made me grateful that I had not.

The eagle sliced a shadow

through the otherwise brightly lighted landscape

that I had grown accustomed to.

I needed the shadow to remind me

that I dwell in radiant glory.

Thanks be to God!

---

    

       [1]David Tryggestad, “I Felt a Shadow Pass Over Me,” December 12, 2014.

    

     [2] http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/John_of_the_Cross.html (accessed December 11, 2014).

     [3]John of the Cross, “A Nursery Rhyme” (excerpt), trans. Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (New York: Penguin Compass, 2002), 313. 

Sermon: "Blue Highways"

THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Year B

December 7, 2014

Isaiah 40:1-11

Psalm 85:1-2; 8-13

Mark 1:1-8

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

“Life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would,” she said matter-of-factly, but with deep lament.

We were visiting our best friends from college after Thanksgiving this past week. They are both well-educated, both having had good and satisfying jobs, having been very active in their church throughout their marriage. Her comment had to do with their son and daughter-in-law and their three-year-old grandson, their only grandchild, who have moved as far away from home as they could get. Their daughter-in-law has undiagnosed mental illness that she refuses to acknowledge, and one of the consequences is that she is driving a wedge between their son and our friends and is determined that they have minimal contact, if any, with their grandson, who himself exhibits profound mental and emotional handicaps. Their hearts are broken and they are powerless to change the situation.

“Life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would.”

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Lynn and I headed south to spend the holiday with Lynn’s 86-year-old mother, who otherwise would have been alone. The usual eight-hour drive took two days, as we drove into snow and ice-covered roads. We headed first toward Rochester, where our son and daughter-in-law have a farm. We wanted to drop off a box of Christmas gifts for them and for our grandson, Simon, and we had with us in the car the body of our beloved cat, Babe, whom we had euthanized the day before, as she was old and very ill. We wanted to bury her on the farm, where Simon could visit her often. From there, we pressed on, intending to take Highway 63, the most direct route, south through Waterloo, Iowa, and on to Grinnell. The further we drove, the worse the roads became, and traffic was solid, almost bumper-to-bumper, on the two-way highway. We decided to abandon that route as too dangerous, with so much oncoming traffic, especially large semis, and headed west toward Interstate 35, where we expected the travelling conditions to be better. They were not. And there was even more traffic. With cars going into the ditch on both sides, even at 30 miles per hour, we got off at Mason City and checked into a motel. It was 7 p.m., and we had left Duluth at 9 that morning.

Two weeks ago in my sermon I referenced a book I’ve been reading, Blue Highways: A Journey into America, by William Least Heat-Moon. The author, Native American, is Least Heat-Moon, because his father is Heat-Moon and his older brother is Little Heat-Moon. Thus, Least Heat-Moon. He was a college professor of English. On the same day that he was notified that his teaching position was being eliminated the following term because of declining enrollments, he learned that his wife was having an affair and wanted to leave him. So he set out shortly thereafter on a journey across the United States—a large circle, actually—with his 1975 Econoline van, four gasoline credit cards, and the remnant of his savings account: $428. It was 1978.

The author explains the title of his book, Blue Highways:

On the old highway maps of America, the main routs were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dust—times neither day nor night—the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it’s that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.[1]

William Least Heat-Moon may have thought he would lose himself through his trip on the blue highways, but he actually found himself through his many encounters with people along the blue highways, off the main highways.

A Native American man I had never seen before was among the group of guys in the sauna at the Y this past Friday. He sat in silence while the rest of us talked about various things, including how we had spent our Thanksgiving holidays. After the others left one by one, the Native man and I were alone, and he began to speak. He first spoke of his many experiences in the sweat lodges that are indigenous to his people. He spoke of his profound respect for the Native spiritual tradition and, at the same time, of his deep roots in the Roman Catholic Christianity of his grandmother. He spoke of getting on his knees at age seven and offering his life to Jesus. At the same time he spoke openly of his struggles as a youth and his rebellious nature that landed him jail. He had spent the last six years in federal prisons around the country, and he was just recently released under work supervision. He’s awaiting papers so that he can return to the reservation. He worries about his sons, who are going down the same rebellious path he had travelled.

Our country is going through a very difficult and painful time. It is also a potentially dangerous time. Our African American brothers and sisters are again marching on the road, seemingly revisiting the marches of the turbulent 1960s. The road to justice and freedom has been fraught with obstacles and difficulties. We still yearn for the time and place where “righteousness and peace will kiss each other,” as our psalmist today sings.

Our lectionary of Scripture readings during Advent jerk us around. (I am not disparaging the lectionary, as the rationale for it is sound.) Today we hear our prophet Isaiah sing:

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:

"In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.” (Isaiah 40:1-4)

Through our prophet, our God sings, “Comfort, O comfort my people . . .” The promise is that God will make a way for the people in captivity in Babylon to return to their beloved Jerusalem and the territory of Judah. God promises that this way will be straight: “a highway for our God.” The hills will be brought low, the valleys lifted up. It will be like an interstate highway from Babylon directly to Jerusalem. No stoplights, no dangerous intersections, no icy conditions, 70 miles per hour all the way.

This is where we get jerked around. Last week, on the First Sunday of Advent, we heard our prophet lament, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . .” (Isaiah 64:1). Last Sunday’s reading comes 24 chapters later in Isaiah. Some of the people have returned to Jerusalem, but it is not what they expected: the city walls are rubble, the Temple is in ruins, and the local people who have settled there are hostile. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” It seems the interstate highway between Babylon and Jerusalem was not as smooth as they had expected.

Every year at Christmas one church or another will offer a so-called “Blue Christmas” service, a service intended to acknowledge and speak to those who find themselves somewhere other than where they hoped they might be, for people who say, like our friend from college, “Life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would,” for people who thought their life would sail along the smooth and straight interstate highways of life but who rather find themselves on the “blue” highways, with twists and turns, detours and potholes, heartache and despair.

I wonder if most of the roads of our lives are blue highways.

Like Barbara Streisand in her song, we sing, “Color me blue.”

Blue is also the color of Advent. It is the color of hope. The Good News of Jesus Christ, announced in our Gospel, is that God in Jesus comes to us, wherever we are along our “blue highways,” and sings to us: “Comfort, comfort now my people.”

Thanks be to God!

---

     [1]William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey Into America (New York: Back Bay Books, 1982), author’s preface.

"Keep awake!"

Scripture

 “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” (Mark 13:37)

Reflection

With this new season of Advent, we launch into the Gospel of Mark. As usual for the First Sunday of Advent, we “begin with the end in mind,” with our text for this coming Sunday from the so-called “Little Apocalypse,” Jesus’ prediction of the end-times. In this, the last Sundays of the prior Church Year and the first Sunday of the new one sound a common tone: “Be ready.”

In Matthew 25, from which the Gospel readings on the previous three Sundays came, we found ten bridesmaids, five of whom were “ready” and five whose oil had run out. In the same chapter, we see three slaves who are called to account for what they have done with their endowments from their master. Next we see the division of sheep and goats, with Jesus to be found in the “least of these.” Three scenes of being “ready” or not.

What does it mean for us to “keep awake”?

Prayer

Gracious God, Keep me alert for your coming into my life in many and various ways. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . ."

Scripture

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . . (Isaiah 64:1a)

Reflection

What a far-cry from Isaiah 40, where our prophet sings, “Comfort, comfort my people . . .” in anticipation of the return of the exiles from Babylon to their beloved homeland. The prophet of chapter 64 is impatient. The long longed-for return has not gone as hoped. The old city and its temple are still lying in ruins. Other people have settled the lands that had been theirs and their parents’ and grandparents’. The task of rebuilding seems monumental. The prophet cries to God in desperation and frustration, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . .” 

Where is God when things don’t go as expected or as hoped? The prophet’s cry is also ours.

We begin our season of Advent longing for God.

Prayer

Longed-for God, Tear open the heavens and come down! Amen.

Commemoration Jehu Jones Jr.

Commemoration

Jehu Jones Jr., d. September 28, 1852; transferred from November 24

Reflection

Jehu Jones was the first African American to be ordained a Lutheran pastor. Unfortunately, racism followed him, both in the North and in the South, even from his pastoral colleagues. His father was the proprietor of a large hotel in Charleston and who purchased the freedom of several slaves. Jones felt a call to be a missionary in Liberia, and, knowing that pastors in the South would not ordain him, he traveled to New York City bearing letters of recommendation from his pastor back in Charleston, and he was ordained by the Ministerium of New York in 1832. When he returned to Charleston to prepare for his voyage to Liberia, he was jailed and later freed on condition of never again returning to his native state. He went with his wife and nine children to Philadelphia, where he established St. Paul’s Church (the cornerstone still stands). When his congregation experienced financial difficulties, his ministerial colleagues refused to help, and the Ministerium of Pennsylvania seized the property. Jones disappeared from the scene disillusioned. Douglas Strange observes that other African American pastors who have followed Jones into ministry in the Lutheran Church “have exhibited, by their decision to do so, a greater tolerance and unfeigned forgiveness toward us than that shown to Jehu Jones, Jr.”

Prayer

Gracious God, Forgive us the deeply-ingrained sin of racism. Make us ambassadors of your peace that knows of no divisions of race. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Commemoration William Passavant

Commemoration

William Passavant, d. June 6, 1894 (transferred from November 24)

Reflection

Of William Passavant, his close friend and associate H.W. Roth said, “When others dreamed, he dared and did.” A pastor of congregations in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, Passavant was a tireless worker in the cause of relieving human suffering. Regular services were held in jails, and he sought out the poor, the sick, and the neglected. He was a mission organizer; a founder of hospitals in Milwaukee, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Jacksonville, Illinois; of orphanages in Mount Vernon, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. He was also a founder of Thiel College, Chicago Seminary, and the General Council. He introduced the deaconess movement to America.

In his publication The Workman, Passavant wrote: The Church must not only be a witnessing Church but also a working Church. If she is not this, her testimony for the truth and her solemn services are in vain. Only when the Church truly believes, is she in a position to teach, to confess, and to live the life of her blessed Lord. . . . And because of such faith, bringing with it forgiveness of sin and the peace of God, the Church must follow in the footsteps of her Lord, and out of the depths of her grateful love do His works. Having been much forgiven, she will love much. And to do this, she must daily sit at His feet and learn of Him.

Prayer

Gracious God, Thank you for the life and witness of your servant, William Passavant. Give to us the same passion to live our faith as he did. In Jesus’ name. Amen.