That kind soul in the back pew reminds us angels dwell among us 20NOV21

 

WHAT a beautiful story, one that needs to be shared just to remind us there is good in this world, good in the church regardless of what is posted on social media and the headlines. From National Catholic Reporter....

That kind soul in the back pew reminds us angels dwell among us

Nov 20, 2021

by Patrick T. Reardon

"Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" 

Dozens of big-name African American entertainers sang for joy when I started my car. It was the "Hallelujah" chorus from "Handel's Messiah: A Soulful Celebration," a 1992 performance of the "Messiah" as channeled through the full range of Black music — gospel, soul, blues, R&B, spirituals, ragtime, big band, jazz fusion and hip-hop. It was a joyful noise.

I had just learned that the angel had died. That jubilant music, that rollicking, swinging rapture, that dizzying elation was an apt celebration of her memory. And her holiness.

The angel was a member of our parish. She would sit in the back pew with her ailing husband and their 40-year-old son Andy, who has developmental disabilities. Her name was Diana, but I didn’t know that until I heard the news of her death.

What I did know was how lovingly she cared for her husband and son. And I saw a lot of them because I like to sit in a back pew, too.

Her husband seemed to have a great number of ailments, a man who was once strong but who now had to make his difficult and painful way up the center aisle to Communion. She was with him every step of the way. And with Andy, too.

They often would be the last people to receive the Eucharist, and, just at the opening of the left aisle that they used to return to their pew, the three of them would stop and, with their arms on each other's shoulders, bow their heads together in a communion of family, a communion of love. Or, if there were people behind them, they would wait until they got to the back of church to do it.

Diana had snow white hair and the brightest of eyes. She seemed to have an inner glow. And her eyes were focused almost always on her husband and her son.

She really impressed our adult daughter, who offhandedly and with deep respect called her the angel. It wasn't a nickname like Angel. It was a noun, a descriptor: angel. And we all came to use it among ourselves.

One time, downtown, at the ballet, my wife Cathy and I saw her and Andy coming into the lobby during an intermission. We talked a bit.  She said she often brought her son to watch the dancing. 

It might have been then that she mentioned that he was soon going into a sheltered care facility where he could live on his own in a community for the rest of his life. He'd come back to visit on occasion, and we'd see him at church. I remember once he'd grown a moustache.

Diana never knew that our family thought of her and called her the angel. We never mentioned it to anyone else in the parish. But I suspect that there were many others who looked at her over the years and saw a woman who was glowing with love and with life.

Diana's husband died in August 2020, and she followed him nine months later. She was 82, and I can't help thinking that during all those 82 years she was an angel to many, not just her husband and son.

And I can't help thinking that every parish is filled with people like Diana who are, in their own particular way, holy and who, in their own particular way, touch those around them. I don't mean that all these people glowed and loved in the way Diana did. She was special. What I mean is that, when we gather in the church or in the parish hall or on the sidewalk outside, each soul is there, each soul is present in some way, each soul touches others in some way.

Maybe it's the woman who comes each Sunday and participates in Mass but doesn't go to Communion. When I see her, I see a woman of strong faith who is a member of our community and our family even though she doesn't feel she can approach the table of the Eucharist. 

I wonder at the pain she must feel not to be able to join the Communion line. Was there a priest who roughly told her she could not because of some decision she’d made in life? Did she come to this on her own?

Or maybe it's the two gay men who adopted three babies born to troubled women and raised them and loved them and have loved them into adulthood, even with the challenges and difficulties they faced.

Or maybe it's the guy who's a funeral director whose wife had a debilitating disease that slowly killed her. He spent a lifetime dealing with death, and he faced his family's tragedy with strength, resoluteness, openness and even humor. 

Each Sunday, I am honored to be in the same church with him. And I am honored when those two gay men are at Mass. And I am honored by the woman who doesn't take the Eucharist but shows up anyway.

And I was honored by the angel. And by her husband. And by Andy.

A parish is a congregation of souls. Each of us is an angel and a saint and a sinner. I have no idea how my presence in the congregation touches anyone. But I’m sure it does.

Each parish, I know, is like this. And not just parishes. Each neighborhood, each work team, each sports team, each council, each gathering — all the fans at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs — each and every one is like this.

Wherever souls are gathered, God is. And, wherever souls are gathered, we can see each one of us struggling to find the way through life. Some will make bitter choices. But even someone who acts mean or greedy is a soul yearning for some kind of goodness, yearning for rightness.

As Christians, we understand that we're all yearning for God. That can be a help in the here and now, but it doesn’t take away the yearning. 

For me, God is in the yearning. God is in each soul in its pain and joy, in its wonder and fear.

God was in the angel. No question of that. But, when I look around the congregation at the 10:30 Mass, I see God in every soul in every pew.

Hallelujah

HALLELUJAH

Patrick T. Reardon

Patrick T. Reardon is the author of 10 books, including the recently published poetry collection Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay Books) and the history The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago (Southern Illinois University Press). 

 

Sermon for All Saints Sunday: Small Acts of Love 3NOV13

A few weeks ago, on a warm Friday evening I was with friends on their deck after sharing supper with them. We were enjoying each other, wine, their chiminea. We were discussing anything and everything and as the lone Protestant in the group I asked about the Catholic practice of Communion. I learned a lot as they may have from me. We discussed differences, but without superiority and condemnation. This is why I love this group of friends, because we really do love each other. This sermon from the Sarcastic Lutheran reminded me of them, and of all the Saints I have known in my lifetime, a good lifetime because of them and the family and friends still with me. Do yourself a favor and listen to this sermon....

November 4, 2013 By Nadia Bolz Weber 

Click here to listen along——-> 2013-11-3 NBW Sermon hfass 2-1
A stanza From the great hymn For All The Saints:
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, but they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

So, I’m a sucker for a good saint and many of you might not know this but when this church was starting I had a stack of saint card – saint cards are like trading card for Catholic saints, their picture on the front, and their stats and like, spiritual powers listed on the back…well I had a stack of these but they were all of the same saint – St Dymphna who’s my favorite. Not exactly the most famous of the saints but there you go.  Saint Dymphna was the daughter of a pagan Irish king and his Christian wife in the 7th century. Sadly, she was murdered by her father. But before her death she is said to of founded a home for the ill and many crazy people reportedly became a lot less crazy around her.
That’s right…St. Dymphna is officially the patron saint of the nervous, the patron saint of the emotionally disturbed, the patron saint of the mentally ill, and the patron saint of those with neurological disorders.
That is to say, she just really seemed like our kind of saint.
Today is a day set aside in the church year to remember the saints.  But not just the ones who have trading cards since it is technically All Saints Sunday and not just Some Saints Sunday. To be clear, this isn’t like a cult of saints or anything…we don’t need special saints to intercede for us because God listens to them more since they were just basically better Christians than we are.  What we celebrate when we celebrate All Saints is not the superhuman faith and power of a select few but is God’s ability to use flawed people to do divine things. We celebrate all on whom God has acted in baptism, sealing them, as Ephesians says, with the mark of the promised Holy Spirit. We celebrate the fact that God creates faith in God’s people, and those people through ordinary acts of love, bring the Kingdom of Heaven closer to Earth. We celebrate that we have, in all who’ve gone before us, what St Paul calls such a great cloud of witnesses and that the faithful departed are as much the body of Christ as we are.
It is quite a thing, really.  That we are connected to so many. Connected to so much faith. So many stories. So much divine love. Especially in this day and age of alienation and trying to find community and belonging in smaller and smaller ways. I mean, I may think that the basis of me being connected to other people is in having theology or political beliefs or denominational affiliation or neighborhood or musical taste or Facebook groups in common.  But none of that is what connects me to the Body of Christ. What connects me to the body of Christ is not my piety or good works or theological beliefs.  It’s God. A God who gathers up all of God’s children into the church eternal.
So, today let us remember all the deeply faithful and deeply flawed saints of God’s church through whom the glory of God has been revealed is being revealed and will be revealed.  Let us remember Mary Magdalena and Peter the fisherman and the glorious disciples.  Let us remember St Frances and Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. Let us remember Lindsey’s mom, and Moose’s brother and my friend Suzanne who took me in when I was messed up kid trying to get sober. Today let us thank God for gathering so many into the church eternal, some of whom still light our own paths.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, but they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Many of you have come here today to honor someone you have loved who has died. Your hearts are heavy with the loss of someone dear. Many of us have our own beloved dead to remember this day. People who we’d frankly rather still have here in this room as a living person and not as a photo on a white table at church the first Sunday of November. We’d rather be standing behind them in line for communion than adding them to the litany of saints.
Some of you know that this last May Julie asked us to pray for friends of hers who had lost their son Drake to suicide. Drake was 12. He was an animated child who was different from other boys.  He was on the state championship cheerleading squad and loved weaving, knitting or crocheting scarves for his friends.  And for all of this and more he was bullied mercilessly. Drake, a baptized, beloved and beautiful child of God is gone but here, today we will speak his name. We will speak his name with the names of others who have departed this world since the last All Saints – expectedly, unexpectedly, peacefully, violently. And all of them now taken into the embrace of the God from whom they came in the first place.
When I met Julie for coffee a few weeks ago and she spoke of how much she’s understandably struggling to make sense of Drake’s death, I told her as I have so many of you, that I don’t have any easy answers. And that there is seldom an answer to the question of why there is such senseless suffering.  But there is meaning to be found in it.  And for me that meaning is connected to being part of this mystic body of Christ because it means that death is never the final word because in both life and death we, like Drake are very much connected to God and to one another. The letter to the Ephesians we heard earlier calls this the inheritance of the saints, That God somehow gathers us all up into the divine love of Christ and makes us a body both now and in the life to come. That even those whose names are eventually forgotten are always and forever held in the light of God in glory. Because while death is a wrenching painful reality to us, it’s meaningless to God.
Not that God is impervious to the pain of death, mind you – after all,
Jesus had real friends who died, and he stood outside the tomb of Lazarus and wept. And then, of course, he raised Lazarus from the grave – as though before Jesus was to defeat death for good he needed to just gave it a really good slap in the face first.   God in Jesus was so moved by compassion and love for those who others rejected, those like young Drake, that his hand was ever extended to them, a God who, in Jesus was so full of grace that he went to a cross we built for him, a God who in Jesus descended to the dead as though to say to us “even here I will find you and not let go” because death has no sting – death is rendered meaningless to a God of resurrection.  And lest we forget, it is a God of resurrection who we worship.
At that coffee with Julie I said I didn’t have answers but I did know that All Saints Sunday was coming up and we could have a little shrine for Drake…. Yet one more Saint that has gone before us with whom we are still inextricably, united in the body of Christ.
So what can we do but also give thanks for this table we are about to gather around – a foretaste of the heavenly banquet around which the saints are already gathered.  We give thanks that around this table we are tied to the whole communion of saints – united with all who have ever received bread and wine and told it was Jesus and it was for them.  We are joined here with angels and arch angels cherubim and seraphim  – we are joined with the church on earth and the church in heaven and all who have called on the name of God. And we are connected to God.
I saw Julie again a couple days ago and in her bag was a picture of Drake and also a scarf he had woven for her. She asked if I could wear it as my stole when we gather around the table today and remind each other of the night before Jesus defeated death. Yes, of course I will and it will be my honor.
So for this we are also giving thanks, that saintly acts are always just really simple acts of love. And that we give thanks for all those who have come before us handing on the faith and being used by God for simple acts of love. Building homes where the crazy can be less crazy, giving food to those who hunger, taking in a kid trying to get sober, changing a child’s diaper, weaving a scarf for someone you love.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, but they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia! Amen.

Drake’s scarf.

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Sermon on mermaids, enemies, and the 23rd Psalm 21APR13

THE week starting 14 APR 13 was a bad week for the nation with the Boston Marathon bombing,  and the huge fire and explosion in West, TX, and poison being sent to Pres Obama and other politicians and judges. LISTEN to this sermon from Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber about the week. This sermon is why I love her preaching, because she applies the gospel and lesson to herself as well as the rest of us, because she shares her feelings and failures and victories, and because she always reminds us and herself to hold on to our faith. 

Sermon on mermaids, enemies, and the 23rd Psalm

April 22, 2013 By Nadia Bolz Weber 

2013-04-21 NBW Sermon <—-as always, I encourage you to listen along. Especially this week. Just click here. It may take 2 minutes more than just reading it.

Happy Good Shepherd Sunday.  It’s not really a festival day of the church, like Christ the King or Transfiguration Sunday are…it’s just that every year, on the 4^th Sunday of Easter, the assigned readings are all about Jesus as the Good Shepherd and the Psalm for the day is the 23^rd Psalm.  About 10 years ago on Good Shepherd Sunday, when our daughter Harper was 4, my husband Matthew was giving the children’s sermon at his church, he had gathered all the little kids around and was going to have them sing that song, “I just wanna be a sheep baa baa baa baa” and he asked the children the leading question: “Ok kids, what do you want to be? And all the kids say “a sheep!” except our daughter Harper, who says “a mermaid!”.

In the spirit of full-disclosure, that is a cute story, and it happened on Good Shepherd Sunday but it’s apropos of absolutely nothing in connection to the rest of the sermon.

It’s just that, in the midst of such a horrific week, I thought a cute little kid in church story might feel nice. Since, well… everything else kinda feels like crap.

This week I posted something on Facebook that said I was sick of “preaching challenges”. And I am.  I’m sick of bad things happening – things that knock the breath out of us. And I’m tired of then having to figure out what to say about movie theater slaughters and school shootings and vehicular homicide and marathon bombings and crippling explosions. Preachers and pastors are supposed to provide some sort of explanation for things, right? I mean some kind of bland reassurance in the form of platitudes that,  like supermarket sheetcake – are so sweet in the moment it makes your fillings hurt and then 10 minutes later, totally forgettable.

Aren’t preachers supposed to be able to help make sense of the senselessness around us?  Aren’t we supposed to be able to give meaning to meaninglessness and comfort in times of chaos?

Well, I just didn’t have it in me this week.  I just felt…well, tired. Tired of event after event demanding my reaction and ripping at my heart and daring me to come up with some kind of good news.  So it’s just a lousy week to be a preacher.  But it’s a lousy week to be a lot of things: a Bostonian, a person who loves Bostonians, a Muslim American, a Serbian, A cop, a marathon runner, a West Texan, Barack Obama, a Shepherd of a flock.

My dad is a little old fashioned and is for sure the only one in my life who refers to me as a shepherd. Sometimes he calls you guys my flock.  Which of course is hilarious. He’ll say “How’s your flock” to which I sometimes will answer “oh you know, disobedient and a little smelly”.  It’s an old fashioned thing, calling a preacher a shepherd and their congregation their flock and it’s one of many aspects of being a clergy person I want nothing to do with, but never more so than this week. Because I’m no shepherd.

I heard of the bombing in Boston and then the explosion in Texas and the attempted poisoning of the president and I knew for sure, I’m no shepherd. I don’t know where the Hell to lead you in all of this, because like you I am scared and unsure and honestly a little numb. I am tired of the evil and danger and the-CNN-created enemies that increasingly surround us.   I just am no shepherd.

But, in all fairness, I think no one else is either. Who is going to lead us and what is going to really protect us? This week in the media I heard many possibilities.  Our patriotism will protect us.  Cynicism about the government will protect us. Tighter immigration laws will protect us. Looser immigration laws will protect us. Unfettered access to firearms will to protect us.  Tighter gun control will to protect us. The swirling chaos of never-ending news cycles is going to protect us. Ignoring it all and numbing ourselves out with food or booze or sex or Netflix streaming is going to protect us.  Or maybe the next earnest meme on facebook is going to protect us. Save us. Lead us. Shepherd us.

And Oh My God do we choose some terrible Shepherds.

But like sheep we really do need something to come along that will finally make us feel safe and loved and knowing we are going in the right direction and will be looked after.

And all I know is that a sermon isn’t going to make you guys feel like little safe and cared for sheep. Which is why in the wake of this week’s events, I thought that I just can’t be a shepherd when I need so desperately to be shepherded myself.

I’m in good company though.  I’ve often heard Lutheran preachers say that they are really grateful that communion comes after the sermon…because it takes the pressure off.  If they somehow screw up preaching the Gospel…they know people will at least get it at the table.

And I’ve never felt that more than today. See, we think we know the 23^rd Psalm really well…I mean what other Psalm do you hear during TV show funerals and what other Psalm is printed on coffee cups.  But I heard something new in it this week. A week of fear and evil and enemies – See, in the 23^rd Psalm God does a counter intuitive thing when it comes to our very real fear of enemies. God doesn’t say “Let’s go smite them” and God doesn’t say “Let’s analyze the data ” God says “let’s eat!”

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

I don’t know what to tell you this week. And I’m too scared to be anyone’s shepherd.  I can’t lead you anywhere, But I can gather with you around this table – a table God has set in the presence of everything that attempts to snatch away our peace.  A table set in the presence of enemies and fear and evil. I have nothing to say.  There is no clever theology or social commentary that can take away the sting of this last week.  But I can gather with you around this table and I can tell you the story. I have no stories of my own (just that one mermaid one…), but around this table I can again tell you the story of how God has come to dwell with us, to make us people of God. I can tell you of how the God of Israel protected his people and walked among them. I can tell you how this same God took on flesh and was born in a time as violent and faithless and terrifying as our own and this Jesus of Nazareth was so full of grace and truth and love for his enemies that he was killed by those he came to save. And I can tell you how on the night before he died he gathered around another table with some real screw-ups and held up bread and said it was his body given for forgiveness and how he held up a cup and said it was for salvation and that when we eat this bread and drink this cup we do so in remembrance of him. And I can tell you that even from the cross on which he was hung he did not stop loving the enemy – even those who nailed him to it and I can tell you that despite human fear and violence,  death did not have the final word and that after 3 days Jesus defeated death itself and then he again gathered his friends around a table from which he fed them breakfast and then he said for them to feed his sheep.  And as his sheep, it is at this table where he desires we be fed. Fed by his story and his body so that we can be the people of God who know that not even death can separate us from the love of God, and thus we can fearlessly face this world’s valleys of the shadow of death knowing that there is a love stronger than the grave.

Knowing that Love conquers hate and that death has no sting and Forgiveness is more powerful than violence and that despite it all it is always always worth it to love God and love people and to continue to gather around the tables God has set – so that we can behold who we really are and become what we receive in a world that like us, so desperately needs to be loved – and not feared.  AMEN.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/04/sermon-on-mermaids-enemies-and-the-23rd-psalm/

Sermon for the ordination of Matthew Nickoloff 16SEP12

WE do have the God that is the basis of our faith, our salvation and our lives...

Matthew was the Vicar (seminary intern) for 14 months at House for All Sinners and Saints and this past Thursday I was honored to preach at his ordination.  He is planting a church now in Rochester, NY.  You can “like” a page on Facebook called South Wedge Mission to learn more.  Literally today is his first day on the job.

Mine and Matthew’s hands at the baptismal font.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ -Matthew 16

Years ago on a bright Tuesday in March I was driving to seminary and I found myself stuck in traffic on I-25.  Sitting in a dead stop on the interstate I stared up into the clear blue Colorado sky and thought “What in the world  am I doing?  I don’t believe a word of this Jesus stuff. I mean, It’s a fairy tale”.  But then in the very next moment I thought “except…throughout my life…I have experienced it to be true.”  I experience the gospel to be true even when I can’t believe it. And honestly sometimes I believe the gospel even when I don’t experience it.  And I suggest to you today that this is why we have and even why we need Word and Sacrament. Because see, we are a forgetful people.
And it is to this office of Word and Sacrament that you have been called Matthew and I feel like in an ordination sermon, the preacher should in some way address the level of preparedness of the ordinand in question, and I am in a position to do just that.
So here we go…You, Matthew Nickoloff,  have demonstrated great gifts intellectually, pastorally, and theologically. You and Leah have left your mark on the church you served as a Vicar and we are the better for it. You have been awarded a Masters of Divinity (and I think some like, bonus Masters when you were at Southern). You have learned to do pastoral care by text message.  You have learned how to pretend not to be bored out of your last mind at clergy conferences.  You have learned how to create liturgies and write shorter sermons and admit when you’re wrong. You have learned to forgive and how terrifying grace really is.  You have learned what it feels like to pastor broken people as a broken person. You have learned how to learn. You have learned how beautiful and maddening the people of God can be. You even got through CPE.
So if asked if you are prepared to hold the office of Word and Sacrament the only answer is: of course you’re not.  Don’t be ridiculous.
But before you take this personally you should know that when addressing the graduates at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary I said that if they were worrying that they might not have what it takes to lead this church that they should  stop worrying. of course they don’t have what it takes to lead the church but that fortunately they do have the God it takes. And here today I say the same to you.
You Matthew Nickoloff, besides these things you’ve learned and experienced and quite apart from any giftedness you may possess, first and foremost you have the God it takes for you to be a pastor.
And this is what you can never ever forget. Because as I mentioned earlier, us Christians are a forgetful people.
I think Jesus meant for us church leader types to keep this in mind, that it is God who makes us worthy of our calling and that God’s people are forgetful and perhaps that is exactly why in our Gospel text for today, Jesus chose Peter.
Jesus chose Peter.  Peter of all people.  This week I started wondering what in the world would a candidacy committee think of that guy? Peter wasn’t exactly a winner.  He seems to always be over reaching or totally falling short. Jesus could have picked one of the nice, pious, righteous apostles, one a bit less embarrassing, who doesn’t blurt out the wrong answers in class all day but instead he chose Peter who was kind of a buffoon and that’s when he wasn’t being a total sycophant. See, I have a theory about this text where Peter is named the rock.  I think that it must have been redacted.  I think what really happened is that Jesus said “You are Peter, dumb as a rock…on which I will build my church” and that is our legacy to this day.
But the thing to remember is that it’s not that Jesus had the guy it took to lead the church, it’s that Peter had the God it took to lead the church and that’s different.
So I’d like to suggest that Jesus didn’t choose Peter because he was the first to confess Christ…after all, Peter’s moment of glory lasted about 10 seconds before he said something stupid enough for Jesus to say get behind me Satan.
So I don’t think that Jesus chose Peter because Peter understood everything or because Peter was clever or because Peter had the best prayer life or because Peter had the mildest personality and he just “seemed” like a pastor.  And Peter wasn’t exactly chosen because of his loyalty –  lest we forget, it was Peter who denied Jesus. 3 times, if you recall. And here’s the real kicker: I don’t think Jesus chose Peter DESPITE the fact that Peter would deny Jesus 3 times on the night he died.  I think Jesus chose Peter BECAUSE Peter would deny him.  Jesus knew that only a forgiven sinner could really preach the Gospel.  Only forgiven sinners can preach the Gospel.  It’s always been that way so I’m not sure at what point the church decided it’s leaders were to be sinless examples of perfect piety.  I might not give them the keys to my house but only a forgiven sinner can be really trusted with the keys of the kingdom.
See, as with Peter, you are entrusted the keys of the Kingdom.  This is heavy stuff Matthew.  What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  Which sounds like you get to judge people…like you get to decide what God thinks of folks.  But that’s not it.  You are to be, as the text says, a steward of the mysteries of Christ and for all his faults, it is those exact mysteries that Peter actually understood.
Peter knew what it meant to really screw things up and be given grace.  That is to say, he knew about binding and loosing.
So as a Pastor I ask that you take binding seriously.
It’s called Baptism. Pour water on God’s children in baptism and bind unto them the promises of God.  Mark them with the cross of Christ – for what does being sealed by the Holy Spirit mean if not that the oil on our foreheads glistens with the shimmering promises of a God who claims us and names us as God’s own? That is a binding.  Remind God’s people of this as often as you can.  Because we are a forgetful people. 
And to be sure, there is loosing to be done in this work. It’s called confession and absolution. It’s called forgiveness of sins.  Loose from God’s people that which weighs them down, their sin, shame, and despair.  Loose from them their pride, anger and resentment and guilt for not being able to live up to even their own values.  Remind them that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Loose them.
And here’s some job security for you- you’ll need to do all of this again and again and again. Never assume that just because your people leave on Sunday believing the gospel that when they return a day or a week, or an hour later that they still believe it. Don’t assume that if they experienced this thing to be true that they still do… Put Jesus in their ears and mouths and don’t stop.   Because we Christians are a forgetful people.
That is your charge… Binding, loosing, putting Jesus in the ears and mouths and eyes of God’s people.  Being a forgiven sinner reminding a forgetful people of God’s love and mercy. Your charge is not to be a professional Christian on their behalf.  You are not charged with being a quivering mass of emotional availability on their behalf.  You are not charged with doing good works on their behalf.   You are charged with preaching the gospel and presiding at the table.  You are charged with none other than putting Jesus in their ears and mouths so that they might believe the good news and continue to share it with others. That they might experience this thing to be true and that YOU too, a beautiful forgiven sinner might experience this thing to be true. God will do this.  For you Matthew Nickoloff have the God is takes to make you the pastor people need you to be.
May God bless you and keep you.  May God’s face shine upon you.  May God look upon you with favor and give you peace. I love you. Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/09/sermon-for-the-ordination-of-matthew-nickoloff/ 

“This teaching is HARD, who can accept it” – a sermon on the Eucharist by Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber 26AUG12

I was just having this kind of conversation with one of my coworkers after work yesterday (and I told her about Rev Bolz-Weber's sermons and that she should check them out) about how I am thankful, as a believer, that I was raised in a Church that doesn't restrict access to communion or salvation. She said she was going to check out Rev Bolz-Weber's site, I hope she does and this is the first of the good reverend's sermons she reads...

The Last Supper – made by House for All Sinners and Saints 2011

NBW Sermon 8-26-2012 <CLICK HERE to listen along.  Sermons are a spoken event!!
 In the last couple weeks, many of us here have been lucky enough to see a musical called The Book of Mormon.  It’s an irreverent and profoundly funny look at the culture of religion in general and the origins of a distinctly American religion in particular.  I personally thought it was hilarious and found myself snickering at what feels like some of the crazier ideas of Mormonism – things like, and I could be wrong about this, but the belief that good Mormon men get to eventually have their own planet.  But it didn’t take long for me to stop snickering and lean over to my husband Matthew and say…yeah but the thing is, we claim to eat the flesh and drink the blood of a guy who lived 2,000 years ago.  Who’s crazy now?  I mean, all religions are weird, we’re just used to ours is all.
Every 3 years the assigned readings during the Summer include 5 weeks working our way through the 6^th Chapter of John and what is called the Bread of Life Discourse. And let’s just say that if Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote a musical called the Book of John they’d have plenty of material from just this chapter alone.
In the last 5 weeks we’ve gone from the feeding of the 5,000 to Jesus walking on water in the middle of a storm at sea, (by the way, Jesus walks on water during a storm at sea so often in the gospels that I’ve started thinking it was less about being miraculous and more about just getting in some cardio), anyhow, then the crowd chased him down demanding more bread and then he goes and says that he is the Bread of Life come down from heaven which angered the nice religious folks, and rather than backing off he makes it even weirder by saying whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life.  Which is where we pick up today when some of his disciples are like “Uh Jesus, That teaching is HARD…who can accept it?” And many of them leave.  And I have to say, I don’t really blame them.
This teaching IS hard. But honestly, Jesus had a lot of sayings that were HARD.  Sayings like, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, You who are without sin cast the first stone, sell all you have and give it to the poor, The first shall be last and the last shall be first and if you seek to save your life you will lose it. I totally understand the reaction of these disciples who say these teachings are hard, who can accept them.
But this week I started to wonder if maybe those disciples didn’t have to leave Jesus…I mean, when we make the accepting of hard teachings the litmus test for being a follower of Jesus I wonder if we are perhaps missing the point all together. Recently I was describing how many different types of people come to this church and was asked by a colleague what it is that unites all the people here at House for All Sinners and Saints. Is it a certain belief, they asked?  I looked at them and was like, What, in a doctrine? Of course I answered No. I mean, I have a very clear and perhaps shockingly Orthodox Lutheran theological perspective, but honestly, you guys believe all sorts of stuff.  Trust me on that. A few of you are theologically Lutheran, but the rest of you guys are everything from Agnostic to Evangelical and strangely I think some of you are both at the same time.  So while we are pretty Christocentric here, I mean, pretty into Jesus, accepting a certain doctrine is ultimately not what unites us. /// I think what unites us isn’t a doctrine, it’s a table – a table that is open to all in which we receive this Bread of Life come down form heaven.  The body and blood of Christ is what unites us and makes us a church. Hopefully not in a prideful see how inclusive we are way, but in a Lord to whom shall we Go? You have the words of eternal life way.
We are all welcomed each week with the news that we have an open table at House for All and that means that everyone without exception is invited to receive the bread and wine which for us is the body and blood of Christ. And some of us have perhaps grown so used to this that we don’t realize how radical that is given the history of Christian practice.  For as much difference there is in the Christian church…Roman Catholicism, snake-handling Pentecostalism, polite Presbyterianism, emotional Evangelicalism, Intellectual Lutheranism – for as much as we differ, the one thing most Christian traditions actually have in common is some form of communion… which makes it all the more ironic that the very thing we all seem to have in common is the thing that so often divides us.  A lot has been spilled in the history of the church over issues of who gets to take and serve communion…a lot of ink and a lot of blood.
Sadly, the way we as Christians have historically responded to the gift of the Eucharist is to make sure that we understand it, then to make sure we put boundaries around it and then to make sure we enforce both the correct understanding and the correct boundaries. But on the night Jesus was betrayed he didn’t say “this is my body broken for you…UNDERSTAND this in remembrance of me….he didn’t say ACCEPT this or DEFEND this or BOUNDARY this in remembrance of me he just said do this in remembrance of me.
It IS a hard teaching.  That God would be made human and walk among us, that this Christ would offer his own flesh for the sake of another world, that he would do this knowing what scoundrels sat around his table the night he was betrayed and that he would do it anyhow saying take and eat this is my body broken for you do this in remembrance of me.  And when we at House start to feel even slightly self-congratulatory about our inclusivity, we might do well to remember two things. One: the 12 disciples who sat around that table included Judas the Betrayer and Peter the Denier and the reason Judas and Peter makes us cringe is that there is that of the Christ betrayer and the Christ denier in all of us and it is precisely THAT part of us which Jesus seeks to make whole with his own broken body.  And 2, every time we enter this space we pass that mural of the Last Supper that we created last year and that the disciples in the mural were created out of images of people or that within ourselves that we wish were not invited to the table.
This teaching is HARD.  Who can accept it.
It is hard to accept that our enemies receive the same forgiveness and grace and redemption as we do but sometimes it’s even harder to accept not just that God welcomes all, but that God welcomes All of me, all of you. Even that within us we wish to hide: the part that cursed at our children this week, or drank alone, or has a problem with lying, or hates our body, that parts within us that suffer from depression and can’t admit it, or is too fearful to give our money away, or is riddled with shame over our sexuality or cheats on taxes …all these parts of us we wish Jesus had the good sense to not welcome to his table are invited to taste and see that the Lord is Good….all of who we are is welcomed to his table to see that the gifts of God are free and for all and for all.  This teaching is Hard…who can accept it.
As your preacher today, please hear that I am not asking you to accept it.  I’m only asking you to do it. Because here at this table, you can bring the most broken pieces of your life, here you can bring the most broken pieces of this world, here you can bring the most broken pieces of yourself, and you can receive with no payment or worthiness on your part, the equally broken body of Jesus Christ. You need not understand it or accept it.  You need not put boundaries or defenses around it.  You need only do it. So come with all of who you are and receive the living bread come down from heaven. Receive life and forgiveness and salvation with all the other broken saints and gleaming sinners for it is this that unites us in the love of a powerful God.  Amen
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/08/this-teaching-is-hard-who-can-accept-it-a-sermon-on-the-eucharist/ 

Mural of the Last Supper by House for All Sinners and Saints 4APR12

THIS depicts the Communion Table as Christ intended, open to all who believe or are seeking, with hearts and minds and spirits trying their best to live up the the expectations and tenants of our faith. Christ is open to all, we should be to....

Here’s the mural of the Last Supper House for All Sinners and Saints made out of images that represent people we don’t like, or categories of people we wish weren’t also invited to Christ’s table, but are. The table is made of images of bread.


http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/04/mural-of-the-last-supper-by-house-for-all-sinners-and-saints/

COMMUNION

"I think the most important thing for me about St. Gregory's is the practice and the theology of open Communion, which says basically that the altar does not belong to the church. The altar is God's, and everybody is welcome. It is not up to the church to say, 'You don't deserve Communion, because you're not baptized or you're gay or you're divorced or you're a child.'"
- Sara Miles