Göttinger Predigten im Internet
ed. by U. Nembach, J. Neukirch, C. Dinkel, I. Karle

EPIPHANY 4, January 27, 2007
A Sermon for a Church Anniversary based on Matt. 28:20 by David Zersen
(->current sermons )


 

I am with you always until the end of the age. (NIV)

 

THREE WAYS TO GET YOUR NAME ON THE CHURCH CALENDAR

Recently I watched a PBS documentary called Shadya about an Arab girl who lived in Israel. Actually, there are 1 million Muslim Arabs living in Israel who simply became a part of the nation when their villages and farmlands were incorporated within the State of Israel. Shadya is the story of a 17 year old girl (the film’s title is her name) who studies karate and hopes to make a name for herself in this way. Her brothers and many members of the community say that it is inappropriate for a girl to show such karate moves in public. By her posture and attitudes, she is demeaning the heritage of her people.

Shadya, however, says, “I think differently. I am not my parents or my family. I am me. I don’t really pray as they do. I make up my life as I go along.” Such ideas are not unusual for a 17-year-old girl, and it’s good to be independent and progressive. However, it’s not really possible, even if 17-year-olds think it, for anyone to live as if each day were begun as a tabula rasa, as a new life lived in a vacuum, free of any influences or any presence. We may be free to make decisions about how influences will be allowed to impact us, but impact us they will. We are always surprised, in retrospect, how many words and rules and concepts of our parents, our extended families and many others have become an abiding presence in our lives. We may even be surprised how dependent we are on the things from which we think we have been emancipated.

When Presence is a Burden

Of course, there are many things that are with us always that can be a burden for us. Such presence impacts us in terms of memories, feelings and societal realities.

In terms of memories, there are the things that I have done and that others have done to me. It is difficult to free ourselves of these memories. They are burdens that hang around our necks in a lingering way. On the one hand, things we have done to hurt others can be an embarrassment. I can remember as a high school student driving back from a YMCA event and we were all talking about the teachers we liked or didn’t like. I denounced a certain teacher until someone shoved an elbow in my ribs and whispered, “the kid in back is his son!” I’ve never been able to escape the burden of knowing I caused hurt with that statement. On the other hand, such presence in terms of a memory in my mind has helped me to try to avoid such incidents. So, negative presence can have a constructive impact.

There are also memories about things that people have done to you. You can live with them, putting them on a back burner, but suddenly the oddest circumstance brings them back with a vengeance. I well remember a father who once grabbed me by the throat and shoved me against the wall and said, “if my daughter refuses to get married in this church because you’re requiring her to go to pre-marital counseling, I’ll have to beat you up!” That memory is a negative presence in my mind (and I’ve always carried brass knuckles since then.) (grins)

There is also the matter of feelings. What do you do with anger, jealously, revenge, hatred? Of course those feelings come in differing degrees, but sometimes they are so strong that we find ourselves plotting as we fall asleep at night or feeling the presence of the assaulting or offending personality so strongly that we can almost shout at him or her. Negative feelings can powerfully impact the way in which we carry out our day, or conduct ourselves with colleagues or members of the family.

There is also the matter of societal realities. Jesus says, for example, “the poor you have always with you.” And we could add, “and then there is the non-stop presence of this g…d… war.” Many are the tensions and inequities in our world that can create burdens for us. It may lead us negative attitudes like road rage or writing non-stop denunciations of the social situation in Letters to the Editor. Of course, it can also encourage us to strive for justice and peace in this troubled world. An artist friend of mine, P. Solomon Raj, works with batiks and woodblock prints to relate the message of Christ’s love within the context of his Indian society. In one powerful print, he has Christ dressed as a Dalit (member of the untouchable class) holding his cross in the midst of laboring peasants as if to say, “I am one you” or even, “I am with you always to the end of the age.” The realities of our world can be great burdens for us, and many of us spend a good bit of energy wrestling with the challenges they pose to us.

Of course, our blessing as Christians is to celebrate the gift of forgiveness that allows us to separate ourselves from the blunders and failures in our lives as well as from the evil things that others have done to us. In the words of Eleanor Farjeon’s poem, made famous with Cat Steven’s melody

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God's re-creation of each new day

As a result of God’s extravagant kindness in Jesus Christ, we know that the dark presence that so often lurks in the dark corners of our lives dare have no power over us. In the final judgement, “death will have no dominion” (Dylan Thomas), and Christ will be our light. Still, on a daily basis, we struggle to figure out how we will get this or that issue off of our calendar so that we can be freed to move into tomorrow. We know that the presence of the burden cannot condemn us, but we know that this is Saturday, Jan. 27, and that a negative presence from this or that experience too often hovers, haunts, and hangs there.

When Presence is a Blessing

Changing course for a moment, there are also times when presence can be a blessing for us. In fact when those blessings touch us, they can defy and bury the burdens that result from negative presence. Positive presence can result from good experiences with family, friends and colleagues today, but also from the stories and the lives of people who have lived before us.

Who among us cannot find an example of someone who is for you such a positive influence that they are a joy to be around? In meetings at work, family gatherings or personal coffee time, they fill us with new ideas, with encouragement and with hope.

Sometimes such people have gone through enormous negative burdens of their own and for years wandered a path that took everybody down with them. But here and there a transformation showed them a new way and now you are the one benefiting from it.

In the classic film about family dysfunction, The Family Stone, nobody seems to know how to do anything right. The siblings can’t stand the girl their brother brings home for Christmas. The mother is obnoxious and foul-mouthed, but loving. Nobody can really agree on anything. But then, the mother has cancer and she dies. And the next Christmas, the family is all still there, somehow cemented in their fragmentation by a mother’s love which remained a presence for them. And you and I know how that kind of love has at times worked in our own marriages and families, pulling us back together when everything else seems to be tearing us apart. Love can be the only real presence there is.

Of course, such powerful examples are not found only in those with whom we live out our lives. They are also present in the stories of those who have lived before us—in differing, but in very real kinds of ways. Jesus says in our text, “I am with you always to the end of the age.” What can that mean for us? The Christian community has struggled for centuries to define that presence because it changes everything when we understand it to be real. On the one hand, it is certainly there as we are reminded of the ways in which Jesus’ own examples of self-giving, love, forgiveness, confidence, trust and obedience continue to teach us. It is also true than when in the dark night of guilt or disillusionment we see that same hand that embraced the prodigal son or Peter on the water reaching out to us, we can know for certain that he is with us. And when we gather at the table, and eat bread and drink wine together as fellow sinners, we know that he who makes us one in his forgiveness is the real and only Presence in the Supper.

But there are so many more positive people from the ages long gone who seek to bring blessing into our lives. And the Church remembers so many of them with special dates on the church calendar: saints, apostles, martyrs; disciples, missionaries, nurses. Some, to tell the truth, probably have little justification for being on such a list. Some were royalty and there was political pressure to declare them saints. Some were martyred, and were remembered for this ultimate sacrifice, even if they never did anything else to justify being remembered. But they are, a presence among us, soliciting our recognition for many and various reasons. And often, they bring into our lives, powerfully positive presence that motivates us. Which is why, when years ago I was pastor here at the building of this church, I encouraged that the rooms in the education wing be named after significant personages whose presence in our sacred spaces might guide and influence young and old alike: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, modern martyr who lost his life because he opposed tyranny; Johannes Kepler, the father of modern astronomy who wrote as much about Lutheran theology as he did about science; C.F.W. Walther, who took a motley group of Lutherans new to the shores of America and made them a confessing church.

But there are so many more—and on a day that remembers the 100 th Anniversary of a Church, a day that looks both backward and forward, we are encouraged to consider all those not yet on the official church calendar whom we could place on our own. After all, you don’t have to be martyred to be remembered. And you don’t have to be world famous. Those are certainly two ways that have been used to place names on the church’s calendar. But let’s here today add a third category. Let’s say that people deserve to be a presence among us because in personal and instructive ways they touched this congregation. Perhaps on All Saints Day different members of the congregation could give testimonies about some of them. Perhaps once each month in a contemporary lesson the presence of one of them could be remembered. And all of us could profit from such a presence being made contemporary again.

There are so many examples, known so well to you who deserve to be on your church calendar so that their life and faith can have a ongoing positive impact. This is why you have lived so long as a congregation, 100 years, to gather such a communion of saints to give heritage and hope, challenge and courage to those who here fight the good fight daily.

Let me share just one example with you, someone whose family is long gone from here so no one is troubled by this story. An elderly woman, Mrs. Mueller, lived here in St. Charles 6 months out of every year with her daughter, Jane Labine. Mrs. Mueller was a member of a very conservative church and she once asked her son, a pastor, with whom she lived the other 6 months, if she could commune here while she was living with her daughter. Her son told her that this was impossible, and that if she ever did, she would not be able to be buried with her husband on the church cemetery. She shared this with me and told me how troubled she was by it. Some months later, one Sunday morning, I looked up from giving communion and saw old Mrs. Mueller with her cane coming to the Lord’s table.

That was a decisive moment for me. It was one of those moments of transcendence or what in education we call “teachable moments.” I knew, without her saying a word, that she was saying to the organized churches, “pfui on your old rules. Shame one you!” And whenever I am troubled by negative presence, by the feeling that I’m not up to the task, that I can’t overcome a burden, I remember old Mrs. Mueller who in her 80s was up to the challenge because she had heard Jesus say, “I am with you always to the end of the age." My presence is the only one you need worry about.”

This happened right here—right on this very aisle. This is holy ground! And there were many more like here down through the years. Thousands. And they should be on your church calendar—because as we look back—and we see Jesus—we see them following in his train. And this is why we are glad to be 100 today. Because we have so many reasons to combat the darkness among us; because we have so many resources to help us live in the light. This is why there has to be a day like this to put it all in perspective.

This is why you are here today, because you too are being called to share your positive presence in this congregation, now and until the end of the age.

Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
Austin, Texas
Djzersen@aol.com

 


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