Leaning into Death

Sunday, February 28, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 13:1-9, 31-35

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

“The United States reached a staggering milestone on Monday, surpassing 500,000 known coronavirus-related deaths in a pandemic that has lasted almost a year. The nation’s total virus toll is higher than in any other country in the world. It has far surpassed early predictions of loss by some federal experts. And it means that more Americans have died from Covid-19 than did on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.”[1]

I have been struggling to wrap my brain around this number all week. I have been trying to absorb the meaning of 500,000 souls who died in the last 12 months due to Covid-19.

I know in my head that this is a big number, yet it feels a little detached from reality.

But in my heart the number feels different because I know that every number represent a person, a family, loved ones who will not be coming home.

I watch for the stories on the news. Every Friday at the end of the PBS News Hour they tell the stories and then the numbers have faces. I see for myself the gifted lives of ordinary people who served, loved, and made the world the amazing place it is.

Real people whose loved one’s wounds are deep from the loss of life and who are left with a grief that is hard to quantify and understand.

This is when the tears bubble to the surface for me. It is not just a number.

How does one lament this kind of loss?

How do we as a country lament what has happened and how it has affected the very fabric of our lives and our world?

I am not sure if I really know how to lament what has happened because of the coronavirus. Like many of you I am just trying my best to make it through each week. I am working hard to stay focused on what needs to be done at home and work and concentrate on the things I can control and then give the rest to God.

But I do know that when we lament, we acknowledge the reality of death in our midst and I think it is difficult for us to see Jesus until we lament.

To lament is an act of faith.
It requires us to tell the truth about what has happened.
It requires honesty about our feelings, and it is a necessary ingredient for us to move forward and heal as individuals and as a nation.

You will notice that Jesus laments for the city of Jerusalem in our reading for today.

Why?

What sorrow does Jesus feel at this moment in time?

What is he feeling in his heart as he looks at the city of God, home of the Jerusalem temple?

Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem. He knows that he needs to go there.

Despite the warnings of the Pharisees, who seem to be looking out for Jesus, He does not back down.

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” ³²He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. ³³Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.

I think Jesus is already lamenting the loss of his own life because he knows that when he gets to Jerusalem, he will be killed. This is the work he refers to.

I think he is lamenting the fact that God’s people will once more reject a messenger from God.

I think he is lamenting the refusal of the people, people like you and me, to receive Jesus and enter into the full and complete relationship that he offers.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

We hear in these words the height, the depth, the breadth of God’s love demonstrated by the work of Jesus.

He laments our unwillingness to repent, to turn back to God and it breaks his heart.

In his lament over the city Jesus is leaning into death. He is leaning into his own death in a way that we cannot fully understand because it is in his death that we are fully and completely loved.

In this profound and powerful image of a mother hen, we see the heart of Christ laid bare for you and me and the entire world.

How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

It may seem to be a weak image for some, but the mother hen spreads her wings tirelessly. She will not stop until every child is accounted for and every child is safely protected and guarded.

The mother hen is so fierce she will sacrifice her life for the sake of her children.

Earlier in this chapter Jesus says that unless we repent, we will perish.

What if we were willing to think of repentance as leaning into death.

Leaning into our own death and the futility of going it alone, without God in our lives.

How would our vision change as we look at our own lives and the world around us if we did that? What kind of ripple effect would there be?

Maybe death would not be so scary. Perhaps we would begin to see what needs to die in each of our lives in order for us to see God more clearly and to understand that God needs and wants us to bear fruit.

And what if we were willing to think of repentance as a deliberate choice on our part to gather under the wings of the mother hen.

For it is under her wings where we will find refuge.

It is under her wings where we will find strength.

Under the shadow of her wings, we will find the freedom to lean into our own death, to repent of all that keeps us from living the life God desires for us, and to live.

To live knowing that God has something new in mind.

That God is pushing us forward.

And finally, to know, in our hearts, when we lean into death, we will always find life.

New life in Christ.

For that promise and hope we say thanks be to God. Amen

[1] The New York Times February 22, 2021

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Leaning into Death

Sunday, February 28, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 13:1-9, 31-35

Past Sermons

Belonging Begins with . . . Showing Up for Each Other

Belonging Begins with . . . Intentional Hospitality

A Word for Worriers and Workaholics

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Belonging Begins with . . . Showing Up for Each Other

Belonging Begins with . . . Intentional Hospitality

A Word for Worriers and Workaholics

About Augustana

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Leaning into Death

Sunday, February 28, 2021 Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 13:1-9, 31-35

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, February 28, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson