Up the Creek

Texts: Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

Sermon for Sunday, February 24, 2008, Michigan Ave. Baptist Church, Saginaw, MI by Joseph I. Mortensen

Poor Moses. Exasperated in his role as leader, he cried out to the Lord. “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” It was not enough that the Lord had brought plagues on Egypt and sent the Israelites on their way out of slavery. It was not enough that the Lord had given them a cloud by day and fire by night as signs of his presence and signposts on their escape route. It was not enough that the Lord had parted the waters through the Red Sea to safety in Sinai or made bitter water sweet or sent them quails to eat and fed them with manna from heaven. You would think that after all that they could believe that the Lord indeed was among them.

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Mitt Romney would have us believe that he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. Or was it his father George who marched? Maybe it happened in some virtual reality, but evidence is lacking for the real event.

I, however, can truthfully claim to have marched with the celebrated civil rights leader. It happened more than 45 years ago.

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For most of a week we have been at the Crystal Downs cottage on Lake Michigan with daughter Anne and her children Roma and Sasha. Over the weekend we entertained Anne’s friend Irina from Moscow and her teenage daughter Anya as well.

Left to ourselves we would not have done as many things or gone so many places. But Anne likes to keep moving, to say nothing of Roma. So we’ve fished, canoed, hiked, climbed Sleeping Bear Dune, visited the Cherry Republic (visas not required but VISA useful), gone swimming, eaten at A&W International Headquarters, and so on.

While we’ve been here, carpenters have installed new picture windows on both levels of the cottage. The original ones had served well beyond their useful life—some of the wood had rotted. The cottage is up for sale at what seems an outrageous price, in spite of which there have already been lookers. Compared to the asking price on the house next door (not the new one, but the one on the north side), it seems like a bargain.

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Today was D-Day, a time of invasion. At day’s end it is not entirely clear who or what has invaded whom or what.

My wife’s mother, my dear mother-in-law Betsy, disembarked from the house she’s lived in for more than 50 years to land at Bickford Cottage. Which is no cottage in the Up North in Michigan sense. Bickford, an assisted living facility, is as nice as one might hope, with a plenitude of amenities. The one in Midland opened a few months ago and already has a waiting list.

Preparations for invasion began yesterday when Two Men and a Truck came to the house to move bed and mattress, recliner, rocker, end tables, lamps, TV and stand, exercise bike, and a few other things. Later in the day and this morning came the moving of linens, bedding, and clothes. My wife and her sister spent an evening putting up shower curtain, stowing supplies in the cupboards and food for the dog in the closet, and finding a spot for the dog’s bed. Yes, this facility allows dogs. Lacking this liberty, there would have been no invasion.

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A newspaper columnist struggled to find something to his liking on the menu. He had waved off the waitress twice while trying to decide. On her third trip back he finally said, “What would you order?” She said, “I bring my own lunch. I’ve seen too much.”

Having lived within the church scene for my whole life, I have seen a lot, maybe too much. It’s been up close and personal. I saw pettiness and petulance in church affairs as long ago as my childhood when a bunch of folks—some of them family friends—left “our” church to form another. I’ve dealt with outright dishonesty and theft on the part of a church treasurer. Pastors, professors, denominational leaders whom I admired turned out to have moral compasses that pointed elsewhere than true north. I felt betrayed. I know what churches sometimes do to good people for the “sake of the institution.” There is no need to elaborate further. I’ve seen a lot, maybe too much. And I have not dared touch on my own long list of sins.

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Reflections on Psalm 19, the Psalter for Sunday, January 21, 2006

This Psalm speaks of sounds, voices, and words, subconscious, conscious, and conscientious. The silent thunder of the heavens proclaims God’s glory. The sky bears mute testimony to God’s works. In a peculiarly ironic, contradictory way, the Psalm struggles to find words to describe these words beyond words:

There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. (19:4,5 NRSV)

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The Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Epiphany (January 14) is John 2:1-11, the wedding at Cana, in which Jesus spurns his mother’s appeal to rescue the situation and nevertheless saves the day anyway.

Jesus says to Mary, “Gynai, ti emoi kai soi?”—a cryptic question, literally “Woman, what to me and to you?” (rendered clumsily but probably accurately in NRSV as “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?”). What follows immediately—“My hour has not yet come”—may shed some light on what’s going on. This encounter between son and mother could well be an adult version of the 12 year old Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem saying, “I must be about my father’s business, but you are not the one who keeps my appointment book.”

Mary, however, seems to have at least some clue about her son’s calling when, undeterred by Jesus’ offputting and maybe driven by a mother’s wish to enhance his reputation, she says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

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The following is a short sermon preached (with the help of an interpreter) at Ascension Baptist Church, Moscow, Russia, on Sunday, September 24, 2006. I was invited and accompanied to the the church by one of my students at Moscow Theological Seminary. The congregation of 60 to 70 people meets in a Soviet-era community hall in the midst of an enormous high-rise apartment complex. The hall which serves or has served many purposes (theater, nightclub, dance hall, et al) has dark walls, no windows, and not much maintenance. Nevertheless, it is home on Sunday for several hours to a vital congregation, many of whose members are young. The occasion of my visit was Harvest Sunday. At the center of worship was a large array of garden produce, a true cornucopia, evidence of an abundant growing season and hard work by the gardeners. Following worship a grand feast topped off the occasion. I am grateful to Pastor Alexander Tsyrulnikov, a former student of mine and now a professor at Moscow Theological Seminary, for his gracious invitation.

Text: Psalm 136 (Russian 135)

“O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endures forever.”

Brothers and sisters: grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (spoken in Russian—rather poorly—by me)

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The following has been edited from a brief sermon preached in September and October 2006 at Second Baptist Church in Moscow, Russia, and at Khimki Baptist Church, just outside the city of Moscow. I am grateful to Pastors Gennady and Leonid for their courtesy in inviting me to speak and to the able interpreters who made it possible for the people in the pews to understand.

Since I am teaching a class on baptism at the seminary, perhaps it is fitting that I say something about baptism this morning. The baptism I am talking about is the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. In Matthew chapter 3 we read this:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenlly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

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Where Did That Baby Go?
Luke 2:41-52; Colossians 3:12-17

Sermon for Sunday, December 31, 2006, First Baptist Church, Midland, MI by Joseph I. Mortensen

There’s hardly a parent alive who hasn’t asked, “Where did my cute little baby go?” Especially as that child hits adolescence and begins to assert a little independence. And bewildered, clueless parents long for days now long past.

We, too, may well ask whatever happened to Baby Jesus? The Gospels don’t give us much of a chance to bask in the warm glow of Jesus’ birth and linger over and savor its mystery and magnificence.

In fact, two of our Gospels—Mark and John—haven’t the slightest interest in Jesus’ birth and childhood. They say nothing about his debut at Bethlehem or his growing up years.

Matthew wrote about wise men from the east but seems not to have known of angels and shepherds or innkeeper or manger; in less than a dozen verses he covers the escape to Egypt and the return to Nazareth after King Herod’s death. Matthew then skips ahead 30 years or so to the preaching of John the Baptist and to Jesus going mano a mano with Satan out in the wilderness.

Luke alone favors us with snapshots of Jesus’ early life. The Gospel author either does not know or does not care about a star seen from afar and the men of mystery who followed it and brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Nor do Herod’s paranoid brutality and terrorism figure in Luke’s account. But what Luke does tell us about the infancy and childhood of Jesus is worth our careful attention, as I hope to demonstrate.

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