I have a couple of things to say, before I really get into things.  The first is, I have no interest in a somber, traditional sermon.  There is so much joy and humor in Biblical stories that is missed by those who live life as one great travail.  Those who can only see the duty and debt -- not the gifts and life.

 

You want to know a secret that I haven’t kept very well?  I think my favorite kind of pastor would be if Robin Williams had gone into the ministry.  I’m not talking about Robin Williams doing some kind of act or routine about a nutty pastor.  I’m talking about the wit, the energy, the intensity, the ability to relate to PEOPLE, as well as congregations.

 

If you look at the life of Martin Luther, he was not a dark, brooding man – though he would have had reason to be.  To look at other denominations, look at the Wesley brothers who founded Methodism, or Pope John the XIII.  These were dedicated people who were ALIVE with the spirit.  It was as our communion liturgy says, “It is our duty and delight that we should at all times and places offer our praise and thanks to you, Holy Father Almighty.”  Even we dreary, drab Lutherans with our guilt trips can do that.

 

Obviously, since I only get one shot at doing this sermon bit, I’m going to hit a lot of points.

 

Secondly, after Carter and Lisi used a song in their testimonial, and Charles pulled out a bottle of Joy for his, I imagine many of you were wondering what kind of special music or stage prop I would pull out for mine.  It isn’t so simple, though.

 

Let me tell you why I was hesitant.  A few years ago, I was working up some audition music for my tryouts.  Anna Simmons, of course, was helping me.  We practiced here, either in the choir room or here after or before evening services.  Pastor Peterson was puttering around here, one evening, getting things ready, while I was practicing.  He apparently thought I sounded good.  He asked if I could perform one of the pieces for a service.

 

 I had to explain.  The first piece I was working on was in German, a Mozart aria from “Die Zauberflöte”.  It is when Papegano, the bird man, has failed all of the Masonic-style tests he went through because he had been promised a bride if he passed.  He has been led to a shade tree, given a plate of food and a bottle of wine.  As in most operas, he has become drunk after one sip, and is singing, “A girlfriend or a little wife is what Papagano desires.”  (He has to speak of himself in the third person, of course.)  He later becomes maudlin and decides to do himself in as a failure, though he gives plenty of opportunities for someone to stop him, which his intended, Papagena, does.  Pastor did not think that was a good piece for a service, as beautiful as Mozart’s music is.

 

The next one was in Russian.  It is from “Boris Gudonov” by Modest Moussorgsky and sung by a renegade monk who has just conned a faithful believer innkeeper out a bottle of wine.  He is a more practiced drunk.  It takes him two sips to get roaring drunk and sing of his youthful days with Czar Ivan the Terrible at the siege of Kazan, where they slew 43,000 Tatars in glorious battle.  Again, obviously, Pastor did not think it was suitable.

 

That left the third.  Sung in Italian, it was from “Tosca”, by Puccini.  It is from the end of the first act, and is sung by the chief of secret police.  The man is standing in the Church of San Andrea de Valle in Rome.  A “Te Deum” mass is beginning in the background, so the music is evocative of bells tolling and processionals, as he stands singing his own thoughts...   He is going to re-capture the escaped rebel he had been torturing in prison, implicate Tosca’s liberal-Voltairianist lover, the painter Cavarodosi, and end up with Tosca in his bed by force.  That one frightened Pastor to think he had liked listening to it.

 

I hadn’t the heart to tell him about the other two I was going to learn after these three.  The first was by Wagner, from his Ring cycle – the one that was part of the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s little ring story, as well as some parts of Star Wars.  It is sung by Wotan (Odin), a very troubled King of the Gods who has gotten himself into a fine mess.  The second was from Gounod’s “Faust” – sung by the nemesis, Mephistopheles – the Devil himself.

 

You see, I am a Lyric Baritone.  In dramatic music, there are traditional roles for each voice type.  Sopranos are young, innocent and pure, heroines or tragically trapped.  Altos are older women – the nursemaids, servants, or more experienced anti-heroine protagonists - like Carmen.  Tenors are heroes, youthful and unsullied, or tragically flawed.  Basses are kings, fathers, and confidants, gods and Caesars, or they are deepest villains – or all the above at once.

 

Baritones are treated in a special way.  We can be a number of things, but usually we are buffoons, villains, or elders.  Rossini’s Figaro is a baritone – so is Verdi’s Iago.  Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” (Don Juan) is a bass-baritone – humorous, romantic, and villainous all at once.  Occasionally we get another role, such as the Toreador Escamillo in Carmen - a egotistical jerk, actually - but usually, we’re just buffoons, villains, and elders.

 

Now, in a complete non-sequitur, let’s look at today’s readings.

 

In Isaiah, those who love, rejoice, and mourn with Jerusalem will be given peace, prosperity and comfort as a child nursed by its mother.  Certainly that city has presented the people of the world with reasons to worry, love, rejoice, and mourn many times throughout history.  Yet those who rejoice with Jerusalem shall be comforted, they will flourish, have joy, and have peace like a river, (to use the phrase in the King James Version of the passage).

 

In Galatians, the faithful are instructed to look at themselves, try to redress all that they may be at fault for, each carry their own burdens, support one another,  help correct those who stray, and do good; all the while maintaining a humble spirit of spiritual guidance from God, and beware of overconfidence.  Again, it concludes that those who follow these rules will have peace and mercy.

 

Of course, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus instructs seventy followers to go out in the proper way to spread the Word.  They are to travel light, travel fast, vulnerable and facing the rest of the world.  Upon finding a place to stay they were to bless the house with peace upon stepping across the threshold.  If the house receives the blessing and accepts the teachings, the peace will remain upon them.  If not, the one giving the blessing will be at peace.  The disciple can then perform his works.

 

These were not the twelve.  They had been sent out, with nearly identical instructions, in Luke 9:1-10.  It says “Seventy others.”  And an interesting thing happens after the Twelve had made their journey.  They returned and Jesus tried to go away privately with them to a desert place that was part of Bethsaida.  They were followed by multitudes, and so we have the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, we have the transfiguration, we have the casting of demons from a man’s son that the 12 had been unable to perform, and we have the arguments among the Twelve as to who should be the greatest of them, all around Bethsaida.

 

When Jesus sends out the seventy, he specifically tells them not to bother with Bethsaida, and says woe onto that city.  He says that any city that had seen the miracles as they had, should have repented, even were it such “worldly” cities as Tyre and Sidon.  I say this just in case you are like me and wonder what is in the verses skipped over in the weekly readings.  This is in Luke 10:12-15, along with a few other cities that Jesus names as finding themselves in worse straits than Sodom, on the day when the kingdom of God is at hand.

 

So, anyway, these seventy went forth two-by-two, they followed instructions, and when they came back they were talking about how they were so happy and AMAZED that things went Just As He Said they would.  Have you ever had kids, or co-workers, or clients that you instruct on something, and they do the “well, I don’t know, but if you say so, I’ll try it and we’ll see,” bit?  Then they come back and tell you that it worked and you have to bite your tongue?  Well, this seems to be one of those cases.  (We’ll leave out the times when you have trouble getting the help line technician to understand that you’ve done that stuff and it didn’t work – that’s a different gospel lesson.) Furthermore, these seventy even got the whole message about what they did wrong.  They were all worked up about the POWER they had over demons and devils.

 

Now, I have a little aside here.  Don’t take this the wrong way, but there are many places in the Gospels where I get the impression that Jesus observed the world with a little of the same homespun humor that you might think of from Will Rogers or Mark Twain.  For example, every time I read His first words to Thomas a week after the Resurrection, I have to think he is having a gentle leg-pull with the disciple.  Today, Luke 10:18 seems to be one of those points.  He references Isaiah 14:12.  Jesus tells them they are right, they showed the power of the Spirit, they made Satan fall – but we know that He knew those seventy did not truly defeat Satan, because He was one who would have to do that for them.  He also tells them they have powers they haven’t even tested yet.  Then he drops the boom down on them, and tells them that they should rather be rejoicing in the fact that their names as believers are written in the books of Heaven.

 

And we, as in all of the Gospel stories, are left asking about these seventy, “When are these clowns going to get the message?”  You and I know, hindsight is always 20/20, and we have 2000 years of it in the case of the Apostles.  We know that while Jesus walked with them, they did not understand anything – they just followed and often came to the wrong conclusion.  It took the Spirit falling upon them on the day of Pentecost before they finally realized what they were really up to.  It was as tongues of fire, and not bricks, but it seems to be the same idea.  Buffoons?  Maybe not, but a little slow on the uptake, at least.

And speaking of slow on the uptake, we would not have any of the other books of the New Testament between Acts and Revelation if it weren’t for the fact that congregations kept messing up and arguing.  Paul is always writing to rebuke, instruct, and encourage – usually starting from where the congregation is screwing up and turning it into a “Teaching Moment.”  And I can tell you from experiences, when a teacher speaks like Paul writes, he’s feeling more than a mite testy.

 

But again, all of these passages speak of a joy upon those who believe, who join in the dance of the Word.

 

But they also speak of the harvest.  Paul warns the Galatian congregation, “Do not be deceived;  God is not mocked, for you will reap whatever you sow”  He tells them that they will reap a reward for doing what is right at harvest time, if they do not give up or give in.  Paul has a lot to worry about with this bunch – back in Galatians 1:6 he finishes with his normal greeting and blessing and gets to the heart of his problem.  “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel.”  These people, it seems, had been re-writing the Gospel they had been taught, or, at least, listening to someone who had turned it, “to suit the will of man.”

 

Apparently, they had been trying to insist that all of the old laws, the Pentateuch, were still absolutely necessary.  Paul spends his entire letter explaining to them patiently why this is not so, why the Gospel of Christ applies.  In Chapter 6, he is coming to the summary, what each and every one of the Galatians were SUPPOSED to be concerned with.

 

It was an important letter for him.  Normally, he wrote the blessings at the beginning and end of his epistles, but someone else wrote the body as he explained it.  Here, we have the Apostle writing bemusedly, as he writes in 6:10, King James: “Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with my own hand.”  The New English Bible has, “You see these big letters?  I am now writing to you in my own hand.”   Some commentaries suggest it is only at this verse, as he explains that being circumcised or not is not the issue and is a smokescreen argument, which he takes up the pen himself as they can see from the handwriting.  Others write that the whole letter is uniquely written by the Apostle himself.  I like part of the sense in the King James Version, not only are his letters big, but that he has written a LONG letter to try to get these points across.  Whichever way is true, he is saying, “Listen to me, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT STUFF!” For those who visit forums and chat rooms on the internet, this is the type of stuff you write in all uppercase.

 

In Luke, Jesus speaks of the harvest, that is bountiful, but he needs more workers.  He sent out the pairs to recruit, telling them to pray to God for more willing hands as they go forth.  So, while the seventy marveled at the works they could now perform, they missed the fact that they were like the neutrons in a reactor, where each one causes a fission reaction that creates two more neutrons, each of which can cause the next fission reaction, creating two more, on and on.  And just like that fission reaction, it would explode within the minds of humankind as each heart was touched.

 

And so we turn to Isaiah, finally.  There is no harvest imagery, but one more immediate to all and intimate.  He is writing to the people of exile, who return to their homeland.

 

Verdi, in his third opera, “Nabucco,” wrote a chorus that captured the longing.  Nabucco (who is a Baritone, by the way) is Italian for Nebuchadnezzar, The chorus is sometimes referred to by its first words, “Va Pensiero,” but the score is merely titled, “Coro di Ebrei Sciavi” – Chorus of Hebrew Slaves.

 

Fly, my thoughts, on wings of gold;

go settle upon the slopes and the hills,

where, soft and mild,

the sweet air of our native land smells fragrant!

Greet the banks of the Jordan

and Zion's toppled towers.

Oh, my country so lovely and lost!

Oh, memory so dear and despairing!

Golden harp of the prophetic seers,

why do you hang mute upon the willow?

Rekindle our heart's memories and

speak of times gone by!

Mindful of the fate of Jerusalem,

either sound a song of sad lamentation,

or else let the Lord give us

the strength to bear our sufferings!

 

The chorus sings in unison until the plaintive cry, “Golden harp of the prophetic seers, why do you hang mute upon the willow?”  In a trained chorus, the moment when voices go to parts (and this is six parts) is more powerful than the unison singing.  The song is a heartrending outpouring of longing.  It is often sung for funerals.

 

The passage in Isaiah is why.  All the hopes and dreams of the exiles, now returned and looking for the restoration, and it is promised in these verses. 

 

The most complete comfort any human ever knows in their life is invoked.  Nourishment, warmth, enfolding in the arms of a loving mother against a sustaining breast.  If this is what God offers you, then it is true that it will be known that the hand of the Lord is with his servants.

 

We hear today of what we should do, what we should wish upon one another, what we should do for our companions, what we should do for our own souls sake, what we should bear for our lives, and what we are promised.

 

As you can imagine, opera deals with drama – comedic, tragic.  The singers strut their time on the stage, belt out their music to be heard in the farthest balcony.  The soloists are fated to play their role based on how their voice grew up.  A bass will never be a young heroic lover, a tenor never gets to really sink to the depths of evil roles, nor play a kindly father.  Only bases and baritones ever get to be kings.  When they aren’t playing a buffoon, villain, or elder.

 

But you see, I never developed as a soloist.  That meant I was in the chorus.

 

I didn’t tell you at the beginning about the chorus.  You see, in most operas, the chorus is a character itself.  All of the voices together, none standing out against the others.  We are a rapt congregation, we are townspeople, we are friends, soldiers, Mandarins, guards, nobles, students, and even cowboys and 49ers.  We are the world, we are the base on which the soloists stand.  We sing “Va, pensiero,” we sing “Te Deum”, and we sing “Freude, Schöne, Götterfunken, Tochter auf Elysium” (Joy, shining, God’s Plaything, daughter of Paradise)

 

And that is fun.  It brings joy to those who hear and those who sing.  It is one way to do good.  That brings me peace in my soul.

 

So no, I did not sing, or play some music to make my message.  I invoked Joy, but did not bring some with me in a bag.

 

And if I since I have gotten this far, I have disappointed Scott.  He said he wanted to see me give a sermon because he was interested in seeing someone struck by lightning while inside a building.

 

May we all find our joy.  May we all have peace.  May prosperity follow us, and the harvest be good.  And may we spread out and help one another, mind our p’s and q’s, and do good for the world.  May we all rejoice in the Lord, forever.

 

Amen.

   

 

Mark Shannon

Ascension Lutheran Church