Home        Contact     Calendar    Map        Sermons     Messenger  

April 25th, 2010. Easter 4. Pr. H. Fege, MLC, Cape May, NJ  -   Ps. 23.

Non Nobis Solum

 

Last Sunday you voted to renew my call as your pastor. And today … “The Lord is my Shepherd…” but I’m getting ahead of myself.

First thank you H. Ireland for “Almost Saved.”

It was a timely homily.

Second, I thank you for your vote of confidence in your renewing my call to serve as your pastor for a while longer… if that is a mandate we will need additional conversation!

I couldn’t help but take a look at the “letter of call” that you sent me 3 years ago.

            We call you to exercise among us the ministry of Word and Sacrament which             God has established and the Holy Spirit empowers:

            To preach and teach the Word of God in accordance with the Holy Scriptures             and the Lutheran Confessions; to administer Holy Baptism and Holy             Communion; to lead us in worship; to proclaim the forgiveness of sins; to             provide pastoral care; to speak for justice in behalf of the poor and oppressed; to encourage persons to prepare for the ministry of the Gospel … to equip us         for witness and service and guide us in proclaiming God’s love through word          and deed.

Another, but shorter paragraph follows… emphasizing my devotional life and ending with what you, the congregation, promise:

            We pledge our prayers, love, esteem and personal support for the sake of the             ministry entrusted to you by God and for our ministry together in Christ’s             name.

We need to have conversation on that one too...

 

I found it a bit ironic that the letter was signed on April 1st, 2007

by Bishop Roy Riley, Jr., Pat Gerew and Jim Sorenson.

More about the date and the signors in a minute.

It was on that date that I preached my first sermon at the VFW in Sea Isle City.

I was no rookie, having already retired from active ministry after 30 years…

Yet I was nervous. I would have been even more nervous had I known what was coming.

Having a wobbly music stand for a lectern didn’t help.

To my left was a portable beer dispenser with Bud and Miller on tap.

Behind me was a closed double door with “members only at the bar” sign, a reminder that at the noon hour these doors might be opened and reveal not only more taps, but a surprised cadre of Veterans raising their steins.

Only 4 months earlier MJ and I sat in the Bishop’s office in Trenton where I explained that I was called by God to be a visiting pastor in some large urban congregation near the home of my in-laws.

Well maybe the Bishop and God had other ideas, so here we are three years later… as they say, where has time gone?

So much has happened. Instead of “members only at the bar” we have “members at the altar.”

Instead of Bud or Miller it is Mogen David.

Instead of a noon curfew we can stay all day… don’t worry.

Instead of 15 or 20 on a good Sunday we have 60 or so… God has blessed us!

We have fallen in love, and like all lovers we have good days and bad days but be they good or bad they are blessed days, because “the Lord is my shepherd”.

But back to the Letter of Call. It begins with Hartmut Michael Fege with prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to do God's will, MLC a congregation of the ELCA meeting on April 1st, 2007 extends to you this call to serve as Pastor. There’s that date again.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

But Scripture to the rescue. In I Cor. the great Apostle writes:

“We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ…” he says the same thing a few more times in this same letter.

So, St. Paul reminds us that April Fool's Day may be the best of all days for a new start for two fools in Christ – an aging preacher and a 92-year-old congregation…three years go by quickly.

The word “Pastor” comes from the Latin meaning Shepherd.

Notice who is called Shepherd?

The Hebrew word translated Lord is Yahweh… Yahweh is my Shepherd… not the Bishop or Pat Gerew or Pastor Fege.  That having been said, let’s take another look at the Ps. 23.

This psalm is read most often at funerals. In Luke’s II Volume work known as Luke-Acts, we heard that Dorcas in the Greek, and Tabitha in the Aramaic,

was a well-to-do woman who was also known as a seamstress who made clothes for many of the poor in her community. Some of you may recall some women’s groups in the past who were known as Dorcas circles…

Like Lazarus who was raised by Jesus, now it is Tabitha who is raised by Peter.

In the last book of the Bible we read how the Shepherd is known as the Lamb (mixed metaphors)

            whose blood washed white the robes of the saints… who dwell with God where             they will hunger no more and thirst no more, where the sun will not strike them,   nor any scorching heat for the Lamb … will be their Shepherd and will guide them to springs of the water of life and God will wipe away every tear from their       eye Rev. 7.9ff.

The 23 rd Psalm and many of these passages are read at funerals, but not so in many of the developing nations of Latin America and Asia. There the 23rd Ps. is seen more in the context of the original reading, where Pharaohs, Kings, Prophets and Priests often had the designation of Shepherd and where the “valley of the shadow” and a “table in the presence of the enemy” were not other-worldly threats, but dangers from oppressive regimes and ruthless despots.

To say, in those circumstances, that The Lord is my Ruler, my Shepherd, was to be unpatriotic and heretical.

So as we continue our journey together, I ask what are the dangers, the dark valleys in our time? For some of you they are personal: illness, family discord, job loss, depression, anger and crisis in faith, for all of us the “valley of the shadow” is global.

Thursday was Earth Day; we need a reminder that the earth is not ours to do with as we want but was created by God… and it was the day that oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico sank spilling millions of gallons into the ocean.

 

On this last Sunday in April we are hard pressed to see ourselves as oppressed. But is it not an illusion, if not an out right lie, to print on our currency “In God we Trust ?” The Lord is our Shepherd we say – who are we kidding?

Maybe we live in the shadow of darkness more than we realize?

When 11,195 corporate lobbyists ply their trade in the Halls of Washington and 300 of them are former Congressmen and women, and 473 million dollars of their employers money went into the political wallets of these “soldiers of democracy” we are indeed in a dark place.

The 23 rd Psalm was and is, I would suggest, still a way to prioritize not only our religious values but maybe even our financial and political ones as well, which for me are irreconcilably intertwined.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, whose books sold in the millions once said this:

            Even though there is a certain freedom in our society, it is largely illusory. Again,             it’s the freedom to choose your product, but not the freedom to do without it. You             have to be a consumer and your identity is to a large extent determined by             Advertising. Identity is created by ads.

If that was true in the 60’s when he penned these words, it is even more true to day. The psalm read at funerals is a resurrection psalm of life! It calls us to prioritize our values.

I’ll close with a quote from a letter written to you by Jim Sorenson, then President of the congregation, dated March 7, 2007.

            We have had a period of 2 years to rest and re-charge our batteries.  With new             pastoral leadership, it will be time for all members to ‘step up’ and become the             arms, legs, and voices of ‘fishers of men’ again for MLC.

            No pastor does ‘it’ alone. But they inspire, equip and lead us to be about the work             of mission in our new location.          P.S. So what are you waiting for? Amen.