I’ve blogged — or at least commented on other blogs — about the benefits and downfalls of PC(USA) Ordination Exams. While they were a relatively minor annoyance for me, they continue to be a huge stumbling block for many of my colleagues and surely are not organized in a pastoral (or even humane?) way. That said, I wanted to publicly praise the Office of Vocation for now offering the Bible Content Exam online.

I took the BCE in 2005, I think, and was struck even then that the last scantron test I took was four years before in high school. I’m very glad that we’ve moved to an online format for the BCE, and I wish the office the best as they continue to adjust to new technology and the multiple challenges of the test takers. I hope, sooner or later, the BCE might even be offered many times a year — say once a month — to ease the scheduling challenges of seminary and the ordination process.

Here’s the Presbyterian News Service article from last month with a fuller report: First online administration of Bible Content examination declared a success

Adam J. Copeland

FPC Hallock

Nov. 8, 2009

The Widow’s Mite or Jesus’ Sight?

Mark 12:38-44

For some of you, today’s gospel passage might have sounded a bit funny. It’s one of those classic passages in the King James Version: “And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.” The passage, still today, is often called “The Widow’s Mite” even though many of us wouldn’t know a mite if we saw one.

What’s a “mite”? Well, I had to check, but found that a mite is something small — often a coin, or a child, or an animal. According to the KJV, the widow gave “two mites,” which together make one farthing. A farthing was an old British coin taken out of circulation forty years ago. So, though iconic, the “widow’s mite” translation doesn’t even make sense in Britain any more!

The NRSV reads: “A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.” But no matter what translation we use, the point is clear: the widow was poor, dirt poor, and she gave all she had — two tiny coins — to the treasury of the Temple.

I’m told we haven’t conducted a Stewardship Campaign here for several years. Instead, the session models the next year’s budget on the previous year and trusts the congregation will come through. But many churches, around this time of year, are eagerly awaiting the results of stewardship drives. And many a preacher out there, I’m sure, read the story of the Widow’s Mite with a certain glee this week.

Fantastic, a story that’s clearly about sacrificial giving to the church. The widow only had two coins, and she gave them both. What a fantastic message for stewardship season! Just ask: what would the widow do and sign those pledge cards. Man, some sermons just preach themselves.

If we were in the midst of a stewardship campaign, I admit, I’d be sorely tempted to preach a similar sermon. But we’re not, and I’m not going to.

Such a simplistic sermon (and reading of the text) does not do justice to the word. As usually happens, God is up to something here a bit more tricky, more compelling, and more extreme than we might first imagine. The story of the widow’s mite calls all authority into question until the reader is left with nothing but God and God’s promises.

For several chapters before today’s reading, Jesus repeatedly connects the Temple with corruption. He goes to the Temple and throws out all those selling and buying good inside God’s house. Next Jesus tells a few parables against the scribes and the Pharisees, the upholders of Temple etiquette. Then, sitting in the Temple himself, Jesus begins the passage we read today.

Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at the banquets!

The story about the widow’s mite continues, and Jesus then leaves the Temple and says that it’s going to be destroyed. The great Temple in Jerusalem, the center of the faith, destroyed. And a few years later, it was.

That’s the  problem with the traditional reading of our story today. Jesus doesn’t praise the widow for giving the mite — though it’d make us feel better if he did. No, Jesus, in the next few verses, says that the Temple she just gave to will be destroyed. What sort of stewardship drive is that?

A few years ago I spent a year working as an Assistant Minister in the Church of Scotland. Now the Church of Scotland is a rapidly changing denomination; or as some say, “a rapidly dying institution.” Churches are being closed left and right.

One day, I visited an American friend serving a downtown church in a neighboring small town. We got to swapping stories about our impressions of our congregations, and he told me that the day before, he worked late at the church and decided to get supper at the Fish and Chip shop downtown. (Fish and Chips are sort of the go-to fast food meal in Scotland, and they’re delicious.) Anyways, it was a small town and he just walked across the courtyard to get from the church to the shop. The shop wasn’t more than fifty yards from the church.

Well, an American wearing a clergy collar stuck out like a sore thumb in that tiny Fish and Chip shop, so the owner struck up a conversation with my friend.

 

“So what brings you to our town?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m working with the church.” my friend said.

“What church?”

“The church right there, right out the widow.”

“Really? That church? I had no idea it was even still open.”

My friend took his meal to go, astonished. That church had stood there for hundreds of years, but now it was so quiet, so archaic that the shop owner fifty yards away didn’t even know it was open. That church had lost its vision. It was missing a mission and it was close to death.

In the surrounding verses of our text this morning, Jesus doesn’t just call the Temple into question, he attacks the Temple leaders as well. “Beware of the scribes,” he says, “they devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.”

Now of course the scribes weren’t literally “devouring” houses — I don’t think ginger bread houses even existed yet. “Houses” refers to the widows’ inheritance and resources; the scribes were inducing the widows to give their meager resources to the Temple [see The New Oxford Annotated Bible note]. Jesus is not very happy with these scribes in their fancy robes who rob the poor. “They will receive the greater condemnation,” he says.

So Jesus’ undercuts the Temple, the center of the Jewish religion at the time. And Jesus says the scribes rip-off the poor. About now we’re thinking, “come-on Jesus, give us something good here” give us an uplifting message for stewardship season.

It’d be nice to think Jesus cracked on the scribes, insulted the Temple, and raised up the great example in the widow. But the text doesn’t actually say that. It’d be a great comfort if it did. It’d make a great stewardship sermon, but that’s now what Jesus is up to here.

When Jesus tells the story of the widow giving her only two pennies, he never actually praises her. He never actually makes a value judgement over her great sacrifice. He just says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those contributing to the treasury.” Sure, she gave out of her poverty, they out of their wealth. But Jesus never says “be like her,” he just says don’t be like the scribes.

Have you ever been really broken down. I mean, truly, broken down until there’s nothing left of you? I’ll be honest: I haven’t, so I’m not quite sure about this. But I’ve been thinking this week, with the horrible shooting at Fort Hood and with Veterans Day approaching, about the military. I’ve heard the challenges of boot camp described as breaking one down, chiseling one away until you’re at base and then building you back up in a new way, as a solider.

I think that’s what the Word does today, breaks us down. Don’t put your trust in the Temple — we can live with that. Don’t put your trust in showy religious leaders — that’s ok too. But then this old widow gives her all to that corrupt institution, and Jesus doesn’t praise the act, he just says it like it is.

Her money, all her money, is given to corruption. She has nothing to live on and what she did have will only feed the fat cats in charge. The widow isn’t an example of good giving, she’s an age-old example of being duped. She’s the modern day equivalent of a senior who’s been tricked into giving out her bank account information to a criminal. She’s the widow who gave all she had to a charity that wasn’t a charity at all, just a front for some swindler with a Swiss bank account.

So what’s left? Jesus broke us down, what’s to build us back up here? What is the good news in this now disturbing text?

Jesus noticed her. Jesus was hanging at the Temple and hundreds were bringing their money forward, the rich, the powerful, the prestigious. The ones with the new cars, the nice shoes, the fancy phones they came forward to place their offering in the plate and Jesus noticed her. The widow. The woman without an income who, in that society, was worth absolutely nothing. Jesus noticed her.

Jesus is always doing that: talking to the prostitute, being kind to the foreigner, welcoming the children. Jesus doesn’t give a lick about power and prestige, he’s about caring for the vulnerable. That’s what he ultimately gives his life for: the vulnerable, the corrupt and condemned, for us, for all of humanity.

That church in Memphis that I mentioned in the Children’s Sermon must be thousands of miles from nearest Fish and Chip shop, but they’re being noticed nationally because they notice those who Jesus did. Liberation Community Church’s motto is “Building a Church Without Walls” and so, they welcome all — the alcoholics and drug addicts, the homeless and the gamblers. It’s not a wealthy congregation, they have under 100 members, but they run an after school program serving 25 kids a day. They host job training sessions, a summer camp, and legal services. They welcome single mothers and orphans, and if you walk by their church, you know it’s not closed. No way: you notice them, because they notice those whom Jesus noticed: the vulnerable.

This old passage on the widow’s mite doesn’t lend itself to a simple stewardship sermon. No, Jesus is up to much more. Take notice.

I met David Corn back in the day when I he debated Rich Lowry at St. Olaf College. It was a fun debate (and honestly, I think Lowry bested him). Corn is a loud liberal journalist, Lowry a staunch conservative.  They both appear on NPR and PBS and the like, in addition to writing for their respective magazines.

Corn’s most recent post “Is the Tea Party Gang Turning the GOP Into a Party of Hate?” at Politics Daily brings up some really interesting points. No matter your political persuasion, you can’t really argue, can you, that the Tea Party race baiting and name-calling is helpful?

Corn’s piece mentions signs at the most recent Tea Party Rally that included:

“Get the Red Out of the White House,” “Waterboard Congress,” “Ken-ya Trust Obama?” One called the president a “Traitor to the U.S. Constitution.” Another sign showed pictures of dead bodies at the Dachau concentration camp and compared health care reform to the Holocaust. A different placard depicted Obama as Sambo. Yes, Sambo. Another read, “Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds” — a reference to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory holding that one evil Jewish family has manipulated events around the globe for decades.

Maybe I’m just a knee jerk anti-name-calling guy, but come on. As I would often say to kids I counseled at summer camp, “Dude, that’s just not cool.”

Maybe such signs and opinions are just the loud extreme. Maybe, if I dialoged with a sign-holder, I would come to understand their perspective and appreciate their opinions. But depicting the President as Sambo? That’s just not cool.

In the old world, way back when I was a kid, TV networks made the content that drove our lives. In some ways that’s still the case, but with web 2.0 (or 3.0 or whatever) more and more often billionaires are beaten by the little guy. With YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and Twitter, a simple clip can get more hits and make more web fuss than even the best advertiser could muster.

For more on this general concept, check out this awesome (though longer) video h/t to Mary:

A few weeks ago, on my favorite TV show (the only one I watch, actually) the little guy drove the big guy big time. The culminating scene at Pam and Jim’s wedding, the processional, was a play on this video:

Yes, a random awesome wedding march in Minneapolis determined the content of The Office. That is the world in which we live today. That is awesome.

I read Mitch Albom’s “have a little faith: a true story” last week on some planes and found it a simple though enjoyable read. Honestly, I was a little skeptical before beginning. I received an advance copy to review here, and it’s not my go-to genre — sort of “religious inspirational.” All things considered, however, the book was plenty fine.

The story is in jumpcut memoir style, flipping back and forth between the author’s reflections on his own faith, his renewed relationship with his rabbi from back home, and interactions with a former drug addict pastor/homeless shelter director. To say it’s in an informal style is an understatement (this coming from a very informal writer myself).  Overall, I mostly appreciated the conversational snippet sort of style.

In terms of a book on faith, it’s hard to knock because this is Albom’s personal story. I mean, I don’t want to crack on a guy’s faith that he seems to really be coming to understand in greater ways. That said, at times I questioned if his recollections of his rabbi’s wisdom were just too stereotypical, too sentimentalized. In fact, “sentimental” is probably the ultimate descriptor of this quick read.

If your faith is in a dry place and needs a pick-me-up, if you want a book on the mushy side, then pick up a copy of “have a little faith.” It won’t rock your world, but it might keep you going. And sometimes that enough.

Nov 1, 2009

FPC Hallock

All Saints’ Day

Unbound

John 11:32-44

Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Unbind Lazarus, dead for four days, but now by another of Jesus’ signs, alive. “Unbind him, and let him go,” he had no more need for his funeral wrappings. “Unbind him, and let him go” live life once more.

Jesus was not bound by the laws of physics and reason in which we pride ourselves today. Jesus was not bound by our expectations and our understandings. Jesus was not bound by even our greatest enemy — death itself.

“In the raising of Lazarus, God steadfastly refuses to allow death the final word.” [Feasting on the Word, Year B v. 4, p. 236] “Unbind him, and let him go.” In the raising of Lazarus God shows us Jesus’ ultimate power: in Jesus Christ, death can never have the last word. In Jesus Christ, death itself is conquered; death is dead forever.

But in this time after Jesus’ resurrection and before his coming again, we easily forget this good news because we are bound to so much ourselves. We are wrapped in shrouds of doubt and entombed in narrowed visions of what God can do with us today. So Christ, unbind us too, and let us go.

+++

For the past few weeks, every Sunday we’ve confessed our sin before God and one another. I understand saying a confession of sin every Sunday is more often than this congregation is used to confessing. Every week we say:

Merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart and mind and strength. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves…

There’s a Lutheran prayer that puts it a bit differently: “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Bondage. Wrapped in sin’s death shrouds.

I appreciate it might take a little getting used to, this confessing every week. But I’m afraid we’d just be deceiving ourselves if we didn’t say who we are every time we meet together for worship.

The point is clear: we cannot save ourselves. We cannot wrestle out of sin’s death grip ourselves.

So we confess that we have fallen short of God’s best hopes, that we have separated ourselves from God, that we need forgiveness. That we must be unbound something greater than ourselves.

But just as we confess each week, we are forgiven each and every Sunday, reminded of what Jesus has done for us. The liturgist declares every Sunday following the confession that in Christ we are a new creation. In Christ we are set free. In Christ we have died to sin and been raised to live once more. Unbound, and let go. It’s that reminder, every Sunday, that can keep us going. Unbound to respond to God’s grace.

+++

Today is All Saints’ Day, the day on which we consider the saints of the past, women and men who now from their labors rest. To be honest, I think it’s a strange day in the church year. After all, we Presbyterians don’t have “Saints” with a capital “S,” instead we are all saints, each of us baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection no more or less part of God’s good purposes.

All Saints’ Day gives us that opportunity — to give thanks for all those who have gone before us. And that’s a good thing, so later our Prayers of the People will include reading the names of those saints close to our hearts.

But All Saints’ Day offers another opportunity as well. On this day we consider death and its power over us. And on this day especially we take time to name death as the enemy, an enemy already vanquished by Christ.

We’re not too comfortable with death these days in America. Tom Long has an editorial in this morning’s New York Times that speaks to the fact that many American funerals have become so commercialized and sentimentalized, that they have lost their voice and worshipers have been robbed of their opportunity to proclaim the gospel. Long says today most people attend funerals more to memorialize the memory of the deceased than to proclaim the gospel in word, song, story, and action.

Instead, Long argues for the Christian funeral as a sacred ritual that connects the gospel narrative to the narrative of the deceased. The funeral becomes a kind of “seeing place,” and sacred time in which we proclaim the good news that death is vanquished.

I spent some time in Louisville, Kentucky this week as a member of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song. This is a committee of sixteen people tasked with the overwhelming duty to develop the next hymnal for the Presbyterian Church. (By the way, the committee has been meeting regularly for over a year, and my colleagues were eager to hear stories of you folks and this place our ministry, and they send you their greetings.)

Part of our committee’s task, in addition to reviewing thousands of hymns and songs composed in the last twenty years since the blue hymnal was published, is reviewing all the hymns in that 1990 blue hymnal to determine what should be carried forward to the next hymnal.

And so we sit, as a committee, and sing hundreds of hymns from that blue hymnal. We talk about each hymn, examine its origin, its message, its tune, and consider how often it is sung around the denomination. But we also talk about each hymn as a “heart song,” as a way the church can sing its faith in the risen Lord.

This meeting I was struck anew by the power of some of those old hymns to proclaim that gospel message, even and especially at difficult times such as a funeral.

To God be the glory, great things He hath done!

So loved he the world that He gave us His Son,

Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,

And opened the life gate that all may go in.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great thou art!

Be Thou my vision O Lord of my heart;

Nought be all else to me, save that Thou art–

Thou my best thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

These hymns and oh so many others can comfort at the time of death, but they do so not because it’s easy to sing at funerals. No the hymns comfort so many because they proclaim the gospel at that most difficult time. Maybe that’s why many of you have shared with me privately how much you cherish the tape of your loved one’s funeral. Our heart songs sung at a funeral can change it from a reverent service of remembrance to a bold witness to Christ’s resurrection.

What is that gospel at the time of death? Nothing less than that death has already been defeated. Nothing less than in Christ death is merely the completion of our baptism. The gospel at the time of death is nothing less than the proclamation that the deceased, our beloved and God’s beloved, is welcomed into God’s presence for Jesus has already prepared the way.

Many times it’s hard, when we are caught up in grief, to sing the hymn or proclaim the gospel. And that’s only natural. After all, Mary and the disciples had the same trouble. They’re concerned in today’s reading that Jesus get to Lazarus quickly, before he dies so that Jesus can heal him. But once Lazarus has died, they figure, “What’s the point?” Jesus can’t do a thing now. Death has won. The crowd said, “Look, he could open the eyes of a blind man but couldn’t even keep his friend from dying.” Martha tells him not to go near the tomb, after four days dead it already smelled.

They knew Jesus was powerful, could pull of many a miracle, but conquer death? They couldn’t comprehend that.

But then he said in a loud voice, “Lazarus come out!” And the dead man came out. “Unbind him, and let him go.” Death is no more. “Unbind him, and let him go.”

+++

I’ve been thinking a lot about vision lately: vision for this church, vision for my ministry here, vision for our future together. The vision of this passage from John, most definitely, is one of hopefulness in God. That in Jesus who raises even the dead, the very dead — the four days dead — that Jesus who can “unbind him, and let him go” can unbind us too.

So what do you need unbound? Is it forgiveness for that thing you’ve told anyone? Is it forgiving yourself for not being who you want to be? Do you need unbound from a family or work environment that entombs you rather than frees you to live out the gospel. What do you need unbound?

The problem about being unbound by Jesus is that life in Christ is so unpredictable, after all God chooses the direction, not we ourselves. If we are unbound by Christ, truly unbound and let go there’s no telling what the saints of Hallock might get up to. Jesus raised Lazarus — dead and smelling too — so surely Jesus can raise this strong community to new mission here.

So, dare we ask Christ to unbind us and let us go? Are we ready for what might be raised? Putting our trust in God, surely we are, so Christ…

Unbind our prejudices and let us go with a new view of others.

Unbind our tiredness and let us go refreshed.

Unbind our thinking that our best days are behind and let us go into a new vitality.

Unbind our hearts where love stops short and let us go to love every single neighbor near far.

Unbind our resources and let those who have much share their bounty.

Unbind our spirits and let us go crying out with all the church that Jesus is Lord.

Unbind us, and let us go. Amen.

I don’t plan to post every church newsletter column, but this one seems blog appropriate.  Whatcha think?

Pastor’s Column, November Newsletter

A church member asked me on Sunday if I knew anything about a historic link between Presbyterians and public service.  She had heard that Presbyterians more often hold elected office than those of other denominations and wondered what wisdom I had on the subject.  Well, at the time, I didn’t contribute much at all.  “Ummmm,” I think I said.  But since, I’ve did a bit of research and found that, indeed, Presbyterians are very well represented in elected office, surprisingly so.  Another question then follows: why?

First, though, a bit of history.   Ten Presidents of the United States have been Presbyterian, and twelve Vice Presidents have claimed the denomination.  So, roughly 25% of our country’s Presidents or Vice Presidents have been Presbyterian!  Presbyterians nowadays make up roughly 2% of the U.S. population, and even accounting for a higher percentage in years past, we have been extremely well represented in the White House.  Today’s U.S. congress includes 44 Presbyterians, 11 Senators and 33 Representatives.  Not bad at all.

Why such a high proportion?  Well, I can only speculate, but here I go.  First, Presbyterians tend to be of higher socio-economic classes and have access to the strong education and means to run for public office.  Second, though, and more compelling is the fact that Presbyterians have always made a strong connection between faith and action.  Presbyterian tenets of faith tend to be public, not just matters of the heart but about how to live one’s life too.  This makes us a thoughtful and active bunch.  Third, and maybe this is a stretch, but our doctrine of sin holds that we all sin and fall short of God’s best intentions.  We can’t fix that, it’s just who we are.  Maybe our strong view of sin makes us want to work to help organize society in ways that mitigate sin’s effects on the world.  And what better way to serve those goals than by holding public office?

That’s all conjecture, but I do know for certain that the way our church government functions is very similar to how our national and many state governments function.  Presbyterians send commissioners to our gradually larger governing bodies – session, presbyteries, synods, and the General Assembly – sort of like government representatives in a town, a state, and nation.  An individual church can offer a resolution (sort of like a piece of legislation) that can affect a presbytery, synod, or even the national church.  This means each governing body is connected to the other.  It also means church wide decisions are made by the body as a whole rather than by one bishop or pope.   Church governance is almost, then, like democracy in action.

Presbyterians aren’t just active in government; they serve God in many vocations.  Some are a bit more famous than others – like Mr. Rodgers (a Presbyterian minister), John Wayne, Andrew Carnegie, or Pam from The Office TV show– but we all seek to serve God together.  So thanks for the question last Sunday.  It got me, and I hope you, thinking.

FPC Hallock

October 25, 2009

Harvest Festival

God the Farmer

Psalm 65

Psalm 65, A Thanksgiving for the Harvest, rouses us this morning. Verse 11 can be translated a number of ways:

“You crown the year with your bounty, 
and your carts overflow with abundance” -NIV

“…and thy paths drop fatness.” -KJV

“…even the hard pathways overflow with abundance.” -NLT

“…your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.” -ESV

Literally the verse reads, “The tracks of your chariot overflow with fat.”

Now the “RHT” translation, the Revised Hallock Translation of Psalm 65:11 would read something like:

“You crown the year with your bounty, even 175, 75, County Road 1, and I-29, overflow with sugar beets abundant.”

Round about the 1870s, the town of Hallock began to take form. Charles Hallock, for whom the town is named, came to our area in 1880 all the way from New York City. Charles Hallock did not come to farm — his fortune was already made — but instead to enjoy the great outdoors, the hunting and fishing abundant in the area.

And so, throughout the 1870s, 80s, 90s and past the turn of the century, word must have spread about a new bustling community with rich farmland and good hearty people.

We can imagine the difficult conversations so many families must have had — to sell what few possessions they owned and uproot themselves from another place, then load up a wagon with what they had left, and come to farm in Hallock.

In the early days, wagon tracks came from the North, bringing English and Scottish immigrants who would soon found this church, the first congregation in the new town. But wagons came, too, from the south and east, as over the ruts and dusty roads settlers came to make Hallock their home. Later they could even travel by Ford’s amazing automobiles or the new train that came straight through town.

Farming in those days, I don’t need to tell you, was bone-tiring work. If the frost cooperated, and the rust stayed away, and the grasshoppers didn’t bother you too bad, and the price of grain held up, and your creditors cooperated, you could maybe squeeze by. But it wasn’t easy. And so the new farms sheltered hopes and dreams, as well as tears and disappointment.

Though Charles Hallock first came looking for an outdoorsman’s paradise, it was the farming that made Hallock tick. The Centennial History Book puts it this way:

Without mutual support of the town of Hallock and Hallock’s farmers, one wonders if Hallock would be celebrating a Centennial. The community of Hallock, which extends far beyond the city limits, has always recognized the vital role of agriculture in its history and in its future.  -p. 231

Agriculture and Hallock are almost synonymous. So, on this Harvest Festival, it only makes sense to celebrate with a Psalm of Thanksgiving for the Harvest. Surely we’ve got that covered, don’t we?

Looking at the psalm…

• Carts overflowing with abundance? Sure. Check.
• Providing the people with grain? Check.
• Making right earth’s furrows? Check.
• Blessings for growth and wilderness made to pastures. Check.
• Valleys decked with grain? Maybe not “valleys” but fields for sure. Check.

Yeah, we’ve got the psalm’s number. We did it. You did it. The harvest — in these parts at least — is darn near complete so we can rest in a job well done.

According to the Enterprise, this year turned out pretty well considering the conditions. With delays due to moisture and seeding in less than ideal conditions, the yields turned out to be really not bad at all. Whew.

Those 12 hour shifts, night and day, paid off. The hundreds of drives to check the fields were worth it. Hiring all those hands to bring the harvest in was a good decision. You did it. It’s time to slap each other on the back, sit back enjoy a potluck and watch the Vikings game in peace.

Now that would be a nice sermon to give — reveling in the significant accomplishments of our farmers. But, try as we might, that’s not actually what the psalm does. We read it again and again and like a vehicle getting stuck in this spring’s mud, the trouble just gets deeper and deeper.

Remember those carts overflowing with abundance? Those people provided with grain? Those furrows made right in the earth and wilderness made to pastures? Those valleys decked with grain?

It’s honestly tough to say it knowing the months of work you’ve put in, but the psalm doesn’t seem to praise that work at all. The psalmist is not actually rejoicing in his farming accomplishments, or even in his people’s farming prowess. No, again and again, verse after verse, the praise and thanksgiving are directed at God. In fact, the psalm doesn’t even mention people farming at all, it’s all about God the Farmer. Farmer God.

“By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance,” the psalmist sings,

“By your strength you established the mountains…

“you made the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.”

“You visit the earth and water it,

you greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water;

you provide the people with grain,

for so you have prepared it.”

God the Farmer, in overalls and boots, jumping up in a combine to harvest the bounty of God’s own creation. Funny picture, huh?

Well, maybe the image shouldn’t surprise us. After all, it’s in only the second chapter of Genesis. God planted a garden in Eden, and what a gorgeous plot it was. And God walked about enjoying the plants and trees and flowers of all kinds. That’s how Adam and Eve found God after they ate of the forbidden tree, God was walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze — going out for an evening stroll checking on the fields.

But if that’s all not hard enough to take, Psalm 65 ends by driving things home even more.

“The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy.”

Did you hear that ridiculousness? The hills and meadows clothing themselves? The valleys decking themselves with grain. It sure didn’t seem like that when you were itching to get the seed in this spring did it? There was a task to do, and those seeds definitely were not going to plant themselves.

The fields could have tried all they wanted to sing for joy this year, but without the seeding they wouldn’t have managed much of a song at all. And those beets and beans and wheat sure wouldn’t have harvested themselves. So what in the world is the psalmist up to? One verse seems to be about sugar beets falling on the roadsides, and the rest of the psalm is praise and thanksgiving for what God has done. What gives?

One of those Bibles we talked about at Young People’s Time was published last year. It’s called The Green Bible and, get this, just like some Bibles have Jesus’ words in red, this Bible has text about creation in green. It sports a cotton cover and soy-based ink too. And, it’s selling really well.

More than anything, The Green Bible says something about the time we live in. Some call it an age of ecological crisis. Thomas Friedman has written that just as previous generations of Americans had to overcome The Great Depression or a world war as the biggest challenge of their time, my generation’s challenge is climate change. And if you believe the United Nations and other international groups of scientists, the prospects are pretty daunting.

With all this in mind, Bible scholars have looked with renewed interest into what the Bible says about our relationship to creation. Their discoveries are too many to address now, but they may all be summed up with the basic idea: God desires our relationship with nature to be more like a partnership than possession. More like a healthy marriage covenant of give and take, than a relationship of slave and master. The soil and the seed, the tractors and the farmers, working together with God in partnership.

So now with that in mind, maybe we can look at Psalm 65 in another light. If the psalmist is assuming partnership with creation, partnership with those furrows and fields and hands that work them and God who made them all, then it is only right to praise God who set the world into being. The psalm is not about diminishing human accomplishment, but reveling in the ultimate accomplishment of God the Creator, God the Farmer in chief.

Since we praise God for all the things God has provided, we can surely give thanksgiving for God who called this community to farming. If we’re in a partnership with creation, creation needs good farmers, blessed farmers, farmers called to their holy work by God Godself.

Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer, has a poem of just such a farming child of God:

The Man Born to Farming

by Wendell Berry

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth

Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

Descending in the dark?

The man born to farming. That’s an apt descriptor for many of us here. Born to farming. Indebted to those folk who came to Hallock over 100 years ago to found a town, to start a church, to farm God’s land.

So we can indeed give thanks. For farmers who tilled and sowed before us, and for God who partners with us in caring for creation. Thanks for harvest. Thanks for this beautiful corner of creation. Thanks for implement dealers and crop insurers. Thanks for diesel and and co-ops. Thanks for all God provides.

And ultimately, thanks that we can join our praise with the pastures and plants, fields and furrows, sugar beet and semis, all praising in one joyous song of thanks to God. God who has provided once again. Thanks and praise to God the Farmer, now and forever. Amen.

26.2 miles is a long way. A very long way. A very very long way. But I suppose I can now say that I ran that far. Not quickly, not prettily, not without some pain, but I got to that darn finish line. I ran a marathon.

The weather for the race was pretty good: chilly, partly cloudy, and not too much wind. The Siouxland Marathon in Sioux City is a smaller race — about 800 participated one way or another, I think — but that comes with a bit more intimacy and midwestern charm. The race expo consisted of getting your race packet, getting a cup of water, and that’s about it — no vendors peddling their wears, no last minute gel pack offers. But that was fine. My goal was to run a marathon, and after the Twin Cities Marathon didn’t work out schedule-wise, the Siouxland would do just fine.

The course was well marked and scenic. The first six miles were on asphalt trails (in the dark at that point) in South Sioux City, Nebraska. After crossing the bridge back into Iowa, the trail continued alongside the river for a good long way. It reminded me a lot of running the Greenway in Grand Forks, actually, but the Greenway is prettier as it’s more open and not so close to an interstate.

I ran the first six miles about right, slightly over 10-minute miles. I was at 2:14 at the halfway point. Perfect, I thought. I’ll just keep this up a and come in under 4:30. Boy was I wrong.

I did manage the next several miles about the same time, I think, but by 17 or 18 I was struggling.  (Typical for first timers, I hear.)  Of course, this is also when the only noticeable hills on the course started showing their ugly selves. This summer I trained in the mountains which would make these hills look like pathetic, but running for two months in Grand Forks made me weak. I started walking quickly at points.

The last six miles were pretty painful, I’ll be honest. Okay, pretty darn painful. My energy level was shot, but at the same time I knew I would finish and the euphoria of that realization kept me going. Also — and I wouldn’t have guessed this — seeing other folks struggle over the last few miles was really helpful. I’m sure this will make a sermon illustration one day, but the race was also runnable by teams of five runners who ran a relay. So by the end, there were some of us who had been running for four hours at the same point in the course with folks who had been running for four minutes. I might have coveted some of their energy and bounce, once or twice. But you could also pick out those of us who had run the full marathon ourselves. Watching those folks struggle those last miles, encouraging each other as we passed, was a great comfort and kept me going.

At about mile 20, I realized my time wasn’t going to be pretty. Every book and person I talked to while training said, with your first marathon, don’t worry about time. It’s a freaking marathon, the goal is to just FINISH. But still, I had run a half marathon in 2:06 and didn’t want to run a full too terribly much more than double that. So, when after a few calculations at mile 20 I realized I might not even make it under 5 hours, I kicked it into high gear. Hmm, well, I did in my head at least. I think my legs maybe moved a tiny bit faster.

The course ends in downtown Sioux City, and about three miles from the finish you can see the skyline of downtown. It looked like it was really far away. Too far. But taking one step at a time, it got closer and closer even though the running wasn’t much fun at that point — back and forth across annoying pedestrian bridges, up and down levees and the like.

Finally, though, I got to the streets of downtown. After I saw the sign for mile 25, I could taste the pizza at the finish and wanted so much to get there. I glanced down at my watch and saw, if I just kept going fairly smoothly, I’d make it under 5 hours. So I just kept it up. And, finally, I made the turn onto 4th Street to see the Finish Line. I had made it. Finished. 4:57:54.

The rest of the day was fairly painful. After the pizza and beer at the bar near the finish, six hours riding in the car back to Grand Forks. Frozen peas for my knees. Gatorade and frequent rest stops. It wasn’t until that night that I saw a bruised toe nail and realized it might just fall off before too long. But the pain — and even the lost nail — is part of the package, really. Running a marathon is an absolutely crazy idea, so it ought to be a bit painful.

Ask me now if I’d run another, and the answer is a clear, “no.” Half marathons are much more enjoyable for me (and my body), and training time is much more reasonable for a busy schedule. That said, I’m very glad, even proud, to have run a full marathon. Call me crazy, but call me a “marathoner” as well.

When I was in high school and chatting with a teacher about our churches, he said “I don’t think I could ever respect a pastor who didn’t know Greek and Hebrew.” That statement stuck with me. Heck, it probably kept me going through some rather challenging times in both my Greek and Hebrew courses.

For a few years now, however, I’ve been wondering how much credence my teacher’s comment really has. I preached about forty sermons in Scotland two years ago without my Greek or Hebrew resources over there (I opted to take golf clubs, not books ). I didn’t get too many complaints from church members about my lack of declining Greek nouns or parsing Hebrew verbs.

Now, though, I have my Greek and Hebrew books on my new pastor’s study bookshelf, but I haven’t been inclined to pull them out. Sure, I could check out a perplexing phrase in a text if I really wanted to, but I just rarely ever want to. So I wonder, what’s the rub: am I a sermon writing slacker or reality claiming time-manager?

The point, I suppose, is not that one uses Greek and Hebrew in one’s exegesis necessarily, but that sermons are well planned and delivered, deeply grounded in the word and call others to do the same. I’d never want to intimidate someone with knowledge of Biblical languages (what little knowledge I have), or put someone off with a flippant Greek or Hebrew remark in a sermon. On the other hand, I wonder what was the point of all those sweat and tears in Greek, Hebrew, and exegesis courses? Maybe they were supposed to teach me how to think, and did that. But how, also, might my sermon direction change if I took the time to read the original language each week?

When I have a conundrum, I often try to solve it with technology. The problem is, technology isn’t always the answer. (I don’t want to become like another Adam and blame my Weight Watchers struggles on the lack of iPhone app.) I do wonder, though, if investing in a good Bible translation program might provide me the added boost to work more with the original language? If you think so, what program for my Mac would you recommend?

And, in any sermon prep discussion I always wonder: and how might I involve our congregation more in the exegesis?

image by Renaudeh