The Long and Winding Road

2020-11-17T12:27:00.003-06:00

Seeing a lot of people sharing, "If Christ came to your door, would you let him in? ... Share this if you would!" on Facebook lately. Each time, the quote in this image comes to mind (Image reads: "He comes in the form of the beggar, of the dissolute human child in ragged clothes, asking for help. He confronts you in every person that you meet. As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor …").

Contrary to the popular 17th century painting, Jesus does not come with a glowing halo, white gown, and smiling countenance, carrying a glowing lantern. Christ comes in the plumber who snakes your sink and works overtime to pay his court fees, in the dentist who charged you $600 for a filling and goes home to her giant house alone, in the water delivery driver who greets you and chats happily each day but lives in a constant state of anger and anxiety, in the lawyer representing the driver that injured your child, in the health care worker begging you to wear a mask, in the conservative in the red hat protesting restrictions, in the Black Lives Matter activist blocking traffic and demanding to be heard, in the governor who doesn't issue a mask mandate.

This is the tricky thing about the gospel -- about the "good news." It is much easier and more comforting to listen to preachers who tell us that following Jesus means everything is going to be okay and point to heaven -- telling us not to be dismayed, to be joyful and happy because Jesus came for US. 

It is much harder to listen to the preacher who tells you that Christ came for ALL. Who says that to follow Jesus is to go directly into the presence of our fellow imperfect, human, in need of grace … neighbor … and who reminds us that we, too, are imperfect humans, in need of the grace that brings love and forgiveness.

Don't mistake my words, loving our neighbor does not mean subjecting ourselves to abuse and accepting a world that says one human has fewer rights than another on the basis of their gender, gender expression, sexuality, race, disability, or socio-economic status.

AND those who seek to follow Christ in fighting against the powers that restrict and deny our siblings' rights and protections cannot use dehumanization of others to do so. Which is hard. If you don't respect my humanity, why should I respect yours?

Because, Jesus.

And that is both the beauty and the brutality of the gospel.

As the mother of a child whose rights are sometimes in question, this reality of the gospel breaks my heart. The idea that a medical professional might refuse to treat her if they found her at an accident turns my stomach and sends hot waves of pain through my chest.

It is dehumanizing.

Which is why I cannot, I will not, simply stand to the side and be silent.

And I will not return the same disregard for human life.

I have to stand in the midst. I have to keep raising the questions.

Because, Love.

And I have to keep seeing the imperfect, broken, in need of grace humans in front of me.

Because, Jesus.

And if our current public dialogue is any indication, it's the only way forward.

Seems like maybe Christ, who saw injustice, who saw and entered other's pain -- to the point of being put to death in the most dehumanizing, excruciating way possible -- knew there was no other way.

Christ, who came to reconcile us to God and to one another -- to heal the division caused by sin and death -- kept coming back to the conversation.

May we who claim to follow Christ keep coming back to the conversation, where God will meet us. God does not leave us alone in our pain, in our fear, in our searching, but enters in.

As God meets us in the conversation, we meet our neighbor, encountering Christ, and it is there we begin to glimpse that Beloved Community of God's rule that is heaven, not in some faraway someday, but piece by piece, here and now, as God's inbreaking of the kingdom.

THAT is hope. Not a passive waiting, but an active participation.

In the way of Jesus.

Thanks be to God.

Waiting ....

2020-11-06T21:35:00.007-06:00

Waiting.

I’ve never been terribly good at it.

As a kid, when I wanted something, I wanted to go buy it right away, and whatever we found first and was in the budget was good enough for me – all much to my bargain-shopping mother’s chagrin.

You can imagine internet shopping, two-day shipping and our instant gratification culture haven’t improved the situation.

Yet, I’m getting to practice waiting a lot lately.

My internship ended at the beginning of September. Now I wait to be called to a church, where I will be ordained and installed as pastor. This is the culmination of a four-year journey of seminary education, a Clinical Pastor Education internship, and a year-long pastoral internship that involved a 45 minute commute.

The entire process is an exercise in waiting … and growing …. and waiting.

As I wait for my first call, reminders that the process is daunting become painful. Loved ones are justifiably interested if there is a call on the horizon.

Yet even this time must be held with the pastoral care of a process that involves hearts and minds and the work of the Spirit. For those who engage in it … and for myself.

Seeking to be called to pastor a congregation is an intimate process – especially when you choose to bring your whole self to it.

So I wait. I wait for the call where my gifts meet with the needs of the congregation. And I believe God’s presence sustains all who participate in the process.

And we wait.

As a nation we wait for the results of a contentious election.

The world waits for an answer to a pandemic that surges through communities … leaves spouses widowed ... children without parents ... has robbed loved ones of final moments together and grieving families of rituals.

And people of God know something about waiting as well. 40 years in the desert. 100-year olds waiting for children. Waiting for a promised Messiah who would loose the chains of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke (Isaiah 58:6).

And still we wait …

… for the full realization of God’s goodness and mercy to bring about the reconciliation of all creation.

… for the vision of God’s redemptive justice unveiled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

… for the release from all that binds us and keeps us from seeing God’s heavenly community enacted.

… when none are bound by fear of another

…. none are bound alone in the confines of their mind.

…. none moved to violence to release the anger and pain that rages in their hearts.

…. none fearing for their safety and security moment by moment.

All surrounded by the all-encompassing love of God and neighbor demonstrated in Jesus.

Held in the embrace of love.

And we are held in that love now.

Held in that amazing embrace even as we wait, and long, and work, and lament, and strive.

And I am reminded that we are all called. Not every call is to a pastoral office.

And even as I wait, I am called to preach the gospel.

I was made to share this hope.

And so were you.

And when I can’t do anything else, it is sharing this hope that gives me life.

And so can you, in your words of care, in your actions for the sake of your neighbor.

Spread it far and wide and lean into the embrace.

This is not an embrace that ignores our realities or those of our neighbor.

Sometimes it holds us as we sob or even as we raise our fists in righteous lament.

But it is there, for all.

So we wait.

And in the meantime we share this hope and love.

And we know it is not in vain.

And we are not alone.

Amen.

Sermon: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost - August 23, 2020

2020-09-01T15:39:00.003-05:00

AUGUST 23, 2020 | SONJA GERSTENBERGER

Passage: Matthew 16:13-20

Click here for video of the worship service. A Transcript will be posted when it is available.

Sermon: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - July 12, 2020

2020-09-01T15:36:00.004-05:00

JULY 12, 2020

Passage: Matthew 11:16-30

Click here for video of the worship service. A transcript of the sermon is below.

So as we consider this morning’s reading, the first thought that came to my mind, and you might not get the connection right away but stick with me, is “Divide and Conquer.” It becomes a mantra in many households with young children. It can quickly progress from being a mantra to being a way of life, to divide and conquer. I still remember my early days with my oldest; it was my husband who could soothe him in the evenings. So, he would sit on the couch separate from me, and I would get a break from holding and soothing the child who was seemingly un-soothable all day long, and he would magically put him to sleep. After all day long of trying to soothe a child who pulled his legs up to his chest and screamed as if in pain, my husband could just make him happy. Turned out, that kid had reflux, so if your kid does that, look into it.

Then there were two, and the colicky infant’s needs took my attention, while my husband lovingly entertained and cared for our toddler. Then there were three under four years old. At that point, life became more of a triage, tending to whomever had the greatest need in the moment. Dividing and conquering, one of us going wherever we were most needed. I dedicated my days to caring for them at home while my husband went to work to learn a living and provide for us, then on the weekends, he would take the kids to a park or out to play, so I could get the household things done that I couldn’t get done during the week.

This division can become even more prevalent in homes with children with special needs which, at one point, we discovered we also had. Three children with ADHD, one with Autism Spectrum Disorder, anxiety, depression, and the unique blessing of parenting a transgender child. Divide and conquer. The death of a parent. Divide and conquer. And if we aren’t careful, we continue to divide and conquer even when the needs become such that it’s no longer necessary. Solo grocery trips. Time alone instead of time together. Coping, instead of living.

And this can happen in all aspects of our lives, not just as parents: it happens in our workplaces, in our families, our relationships. We divide and divide and divide until we feel like we’re facing all of the world’s challenges alone. And alone, they seem impossible and insurmountable, overwhelm and fear and even apathy can set in, and we can become immobilized.

I’d like to suggest that one way to read this story of the sower is to consider the different types of soil are the many different realities into which we find ourselves divided in this world. Some by virtue of our current reality, or the reality in which they are born, live on the path. When the seeds of faith are sown, we are in a constant state of being trodden upon by those traveling from here to there, and the seeds are kicked. They’re scattered and ultimately gobbled up by the birds. Some live on rocky ground; the seeds quickly take root, and there’s joy. But the soil is unable to sustain life, and the roots can’t grow deep.

I’m familiar with this kind of soil because I live in a new development where they strip off all of the good, deep, dark soil, and leave just a tiny little layer. So, when you go to plant a tree, or three trees in three years, they quickly die, which I experienced. They were good trees, but the soil couldn’t nourish them.

Some of us live among thorns, which Jesus names as the cares of the world and the lure of wealth. Our jobs, our children’s activities, living beyond our means constantly, or striving to keep the pace, or simply watching others live with luxuries we can’t afford and longing for them. These desires are the thorns that choke the Word. And finally, we have the good soil. As Jesus said, “as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the Word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundred fold, in another sixty, and in another, thirty.

That part’s particularly interesting, given what Jesus said that is not included in today’s reading. There’s a bunch of verses that are skipped in our lectionary. At that point, Jesus explains to the disciples, separate from the people who He’s talking to, “the reason I speak to them in parables is that seeing, they do not perceive and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand. But blessed are your eyes, for they see and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” It seems kinda cruel when you put it that way.

I'm sure you've heard sermons that would encourage you to be good soil. To position your lives in the way that faith can be sown in your heart and provide a yield. Nothing pains me more than the days when I worked with young moms in a mom's group and listened to moms talk about how they needed stronger faith, and they needed to be responsible for that. For that gift of faith that is God's work in our lives in baptism. See, the thing is we don't understand our faith as any work of our own. Our faith is a gift of God, right down to the ability for it to be nurtured and to grow.

Even the disciples were not good soil on their own. We can read lots of stories about them not getting it. They required Jesus to explain the parable. If we read scripture, we can look back to Isaiah, which Ardie read for us, to see how we might expect the Word of God to work for us, “For as the rain and snow come down from heaven. So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” In verse 13, “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle. And it shall be to the Lord for a memorial for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Sounds like the very work of God is to transform the soil itself. Fragrant myrtle instead of thorny briar. Mighty cypress instead of brittle thorns. Now these words were written to a people in exile, to people who've been conquered by the Babylonian Empire. They were written to proclaim a word of hope overran against a policy of empire that brought death and destruction. It was a promise that God is with God's people always, even in exile. So if God's word does what God wills, and God sends rain and snow from heaven, how do we reconcile this God with the parable in which Jesus seemingly tells us faith is dependent on this soil in which the seeds are grown?

Perhaps, the different types of soil Jesus mentioned are a product of division. When we divide and conquer, divide and conquer, we ceased to see the experience of the other. What we don't realize is, perhaps, in a world bound by sin, none of us is entirely good soil. Some live on the path, trodden by people seeking better ground, never able to see the seeds on the path because the foot on their neck keeps them from looking up. Others live on rocky ground; they are ready to embrace faith with joy and to live in the promise that it brings, but are constantly having it die in their hands as they tend to their own basic needs: finding shelter, finding food, finding clothing, struggling to make a life that just provides for basic needs.

And perhaps those most blind to our circumstances are those of us living in the thorns. We are #blessed with enough to meet our daily needs and enough to fear losing the savings we've accumulated for our retirement. Our own wealth is the thorn that chokes the Word. We want to embrace faith, and in many ways we do. It can take root. We dedicate time together for worship. We participate in the rituals of the church. We have fellowship with one another. But the thorns are there. We worry about our savings, and it keeps us from doing things to invest in our faith community and in the community around us. We worry about our good name, and it keeps us from working on behalf of the good of our neighbor. Our desires to have a good life and provide a good life keep us from completely giving ourselves over to faith, the faith that drives out fear, that according to Luther's doctrine of vocation, God does not need our good works in our vocation, but our neighbor does.

Our relationship with God is based completely on God's work for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Justification by faith alone excludes any kind of dependence of our own good works for salvation. We come before God clothed, not in our own work or merit, but solely in the working merit of Christ. Christ, who had to explain this complicated parable to the disciples. That's a gift. But having been justified by faith, we are sent back into the world into our vocations, into our lives, to love and serve our neighbor. That is the good soil: giving our life away for the sake of the neighbor as faith takes root and grows, even when it means questioning the allegiances that make up our identity, even when it means accepting that our own experiences, the history we've learned, the heritage we cling to, is only part of the story of the world that God so loves. Even when it means turning to the neighbor with whom we disagree and, instead of saying “You're wrong,” saying “tell me why you feel that way.”

We're only able to do this in part. The evil one Jesus mentions as the one that chokes out, gobbles up, or causes the root of faith to die, is part of living on Earth. In this place, between the coming of Christ, in which we find the gift of faith and salvation in God in Christ Jesus, and the ultimate Kingdom, which God has promised in which we will experience an in which God is bringing to earth bit by bit, day by day, our efforts are incomplete. We're going to feel like the problems of the world are too great for what we can offer. And they are. Our efforts alone will not reconcile God to God's creation, only God. But when we offer our meager efforts, when we seek to enter into division and into the pain we see around us and seek to understand, when we no longer divide and conquer, but multiply God's goodness, we get a glimpse. And that glimpse of God's Kingdom is so beautiful, so amazing, so awe-inspiring that it keeps us longing for the day when we will all live on good soil; all will be nourished by the seeds of faith, and all will be one in God's love. No longer divided. No need to conquer. Truly blessed. Amen.

Sermon: Third Week after Pentecost - Romans 6:1-11

2020-09-01T15:34:00.003-05:00

JUNE 21, 2020

Passage: Romans 6:1-11

Click here for video of the worship service. Below is a transcript of the sermon.

Romans can be a tricky thing for us to read in our 21st century culture where things are a little different, and, quite honestly, Paul’s use of language and circular sentences and all of the sorts of things that go along with that challenge us in our understanding. The lectionary itself can make it sometimes a little tricky, because what we see today in Romans 6 is a direct response to what Paul said in the previous chapter in Romans 5. So, let me remind you what Paul had introduced in Chapter 5 that he then is Responding to in chapter 6.

Paul states, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” That makes the beginning of Romans 6 make a little more sense. As we consider the beginning of Romans 6 where Paul says, “Well, then, what are we to say? Are we to continue in sin in order that grace and holiness may abound? By no means! How can we who have died to sin go on living in it?” Paul is taking his letter and unraveling the idea of what it means to be saved by God’s amazing grace and then living into that life of being saved by God’s grace.

We do know that, despite the sentence, “How can we who have died to sin go on living in it?”, there is a tension there. We know that sin is still active in the world. We know we’re not perfect. We know we hurt others. We even state in the confession that we say during our traditional worship services, and we ask God to have mercy on us; we confess that we have turned from God and given over to the power of sin and we ask God for compassion to forgive us of these sins we know that we’ve done and for the things we don’t even realize we’ve done. We ask God to turn us back to God’s self, to uphold us with God’s spirit so that we can live and serve God again in newness of life.

Where does that leave us? Well, thankfully, Martin Luther had something to say about this as he did many things. While Christ’s death, as Paul stated, was a once and done event that freed humanity from the death-dealing power of sin, we are both freed by being buried with Him in baptism into death so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we might too walk in newness of life. And, we live in a world that is not yet the fullness of God’s kingdom; we live in a world where sin is still active. Luther understood our baptism to be both a once-and-done event (one does not have to be re-baptized just because you sin again) and, in that baptism, we daily die to sin and rise again to new life and sometimes that’s even a moment-to-moment experience.

Living in a world where sin is still active: yes, our old self has been crucified, we’re no longer enslaved to sin. A slave has no choice; a slave is bound; a slave does what the master says, and, if sin is our master, then all we could do was sin. A slave has no way out. Because of Christ, we’re no longer this kind of slave. God’s grace in Christ has made it so that sin does not have ultimate dominion over us, so that we are able to live our life for God. And, because we do not yet live in the fullness of God’s kingdom, we still screw up. And when we realize that we’ve screwed up, we have two choices: we can own it, turn back to whomever we have hurt and recognize how we’ve given ourselves over to the power of sin; or, we can try to deflect the real pain of those we have hurt and sink deeper into sin.

This reality has powerful implications as we come to terms with the hurt and pain that is being named in our communities and in our country. Social media has opened up possibilities for those harmed by sin and evil to bring it into the light and to name the ways that our actions have contributed to hurt. It may be easier and seem more peaceful to live in a culture where we’re never close enough to those we’ve harmed to see what the minor slights have done and the pain they’ve caused, never have them reflected back to us so that we can understand how we continue to contribute to and benefit from a system that continues to cause pain and death to our siblings in Christ.

But that’s no longer the world we live in. Like it or not, for good or for ill, call-out culture isn’t going away. Those previously silenced by a system where they never had the microphone, have access to a way to share their experiences. And when we’re confronted by them, it can be easy to dismiss the pain being shared. We can hide; we can remain captive to sin, not acknowledging how our action have caused hurt and separation, or we can turn. Repentance: the Greek word that is translated as “repentance” means “to turn.” We can choose the freedom given to us in Christ to recognize our sin, the sin we are all trapped into and acknowledge another’s pain. Because, here’s the thing, being called out doesn’t mean you’re a bad person any more than saying “your actions hurt me” to a dear friend, asking those who are hurting to not tell us, to spare our feelings, doesn’t do us any good. That’s how things fester like an infection.

See, there’s a difference between guilt and shame. Shame is to see something we’ve done and say, “I am bad.” Guilt is to see something we’ve done and say, “I’ve done something bad,” and there is a very, very big difference. How we use or see these two possibilities is entirely up to us. Guilt invites learning: “What can I do better?” Shame invites defensiveness: “I didn’t mean it. I wasn’t trying to. I’m not bad.” And we remember we are captive to sin; we will screw up. We are all in this together. Again, acknowledging the pain you’ve caused does not make you a bad person; it means you’re learning.

We tell children they learn when they make mistakes, and we do too. This is part of the freedom in Christ. New life in Christ means being open to that feedback because our desire isn’t to be seen as perfect people who don’t make mistakes and don’t need salvation. Our desire is to love our neighbor, and we can only do that by listening. And it’s not surprising because we often love people the way we want to be to be loved; newlyweds often discover this as they try to learn to love one another in early married life. They give gifts and do the things that they want instead of listening to loved ones and giving gifts and extending love in the way our loved one needs to be loved.

Truly loving our neighbor means hearing how they need to be loved and responding, and when they say, “that’s not loving,” it’s not a character assassination. It’s an act of loving relationship to let your loved one know how they can best love you. And in all of this, remember who you belong to: your ultimate identity is Child of God. Our ultimate identity is not individual; ultimate identity is not based on community or country, but we are one in a royal priesthood, the Body of Christ, bound together. The health of any one part dependent on the health of all parts.

Freedom in Christ does not mean being free from the responsibility of anyone other than yourself, but, as Luther stated, “free to be a servant verses a slave in bondage.” As we die and rise in baptism, we too are called to bring our resurrection life to bear on the world around us, to bear on the world around us as we seek to love God and love neighbor. May we remember this baptism each day, each hour, each minute, and rest in the assurance of this identity: Child of God, member of the Body of Christ, freed for the sake of our neighbor.

Amen.

Sermon: Pentecost - Acts 2:1-21

2020-09-01T15:29:00.005-05:00

MAY 31, 2020

Passage: Acts 2:1-21

Click here for a video of the worship service. Below is a transcript of the sermon.

I’m going to start off by saying, I wasn’t supposed to be here today. I was supposed to be graduating from Luther. I missed out on taking my family up to Luther and having them experience the things that I’ve enjoyed over the last four years, seeing the members of my cohort one more time, and joining together in celebration of what we have all done over the last four years. Because, certainly, anyone who goes to seminary takes their entire family with them, as they each have needs that go unmet and time that goes unspent so that the person in seminary can focus on the work of discerning how God is calling them to be a pastoral identity in the world.

The other thing that can’t go without saying at this point is that the place I was to go, where I was to be celebrating with my fellow cohort members and other graduates of 2020, is the Twin Cities. The place that was to be the center of our celebration is now afire with the pain of generations of unheard and unanswered trauma, lit by another video of power taking the life of a black man. A knee on the neck of George Floyd not for seconds, but for agonizing minutes as his life slipped away, while he begged for his mother, and cried, “I can’t breathe!”

And instead of being there, I’m here. And as the work of the Spirit often is, I don’t believe it’s any coincidence. This Sunday, we celebrate Pentecost, and our sanctuary is beautifully lit with the red, yellow, and orange of the fires of Pentecost, the flames that were lit on the heads of the disciples as they spoke in languages that were not their own and that each, in their hearing, heard their own language. This festival takes place 50 days after Passover, and the reason people had gathered was the Feast of Weeks, the completion of the grain harvest, a celebration commanded by God. And this feast, this time, this Pentecost that we now celebrate, we celebrate as the end of our Easter season.

And if you haven’t noticed, throughout Easter we’ve done something a little different: we’ve had a remembrance of baptism at the font, we’ve poured water and spoken words to remind us of our own baptism; to remind us, in our own baptism, one is adopted into the body of Christ, delivered from the forces of evil and, in Luther’s words, our sinful self is put to death, and we are raised to new life through the work of the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist baptized just with water and foretold of Jesus who would come and baptize with the Holy Spirit. And we Lutherans have a delicate relationship with the Holy Spirit: we call upon her in baptism, we remember her when we have our young people affirm their baptism, we even speak words over each individual and a prayer that the Holy Spirit may ignite in them, and we definitely pray over our ordained pastors when they are ordained. But we tend to leave her in those moments other than when we name the Trinity, and I don’t think it’s by chance. Because the Holy Spirit is dangerous.

At Pentecost, the disciples were equipped and sent with the Holy Spirit, and if we remember, the places that they went and the ways that they were received weren’t always with thanksgiving and joyous celebrations. Certainly, they spread the gospel, but they were also at risk. They were proclaiming words of freedom in the Roman Empire, in the Pox Romana, when the peace was built on the idea of submission, and they were calling for freedom.

To be equipped with the Holy Spirit looks like the quote from the prophet Joel that Peter spoke, “Your sons and daughters will prophesy; young men will see visions, old men dream dreams.” We often get stuck on the part of prophesy that mentions the culmination of this time and the beginning of God’s reign on Earth as some sort of hard stop, and that prophesy is about leading up to that time in only as much as what we might look for. But I think we misunderstand prophesy if all we think it is is signs for us to look for when this time will end, and we will enter the fullness of the kingdom of God.

Prophets sent during the time of the kings were to warn God’s people of the consequences of their actions, and usually the consequences of their actions were invasion and exile. And their actions can be summed up in a couple of readings from Ezekiel and Isaiah that I'll share right now. In Ezekiel 16, the prophet says, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did abominable things before me; therefore, I removed them when I saw it.” And Isaiah 58, “Look, you serve your own interests on your fast day and oppress all your workers. Is not this the fast that I chose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the throngs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and to bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to cover them? And not to hide yourself from your own kin. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up quickly.”

We wonder in our modern, comfortable lives, why it seems like fewer and fewer young people choose to be part of a faith community. Perhaps it’s because of the stronghold we have on the Holy Spirit. And I admit, we preachers fear you can’t handle the truth: that our predominately white congregations are filled with people that benefit from the systems that work to keep people oppressed and silent through intimidation and violence. And we could never dream of participating in those circumstances so to call them out would be too hurtful. And we have failed you, even worse, we’ve failed the very neighbors Jesus has called us to love.

In our tradition, the act of preaching is to distinguish the law, which convicts us, and point to the gospel, our forgiveness and freedom in Christ. Most of the time, a good sermon does both, but sometimes a sermon is just law. And today’s readings and the circumstances of George Floyd’s death remind me that action of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 is to create prophets, and prophets tell the truth; prophets warn us about the ways in which our actions are not living out our call to love God and love our neighbor. Our actions witness to Christ, and not the Jesus of the storybook Bible who gives us good, moral ways to live a good life, but the Jesus who disrupted an economic system by turning over tables in the temple because those tables were taking advantage of the poorest among them, the people who couldn’t afford to bring any sort of sacrifice to the altar on their own and had to purchase something in order to participate in the sacrifice. And so there they were, ready to sell things to them at a high price. The Jesus that stood between men ready to throw stones and a woman caught in adultery. Nobody ever said she didn’t do what she was being accused of, and Jesus said her life is worth more.

I hear echoes of the ancient prophets all around me, and this weekend, those voices are people I know, people I have come into relationship with, people who are standing and saying ENOUGH, pointing to violence and death, reminding us of the untold history of our nation, built on the backs of uncompensated labor, necessitating violence and injustice to sustain itself. They’re living out their baptismal promises, and we too, who are baptized into Christ’s death and born anew as children of God through the work of the Holy Spirit, we too are called to condemn injustice. We’re called to care for the orphan and the widow, and that doesn’t mean just these two populations of people; that means the ones who cannot care for themselves, not expected to figure out to do it by themselves to prove their industriousness and worth, but cared for, supported, built up, held in community; to shelter the immigrant; to stand up with persecuted; to confront racist jokes that may be said in our midst, even if it’s uncomfortable and even if it means we might have some hard conversations; to call out covert racism; to support organizations working for justice.

This is one of the best ways we can support the people on the ground who are really crying out for justice in Minneapolis, and there are a lot of narratives, and there’s a lot of really awful stuff happening. But I tell you, there are people working, committed for justice whose hearts are bleeding. We can support them and the agencies that are supporting their work. And another thing we can do is learn about the deep history of racism in America so that we can better advocate for our neighbor. We live in a pretty insulated place; we have to do work to learn what life has been life for decades, centuries for a population of people who have been begging us to listen.

We are freed in Christ and baptism for the sake of the neighbor, not to earn our salvation, you don’t have to do any of this to be saved, but our baptism calls us beyond just that. God didn’t stop desiring justice and mercy in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. And He certainly didn’t bring Jesus to free us from relationship and responsibility for the neighbor. God has bound us together; we are the body of Christ so that when one part hurts, all parts hurt. We might not yet realize how our own identity is broken because of what we refuse to see. God brought and demonstrated in and through Jesus, God’s deep love and commitment for all of creation and desire to bring humanity into the work of extending God’s love to the world around us. Not to earn our salvation, but to participate in it in the here and now, God’s new creation. God is at work. God is alive. God is active now.

The Holy Spirit, a gift of God through Jesus Christ, is a gift of baptism, and the Holy Spirit is not just for preachers, but also for you. As we conclude the Easter season this Pentecost, may we remember that in baptism, God claims us from sin and death and renames us Child of God. And I invite you right now, if you’ve gathered that bowl of water and have that candle lit, to dip your finger in the water and trace a sign of the cross on your forehead to remember that, in baptism, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. And that is something no one can take away.

And now, hear this blessing: God who is rich in mercy and love gives us new birth into a living hope through the sacrament of baptism. By water and the Word, God delivers us from sin and death, and raises us to new life in Jesus Christ. We are united with all the baptized in one Body of Christ, anointed with the gift of the Holy Spirit and joined in God’s mission for the life of the world.

We give you thanks, oh God, that through water and the Holy Spirit, you give us new birth. Cleanse us from sin and raise us to eternal life. Stir up in your people the gift of your Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the Spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever. And God, may your Spirit pursue us relentlessly to use our freedom to participate in loving our neighbor by working for the freedom of all.

Amen.

Sermon: Fifth Sunday of Easter 2020 - John 14:1-14

2020-09-01T15:25:00.003-05:00

MAY 10, 2020

Passage: John 14:1-14

Click here for video of the worship service. Below is a transcript of the sermon.

So, we have John 14 as our gospel message today. A familiar passage: Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life. Those are words of hope and promise in the midst of a current reality that doesn’t have us traveling much at all. I’m also reminded that we are reading through 1st Peter this Easter season, and it is still Easter. 1st Peter begins, “Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Easter is about resurrection, and we live in the hope of resurrection and the promise that Christ’s resurrection brings us to new life.

The reality of resurrection is that first comes death, which got me thinking about a lot of the things that are perhaps dying right now, things that we are maybe even letting die: gatherings like graduations, end-of-the-year celebrations, even our typical Mother’s Day gatherings, spring sports seasons that we anticipate as the weather warms up and as we get outside and join together with friends and family to cheer on our athletes. We’re not able to participate in those right now; all of the end-of-the-year celebrations for the schools: the music concerts, the gatherings, the spring plays, even our weekly coffee with friends, our nights out, our card groups. Knowing that we have to let go of things brings grief and sadness and also, in this Easter season, we are reminded that after death comes resurrection.

And I’m really intrigued right now with what is being born anew. I think about the things that were already being born anew here at Bethesda, before all of this happened: we were planning a fine arts camp this summer to take a different direction from the typical VBS, to invite multiple ages into the process of journeying together through God’s story of how God has called us to be creative beings. And now? We’re anticipating. What will happen? Will we be able to gather for that in July, or will something else be born anew? Our Splash Faith Formation had transitioned to cross-generational worship for two fun-filled weeks, where we gathered all kinds of different people from different age groups and different perspectives together to learn and grow together in worship. We were engaging differently: talking, acting things out, taking a different way of exposing our children to what it means to be life-long learners and life-long people of faith.

And now, that has transitioned too. We have had a new birth in which we are providing the family Sunday School and the Vibrant Faith Moments; and inviting you to take what has traditionally happened here in this building and do it in your own homes: to engage in those faith conversations around the tables where you eat, in your living rooms with your families as you grow in faith together; and inviting parents to take that additional step of being the one leading that conversation and relying on the fact that God has prepared and equipped them to do exactly that as parents. Service projects that were once done by a few people here and there were to be a Compassion Sunday where we were going to gather together here, and we were going to act out an act of service for an organization in this community. That was supposed to be next weekend; it’s not going to be, instead, I see compassion every day around us.

I see groups of people making masks for everyone who needs them. In fact, in my community, there is a woman who just keep making them, many every day, hangs them out on the tree in her front yard, and invites everyone who comes to take one to make a donation to our Food Pantry. We have many new volunteers in our Food Pantry as we envision new ways of bringing the food out to people and reducing contact. I bet you can identify a few things that you’ve seen in your own community, in your own neighborhood as people reach out and take care of one another during this time.

And then I think about the resurrection that I’ve seen in my own home: instead of running around to various activities in the evenings (and we’re not even that busy of a family)- boy scouts, piano lessons, Confirmation on Wednesday nights, music concerts- instead of doing that, we’re able to eat dinner together nearly every night right now. And our mornings are so much different: instead of that hurry to eat breakfast, chow down the cereal, get out the door, get everyone on the bus on time, we’ve had slow awakening; we have cuddles, eggs and toast around the table together as a treat. And despite all this new life, which we look to and we celebrate, there is still death in the grief that has taken place.

It’s harder every day to maintain social distance; we miss laughing loud and long with friends, embracing the family members that don’t live with us, and even coming together to share in the feast of the Lord’s table with one another. And the separation that we feel, the separation that is so prevalent right now, is a separation that is much like what God has grieved, in God’s separation from humanity through sin.

Throughout scripture, community is the sight of God’s presence, and the ultimate community is the body of Christ: us, together. “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” perhaps doesn’t mean what we’ve always taken it to mean: not a gate keeper, not an if-then statement, but the very being of God in the world. A being, we as the body of Christ, dwell in and with. Philip asks, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus responds and clarifies, “The Father who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. We are one. And you are in me, so you know the Father.” In Jesus, that separation, that great separation that God mourned, God healed that divide, the divide between God and humanity, the divide between you and me, the divide between us and them. There is only we.

Perhaps one of the biggest points of grief for me during this time is seeing how this separation, this mutual experience of loss and of change has further sown seeds of division: people who choose to wear masks out of care and concern for the neighbor and people who don’t and criticize those who do; those who believe one set of scientists about what needs to happen, and those who believe another set of scientists. In the body of Christ, there is no us and them, only we.

The dwelling place Jesus goes to prepare isn’t the way we think about it; the word “house” makes us think of room, and we think of all these separate little rooms as if we’re going to all still be separated in God’s great reconciliation of creation. Think of it more as a space within God to abide, to dwell within. As Jesus said, “I will come again, and I will take you to myself; so that where I am, there you may be also, in the intimate presence and being of God.” We who know Christ get to experience the foretaste of this intimate love. We saw that in Christ’s life, as Christ reached out and stood between the woman about to be stoned and those who would throw the stones; Christ who promised living water to the woman at the well, the Samaritan, the person who, as a Jew, He would be least likely to extend love; to the leper, shunned and excluded from community; to the man born blind, those around questioned what had he or his parents done, who had sinned that he was blind, and Christ said no.

We too have this intimacy with God in Christ Jesus as infinite, overflowing fountain of water that quenches our thirst: the longing and thirst over grief and loss; the thirst to accomplish and to do, to feel productive; the thirst to go; the thirst for love and belonging. This intimate, overflowing love meets us in our lonely, isolated places and this intimate, overflowing love gently raises our chin, turns us around, and points us toward a dry, parched, lonely, grief-filled world, and through us, God points that love like a firehose, bringing about new life, expecting resurrection. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sermon: Fifth Week of Lent 2020 - John 11:1-45

2020-09-01T15:20:00.004-05:00

March 29, 2020

Watch the full worship service here. Below is a transcript of the sermon.

Passage: John 11:1-45

Many of us are recognizing things in this text that we perhaps didn’t see before. As we see Mary and Martha’s tears and hear the desperation in their voices, we might find ourselves identifying a little bit with how they’re feeling.

One of the other readings in this morning’s lectionary is the Ezekiel text of the Valley of Dry Bones. That’s another place we might be feeling a sense of identification with. If you can imagine Ezekiel looking out over an arid, hot desert, barren except for bones and birds picking at the bones, there might be a sense that there’s a little bit of that that we’re living in right now. Things have been stripped away, things that we enjoy, parts of our lives that give us joy and fulfillment.

We’re kind of stuck, some of us, in one place. We may be afraid and anxious, and for some there’s a sense that death is kind of looming all around us, whether we think we might personally experience loss, or whether it’s just the general sense that it’s in the air. And many, many of us are feeling isolated...lonely...restless. And it was the same kind of despair that Mary and Martha approached Jesus in their grief, asking Jesus, “How? How could you let this happen? You’re like family to us. If you had just come... why did you wait?”

Certainly, it’s hard to understand why Jesus would have waited in that circumstance. The disciples were perplexed, and then He decided to go anyway. At first, they probably thought it was just too dangerous, but then, once it was too late, that’s when He went. And Mary and Martha-Mary who had knelt before Jesus, anointed Him, wiped His feet with her hair- this Mary, looking at Jesus with eyes full of tears, wondering, “How? Why? Why didn’t you prevent this?”

Jesus’ response to Mary and Martha isn’t to dismiss their feelings; it’s not to blame Lazarus for getting sick in the first place; and it’s certainly not even to claim that his death was necessary. Instead, when faced with the overwhelming grief around Him, Jesus weeps. Jesus weeps with Mary and Martha. Jesus weeps with us, and Jesus not only weeps, but He also walks straight into that cave. The stone is rolled away, the stench comes rolling out, and Jesus is there. Jesus speaks life into that death, “Lazarus, come out!” as we heard Jason interpret that Biblical passage in his reading. And Lazarus does! Lazarus was raised from death to life. Jesus looks into the face of death and speaks life.

It can be really hard to live, the way the world is right now, rocked with a little uncertainty every day. The bad news seems to kind of compile. Not only are we stuck in our homes, many of us, but we hear about earthquakes happening all over the world, the markets aren’t stable, and many of us look at the possibility of retirement savings, everyday savings, our livelihood possibly disappearing. And businesses, businesses that people have worked hard to build up, are struggling. They’re struggling in a climate where we’re asked not to interact with one another, for the safety of all.

And there is a sense in the air that the things we have come to know-this community, this nation, this economy- we fear it might pass away. And Jesus, like with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, doesn’t stand by watching, but enters into this space with us, grieving with us. And just as Jesus commanded to unbind Lazarus: “Let him go!” Jesus has unbound us through His death and resurrection. He has unwound the claws of death and decay in a world of sin. Jesus unwinds our greed and our hypocrisy, unwinds injustice and inequity, unwinds our fears and our anxieties, and brings us into life.

Jesus proclaimed, “I am the resurrection and the life!” And that little tiny community of Bethany heard it; not only did they hear it, they shared it and believed it! And that’s how we even ever got to hear this story to begin with. That’s how we came to know. And God’s Word can, for us, bring us nourishment in despair and raise us to new life as well.

Because, the really beautiful thing is, despite the fact that the words are out there, “church” is not cancelled. You can’t cancel church. We’ve simply left the building, but we are still the Church; we are the body of Christ in the world. So when you need, when you long for, the gathering where we sit at the Lord’s Table, receive the bread and the wine, and are nourished on the body and blood of Jesus Christ, look out into the world. I guarantee you’ll see it.

You’ll see Christ’s body at work in the world in the notes written to folks in nursing homes and hospitals by young people; you’ll see Christ’s body at work in the world in our Food Pantry that continues to operate daily, where people are volunteering who’ve never volunteered before to keep other safe and where we continue to feed those are most at risk of not having what they need. You will see God at work in the world, you will see Christ’s body in the world, through your neighbors who are reaching out, doing small acts of kindness, taking time to check in on one another. And in families, gathered around tables, playing games, parents struggling to continue to enrich their children’s learning while school is out. In time spent together, embracing one another, comforting one another.

So, as you look out into the world and see Christ at work, Christ’s body, in and through the Church, the people of God, point to it, name it. Not just for the world to know that Christ is still present and still active, but because when we point to and name God’s work in the world, it feeds us, it enriches us, it brings us out of despair and grief and into trust. Knowing that no matter what despair we might experience today, we rest in the solid assurance that Christ has defeated death and brings us to new life, and we will all gather at the eternal banquet.

We will all be set free from those things that bind us. Christ is with us in our sorrow and grief, and we cling to the promise that Christ will pull us out of this pit of despair and bring us to new life. In Christ, there is life everlasting. This is most certainly true.

Amen.

Sermon: Second Week of Lent 2020 - John 3:1-17

2020-09-01T15:16:00.007-05:00

You can listen to a recorded version of the sermon here. Below is a partial transcript of the sermon.

Passage: John 3:1-17.

And it is through that spirit that we are called and created as people of faith. We have faith that God is not just something human beings latched on to to make sense out of life. As people of faith, we have faith that the promises God has made, God will keep. And our faith defies logic and economics and commonsense. Faith is risky. It says, "forget what you know by sight and put your trust in God's kingdom." In the unseen, unknown, upside down kingdom for the last are first and the first are last. Like Abram, who trusted God's promise to make his family in a great nation and left family and inheritance, stability and support. It wasn't that Abram needed this promise God made in order to have those things, but God told a man and a woman who weren't able to have children that their ancestors would number the stars, and that God would bless the entire world through them.

And based on that promise, Abraham left, Abram at the time, left everything he knew: the inheritance he might get, the family that would support and care for him and he and Sarai and Lot and those that went with them traveled to a place unknown. God said go. And Abram went, sight unseen. God didn't say go to New York, and Abraham could know what New York was and looked like. God said "I'm going to take you somewhere. And I'm gonna bless the world through you in this place and, in trust, in faith, Abram went.

Now Nicodemus, who we heard in our gospel reading, was relying on what he had seen, on the signs and the miracles that Jesus had done. Signs that must mean that God's presence was at work, and he wanted to stay in his comfort zone. He was there trying to nail Jesus down to have what he knew, confirmed. And Jesus challenges Nicodemus to trust, not in the flesh, not just in the things that he could see, but in this spirit, the spirit that creates faith, the spirit in which we are born anew. Jesus abolishes categories that Nicodemus knew: God, not God, flesh, not flesh, and challenges Nicodemus to full relationship. Faith looks at Jesus, Jesus, our boundary crosser extraordinaire, and says, "everybody is in, baby!" And, in our reading from Romans, that includes the Gentiles. Paul is breaking open this idea that God's covenant relationship with Israel could only be in Jesus, also to those who knew God through the Torah. Because of God's action in Jesus Christ, the promises that were made to Abram expand to extend and include a new people through Jesus. And that means you and me.

Now we're in Lent, as Mary mentioned, and we do, we focus on our brokenness as human beings during the weeks during Lent. But did you know that the number of days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday aren't exactly 40? Because every Sunday is a little Easter. Every Sunday we remember that we are made new in Christ Jesus. Every Sunday, we remember that that brokenness that drives us to God, that we acknowledge in Lent, that we looked at during our pastor chats as we talk about the seven deadly sins is not who we are. We are not the labels that are used to define us. Fornicator, glutton, illegal, greed-monger, deviant. In Christ, we are named and claimed children of God, and so are our neighbors.

Faith is born in Jesus, hanging on a cross, who looked at the lawbreaker beside him and said, "Truly, I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise." Jesus didn't say: "First, tell me what you've done and I want to make sure it wasn't too bad." Or "Tell me how you're gonna make up for what you did, and then you will be with me in paradise." Jesus simply extended the promise and the forgiveness and the identity. And as one's reborn in Christ, we get to go love God's creation, too, exactly as it is. We get to love our liberal neighbor, our conservative neighbor, our straight neighbor, our gay neighbor, our cisgender, transgender, fluid neighbor, our fiscally conservative neighbor, and our democratic socialist neighbor.

God's love demonstrated in Christ Jesus comes in close. It puts close enough to get to know those who, in Jesus' time, were most condemned and most despised. Those who had been labeled: tax collectors, sex workers, that woman caught in adultery, a Samaritan woman. Jesus loved them all; Jesus got close enough to hear their stories and to know them. And we're called to do the same.

Jesus didn't come in close to condemn, but to love, to bring God with flesh into direct contact with broken humanity. Just as we hear in John 3: 16-17, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him." God's love is for all, including you, not just when you clean yourself up, not just when you meet a standard, but now, as you are, because of Jesus' death and resurrection. You are made new, child of God. Thanks be to God.

Pandemic ... a time to stop.

2020-03-19T17:52:00.002-05:00

What if being forced to stop is a good thing?

It’s Spring Break for our kiddos, so it’s a week we would have been hanging just as a family, anyway, and one I took off of work. As one not trying to figure out how to do the same things we’ve always done just now distanced from other people, it has been interesting to watch the many ways my peers in ministry address this challenge.

I’m not sure how I’d feel if I were trying to “work” this week … what I would be doing to be productive … What content I would be generating to try to justify my continued paycheck.

But from the sidelines, one of my first thoughts about this forced time of distancing is Shabbat … stopping. The kind of stopping mandated by God’s law in the Torah for the good of humanity.

The weekly Shabbat … ceasing from work to be in the presence of God and family, and the order that those who forced others to labor would also grant that stopping.

The yearly Shabbat of the festival days … ceasing, celebrating together.

The seven year Shabbat where the land is left fallow, allowed to rest and recuperate. No plowing, planting, pruning, or harvesting. Food that grows on its own can be eaten for sustenance, but no hoarding, just take what you need. Debts are to be remitted.

And then the Jubilee Shabbat, the year at the end of the seven year cycles, when slaves and prisoners are freed, property lost due to debt is returned to original owners, families are reunited.

Scholars see little evidence that these were observed prior to the exiles, and perhaps these are the very practices God mandated so that the Israelites would be just and merciful, that they did not abide. (For more on this topic see The Bible Project’s podcast series here.)

As we are inundated with information about what this pandemic will do to stock markets, businesses, and systems around the world, I cannot help but think of it as a forced Shabbat. A stopping. And, possibly, a reordering of creation in its aftermath. As governments and organizations postulate about what supports might be necessary, the solutions sound a lot like making sure everyone has enough, reordering things a bit.*

And some of the most beautiful work of the Church I have seen in this time hasn’t come from doing the same things we do inside the building just from a distance, or via the internet. The church is BE-ing church.

People are checking on their elderly/medically fragile/food insecure neighbors.

School districts and individuals are mobilizing to make sure kids who rely on free and reduced school lunches are still fed.

Families are in the same space for days on end, eating meals together. Playing games. Laughing. Fighting. Making up.

Food pantries are figuring out how to provide food to those in need while protecting the health of their volunteers and patrons.

And I wonder …. What would it look like to spend our time tapping into what is happening in the world? What would it look like to encourage our communities to look for how God is at work in their midst and create opportunities to share that with one another … via Facebook post comments, or a Zoom hangout, or posting pictures on Instagram with a specific hashtag?

Yes, we still need worship experiences, but we don’t actually need every pastor in every congregation to recreate Holden Evening Prayer every week.

What would it look like for us to live into a season of Shabbat?

And what might our world look like when we re-emerge from a season of forced stopping? After living together in our moments rather than moving and running and seeking the next thing, how might we reprioritize what we see as “essential” activity? When we have spent days on end with our families, might our desires be reframed so that we do not want to rush through our days to the next activity but miss the long days spent with one another?

If the existence of our economy requires that resources are reallocated, how might our economic systems change so that all have the opportunity to thrive?

If we begin to understand that the health of all is dependent on the health of our most vulnerable, how might we rethink healthcare as a right rather than a salable good?

If we explore new ways of being church in a time when we can’t gather, how might we continue to be church in the world, rather than requiring people to come through our doors for “church?”

It is okay to stop. It is okay to rest. It is okay to cease from doing and be. When Moses asked God who he should tell the Israelites was sending him, God replied, “I am who I am…I am has sent me to you,” (Exodus 3:14).

God is not defined by doing, but being, and so are you.

* One quick note … I am not suggesting that God brought this pandemic in order to force us to stop. Instead, I wonder if we have pushed creation so far and moved so fast, that this pandemic is a natural consequence.

A Moment in Time

2020-03-09T22:26:00.004-05:00

Tonight my baby girl let me put her to bed for the first time in several weeks.

She’s been “brave” and “grown up” enough and exiting a season of anxiety-fueled, “don’t leave the bathroom when I’m in the shower,” so, this has been a reprieve.

The “No, I’m good,” to my, “Do you want me to tuck you in?” left this mama heart a little wanting.

I’ve been plenty absent in the evening myself. Internship and 45 minute commute and all.

But tonight I was home. And the parentals discerned older-brother’s concert was best a one-parent experience for the sake of all involved.

And she and I lay on the couch in a cuddle we both longed for.

And after her independent shower, she requested a tuck-in.

And I acquiesced.

And her room.

Neat and tidy.

Not the tornado-zone of her younger years, but all buttoned up (if you don’t look under the bed or in the closet).

And her bag packed for a spring-break weekend with her best friend and family, lined up right next to the door.

And there it was in front of me.

A wave, and a car door slam, and there she goes to college.

Thank God she’s only 9.

Plenty of days ahead to savor.

The future is right there.

So today we’ll cuddle.

And it’s only halfway there.

Thank God.

Sermon: A Time to Give

2020-02-19T16:59:00.003-06:00

The transcript from my sermon for February 16, 2020 is below. Or, you can listen here.

I don't know about you, but every time I hear the reading that we heard this morning, my first thought goes to The Byrds' song, "Turn! Turn! Turn!" And if that's running through your head throughout the sermon this morning, that's not such a bad thing; go ahead and enjoy it.

But one of the things that really stands out in this particular reading, one we see in verse eleven: it says "He has made everything suitable for its time. Moreover, God has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." God has ordered time. God has ordered our lives.

We experienced that in the creation story where God takes chaos, darkness and nothingness, and brings order: day and night, sky and land, land and water, animals and humans. Creation is God's ordering of chaos, and the routines that we have in our lives order our chaos to a certain degree. Order grounds us, routine grounds us. We sometimes don't realize it. We can think, oh, I'm such a creature of habit, and that's a bad thing. But get out of your routine for a while, and it affects us; any parents out there who have experienced the last few days of Christmas break or summer break know exactly what I'm talking about. Those kids need that routine back, that sense of time and order that brings understanding and purpose and meaning to our days.

And this list here in Ecclesiastes is a pretty big list of the things that are a part of the times of our lives. It's not just a rosy-cheeked list of the good stuff; we don't get to weed it out. That is the thing about the order of God's creation: it is complete, and we don't get to pick and choose which times we're going to participate in, which times we're going to sit out of. Included in the list are a time to die, to kill, to hate, a time for war. These are things we don't like to think of as necessities in life, and yet in our broken humanity, they are a part of our lives.

The speaker in Ecclesiastes is an interesting character. He's called the teacher, and if you try reading Ecclesiastes in The Message Bible, you might get a greater sense of the kind of just flat-out realism that that this particular person has about life. This speaker is telling it how it is and doesn't really pull any punches. It can kind of be a contrast to Proverbs, where we have these kind of nice nutshell sayings that if you do this, then this will happen.

Ecclesiastes challenges those assumptions. Ecclesiastes is a little more what life is really like. And this particular reading was so important that it was read at the Festival of Booths, which was a fall festival commanded by God, celebrating God's care for the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness. So if you can imagine hearing these words spoken in remembrance of a time when order seemed far off, when certainty seemed far off, when God had promised the land and goodness and richness and milk and honey, and yet the people wandered in the desert, having to depend on daily rations of manna that came in the morning and were gone by evening. This is the kind of experience that today's reading speaks into.

And the thing about the parts that deeply grieve us is that, without them, we wouldn't fully experience the amazing goodness of these parts: There is a time to be born, to laugh, dance, embrace, speak, love, a time for peace. Without death, life could seem an endless drudgery. Just a whole 'nother day in this world that we live in, short of God's kingdom.

It reminds me of a woman that I used to get to share with in ministry: Jessie Mae Perdue. She was in her mid-90s when I met her, and we had arranged for groups of six to eight confirmation youth to visit Jessie Mae as a service of accompaniment project throughout the year. And the interesting thing about Jessie Mae is that her life probably tended for more experiences that we would consider negative: she had buried multiple children, lost a spouse, and had an upbringing that wasn't exactly rosy; she had come to faith by attending church with her aunt and uncle, her parents weren't people of faith. But Jessie Mae's faith was absolutely contagious. She spoke of God and God's work in her life in ways that I've heard very few people speak. She lit up. Her warmth and generosity oozed out, and her love for those kids was palpable. They went to visit Jessie Mae in an act of service, and Jessie Mae extended her life and her story and her love in a return of service as well. And the one thing I remember most particularly about Jessie Mae, she passed this last year, and when I would call to confirm that the students were coming, to make sure she was still up for it. We would get toward the end of the conversation, and she would say, "you know, Sonia, I'm so glad to be doing this, I'm so glad God is still using me. But man, I just wish He'd called me home." Life without death can become long. And there is hope in going into God's kingdom and being one in the love that is the kingdom of God that we all look forward to.

We look a little more deeply, in this passage, in all of these contrasts. There are some that, on the surface, seem pretty simple, but when we get a little deeper into the translation, in the words used, there's more meaning than there might seem. In verse six, it talks about a time to seek, to look for, and a time to lose, a time to keep, and a time to throw away. For those of us minimalists in the crowd who have maybe spouses that aren't so fond of getting rid of things, this might seem like a really great passage to point to when you're cleaning out this spring. There's more to it, though; the "throwing away" in this passage is a pouring out in generosity. It is a being willing to let go of for the sake of something greater.

And it's a reference to the way God pours out good things for us. I think of a story I've heard of a child who had heard in worship of need, "Next Sunday, we're gonna be giving money for: fill in the blank." I think it was possibly another child who was ill and was needing help and parents who needed money. And this child came the next Sunday with their piggy bank and opened up the bottom and shook every last penny into the offering plate, knowing that it was going to help someone who desperately needed it. That's the kind of "pouring out" I think of when I think of this passage.

Without giving, without the pouring out, the keeping can become hazardous when we are so worried about keeping what we have for ourselves, that we don't respond to the world in need with a pouring out of generosity and love in the way that God has poured out generosity toward us. It can be a little bit like Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Holding that ring, polishing it and how that grasping of something eventually destroys him.

God has ordered our lives. And, in that order, there is a time for forgiving. In the life of this congregation, we have said that that time is now: "For Such a Time as This." We are calling upon each other to consider what we have, consider the amazing gifts that God has given us, and respond to build up for the future of ministry in this time in this place. We're asked to consider how we'll respond to that Capital Campaign and all of the ways that Bethesda is building for the future and continuing to pour out the love of God in Christ Jesus to a world desperate for a word of life. Jesus poured out generosity and love to all He encountered; Jesus frees us from sin and death to new life. Thanks be to God.

Sermon: Filled to be Emptied - Acts 2:42-47

2020-02-19T16:56:00.004-06:00

Transcript from my sermon for February 2, 2020 is below. Or you can listen here.

So, speaking of that first Christian community, how many of you have ever had mountaintop spirit-filled experiences? A few out there. Oh, that's more than Saturday night. I'm glad to see that. I think people are a little bashful on Saturday night. Whether it was a worship experience that was particularly spirit filled or a camp experience at some point in time, or even just literally being up in the mountains and being absolutely blown away by their majesty and the majesty of God's creation.

Mountaintop experiences leave us with this sense of awe and wonder. And that's the kind of sense of on wonder that this community was feeling, because the particular passage that we read today, this Acts 2 passage is right after Pentecost. This is right after the Spirit has come and filled the room, and the disciples have spoken in many tongues, and Peter gave his absolutely astounding and rousing speech. And the people around thought those people must have gotten into the wine a little early because there is no way people behave like this. But they did. They had that sense of community, and then they went, and thousands were baptized as a result. They lived in this community. And we have this passage. This is being filled with the Spirit. This is the ultimate example of being in community and the ultimate example of God's work through the Spirit.

If you were here on Wednesday night, we talked about Luther's two kingdoms and how the right hand is God's work that frees us from sin and death; God's work in the spirit. And then the left hand being our work in the world. Well, God's work through us in the world. So there's gonna be a couple references to that if you were here Wednesday night.

But if this particular community, this community that had awe that came upon everyone, and they were all together, they were living in community day in and day out, giving to one another. Somebody needed something a lot like the story with the soup, they gave and all had what they needed, and they worshiped together in the temple. Sounds like daily to me, with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all people.

That's the work of the spirit. Why is it that a lot of our communities, our Christian communities don't really look like that? I didn't ask the question, do you feel mountaintop experiences every Sunday? And don't answer; I don't actually think that that's the goal. But the thing is that this particular snapshot we get in Acts is just that, it's a snapshot. It's right after Pentecost. It's right after touching the Spirit in a way that was absolutely the most profound experience of the Spirit we could probably describe. And if we look further into Acts, there aren't any other descriptions that look quite like this one. Much like our mountaintop experiences, the apostles and the disciples and the followers of Christ after Pentecost went back about daily life, at some point; went about spreading the gospel. And in doing so, daily life creeps in; the demands of daily life creep in.

But it does describe what the spirit can do in and through us.It can create communities that are filled with hospitality, that are bubbling over with that sense of "we want you to be a part of what is going on here," and there's something amazing to be a part of. Mutuality, where all have what is needed. Worship of a God who sent God's son so that we might be free from the powers of sin and death. And that idea of charity, where we consider the demands of our own lives, and we consider the demands of the kingdom, and we decide what sacrifices we might make so that God's kingdom might come more fully here and now. And I think if we're all honest with ourselves, at one point or another, we really do long for that kind of community in a world that becomes more and more isolated and independent, in a society that is one of the most independent societies where my needs and my family's needs come before the needs of others in many ways, at least in our discourse, where we must protect ourselves, our church, our country. There still, we're left with this sense of longing.

And I remember a time where that sense was particularly profound in my own life. I was working in a corporate job. I had been promoted to the role of employee communications editor for a large company in the Des Moines area. The guy left the job, and I ended up getting put in it. But, you know, because I was capable of doing role, for something that felt like a huge accomplishment at the time. But with that huge accomplishment came a lot of pressure and a lot of scrutiny in that particular company. The communications department was right at the hand of the CEO and chairman, and anything we did was highly scrutinized.

It was the week of Thanksgiving, and there were very few people in the office. But the employee communication still went out on Wednesday, as always. And very few people there to proof it, and we had some very unfortunate typos. We were a "publicly traded company," think about that for a minute. And in the ensuing weeks, there were reports written, and there were lots of very intense meetings where we tried to figure out how we could make sure we never made an error like that again, or any kind of error. "How do newspapers do this? How do other publications do this?" Well, for one, they have proofreaders, but not just the two people putting the publication together.

That being said, the job became more and more stressful. My thoughts were consumed with that and my ability and my bandwidth to be able to do anything else was pretty small. And it happened, so just so happened, that I was scheduled to go on a mission trip, Permission of Accompaniment that I've talked about before, to Mexico, my husband and I with a group of young married couples. It was a mission trip in which you didn't do anything but accompany people, listen to stories, allow the hospitality of people who have very little to be given to you, and not insist on giving anything back.

And it changed me. After that experience, I wanted to stay there and participate in everything that was going on. But wisely, the folks that put this particular trip together said to all of us, "it's more important that you take what you've learned here and continue to tell that story and continue to participate in ways that continue to further understanding back home." And I did.

And it wasn't long after that, six months maybe, that I resigned from my role in the corporate communications world and started a job working one on one with people with disabilities. And that resulted in having more time to volunteer at my church and more bandwidth to be able to do that, which resulted in being a mentor in a confirmation program, which resulted in eventually leading that program, which resulted in a sense of call, and here we are.

It can be really easy to do to resist the kind of demands that the spirit makes on us. And I'm not up here saying, everybody leave your corporate job, because Luther would be really disappointed in me. Our work, our vocation, our spreading the gospel in our daily jobs is supremely important. It is what we are called to do. However, if those demands become so much that we can't be people of the Spirit and people of faith, then we can think about that.

Or if the demands of our own lives in this year of the year 2020, the demands of having to have just the right house with just the right kind of counter tops and a certain year, at least, model of your car or the demands of feeling like, well, my kids are missing out on something if I don't take them on a tropical vacation because it's spring break, and for goodness sakes, we have to do something. Or the demands of having to have a certain size television set or a certain brand of clothes.

These demands pull at us as well, and our resources, our time, but also our financial resources only go so far and then their demands that of what it takes to be a church in the world today, to be this place, to have these lights, to have this building. The demands of time and financial resources that it takes to provide a nursery so that the children can be nurtured. While parents who may be just in dire need of one hour to be in the presence of God can sit and do that on any given week. Or to provide children and youth programming that passes on this legacy of faith that we have that we cling to to the next generation, creating worship experiences where everyone can hear what's going on and where perhaps there's even some visual stimulation that helps those of us who live in a culture where nearly everything we process is visual, come into a space and engage as much here as we engage on our phones and our tablets and our screens at home. And we struggle, we struggle to make the kinds of sacrifices that it takes to live out, to live into, that left hand kingdom of God where, freed by God's right hand, we participate in God's work in the world. We put on our neighbor, whether we understand them or not, whether we fear them or not, knowing that they, too, are a child of God, worthy of God's love and grace and justice and mercy, worthy of their humanity in as much as we are of ours.

The Old Testament promises had a lot to say about God's just society. In the Old Testament, we see God over and over and over again, getting after those Israelites for not striving for justice and mercy. The very laws in Leviticus set out ways for which the hungry would be fed. When fields were harvested, leaving the outside edges, so that, if someone was hungry, no matter why, they could come and be filled; an even more radical idea of the year of Jubilee, every 50 years, where debts might be completely erased. Slaves who maybe came into slavery because they couldn't pay their debts no matter why they got in over their head, out of their own selfishness. Debts. Slavery. They were released. They were returned back to their land.

This turnover. That's the kind of just society that God longs for. It's actually the kind of just society that we saw in our Acts 2 passage today: that glimmer, that glimpse of the kingdom that is coming. And then in Jesus, we see that kingdom. When Jesus said the kingdom of God is at hand, and then we watch what Jesus did. We watched Jesus freeing people who by all means had every right to be punished for their sins, and saying "you're free, you're healed."

That's God's kingdom come. That's the amazing work of the spirit that we as people, as people who are of the Spirit in baptism, as people who are followers of Christ are called to participate in. We are called to bring out those tangible signs and wonders that they talked about in the Acts 2 passage here and now, whether that's eliminating hunger discrimination or inequality. It's not us. It's God's spirit in and through us. And we can't get it perfect, but we can sure start.

We can take a look can take a look at the gifts that we have in our lives, the meager gifts that they might be, and decide what portion of those we can return for the legacy of God's work in the world in this time and this place, whether it's $10 a week or a month. What can we do to steward those gifts to a future where that vision of the Spirit continues to be the driving force of everything we do, where we both set aside for the future in our endowment, where we pay for the things we've already done in paying down our debt and where we enhance the experience for all who come to be a part of this place?Will we respond generously as those in the Acts 2 community?

And what might we experience if we do, if we respond to the work of the Spirit in the way that they did with eagerness and awe and wonder, and how might God transform us in the process? This is certainly the life-affirming community for which we long. This is certainly God's amazing work through the power of the Holy Spirit: that we are not just people striving for more, but we are promised to be a part of God's kingdom work here and now. And that frees us even as we work to free others. Amen

Sermon: Matthew 2:13-23

2020-02-19T16:54:00.001-06:00

Transcript of my sermon from December 29, 2019, is below. Or listen here.

Well, this week's reading from our lectionary, if you don't know the lectionary, it's a series of readings put together in a three year cycle so that we hit Matthew, Mark, and Luke over the course of three years, and then John sort of gets sprinkled into each year.

This year, this is the reading assigned right after Christmas. We don't get to bask in the peace and glow of the manger very long. This particular reading reminds us of what it meant to be Jesus during his time. In this particular reading, we remember that Joseph and Mary had to pick up their beautiful baby boy and flee out of the country that they knew to Egypt in Africa, where they took refuge from a king that sought to destroy Jesus and that was so afraid of the power that Jesus brought that he wanted to make sure that power would never come.

The particularities of that we heard in the reading, and we're reminded of other times when the children of Israel were also in danger. We're reminded of when Syria and Babylon invaded their country and when they lost their lives to those invasions. We're reminded all the way back to when the Israelites were slaves under Pharaoh, and they were becoming such a large number that Pharaoh began to be afraid that they might gain power over him, and so similarly, he ordered that first-born males be killed to stop the growth of the people, because he was afraid.

And this Herod was afraid not because he was a mad king. This was no Nero. This was no man who'd lost his mind. This was a king or a leader, a ruler that had the favor of many people. The people who were important to have favor of. This was a leader who knew just who to please, and who had done good things for Judea. There was growth. There was prosperity. Yet Jesus, and what Jesus brought, scared him. The idea that a leader who is not of his line might be coming forward became so scary that, like Pharaoh, he also ordered, not just first-born, but all boys under the age of two be killed.

The interesting thing is that Herod's rule didn't even last all that much longer, because we know that Jesus returns and is in the temple teaching when he's still just a boy. But we hear in our reading that Herod dies, and his son becomes king and rules over Judea. So it wasn't even so much about his own rule as the fact that things might change. And we remember that rulers, in general, fear that things will no longer be the way they currently are. That keeping the status quo, keeping the power, keeping that sense of control is often what our human nature drives us to do.

God's work in Jesus Christ turns that all upside down. In Christ, God was bringing about a whole other way of being, a way of being that didn't privilege those in power, but instead brought life and light to all- a way of being that didn't fear a child who may rise to be king or all children who may overtake a population, but instead spread love and light to all.

As we remembered just Tuesday on Christmas Eve, God came to be with us in Christ; with us in our humanity, in our daily lives; with us in a life where we live in a world where rulers will seek power, and rulers will seek glory. And yet we, as people who follow Christ, are called to a different way, called to a way of love, called to a way of light. Because we don't live in fear of losing anything. We can lose everything and still know that we have what God has given us in Christ. We know that Jesus, Jesus who had to flee from Herod in order to fulfill God's call on Jesus' life, eventually faced that same power, that same power that was so afraid of what he was bringing that it crucified him.

But that wasn't it. Because we know that there was resurrection. We know that Christ, while crucified, rose to new life, and we have that assurance, and that is the kind of assurance that this world so desperately needs. We need to hear that the death that comes as a result of our human nature is not all there is. The deaths that come when we're disappointed; the deaths that come when life doesn't turn out the way we thought it was gonna be; the deaths that come when we lose the things that are important to us, whether that's our livelihood or the people around us that we care about, friendships that fall apart, family relationships that aren't what we want.

All will be raised to new life in Christ, just as Christ defeated sin and death in the resurrection, we cling to that same hope that all will be made new. We have the hope of new life in Christ. And- there's always and. We have the great privilege of being a part of making that happen right here, right now, in our daily lives, spreading that message, giving that hope to people who think that this world is all there is. As a people that know there is a promise to which you can cling, we have a message that is amazing.

We have a gift to give the world, not just a celebration of Christmas, not just a present under the tree, not just the ways that we work in the world to bring about God's kingdom here and now by feeding people and clothing people, speaking up for those who are being hurt by the ways of this world, but also, in the midst of all those things, proclaiming Christ has come, and this is not it. There is hope in God's love. Amen.

Sermon: Christmas Eve

2020-02-19T16:51:00.006-06:00

I've gotten behind posting these ... and there was no transcript for our Christmas Eve sermons, so if you'd like to check it out, you can listen here.

Sermon: Advent 1 -- Hope in Christ

2019-12-06T20:20:00.004-06:00

Listen to a recording of this sermon here. Below is a transcript of the sermon preached Sunday, December 1. Since I did not use a manuscript, the message will likely be better communicated by listening.

All right, so adults, it's your turn. Who's got their tree up? That's OK. Yeah. This isn't going to be a pastoral advent shame message about having your tree up already. So don't worry about that. I don't feel that way about it. I think that the preparation that we do during Advent--the decorating our homes, the making of the meals, the purchasing of the gifts can all be ways that we're preparing our hearts and minds to celebrate Jesus at Christmas. And certainly, there are ways to get so lost in that that we aren't really thinking about it.

But I think that if we are intentionally thinking about how those things are ... how we prepare for Jesus coming, for the celebration of the first time Jesus came, we can be worshipful in those ways as well. And as we think about that today, we think about Advent, this season that we were talking about with the kids.

And Advent is actually the beginning of the new church year. So happy new year! We went from Christmas to New Year in two minutes worth of sentences. This is the new year of the church season. And it's fun that that what we think about and what we celebrate in the new year, the church season, is this amazing anticipation. And the other beauty of the new year of the church year, is it's a lot different than the new year that we have and that we celebrate in the secular world. Because the new year that we have in our secular world is all about, "how I'm going to improve myself?" Right? What are my resolutions this year? What am I going to do differently? Am I going to lose weight? Am I gonna finally start exercising every day? And then am I gonna not be behind on my bills? Am I going to save money? How am I going to be better?

Well, the new year of the church--Advent--as the new year is completely different than that. It is all about how God is making something new. It's all about Jesus who came to us as a baby and our waiting in joyful anticipation for Jesus to come again. That's pretty awesome. That can be pretty amazing. That makes me wonder, so what exactly are we preparing for in Jesus coming again?

We talk about it--we talk about how Advent isn't just about counting down to Christmas, but it's also about preparing for Jesus to come again. What does that even mean? And our readings today give us some clues about that, especially our first reading from Isaiah. Isaiah paints this beautiful picture of what it's going to look like when God's kingdom comes down to earth, paints a picture of this mountain of the Lord's house, established in the highest of mountains raised above the hills. People streaming to it. Everyone saying, come on. Let's go. Let's go to the mountain of Jacob.

Let's be taught by God's ways. And then instruction will flow forth. And that God will arbitrate for the people. No longer will we have judges deciding who's right and who's wrong, which killings were just and unjust. And that will be so beautiful that swords--think about Jesus time swords were the ultimate of weapons--swords will be beat into plowshares. Instruments of death will become instruments of life-giving creation of food, and spears into pruning hooks. This picture, painted in Isaiah, of what it means for Christ to come again--it's that kind of amazing world where we don't have to be afraid anymore. It's the kind of world that we create when we come together on a Sunday morning and gather and worship . . . vulnerable in a world where bad things can even happen in a worship space.

We recreate. We are already anticipating the world that God is going to bring when we do things like come together and worship without guarding our space. But trusting in God and trusting that God is bringing a new creation.

And right before our gospel lesson today, Jesus tells about something that would have been absolutely terrifying to the people of his day. Jesus says that the temple is going to be destroyed. Now, for the people that follow God at that time, the temple is where God lived. The temple was this place of worship, and Jesus is saying it will be destroyed, torn down. And then a new creation will come. Something bigger, something better. Well, we no longer need a temple, but we can gather on that mountain.

And then it takes a turn. Then we hear about how nobody knows when this time is going to come, because that was kind of what led to this whole, so interesting, reading that we have for today. They said, well, when when? When is this temple--when is this going to happen? When's the temple going to be destroyed? And Jesus said, nobody knows. Only God knows. I don't even know. Me. The one who is going to come back. I don't know when.

I don't know. And then he describes what it's going to be like. Or at least how one can anticipate it. He says then, two will be in the field. One will be taken and one will be left. Two women grinding meal together, one will be taken and one will be left.

And unfortunately, those images don't create anticipation and joy for us because we've all--well many of us have--been exposed to some teaching that strings together, a whole bunch of biblical passages. Back in the 90s, the Left Behind series that made what was meant to be this joyful anticipation of Christ's coming into something terrifying.

And I'd like to rethink that this morning. We do know that to be left behind is hard. I'm particularly attuned to that after the loss of my father-in-law this month. Being left behind is hard. There's grief and there's mourning. There's a sense of loss. And there's a sense that you must move on. Life continues to move even when you are the one left. And as I think about that, I think about what it means that Jesus was talking about one being taken and one being left. What does it mean that we are still here? What does it mean that we are here anticipating Christ coming again? At any moment.

If we knew that instead of the three weeks we have before us to prepare for Christmas, that it could come at any time. What would we be doing? Would we be waiting for the next three weeks to gather the gifts and to prepare the feast and to be ready? Or would we be ready all the time? Would we be expecting it at any moment? And is that is that how we're waiting for Christ to come again--expecting that it could happen at any moment?

And if we are expecting that Christ could come at any moment, how are we waiting? Do we live into the world that we saw painted in Isaiah, where swords are beaten into plowshares? Do we start expecting to see a world where pain and violence is no more? Do we start creating that world today? Because the thing is, Jesus came. Jesus died. And Jesus rose again. And God's new creation has already begun. And we wait for Jesus to come again. But we wait already participating in that new world.

And sometimes that world means death because we are still here, we are still left. And sometimes that death means articles that continue to tell us about the fact that this church is declining, this mainline denomination is declining. And there are two ways to think about that. We can think about that as people who fear death. Or we can think about that as people who expect resurrection. What does it mean to allow things in this world to pass away so that God's new creation can come and so that we expect to see it happen?
What does that mean in our daily lives? What does that mean in how we engage with one another? What we teach our children? Are we to fear the other? Or are we to love them out of the joy that God first gave us in Christ? Our theme today is hope--this first candle. Our hope is in Christ, our hope is in the Christ for whom we prepare and wait.

We wait for Christ's coming. Wait for a world in which new life will spring forth from death. And death will come first. But it's not the end. And that, THAT is good news. Amen.

Sermon: Fruit of the Spirit -- Patience

2019-10-14T09:41:00.002-05:00

In the coming months, I will be using this platform to share sermons I preach during my pastoral internship at Bethesda Lutheran Church in Ames, Iowa. I encourage you to follow the link to the recorded version. Below is the text from my sermon October 13, 2019. The reading for the day was Romans 8:18-28.

All right, so as adults, we wait, too, right? We wait for the bus; for dinner to be ready; to get back the big test or paper or project; for our favorite team to win; for acceptance letters, job offers, retirement; summer break; in the school car line; to open Christmas presents; for kids to brush their teeth and go to bed. Sometimes we wait with patience and sometimes not so much. And the early church waited for Christ to come again, just as we wait for Christ to come again.

There was a clear sense in Paul's early letters that he thought this was going to happen in his lifetime. In this particular letter, the Romans, Paul emphasizes waiting in hope of the glory that will come and the freedom that that will bring. For people who could remember firsthand accounts of Christ alive through stories shared by the people they knew, Paul wrote these Romans to encourage them to continue to live in the spirit, to not lose hope.

And we as people who live far removed from the immediacy of Paul's time, it can be hard to imagine what it must have been like to think Jesus could just show up at any moment, like he did after the resurrection. We could be walking along the road and suddenly realized we were talking to Jesus. We stake our lives on the fact that Jesus will return, and God's kingdom will come in its fullness. But I know I don't always have a sense that that could happen any moment.

But still, we live in hope and wait with patience.

Maybe sometimes a little too patiently, so patiently that we don't have an immediacy of the need to share that message of hope with the world around us. So patiently that the work of the church seems like yet another task to do on our to do list, rather than an invitation to participate in God's work in the world. So patiently that our day to day lives aren't enlivened with the hope and promise of Jesus. We hear the word and feed on Christ in the Lord's Supper, and then we leave Christ safely in the building six days of the week.

Yet, we are people of the promise and we stake our claim on hope. Our waiting cannot be without urgency. The imagery Paul uses for creations waiting is profound. Groaning in labor pains. That is an urgent waiting. Now, labor pains aren't something everyone here has experienced. Not everyone has had their body overcome by such pain that they emit reflexive guttural groan. Some may have witnessed labor, whether it was a spouse, a child, a sister, a patient, or perhaps it was an animal -- a pet, a farm animal.

And I have to acknowledge that there are some among us who might have longed to experience childbirth. Yet this is the image Paul uses in his letter to the Romans to communicate the longing of creation to be set free from its bondage to decay. And there are certainly days that I can relate to that kind of longing. I'm reminded of a scene years ago of little bodies crouched against the wall in the school hallway while a siren sounded. A tornado happened to pass by while I was visiting my son's school. It was right after the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, and it had leveled the community, including the high school. So there was a sense that this really could be destructive, not like our usual Iowa sense of "everything's gonna be OK, it's just another tornado."

As a parent, I was terrified, waiting for it to pass, hoping it wouldn't hit the school. The relief I experienced when it was over was tremendous. A year later, I heard stories of teachers and children at Sandy Hook Elementary crouching in terror. The danger much more imminent. Waiting, hoping. And the realization that for these teachers and children, the relief didn't come. And we consider the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing to the glory to be revealed to us.

That's gonna be some kind of glory.

Can our waiting be punctuated with the kind of urgency that longs for the sufferings of the present time to pass that we might live in God's glory? As Western Christians, we don't experience the kind of persecution Christians and the early church did, but we're not immune to suffering.

We're not immune to waiting and to the world in decay. If we're truthful, we long for the redemption of the kingdom of God. And we wait in hope.

As Paul describes, God's very creation waits in hope to be set free from this bondage to decay like the size and groans of a laboring mother -- creation cries out in pain, longing for an end to famine, decay and disparity. We long for an end to a world where the bloated bellies of some longed for nourishment and others bloat with overabundance. We wait for the all clear; for the diagnosis; for the pain to end; for the job to come; for acceptance.

A laboring mother cries out in pain and sometimes becomes impatient, "is this baby ever coming?" Some give up out of futility: I can't do this, I'm too tired. It's taking too long. And like the nurse or midwife who presses her forehead to a laboring mother to tell her, "just one more push, you can do it." God sends the spirit to help us in our weakness, interceding with size too deep for words. As a mother waits for the birth of her child, we wait for the deliverance from the present suffering to future glory. And like that mother we wait in hope. Hope that we cannot see. Hope that saves even as we wait. And that's hard. But that's what hope is.

Hope is the gift of the spirit that anchors us in Christ's promise and draws us into the certainty of God's future. We wait patiently for God's future, where pain, death and separation from God and from each other will be no longer. Where children no longer huddle in terror; where illness does not ravage bodies; where there is not constant pain; where all have shelter, clothing, food and love. Where we are not the sum of our successes and failures. We are not our mistakes and we are not our worst impulses. By our adoption through Christ, we are made members, the family of God, heirs of the kingdom. We live in the present reality and the future hope. And we are not alone. God, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, abides with us interceding when we do not have the words. In Christ God came to earth, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, protecting the vulnerable, and standing beside the outcast. So we do not live in fear of what might happen, but in the assurance of what has. In Christ God defeated the powers of sin and death, giving himself on the cross and rising to new life. We have hope of new life ... a hope of new life that has the urgency of anticipating something amazing. And in that hope, we are invited to join in the kingdom of God. Right here. Right now.

To participate in the healing, reconciling work of making the kingdom of God known. Creating community that bears one another's burdens, waits with one another in times of crisis and celebrates when the crisis has passed. Community that joins together to take up our rakes and help clear debris at Reiman Gardens, caring for creation and our neighbor. Community that surrounds young people with the assurance of God's love, cherishing them and their uniqueness. Community that stands with those who fear rejection or prejudice based on their race, sexuality, gender identity or immigration status. Creating community that reflects the kingdom of God, while we wait in hope for its fulfillment. We ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, have been given these gifts not to hoard them for ourselves, but that we might proclaim the coming of God's kingdom to the world with anticipation and urgency. In a world of pain subject to decay, it's easy to be weighted down by our brokenness and become apathetic in our waiting.

Yet we know this is not the end, there is resurrection and new life. We have a beautiful message to share with the world. God's kingdom is coming. The present times will pass away. The suffering of today is nothing compared to the glory to come. Come join us as we wait. Feel the power of the Holy Spirit at work in your life and take part in the coming of the glorious kingdom of God. Thanks be to God.

Sermon: Fruits of the Spirit - JOY!

2019-10-01T11:30:00.001-05:00

In the coming months, I will be using this platform to share sermons I have written and preached during my pastoral internship at Bethesda Lutheran Church in Ames, Iowa. I encourage you to follow the link to the recorded version, as the sermon is often different from what was written. Below is the text from my sermon September 29, 2019. The reading for the day was Mark 14:1-9. The recording is available here.

We are working through our Fruits of the Spirit Sermon series and I get to preach on JOY!!!! What a way to start for my first sermon at Bethesda.

How appropriate that the young people in Sunday Splash shared that very song with us this morning.

When you think of Joy, many of your minds (especially those of you with children and grandchildren) might think of the character from Disney’s Inside Out.

Certainly Joy is the kind of lighthearted, exuberant, persona we associate with this attitude of the spirit. If you know anything about the movie you also know the movie depicts how integral all our emotions are to a full experience of life. Joy without sadness is not better, in fact when Joy tries to stifle the other feelings it creates trouble and distress.

Another perspective on joy from heathpsychology.org, “Being joyful requires feeling connected to other people in life, with nature, by appreciating the arts, and it requires an acceptance of life, as it is, in the present. When someone experiences joyfulness, physiological and biochemical alterations occur that encourage a sense of well-being, completely altering the negative views of life. Joy is an attitude or a belief, which soothes even in the most sorrowful of situations.”

If we look at each of the other fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) they are all RELATIONAL. They all involve at least one other person.

And JOY is also like that. Just as we cannot have joy without sorrow, we cannot have joy in a vacuum.

The discussion of the fruits of the spirit comes in the fifth chapter of Galatians as a result of Pauls’ expounding on a very Lutheran concept, “Freedom of a Christian.”

Paul was directly confronting the notion that Gentiles needed to follow Jewish law (specifically needing to be circumcised in order to be free).
Paul says, “For you were called to freedom, siblings; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Our joy is directly bound up with that of our neighbor, be that our family and friends, the young people of the congregation, the elderly in our midst, the people served by the food pantry and clothes closet, the surrounding neighborhood, and those in our community, state, and world.

And loving our neighbor isn’t the easy road. We live in a world of fear and that fear seems more pervasive every day. We are more likely to be suspicious of our neighbor. We worry about having enough for those closest to us. Enough time. Enough money. Enough energy.

Perhaps you have thought, sure, I would love to be involved with _____ but there just isn’t enough time, or I’m not great at that, or I might be uncomfortable. OR, if we invest more time and resources in that ministry, we won’t have time for this ministry that is important to me.

But just as Paul said to the Galatians: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” and “through love we become slaves to one another.” We often think of passions and desires as “big deal” things like the Seven Deadly Sins. In reality they are simply the things that turn us inward toward ourselves instead of outward toward the neighbor.

If I am focused on the things that benefit me, the things I am attached to, the programs I can’t imaging parting with and a fear of scarcity of time and resources, I miss the gospel that points me to the reality of God’s abundance. It is not either/or …. ministries for us for ministries for them. True ministry is an exchange in relationship in which each experiences the presence of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Since we’re just getting to know each other, I’ll share how this has happened in my life two different times. My first career was as a high school English teacher. It ended quickly and I found myself moving back to Des Moines from California, working for a local temp agency, trying to figure out the next step.

I had a simple calendar on my desk with a Bible verse and devotion. As a result of that calendar a coworker asked me to help her study the Bible, which later led to baptism. I was simply present, in my current reality and I responded to a request and took a risk to share my time.

I could have easily said “I’m not qualified to help someone learn about the Bible.” At that time, I wasn’t particularly comfortable claiming my identity in Christ and I had no qualifications except my own experience growing up in the church and my love of my friend. Yet in risking that uncertainty, we both grew in relationship with one another and with God.

Ten years later I found myself serving as a guide being present with a small group of students in confirmation and leading a mom’s group. I took a risk beginning to work with the confirmation youth as my previous teaching experience had not been great. I had tried, first, to teach an elementary Sunday school class and been completely overwhelmed. But in this context, in a small group with junior high youth, for the first time in my life I experienced joy in my work, true vocation.
I shared my own journey of discernment with the Mom’s group, and how I was sensing a call to ordained ministry.

When I announced this internship via a Facebook post, a mom I have since lost touch with reminded me of when I first divulged this sense of call to the group and how they all felt they had journeyed with me through the discernment and my formation. Many of these women have gone on to ministries and leadership of their own.

Neither of these periods in my life were without struggle, and challenge. And both involved risk. But they were both an act of vocation. Because when we step into our joy, we risk disappointment. If we share our time in this way, we might not have enough for something else.

But we may find ourselves drawn into something beautiful. As our speaker at a synod event this week stated so well, “when we claim faith (the gift of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit), vocation forms.” And vocation is basically spreading good news right where we are planted.
Vocation is both giving of self away for the neighbor and growing in faith and love in the process when we set aside our fear of scarcity and trust the abundance that is found in giving ourselves for the sake of the world God so loves.

In our gospel message today Jesus said of the woman with alabaster jar, “Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
WHENEVER the gospel is preached throughout the world, HER story would be told. This story of this woman, who brought her alabaster jar of oil and anointed Jesus.
What is so revolutionary about this woman that she would be mentioned every time the good news is shared?

Perhaps, she is the good news. Perhaps kneeling at the feet of our neighbor and risking an extravagant gift of our resources is the good news.

If it is true that the good news disrupts or dilutes whatever is bad news for any particular person, then this woman brought good news to Jesus. For Jesus, who would be tortured, crucified and utterly abandoned, the good news was an act of compassion and presence. An act of love poured out to anoint a body and ready it for burial.

Jesus was not discounting service and gifts of resources to the poor and needy when he told the disciples to leave the woman alone after they rebuked her. Instead, he was directing them to not discount the Good News being demonstrated in their midst.

Yes, the good news is freedom from sin and death, freedom from all the separates us from God and one another, demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

AND the good news is reaching out to a family struggling with food insecurity to be present in their reality.

AND the good news is bypassing our table full of friends to sit with a stranger and seek to get to know them.

AND the good news is risking discomfort to spend time with young people in Sunday Splash and confirmation.

AND the good news is taking time to serve a meal at Food at First or simply showing up for the meal, sitting with those present and listening to their stories.

AND the good news is being named and claimed as a child of God, washed in the waters of baptism, sealed by the Holy Spirit, forgiven, and free.

You are free to receive the fruit of the spirit.

You are free to experience joy in vocation as you share the love of God with the world around you.
You are free from scarcity and fear and caught up in the abundance that is the love of God in Christ Jesus.

May you bear Christ to the world around you, and in doing so feel the joy of the Holy Spirit as you are swept up in the relational, reconciling, and redeeming work of God in Christ Jesus!

Doubt ... Encounter ... Belief

2017-04-23T16:48:00.002-05:00

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio

A message I shared at St. Peter Lutheran Sunday, April 23, 2017.... Listen here or read below.
Thomas.

Sometimes I wish I were Thomas, with the guts to say, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in his side, I will not believe.” We don’t have the luxury of this kind of bold declaration.

However, while we often label Thomas “doubting,” Thomas wasn’t the first who didn’t believe a second hand account of Jesus’ resurrection. In John Chapter 20, Mary encounters the risen Christ, who sends her on to go and tell the disciples, saying, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”

Which we can assume Mary did. And yet here the disciples are, behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. They aren’t celebrating Jesus’ resurrection or proclaiming it to the masses. It is not until Jesus appears out of nowhere in their midst, saying “peace be with you,” and showing them his hands and his side that the disciples rejoiced.

And likewise, when Jesus appears a week later and Thomas is with the disciples, after touching Jesus’ hands and his side, Thomas declares, “My Lord and my God!”

This is the movement of believers in the Gospel of John. From doubt to encounter to belief.

I wonder why it was so important for the writer of John to continue to reveal Jesus in this way? What is it that we can see in this movement that helps us understand our own experience, especially as believers who only have second hand accounts?

Or do we?

There was a time in my life when I spent several years unable to really live out the faith that had been a part of my life since birth. In college I spent a summer as a camp counselor and encountered many of my fellow counselors who came to faith later in life. They shared their belief in the necessity of a moment of acceptance of Christ, and that people who had just believed their whole lives had to experience a moment of acceptance to really believe. I couldn’t point to anything and grew frustrated and disheartened. It was also at that time that I found myself focused on my actions, what I did, asking forgiveness for all my sins and beating myself up when I found myself falling back into sinful patterns of gossip, or anger, or short tempered replies. After that, I went through the motions of church attendance and faith, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

After I graduated from college, I moved to California to teach high school English. It was a lonely time, and my mother suggested I find a church to attend to find some community. I didn’t want to at first but eventually decided to visit a couple of places just to see. There was a big, beautiful stone church in the heart of Riverside, and I planned to attend worship that Sunday. As I drove up to the church I realized it worship had already started, a half hour earlier than the advertisement I found in the Yellow Pages.

So, I continued on to my second choice, Trinity Lutheran. A small, modest congregation of Midwestern transplants, at Trinity I found myself welcomed and embraced by the family of God. Yet, despite their welcome and care, I declined all requests to teach Sunday School or VBS because my uncertainty was still there. My resentment of church as judgmental and hypocritical had built up to the point that the simple faith of my youth was clouded and confused. I just couldn’t see myself teaching something I wasn’t sure of.

Even though my attendance was sporadic and I resisted all attempts to be brought into leadership, these people surrounded me in community, and they loved me. They welcomed me into their choirs and their homes and their lives. And though I could not touch the hands of Jesus or put my hands in his side, they carried me with the strength of their faith. It wasn’t until I was preparing to move back to Iowa and getting ready to say my goodbyes that I understood how God had been working through these amazing people to show me exactly what the body of Christ looks like. In them, I encountered the risen Christ.

Which brings us back to our text. Jesus, while he walks through walls and appears out of nowhere, doesn’t appear the way a “spirit” or “ghost” would. Jesus appears with the wounds of the nails in his hand and the gash in his side. His body carried the marks of his human wounds. Jesus carries our wounds. Jesus human life mattered, just as our lives matter. We, too, carry our wounds.
The wounds of broken relationships...
hurtful words about ourselves or our loved ones
bullying
exclusion
grief
loss
disappointment
lonliness
despair
mental illness.

The body of Christ bears our wounds.

In Jesus we see the fullness of God’s love.

In Jesus’ crucifixion, God’s solidarity with the suffering of creation, with OUR Suffering, is made known.

Jesus came back to reveal himself to the disciples with the marks of his suffering. Not all prettied up and shiny and radiant as he is at the ascension, but as we have always known Jesus, the incarnate God. God with flesh. One with us in our humanity and one with God in God’s divinity.

When we talk about “the church,” when we talk about this faith community, when we talk about ourselves as the Body of Christ, that isn’t some shiny happy-clappy, everything is roses thing.

The body of Christ is Crucifixion.

The body of Christ is bearing burdens.

The body of Christ is what humanity looks like – the good and the bad. And we, the church, the people of God have wounds, and have wounded one another.

Yet, after Jesus showed the disciples his wounds, he did this really strange thing, after telling them that “as the Father has sent me, so I send you,” he breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The same Holy Spirit we receive in baptism.

And we become that God with flesh as the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We both bear the wounds of this human existence and because Christ bears our wounds, we are freed to be the body of Christ for the world. To be the church for the sake of the world. To HEAR the word of God, to EXPERIENCE our doubt, to ENCOUNTER the Living Christ in one another and then to GO and TELL the good news.

As Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and My God!”

God doesn’t leave us to poke around in our wounds.

Because of Christ we are freed for life abundant.

As we heard in our first reading from Acts, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” and in Peter, “Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” And our Psalm for today, “In your presence there is fullness of joy, and in your right hand are pleasures evermore.”

We are the body of Christ.

Wounded? Sure.

Carrying one another? Thank goodness.

Freed for abundant life to rejoice in the resurrection and to spread that good news?

Alleluia.

Listening

2016-11-12T16:06:00.000-06:00

I have been doing a lot of “listening” over the last 72+ hours.

I am listening to female voices who had aspirations for a female president.

I am listening to voices of friends troubled and surprised our country elected a person who has said and done the things our president-elect has, and horrified and dismayed by the reports of hateful rhetoric and action in his name.

I am listening to people of color not surprised at the results of the election who continue to state that the overt racism/misogyny/xenophobia/homophobia/etc we are seeing is what they experience every day overtly or covertly.

I am listening to voices of parents whose children cannot comprehend the election result, and who, as parents, are not sure how to talk to their children about how we treat our neighbor when a person who clearly does not practice these ideals can be elected president.

I am listening to voices of people I know and care about who are hurt they are being labeled as racist/misogynist/xenophobe/homophobic by their vote.

I am listening to the voices of the church and leadership calling for all to trust in the power of God to overcome, to have hope, to pray for the success of our next president, and to act for justice.

And I am listening to the voices of those for whom the proclamation of the gospel while they are still deeply hurt seems like a call to skip lament and move straight into new life.

So, where does this leave me? I admit my perspective on how to verbalize this changed dramatically since I entered candidacy to take steps to become an ordained leader in the ELCA. All of a sudden, I realize I will not be just one of many voices and opinions. I am becoming one who is called to care for and shepherd all in a given congregation.

In that kind of role, my opinions are not just my own. No matter how I might feel, to cause division in relationship between me and a member of my congregation is to cause division in the body of Christ. And what happens when next week that person loses a loved one or is in need of pastoral care and no longer feels their pastor is a safe place?

And yet.

Throughout the Gospels we are called to participate in God’s reconciling work in the world. Yes, we are called to be peacemakers. However, the more I listen and the longer I think about all of this, I know being a peacemaker does not mean glossing over the brokenness of our world. Raising up and acknowledging the bad things happening doesn’t mean people are stirring the pot or dwelling in negativity. We have to know the brokenness that exists in our world so that we can enter in and be peacemakers.

And I have to admit, the brokenness I have become aware of in the last year is so much more than what is visible in my everyday life. And I think that is the case for many of us who live in the insulated and peaceful security of middle-class, suburban, midwestern America.

But we cannot just ignore the hateful words and actions given voice as we affirmed the right of a public figure to speak them by electing him to public office. We can all hope and pray our president-elect becomes “presidential” and refrains from the divisive and hateful tone used during the election.

And.

We must act. We must stand up to and confront hateful rhetoric in all forms. We must stand up to name-calling, even of those with whom we disagree. We must continue to call out and lament acts of discrimination and hate and stand up for our neighbor.

And, we need to listen. I have learned much in the last year about how my well-intentioned words and actions sometimes cause more injury. That can be hard to receive. My first reaction is to say I am sorry, and I didn’t mean to do anything wrong; I was just doing my best. However, it is not the job of people who have been crying out at injustice to forgive my ignorance. It is much harder to say, “Thank you for pointing that out, I hadn’t seen it that way.” This simple act puts the agency in the hand of the person who experienced the injury.

For those surprised and saddened that these things are happening, this is a great opportunity. An unveiling, if you will.

And in this new awareness we have two opportunities.

We can become sad and overwhelmed until we “need a break” and have the privilege of escaping into our insulated communities, into our sports, and entertainment, and other activities (places where those who find themselves targets are not able to retreat, as they never know when someone will confront them with angry words).

We can commit ourselves to listening, learning, and acting.

If you want to start (or keep) listening, here are a few of the people who’s lived experiences (or those of the stories they lift up) and perspectives have opened my eyes over the last year (below). It is by no means complete or perfect. These are humans sorting out their human reactions. By reading, sitting with my initial reactions and then considering what truth is present, I have learned a lot. And there are things I have to set aside for a time to come back to. But, ultimately even the most difficult things have taught me something.

https://beingblackatschool.org/#intro

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=763930077&hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf

https://twitter.com/rachelheldevans

https://twitter.com/crazypastor

https://twitter.com/dn_charles

https://twitter.com/tvrasche

https://twitter.com/MeredithGould

https://www.facebook.com/chescaleigh/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf

And here are some stories from people’s lives or reflections for consideration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/deep-in-virginias-craggy-coal-country-they-saw-trump-as-their-only-hope/2016/11/11/a76ac324-a69f-11e6-8042-f4d111c862d1_story.html?tid=sm_tw

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-elections-wake-racist-incidents-have-schools-on-edge/2016/11/12/c6de4904-a84f-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html?tid=sm_tw

http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2016/11/the-alt-right-movement-harassed-my.html

http://www.shannondingle.com/blog//i-want-to-help-you-understand-my-lament

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/to-my-friends-and-family-who-voted-for-trump_us_5825db0ae4b0852d9ec214a1

https://www.splcenter.org/tell-donald-trump-reject-hate-and-bigotry-0

http://time.com/4566646/donald-trump-women-advice/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter
http://time.com/4406337/mike-pence-gay-rights-lgbt-religious-freedom/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter

Adding more as I find them:
https://cmsangalis.com/2016/11/15/trumps-election-from-the-perspective-of-a-sexual-abuse-survivor/

No matter where we end up on this issue, or any issue, as Christians we are called to live together in loving community. The only way I know how to do that is deep listening. And deep listening means listening … not affirming or denying what the person is saying but simply listening. The only response necessary is, “thank you for sharing your experience with me.”

The more we listen to one another’s stories, the more we see the person sitting before us, a child of God. My experience is when we see the people around us as God’s children, we are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and find our hearts torn in two by the brokenness in the world. And instead of running from that pain, we sit with it and ask it what it has to teach us and where our presence is needed to participate in reconciliation.

Privilege and Silence

2016-07-08T23:46:00.000-05:00

Privilege is choosing to "take a break" from the heart-wrenching realities of this week's events to go to a park with my children and sit under the shade of a beautiful tree while I watch them play.

Privilege is doing this knowing that even if my children devolve into the most abhorrent of childhood behavior, break something, throw a rock, hurt another child, etc. my greatest fear is my own momentary embarrassment and disappointment.

Privilege is simplifying a complex social issue that is coming to a head in a country with a deeply divided racial history to a statement that we should all just "stop" seeing race, while dismissing the deep pain of the lived experience of those crying out for justice.

To not “see” race is to disregard the person in front of you telling you that their experience of life in this world is vastly different than yours in ways that have formed their identity, their sense of worth as they see it through the eyes of those around them, and the safety they feel as they go about their lives each day.

Just because someone else's lived experiences is not our own does not make it invalid. I have never witnessed police brutality of any degree first-hand.

I just haven't.

That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I haven’t witnessed rape either, but I believe the victims who tell of their experiences.

However, I have been privy to derogatory comments, jokes, and bias that lead to disparagement and unwarranted fear toward people of color. Even those of us who would seek to live in a way in which every individual we encounter is treated with loving-kindness have been witness to this behavior on the part of someone we know.

I've been at gatherings where someone related to the host makes a derogatory comment about a person of color. I've been in a car with someone who when driving in a major metro area in the dark looked out the window to see the man in the car beside her looking at her and expressed she was scared for her life because the black man was staring at her.

And these moments cut me to my core. I am angry. Incensed, even. But for the sake of relationship, not stirring the pot, I've been quiet. In my Midwestern politeness, I have not stood up for my fellow children of God because I don't want to hurt the feelings of someone saying something unwarranted and hateful.

I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of someone saying something unwarranted and hateful.

Ouch.

Would I choose not to call out someone who proliferated degrading comments about women, stoking a culture of rape?

And this, dear friends, is what we call being complicit in racism. I don't have to say the words to be racist. It is often what is not said that allows this underlying, insidious beast to continue to feed off the covert racism that remains in our country and rears its ugly head.

So, today, when it would be very easy for the energy of our nation to make the pendulum swing back toward blaming the victims of racism in the wake of the shootings and tragic deaths of the public servants in Dallas, Texas, I just can't stay silent.

We cannot simplify the reality of the officer lives lost in Dallas into an argument that the Black Lives Matter movement is somehow responsible simply because BLM has given voice to deep racial divisions that continue to exist and organized those calling for recognition and change.

We can't tell people that speaking up caused these people to die -- so they must stay silent.

We cannot silence an important conversation because a ~~handful of individuals~~ one individual took it upon ~~them~~ himself~~ves~~ (edited with current information) to take a peaceful protest and respectful relationship between BLM activists and the Dallas Police Force and turn it into a slaughter.

It is most certainly true: The answer to violence is not more violence, a la MLK, as I've seen posted and liked by many today. However, to assume the violence was perpetrated by those assembled in peaceful protest and targeting those assembled in peaceful protest is dubious at best and not supported by the facts as they are released.

The response to this tragedy is also not silence and sweeping things under the rug in the name of keeping some false sense of "peace" that only really applies to those not affected.

That would not honor the lives lost protecting these protesters.

To ask those in the trenches working for change to stop talking about the issue and pushing it to the forefront because it may cause some with ulterior motives to act out in violence is no more logical than those who chose to respond to violence with violence.

It's also not Biblical. Jesus consistently called out those in power who would use their power to exploit and repress. One need only look to the Sermon on the Mount, or Matthew 25 to be reminded that the core of Jesus’ ministry was to those the world would write off as “deserving” of their situation. 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

The Jesus movement was seen as threatening to the powers of Jesus’ day, ultimately to the point of Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross. Jesus stood in the line of fire and defended those who, by the law were “deserving” of punishment. And yes, in Jesus’ death and resurrection we are born anew, children of God, "28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galations 3:28.

Yes, this is our calling and our inheritance as children of God. This is that for which Jesus died and rose -- this is newness of life. God is at work in all of creation reconciling all of creation to Godself.

Yet, we cannot simply state this amazing promise of the Gospel and throw up our hands, say “we’re all equal” and walk away when our fellow children of God are crying out in anguish.

You see the thing is we live in the "now but not yet" -- the Kingdom of heaven is breaking into our world with the hope of the promised salvation ... a world in which we all experience this blessed unity.

Yet, we still live in a sinful human world wrought with division and pain. And our calling as children of God is to join in God's reconciling work in all of creation, wherever division continues to reside, so that we might bear witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus as we learn about the experience of our neighbor, stand beside them, and work for a world in which all have dignity and worth to be treated first as valuable human beings and not suspect or targeted simply because of race.

We cannot simply say to our neighbor that to tell their story causes division so they should stay silent. We are not called to IGNORE division but partner in God's work in the world to END it.

And ending division and hate means we cannot be silent...

I believe that the vast majority of police officers are bound by a sense of duty to protect and serve their communities and do not perpetuate racism and violence against black bodies.

But if any do, how can I remain silent?

I believe that not all police departments operate under policies that escalate violence.

But if any do, should I remain silent?

Just the same as saying these truths does not mean that all officers target black bodies, we need policies in place that ensure that police officers are trained and equipped with the same assumption of those they are called to protect and serve.

Is service in uniform dangerous?

Yes.

Do those who protect and serve enter the job willingly understanding the risks?

Yes.

Does this mean they should ever be targeted purely for their choice of occupation?

No.

Do those who are often assumed to have criminal intent by virtue of the color their skin choose to have these assumptions thrust upon them?

No.

Does this mean they should deserve less of the assumption of innocence than any other citizen of the United States?

No.

Being a police officer in this country is dangerous.

and

Being black in this country is dangerous.

This is not an either/or statement. It is both/and.

I can be speak up against racism and injustice.

and

I can respect and be thankful for the sacrifices of law enforcement officers.

Can we hold these truths in loving tension … acknowledging that both can exist without being mutually exclusive?

Can we acknowledge that one is true without demonizing and dismissing the experience of the other?

"We are all equal in God's eyes" does not remove from us the onus of seeking out and eradicating injustice and racism.

And support for the equality and just treatment of all does not mean lack of support for our women and men in uniform.

They are not mutually exclusive.

Just as when we continue to raise discussion and awareness of rape we are not saying that all men are rapists, by saying that instances of police brutality must be investigated is not saying that all police are brutal.

We are saying This. Instance. Happened.

It's. Not. Okay.

Just as the slaughter of the civil servants in Dallas, Texas was not okay.

But it is not enough to just know these things are not okay.

We cannot be silent.

We must begin to speak.

For until we are able to name the division and strife we will not be able to join in God’s reconciling work to cast it out in the name of the God who grieves every division …

every loss of human life …

every child of God.

All of us.

Without exception.

An Object in Motion ...

2016-06-10T11:31:00.000-05:00

I feel a bit like I am rejoining my former life for a brief visit this summer. For the last few summers I've worked a few hours every day and hired someone to watch my kids during that time. This created a kind of rhythm where my kids went on the bulk of their outings during my time away.

This summer, I decided to try something different and am trading childcare with a couple friends so I work 9 to 4 two days a week and then have my friend's kids two days a week. At the end of one of those chaotic, fun-filled days, I am reminded of the exhaustingly joyful nature of a day spent getting out and keeping busy for the sake of fun for the kids and, quite honestly, one's sanity.

I think I have been more "busy" in the last week than in the last nine months. We've been to two parks, the library and swimming in the three days I've had extra kids in tow. And while my default, introvert preference is quiet and calm -- usually achieved comfortably at home alone or with my spouse or a close friend -- I have found myself less unsettled and with a greater sense of purpose in these full days than I have for a long time.

That's not to say I could maintain this pace indefinitely. My transition to working part time while participating in a distributed learning seminary program in the fall is looking much less daunting. By the time fall rolls around, it may be a welcome reprieve.

As I reflect, the last nine months served a purpose. We all need to step away from a place of being constantly busy and needed and embrace the reality of what we experience when we have "nothing to do" for a significant period of time. It was my Sabbatical, of sorts. A daily Sabbath at the very least.

I entered this time empty, drained, and spent. As I encountered these unfilled spaces of time, I struggled with an equal sense of need to just rest and "be" clouded by a sense of obligation to "do" something and guilt for time spent doing "nothing." This tension, which I dealt with better some days than others, was never fully resolved. I have definitely felt a sense of purpose and comfort in having to be certain places and do certain things over the last few days.

Which makes me wonder ... what about this time left me with such feelings of emptiness and guilt? I certainly struggled when I heard about or saw the busy pace of my friends' lives, many of whom would benefit greatly from a day to just be at peace. Which also makes me wonder ... why is it so hard for us, especially those of us who have entered the role of parent, to claim the need for Sabbath ... the need to step away, to rest, to refresh for the sake of ourselves and those we love?

As I enjoy this Friday where the kids and I have slowed down from a busy week, I certainly appreciate the slower pace all the more. Maybe both extremes are simply much like the laws of motion ... "Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. " The same is true of an object at rest. Something has to act upon whatever state we are in to either push us forward or bring us to stillness.

Perhaps that is why the Sabbath was so important that it was included in the commandments. In a life of motion, to come to rest takes action. Something has to absorb the energy that would instead keep us in motion. Yet God calls us to do the hard work of figuring out how to come into a state of rest for the sake of our relationship with God, those around us, and ourselves.

How do you bring all that would continue to be in motion to rest? What stillness are you in need of today?

New Beginnings

2016-05-01T23:15:00.003-05:00

Our family is emerging from an almost week-long "quarantine" as we passed a stomach bug around, and we are feeling well again with energy and ambition which feels a bit like having a fresh start.

It is interesting to me that this fresh start coincides with recent news that drives me forward in the calling I have been discerning for the past 10+ years. Two weeks ago I visited the Southeastern Iowa Synod office for my candidacy entrance interview and received a positive decision, which means I am now a candidate for ordained ministry in the ELCA (one of many "first steps" along the path). Yesterday I received word from Luther Seminary that I have been admitted to the Master of Divinity Distributed Learning program, to begin study in the fall. I started the process to get to this point last summer and have been in the process of discerning if this was my call to answer for many years.

The months in between deciding to pursue candidacy and beginning study for a career in ordained ministry have been a bit of a fallow season, which has been hard for me. Certainly there has been much work to continue in my current vocation (and there will continue to be). However, as I stepped back from making new commitments of time and energy to prepare for this new step, I have often found myself lacking motivation to "do."

With our youngest entering Kindergarten this year, I leave the early years of motherhood that are so time-consuming and physically exhausting and enter a stage when my children are more self-sufficient. With this transition comes a sense of "what now?" With all three children in school, there is time in my schedule that was once filled with the moment-by-moment demands of parenting. It is an eerie feeling, as if I am always forgetting something.

I have to admit, in the absence of such obvious needs to be met, I feel like I have not made the best use of this season. Soon, I will embark on a five-year (hopefully!) period of study and preparation for ordained ministry that will involve 25-35 hours a week of course work on top of my 25 hour a week current vocation and roles as mother and wife. With all of my current free time I have done little more than rest while I watch my fellow mothers pour their time and energy into projects around the house, cooking and baking, school and sports activities, and other pursuits.

As I live in this time "in between", this fallow season, my new devotional led me to several renewed questions today:

What does it mean to be thankful, even when it LOOKS like there is nothing to be thankful for? (What does it look like to rejoice in this season of stillness and let it prepare me for a season of activity?)
How can I spot God's blessings "in, with, and under" the mundane realities of life?
How do I push through the days when I don't want to? (What happens next year, when time is so limited, if I experience this same sense of apathy?)
What does it mean to live my best life in grateful response to God's grace and love -- to push through the rough days in grateful response to grace?

Pondering these questions reminds me of how God's hand is at work in my life even in this fallow season. The rhythm of life in the wintertime before electricity and modernization was a time of preparation for the needs of the spring. It is hard to watch the world around me continue to push forward when I feel called to rest. Yet, I am called to acknowledge the indwelling of the Spirit -- God working in and through me to prepare me for what is to come, even if it sometimes presses hard against the norms of modern life.

Soon it will be time for long days and late nights. Soon enough it will be all about the doing. For now, I prepare. Like a mother who rests to prepare for the birth of a child, this fallow season is allowing me rest to prepare for the birth of something new.

I am excited for all this new beginning will hold.

Thanks be to God!

Sometimes we Have to Stare into the Tomb

2016-03-28T08:34:00.000-05:00

I’m starting to wish I had started this blog under a pseudonym … a way to write, to put things out in the world without being directly associated with my identity, without involving my friends and relatives, without being linked to my current or future vocation.

I long for an opportunity to process, in writing, the things with which I struggle and how I reconcile these things (or don’t) with my life, faith, and vocation. And yet I understand, more clearly every passing moment, the risks of doing so in a public forum.

Yet I made the choice to start this blog in a public forum with a specific purpose: to be a real person, flesh and blood, struggling in and with the realities of how we live in the “now but not yet” of this life, acknowledging the moments in the depths and still standing in the brilliant hope of the resurrection. And I don’t think you can do that from a place of hiding.

So here I am talking to myself while I write about why I do this, convincing myself it’s not too risky to do again. It has been another six-month silence. Yet, my soul screams out for the transparency this sharing brings.

So here it is … it has been a dark Holy Week. A couple of individuals I started following in the last year on social media (@rozellahw and @crazypastor) have been examining the despair that remains even after Easter, the tension of proclaiming “He Is Risen, Indeed, Hallelujah!” while living in the reality of a world still so broken.

How do we stand in the light of the resurrection, participating in God’s work in the world, while still fighting the sinking despair that comes when you stare into brokenness inherent in a world this side of heaven?

It has been refreshing to have this tension named this week. I think sometimes the hard part of believing in a God who loves us and reconciled the world to Godself through Christ's death and resurrection is staring into that brilliance and then feeling the heavy blanket of continuing to live in the broken world. The hard part is living in the heaviness of being called to love that world, called to love even those who would scorn, mock, and crucify us, and, in fact, our very Lord and Savior.

So let’s name it … recently I found myself in the hard place where I go from the self-starting, perfectionistic, internally motivated type-A personality to the person who has to talk herself out of getting out of bed and finds an excuse to recline at the earliest possible moment.

It all started the week of Spring Break. I could feel the heaviness coming on. I had a soul-draining February with weekends filled with a training event and leading a synod event and an overnight confirmation retreat. I loved doing all these things. Yet when they were done, I had emptied myself so completely I couldn’t rebound. While our family had planned a fun couple of nights away at a cabin to play and explore, I found myself sleeping away much of our time.

The following week I spent three days sick with influenza. I was sure my fatigue the week before had been my body fighting this oncoming illness.

Enter Holy Week. As I stared down the barrel of a number of events to prepare for in April, I was living in the midst of a week that while very busy in the life of the church doesn’t require a lot of me other than showing up. The confirmation ministry for which I am responsible has spent the last five weeks attending Lenten worship and meeting in small groups to discuss our weekly dramas so I haven’t had to plan and prepare and also haven’t had the chance to teach, which drives me and brings me joy.

And while there was plenty of planning and preparing for things in April, I wanted to do none of it, or get out of bed for that matter – so much so that for two days this week I put off getting out of bed so long I didn’t have time to get ready and ended up working from home. And there’s nothing so wrong with working from home, but the guilt of not choosing to get out of bed and not showing up during a busy week in the life of the church weighed heavily on me. And the guiltier I felt the harder it was to snap out of it all.

So, I, too, find myself short of heaven.

And aren’t we all?

As we struggle with the evil that remains in this world – hatred, racism, persecution, xenophobia, poverty, war, homophobia, income inequality, misogyny, etc. – isn’t it clear that while “It is finished” for eternity, for today we continue to struggle against all that would pull us into the depths, all that would steal the beauty of our days, of our very lives?

And I am reminded of another of my favorites to follow on social media (@momastery) who speaks of these days. She speaks of being the kind of person who feels the energy of the world and seeks to channel her response into active engagement in God’s reconciling work in the world.

But, she is the first to admit that some days the waves consume and she has to be gentle with herself. Sometimes staring in to the brilliance of the resurrection and reconciliation while trying to throw off the oppressive weight of the world around us takes more than we have.

And this is good news for me.

I may think I should be capable of all this.

I may think the sheer power of my will should be enough.

But the reality so vibrantly presented in the death and resurrection of Christ –

Whether you shout, “He is Risen, Indeed. Hallelujah!” with confidence surrounded by plastic eggs and chocolate bunnies or whisper it defiantly in the face of deep despair and sorrow in the evil of this world –

It’s not on us.

God’s got this.

God always has and God always will.

This is the reality presented in the story of God’s people in the Old Testament – trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and failing all leading up to the introduction of Jesus – the messiah who would take the sin of the world upon himself.

The more I burden myself with the responsibility of “snapping out of it” to embrace the life God has prepared and invited me into, the less I understand resurrection.

The more I trust the God I believe in has the power to reconcile ALL of creation to Godself, the more I open myself to the opportunity for my own resurrection – from all that would pull me into despair.

I don’t have to resurrect myself.

And releasing my death grip on that reality opens the door for God to begin God’s reconciling work in my heart and my life once again.

He is risen indeed.

Clinging to the shoulders of Christ, I, too rise.

Hallelujah.

At Peace

2015-09-25T14:25:00.000-05:00

I often turn to writing when I am struggling with some large question or frustration, but when the tide turns and I am at peace, I don’t feel quite the same need to put my thoughts to paper. For those whose interaction with me rarely goes beyond these posts (I think mostly of my family and friends who live at a distance), it may seem like I live in a constant state of angst.

Today I wanted to share with you that, finally, the dawn has broken on what feels like a terribly long period of struggle. I cannot logically explain how or why (I could wager some theories, but they would be mere supposition). but as I am going about my day I realize: I. Am. At. Peace.

The brilliant beauty of blue skies punctuated by white clouds and sunshine peeking through bright green leaves no longer carries the weight of a day I should enjoy but cannot. Where there has been a lingering sense of despair and apathy there is now a sense of stillness and content. It is like a switch flipped and all the lights came on.

The breeze and warm sun on my face remind me of the eternal presence that gently holds and sustains me in all things.

The day before me is an exciting opportunity rather than something to endure until I can steal a moment to lie down to rest.

These seasons are part of living for me. Seasons of beauty and purpose and seasons of stirring and discontent. It is easy to trust the joyful seasons … to see God working in the purpose and intention. What is harder is to recognize, accept, and trust is that God is also working in the difficult seasons, the times when I wander in the desert, not knowing my ultimate destination or how long it will go on. Even though my every need is still provided, I think there is something I must “do” to move myself out of the desert into the next stage.

But as God walked with the Israelites through their desert wandering, it was not their “doing” that led to the Promised Land. Every time they attempted to use what they knew to relive their distress – turning to idol worship and pagan rituals – they prolonged their suffering. It was only in forsaking their own ability to save themselves that they were ultimately delivered.

And so it is with me. God’s saving grace does not come in my seeking perfection or my striving. It does not come in the moments when I am trying to do my best. It is not my knowledge or my right actions that save me.

Wen all else fails and I have surrendered to my complete inability to fill my own cup or to be any more than the empty shell in need of saving, God can lift the veil and fill me with the peace of his saving grace.

And that, is a miracle.