Faith, Fear, and Trembling

So there we were in Bible study today at the local cafe, the same way we are every week.  This week we were looking at the readings for our Christmas Eve service, particularly the gospel narrative of Jesus' birth from Luke 2.  We were all talking about what it must have been like for the shepherds, wandering around Bethlehem in the dark, looking for that one stable where Jesus was born out of the many nooks and crannies likely available in a little hill town like Bethlehem.  No streetlights.  Nothing but the stars and the occasional household fire.  Then one of the members of the Bible study said, "I always figured the star led the shepherds to where Jesus was."

Sermon for Advent 2: "God Is Not Done With Us"

After Ten Years

Bishop Rolf Wangberg, me, Prof. Dennis Everson at my ordination
Salem Lutheran Church, Wakefield, NE.

Today is the tenth anniversary of my ordination.  I'm amazed to think it's been that long already, and at the same time I give thanks because after ten years ministry still feels like the thing I've always been meant to do.  Here are ten things I've learned in ten years as a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:

God and Sabbath

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah 58.13-14

The question was raised tonight at Bible Study: "How does God keep the Sabbath?" Christians and Jews tend to understand the commandment to "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy" as a commandment designed to elicit worship out of God's creatures - and since God is, well, God, worship of Godself seems nonsensical at the least, not to mention in some ways impossible.

We are not merely playing with semantics here: Genesis 1 describes the first Sabbath, and it is God doing the observing, not us. Obviously, Sabbath is important to God - but we know precious little about what God actually does with God's Sabbath.

Sabbath weighs heavily on the Old Testament and Gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary this week. Isaiah 58, quoted above, reminds the hearer that the Sabbath is a day in which one's own interests are put aside and one's affairs take the back seat. In Luke 13, Jesus heals a near-crippled woman on the Sabbath; this act of healing brings condemnation from the leader of the synagogue, who insists that the woman could have been healed on any other day of the week. It is the third of four Sabbath controversies in Luke's gospel, and in all of them Jesus calls the strictest Sabbath observances into question. The question that arises is, "What is Jesus saying about the Sabbath and its purpose? How does God do Sabbath, and how should this transform our observance as well?"

One wonders if the issue is not work or not-work, but rather delight or drudgery. In his commentary on the lectionary this week, Dan Clendenin wrote,

"When religious rituals like sabbath-keeping and fasting — or our Bible studies, sermons, church attendance, and retreats — are divorced from human health and wholeness, whenever a believer "turns away from your own flesh and blood" (Is. 58:7), then our religion has gone very bad indeed."

When the things we do as religious people become more important than our delight in the One who calls forth work and play and Sabbath, we have missed the point of Sabbath altogether. When God had finished a "hard week" of creation, God rested on the Sabbath; what do you suppose that rest looked like? Here's one possibility: imagine you have slaved all week on an outdoor patio or backyard retreat like the one pictured above. Once you've finished all that work, what will be the first thing you'll want to do? Take delight in that which you have wrought. Was this what God did on that first Sabbath? Moreover, is delight what God asks of us when we ourselves observe Sabbath?

I am coming to believe that delight is indeed the first and most important point of Sabbath: delight in the presence of God, delight in the company of our fellow sinner/saints, delight in the promise, made in baptism, through preaching and in the Lord's Supper, that Christ has lived, died and risen again for you. Sabbath is a time to put down the laptop, to stop looking at the clock, to deny the omnipresent modern desire to produce and consume and simply be in the good creation which God hath wrought. Walter Bruggeman insists that the modern pre-occupation with production and consumption is a metaphysical equivalent of Pharaoh's yoke. Let the reader note that when Jesus explains himself in Luke's gospel, he points back 1300 years to the time of slavery in Egypt and says, "Ought not this woman...have been released from her bondage on the Sabbath day?" Call it a date night, call it a backyard retreat, call it what you will - the call to Sabbath is not about satisfying God's need to be praised, but rather about the sheer joy of taking delight in God, of being shaped by God's grace, of hearing regularly "You are My beloved child, fearfully and wonderfully made."

That's my answer, at least: what's yours?

Grace & peace,

Scott

Good Book Groups Make Good Pastors

"God is utterly committed to set the world right in the end. This doctrine, like that of resurrection itself, is held firmly in place by the belief in God as creator, on the one side, and the belief in his goodness, on the other. And that setting right must necesarily involve the elimination of all that distorts God's good and lovely creation and in particular of all that defaces his image-bearing human creatures. Not to put to fine a point on it, there will be no barbed wire in the kingdom of God. And those whose whole being has become dependent upon barbed wire will have no place there, either."

Bishop N.T. Wright
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven,
the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

There are days when being a pastor doesn't involve much. On those days, you find yourself tending to the details of administrivia, as a few of my blogger friends have put it; picking hymns, moving around the building and putting things where they belong, thinking about the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day operation and administration of a community of faith. You buy communion wine, make sure someone's baking the bread, pick up some napkins from the store, figure out what kind of donut holes you should have for Bible Study on Sunday morning. And, for God's sake, don't forget the coffee. :-) Like most jobs, these kind of days make up a lot of what I do - they are unremarkable, but generally enjoyable as well.

Then you have days like today. Days like today are what make what I do a vocation, not just a job. We have a group of folks meeting at University Lutheran Center every Friday to read and discuss books. I call it Theology for Lunch, though in truth there's only a few of us who eat and the group predates my time here, so it's more a title to go on the calendar than anything else. Currently we're reading the book quoted above, and after almost three months of slogging through introductory stuff, today we finally hit the meat of the matter. My heavens, was it ever a good conversation today.

There are a lot of reasons to love a group like this. For one thing, we can disagree without demonizing, a rare commodity. Granted, we're a fairly cohesive group politically and theologically, but we do have varying opinions on matters, and, more importantly, a few members who are unwilling to let generalizations and poorly-explained arguments slide. You better bring your "A" game to this group, and it better be good. At the same time, we've been together long enough that we can confess to ignorance, stereotyping and frustration with certain aspects of our lives. The combination of willingness to argue and agreement to respect makes for a lot of good discussion.

In the chapter we read for today, "Purgatory, Paradise and Hell," Wright really made some spectacularly cogent arguments toward what I think is a more fruitful understanding of, as he calls it, "life after life after death." I especially connected with the idea that even though God is indeed determined to right the wrongs of this world, God is NOT interested in maintaining the divisions we so painstakingly construct between ourselves. When we were discussing the paragraph quoted above, there were a number of different images people admitted came to their minds: the U.S. Mexican border and our problems dealing with immigration, gated communities, and, most importantly, I believe, Christians who seem to base their entire existence on proving they know exactly who is in and who is out when it comes to salvation. Any time the idea of heaven and hell get weaponized, Wright argues, we're missing the whole point, and I agree wholeheartedly.

One of the reasons I remain an ELCA Lutheran is because in our theology I find precious little evidence of walls and barbed wire constructed for their own sake. The Augsburg Confession, our "constitution of faith," if you will, states that preaching of the gospel and administration of the sacraments are all that is required for the unity of the church. Everything else is adiaphora, matters about which we are free to decide what seems best in our local ministries. This can lead to an ungodly mess at times - witness the current brouhahas brewing over sex and money in our denomination. But these things are not the pillars upon which the church stands or falls, contrary to what some will say. So long as we have only the gospel and the sacraments, the preaching and the presence of Christ in His church, we have all that is necessary.

One of the things that got Jesus most in trouble with the authorities in his day was the way he kept tearing down walls they had built to increase their power. It seems to me God's been doing that for quite some time: we find ways to box God in so we can be in control, God gets busy busting loose and tearing down the spiritual barbed wire we've so painstakingly used to imprison ourselves. Frost was right: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," and today it seems to me that God, also, doesn't love a wall. "...no barbed wire in the kingdom of God." Sounds good to me.

Grace and peace,
Scott

"Uff Da" Was Invented For Questions Like This

Sometimes the privilege of being a pastor runs side by side with much fear and trembling about people for who you care a great deal. Had one of those moments this morning:

I am _________'s [parent]. I have been wondering for years if they taught you that the Bible is 'just a book'? Did they teach you that Noah wasn't real? That Adam and Eve weren't real people? When Pastor ______ told the adult Sunday school group those things, a sickness came in me. It was what I call a red flag. There are several of us at _____ that are upset with this teaching - XX and YY to name a couple. Do you believe that way now, too? Pastor did talk to me about these teachings. He said he was the last one to change his mind and believe the way the seminaries are teaching now. This has been bothering me for a long time. When ____ told me last night that you were on Facebook, I felt that at last maybe you can ease my heart. I feel that at last, God has guided me to you. Please reply. Z___ Z___

So much for a nice easy Monday morning. After strapping on the theological kid gloves, I wrote my response:

Hi, Z_____ - how nice to hear from you!

This is a very hard question to answer in one email. I'll do my best, though. The short answer to your first question is, no, no pastor in the ELCA is ever taught that the Bible is "just a book," including Pastor _____. We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, as Paul writes, and that the Bible is "the cradle where the Christ child is found" as Luther once said. The Bible informs our lives, shows us where we are sinful, and reminds us that God's grace in Jesus Christ is the gift that brings us into the family of God.

Now, having said that, there are some questions about the historical value of the Bible. These questions have nothing to do with whether or not the Bible is God's word - it is and remains God's word. But there are some differing opinions among Christians about what is historical and what would be best considered mythological. This is where it gets complicated.

Most ELCA pastors, including myself, believe that everything from Genesis 1-11 is not historical, or at least not historically reliable. Other cultures have tales of a great flood in the Ancient Near East, so it seems that there was a flood of some sort in the days before Abraham, but we're not certain that a man named Noah ever lived. Or, at the very least, if there was a Noah, records of him have not been found. The same for Adam and Eve and everything up to the beginning of Genesis 12, which is the beginning of Abraham's story and, we believe, the first historical figure in the Bible.

That doesn't mean, however, that we don't value Genesis 1-11. To the contrary, those stories are VERY important for our faith. Adam and Eve show us how we are always testing the boundaries and trying to become more than we're meant to be. Cain and Abel shows us the deadly consequences of broken relationships and violence. Noah shows us the importance of faith and perseverance when the world around you becomes more and more dangerous. These things are important because they are true reflections of humanity, even if they aren't historical fact. It's sort of like the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, then refusing to lie to his father about it: even if it didn't historically happen, it's still an important illustration of the kind of person Washington was. The same is true for the Bible: even if all the things within its covers aren't historically verifiable, they are still important illustrations of the way God has continually cared for humanity, and even rescued us from evil and from our own worst tendencies.

I don't imagine this is the answer you were hoping to receive, but it's the best I can do. If you have more questions, please feel free to email me again - I'd like to help as much as I can. Say hi to ____ for me!

Grace & peace, Scott

It's one thing to lob your theological hand grenades at people you don't know well, folks you can yell about and never feel the ill effects personally. But what do you do when someone you know, someone your parents know, your siblings know, someone you're likely going to see the next time you go home, comes with such a heartfelt question?

Those of us who follow the Revised Common Lectionary heard from James yesterday: "your anger does not produce God's righteousness." (James 1.20) Some of us in the church would come thundering down with hellfire and brimstone to defend the idea that God's word is inerrant - others would thunder just as loudly against anyone simple-minded enough to believe in such rubbish. Both would be wrong. Believing in the rightness of your theological position doesn't give you room to be an ass about it.

Now I'm going to get back to my coffee and cleaning off my desk. I think I've done enough theological heavy lifting for the morning.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Friday "If I Had A Million Dollars" Five

I was going to embed a video of Barenaked Ladies singing their song of the same title, but Swandive beat me to the punch, and I can't find a video of Peter Mayer's hilarious song "Easy Street," so my selection of "If I Were Rich" songs is not tapped. So, all right, here we go:

Lingering effects of a cold have me watching more television than usual. There appears to be a resurgence of the old daytime staple--the quiz show. Except they are on during prime time, and a great many of them offer the chance of winning one million dollars.

I think it started with Regis Philbin and "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" but now we have a half dozen or so.

My husband and I started musing (after watching "Deal or No Deal") about what we could do with a million dollars. I thought I'd just bring that discussion into the Friday Five this week. It's simple. What are five things you would want to do with a million dollar deposit in your bank account?

1. My entire family, debt free. Brothers, parents, in-laws, the whole bunch. 'Nuff said.
2. Assuming I have anything left at this point, travel. Germany for me, Ireland and Scotland for the missus and I both.
3. Oh, I just thought of this, but I'm going to put it here anyway: first, a tithe to the church. Not sure what form it would take, but 10% to God right off the bat sounds about right. Now, as to leaving it here - shows that I, like all of us, jumped right to me instead of God. I believe the phrase we Lutherans use for moments like this is incurvatus sei: the Self curved in on the Self, our bondage to sin. There you go: theology and a Friday Five all at once!
4. Okay, back to me. Here's the next bit:

For those of you who aren’t guitar nuts like me, that’s an Adamas Melissa Etheridge 12-string guitar, complete with a unidirectional carbon fiber top to provide extreme strength with very little mass for the truest enhancement of a string's vibration possible, a mid-depth cutaway body and 5-piece mahogany/maple/ebony neck with ebony fretboard and urethane oil finish to provide the ultimate in playability and projection, and an ebony bridge, gold tuners, and exotic wood epaulettes to make it visually stunning while Ovation's Original Patented Pickup and OP Pro electronics deliver stellar sound plugged in. (You can send that guitar with your answer to this week’s puzzler to: Car Talk, Harvard Square, Cambridge [Our Fair City!], MA…)

5. Finally, assuming again that I have anything left, I’d start a coffee house and just hang out. Invite the local theologians, ordained and lay, to some sort of brew and Bible group. I’d make sure it had a small stage for concerts by local artists and independent folks from the area (like my favorites the Wild Clover Band, Storyhill, Justin Roth and the like). And I’d have really, really good coffee, fairly traded, of course.

What a dream. Maybe someday, right?

Friday Five: Heavenly

What is your idea of a heavenly (i.e. wonderful and perfect):

1. Family get-together
This one is actually a memory more than a hope: I remember a Johnson family reunion when I was young, probably six or seven years old. We met in the park in my hometown of Wakefield, Nebraska, and in my memory there's like a hundred people there. We lived a mile away from the farm where my Grandpa Johnson was raised, and his brother and sister both stayed close when they got married themselves. So we knew our cousins really well when we were growing up. Anyway, this family reunion was wonderful: everyone was there, we had tons of food to eat (including a big pile of fried chicken) and we ran and played games all afternoon. Everyone laughed and enjoyed each others' company - I'm hoping someday we can do it again.

2. Song or musical piece
Hmmmm - what to choose. Here's a few:
a. Symphony #1: Lord of the Rings by Johan de Meij
b. Heaven Is Waiting by Rich Mullins & Mitch McVicker
c. Hold Me, Jesus by Rich Mullins
d. Day By Day - a hymn by Lena Sandell
e. Jesus of Suburbia by Green Day
f. Symphony #5: From the New World by Antonin Dvorak
g. Symphony #4 by David Maslanka
h. Tom Sawyer by Rush
i. Peace of Mind by Boston
j. One Voice by the Wailin' Jennys
k. Steady On by Storyhill
These are all songs/musical works that have just made my heart jump upon hearing them, even to the hundredth time. I know the array of choices is wide, especially when you throw in Green Day and Rush, but hey, it's my heavenly music, right?

3. Gift
A new set of Callaway golf clubs would be heavenly, for sure - the FT-i neutral driver, Fusion Woods and, oh, why not the X-18 irons & wedges. Because, you know, it's all about the clubs, not the guy holding them. :-)

4. You choose whatever you like-food, pair of shoes, vacation, house, or something else. Just tell us what it is and what a heavenly version of it would be.
Let's do a heavenly Grandma's Marathon, shall we? First, I'll sleep well in my friend J's parents' house, something I never do in a strange bed. Then we'll rise early and I'll have a nice cuppa joe or two, a bagel with organic peanut butter and orange marmalade, and a banana that's at the perfect ripeness. Top it off with one more cup of coffee on our way out to Two Harbors, MN for the start of the race. The mist is breaking off of Lake Superior and the temperature is in the low 50s, where it will stay for the majority of the day because of the light northern breeze at our backs. We cross the starting line after most of the elite runners are gone, and wonder of wonders, everyone has managed to line up in their pace groups so we aren't a) dodging walkers in the first two miles and b) getting run down by the fat guy with all the tech gear who started at the back so he could pass everyone & feel awesome at others' expense. We hit all our pace goals with good effort, and even though my calves are really starting to scream by mile 20, the wall is nowhere in sight as we roll into Duluth. Then it's down to the harbor and across the finish line in 3:50:00 or better, breaking my goal of 4 hours and setting me on a course to try for Boston in a year or two. We top off the day with great food, great beer and a lot of fun with all our friends who have traveled with us to Duluth, then we spend a couple of days hiking on the North Shore before heading back home. Yeah, that'll do.

5. And for a serious moment, or what would you like your entrance into the next life to be like? What, from your vantage point now, would make Heaven "heavenly?"

Realizing that the promise of Christ was true - heaven has been waiting all along, and the journey home was about serving others, not earning the place that was given at Baptism. Seeing my Grandma & Grandpa Johnson and my Grandpa Janke, along with other family and friends who've gone before. Beyond that, it's too wonderful for words - I'll just trust that the Creator knows what He's doing and I'll love it when I get there.

Wednesday Reflection: "Little Ones"

Matthew 18.10-14: “Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”

My friend Caroline got a kitten while we were in seminary. She named it “Mikra,” which is the Greek word used for “little ones” in these verses from the Gospel of Matthew. I thought Mikra was cute for a kitten but wouldn’t work for a cat who could, for all I know, weigh 20 pounds and resemble a furry rock more than a kitten these days.

I don’t know much about naming cats – Ike and Reggie just seemed like, well, Ike and Reggie when they entered my life. But I remember feeling the same way about them as Caroline did about Mikra: even if you’re not a cat person, it’s hard to resist a kitten. I remember the day my girlfriend brought Ike home; he was a yowling ball of fur, hiding in the back window of her car and scared out of his wits, but once he got used to my little one-bedroom apartment, he became my best friend. To this day, Ike is still “my” cat, even though his kitten days are long gone and the girlfriend who brought him home is now my ex-wife.

As much as I like thinking about the cute, fuzzy days of kittenhood, that’s not what Jesus was talking about here – it’s not even close. The love of God is not the warm, oogly mush of fuzzy kitten sentimentality: it is the raging, protective, all-encompassing love of a benevolent parent for a child. If Ike or Reggie had wandered through an open door or window and been lost, I would have been truly sad, of course, but not for long. Growing up on a Nebraska farm, I’ve gotten familiar with losing pets over the years, and old age has seldom been the cause of death. The love I had for Chee-Chee, Lady, George, Rocky, Patches, Ed, Cheddar, and all the other cats and dogs, all our “little ones” over the years was strong, of course, but nowhere near as strong as the care a shepherd shows for his sheep or, speaking from personal experience, a parent for his child.

Last Saturday we had a house full of family in town for my installation and to celebrate Ainsley’s first birthday. I’d been working on a few odds and ends around the house, and my tools were kind of all over the place, so as Kristin and my Mom headed off to check into the hotel where my parents were staying, I was running up and down the stairs putting wrenches back in the tool box and other stuff. My Dad was watching my nephew Zach and our Ainsley, but kids are quick and distracted parents make mistakes. I made a big one. I was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher when I heard a loud thump on our basement stairs, followed by another, then another, then nothing. My heart dropped right into the pit of my stomach as I realized that I’d left the door open and Ainsley had just fallen down the stairs. I raced downstairs to find her wedged against the gate at the bottom, startled and trying to breathe. I scooped her up and checked her from head to foot for any serious injuries while she caught her breath and proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs for a couple of minutes. We’re talking serious crying here: she was scared, hurt and not afraid at all to let the whole world know about it. And me? I felt like the worst parent in the world for letting something like that happen to my little girl. I would have gladly taken the fall on myself if I could have, and in the days since that fall I’ve been hyper-vigilant about where my little girl is and whether the doors are shut or not.

This is the kind of care the Father has for us – His “little ones.” You see it over and over throughout the Bible: God the Father is in anguish when we are hurt and scared because we’ve fallen and cannot stand on our own. The prophet Hosea was given a glimpse of this love when he wrote,

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

²The more I called them, the more they went from me;

they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.

³Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms;

but they did not know that I healed them.

⁴I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.

I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

⁸How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?

…

My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.

⁹I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim;

for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst,

and I will not come in wrath.[1]

This is the love Jesus described when He told his disciples, “It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” You are God’s little ones, the ones for whom God’s heart is yearning. This is the love of Christ, so powerful and passionate that even the prospect of crucifixion was not enough to cause Him to renounce His “little ones.”

Lent is about the journey of Jesus to the cross, but we know that we cannot walk the road with Him; we stumble and fall and find ourselves gasping, out of breath, terrified by our own mistakes and the misfortune of suffering for someone else’s sin. But the love of God for us, His “little ones,” is the love that stoops down, picks us up, caresses and soothes until the terror is gone, peace reigns in our hearts, and we are able to walk once again. Little ones, be assured that this loving God is yours, tonight and forever. Amen.

---

[1] Hosea 11.1-4, 8-11, New Revised Standard Version