Tired and Suffering...Somewhat

Paul Walters and I share more than just being members of the Luther Seminary class of 2003.  Apparently, for the past few years we've shared the status of suffering from back pain.  I don't know how it happened for Paul, but for me things just got worse a little bit at a time until all of a sudden they got a LOT worse very quickly.

Ash Wednesday: Let Envy Die

I'm a firm believer in the potential of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) to influence the world for good.  There are simply more stories out there that point to the benefit of instant connections than there are stories of how things can go wrong.  That being said, one of the things I'm trying this Lent is getting on top of one of my biggest social media problems:  envy.

Easter Evening: In Pacis Requietum

5:30 A.M.
Wake up, make coffee, start roast in crockpot with one bag french onion soup and a bottle of Guinness, finish notes for today's sermon.

6:30 A.M.
Alanna is awake. Make a bottle and enjoy a quiet moment with her. Much too short as she begins fussing, crawling about and, of course, falling down and bumping her head.

7:00 A.M.
Beloved takes a shower while I entertain both girls for a while with Sesame Street. Drink my third cup of coffee. Wonder how the day will go, now that I'm somewhat conscious.

7:30 A.M.
I shower while Beloved has playtime with the girls. Beloved leaves just before 8:00, so I shave and dress while watching the girls, then set out the rolls to thaw and rise. Unwrap the ham, place in the baking pan and set the timer on the oven.

8:15 A.M.
Start getting the girls ready for church.

9:00 A.M.
Arrive at church in something less than a happy mood. (Note the time difference between the last two time checks for possible cause) Breakfast puts me right: biscuits & gravy, egg casserole, potatoes and an omelet make for a happy pastor (especially the bacon & sausage after the Lenten fast!)

9:45 A.M.
Leave girls with Beloved and sundry church child care folks and head off to my part of Sunday morning. Purchase donut holes and OJ for students, Starbucks for me and head to University Lutheran Center.

10:20 A.M.
Prepping for worship, including setting up communion, double checking Power Point show and making sure I have full liturgy script and sermon notes, plus a hymnal. I've done good advance work this week, so I'm free to shake hands and greet folks from about 10:35 until worship starts.

11:00 A.M.
Easter Celebration Worship. Songs in the liturgy replaced with Easter hymns in a "Jesus is risen" extravaganza. Consider contacting KTel or Time/LIFE to tell them about our "greatest hits" Easter service. :-) Easter sermon seems to preach well - "Raised for Hope" is the title. After listening to it again tonight, I think I managed to stay out of God's way this morning. Assisting minister carries his load perfectly, brass group hastily assembled Thursday adds a nice touch to the service, all goes well. I think I like this part of my job.

12:15 P.M.
Quickly shed my alb and meet with a woman looking for a handout from the church. Invite her to contact local service agencies for food and agree to buy her a tank of gas at a local filling station. Gas dispensed, I hurry home to finish Easter dinner for the students who've accepted our invitation.

12:30 P.M.
Ham & roast have turned out well. Cheesy potatoes are still baking, baked potatoes (for the lactose intolerant) are a bit behind. In the hurry to finish baked potatoes and everything else, we forget the vegetables until just before serving - too late to do anything about it. In the midst of conversation about the rest of the meal, realize that we've used Cream of Chicken in the cheesy potatoes, much to the chagrin of the vegetarian raving about how good they are as she dishes up seconds. Profuse apologies ensue. Student-baked apple pie and coffee top of a wonderful time together.

3:00 P.M.
Students have left, girls are in their rooms for naps and I'm downstairs, exhausted. But on my DVR, Lefty has made four birdies in the first six holes of his round at the Masters. I settle in for a long afternoon of excitement, capped by disappointment at the end when Phil ties for 5th.

7:00 P.M.
Beloved is giving Ainsley a bath and I'm dealing with fussy Alanna. Teething is no fun for anybody.

8:00 P.M.
After phone calls from my brother and my mom, we put the girls to bed and finally repair downstairs for television and private time. "Amazing Race" is a good one tonight.

9:00 P.M.
I finally get around to reading Foy Davis stories from Gordon at Real Live Preacher. Good stuff.

10:45 P.M.
Full day - and I'm tired, but happy. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Grace & peace,
Scott

Lenten Journal: Good Friday Five

Adoramus te, Christe,
et benedicimus tibi,
quia per sanctam crucem
tuam redemisti mundum.
Qui passus es pro nobis,
Domine, miserere nobis.

We adore you, O Christ,
and we bless you,
because by your holy cross
you have redeemed the world.
O Lord, who suffered for us,
have mercy on us.

1. How will you pray and worship today?
In silence and prayer. Tonight we observe a service revolving around Jesus' Seven Last Words, with the hymn "Jesus, In Thy Dying Woes" as a centerpiece.

2. Share a powerful memory or memories of Good Friday past.
They're all powerful. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are the two most meaningful services of the year for me. As such, I'm honestly having a hard time picking one memory to mention. In college, we always gathered for Good Friday Worship at 7:30 AM, with a breakfast to follow with egg casserole, freshly baked cinnamon rolls and other goodies.

3. How have you grown and experienced God's love during this past Lent?
In partnership doing this Lenten Journal/Devotion business. I've been challenged, challengING and comforted throughout the season, including those times when I was forced to stop writing for a bit. It's not been as disciplined as I'd hoped, but I feel as though I've grown nonetheless.

4. In whom do you see the face of the suffering Christ most clearly?
Right now I see it in the people affected by the horrible earthquake in Italy. Innocent suffering always reminds me of Christ, and this was certainly an act of nature which struck down the just and unjust alike. But I also see Christ in the response to the spiritual, psychological and basic, physical need of the situation. The church prays; the people gather round and tend; the world sobs in grief. This is just one of the many ways we love one another as Christ loved us.

5. Where do you find hope for resurrection?
In my children. They give me such hope and joy these days, especially in this last week as our lives have been disrupted time and time again. Funerals, emergencies and other needs have intruded on us, to the point that it's all we can do to get to the next thing (including worship this week - I wrote my Maundy Thursday sermon at 4:00 yesterday afternoon). It's not been the Holy Week we hoped to encounter, but God is certainly wrapped up in all the mystery and frustration we're experiencing right now, and our girls are the point of light in all of it. Smiles, laughter, trust, peace, love; they give us all that and more, just by being who they are.

Bonus: Share a song, poem, or prayer that makes the paschal mystery come alive for you.
I've shared this before, but it still has been on my mind and heart this week. Thus, I give you Durufle's Ubi Caritas.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday: "Unsurrendering Love"

“The decisive factor is said to be that in Christianity the hope of resurrection is proclaimed, and that means the emergence of a genuine religion of redemption, the main emphasis now being on the far side of the boundary drawn by death. But it seems to me that this is just where the mistake and the danger lie. Redemption now means redemption from cares, distress, fears, longings, from sin and death, in a better world beyond the grave. But is this really the essential character of the proclamation of Christ in the gospels and by Paul? I should say it is not. The difference between the Christian hope of resurrection and the mythological hope is that the [Christian hope] sends people back to their life on earth in a wholly new way which is even more sharply defined than it is in the Old Testament. Christians, unlike the devotees of the redemption myths, have no last line of escape available from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but, like Christ himself, they must drink the earthly cup to the [end], and only in their doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with them, and they crucified and risen with Christ. This world must not be prematurely written off; in this the Old and New Testaments are at one. Redemption myths arise from human boundary experiences, but Christ takes hold of us at the center of our life.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a letter to Eberhard Bethge from Tegel Prison, 27 June 1944.

Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged for treason at Flossenburg Concentration Camp 64 years ago today. As we began preparations for this Maundy Thursday service, I couldn’t help but notice the coincidence and comment upon it. I am one who has been continually challenged and comforted by Bonhoeffer’s writings and the stories of his life, most notably his choice, in 1939, to return to Germany and continue his work in the Confessing Church, resisting both the Nazi Party and the majority of German Christians who had fallen in line with the government. He had the choice to remain in the United States, but Bonhoeffer insisted “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.” Within months Bonhoeffer was a co-consiprator against Hitler and, eventually, arrested, imprisoned and executed.

In his letter which I quoted earlier, Bonhoeffer wrote something I want to tie to the gospel reading for this service. “Like Christ himself,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “[Christians] must drink the earthly cup to the [end].” In the Gospel of John it is written, “Having loved his own who were in the world, [Jesus] loved them to the end.” This commitment to see things through “to the end” is, I believe, the essence of what gathers us here tonight.

It is Maundy Thursday. “Maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum, “commandment.” We call it “Commandment Thursday” because of what Jesus said to and did for his disciples on this last night together with them. He humbly knelt and washed their feet, a chore generally regarded as beneath even the lowliest servants. He broke bread with his friends, even though one of them would leave the meal to betray Jesus to the authorities who wished him dead. He commanded them: “love one another as I have loved you.” Then Jesus continued to love his disciples to the very end of his life; abandoned, rejected, scorned, humiliated, flogged, crucified and executed. These are the deeds of the One who loves his followers to the very end, to the bottom of the bitter cup.

This is not an easy thing for us to gather and remember. It is a far cry from Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem that we celebrated on Sunday. Even the crucifixion is easier to handle if it’s properly interpreted. I remember a “Lord’s Gym” shirt I used to wear that had a picture of Jesus doing a push-up with the cross on his back. The idea, of course, was that Jesus took on the cross the way the Cyclones take on the Hawkeyes: the ultimate rivalry, the grudge match, the game in which the good guys must emerge triumphant. Come Sunday, some of this might be justified, but not tonight.

No one comes out a winner on Maundy Thursday. Judas left to betray Jesus to the authorities; Peter and the rest of the disciples fell asleep while Jesus prayed and ran when Jesus was arrested. And Jesus? He surrendered. Utterly. No resistance, no protest of innocence. Jesus laid himself into the hands of authorities who would rather see him dead than hear any more about the relentless, unconditional love and mercy he had been preaching.

There’s only one thing Jesus did not surrender on his last night with his disciples: his love. Remember, John tells us, “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” He surrendered his position as he knelt and washed his disciples’ feet. He surrendered his trust as Judas betrayed him with a kiss. He surrendered his dignity as the priests and authorities questioned and tortured him. He surrendered his honor as he was paraded through the streets and crucified, an execution meant for the lowest criminals and deadliest enemies of the state. But Jesus would not surrender his love for his disciples, then or now.

This is what it means to “love to the end.” This is what makes Jesus’ commandment a “new” commandment. There was nothing new about the commandment to “love one another:” that had been one of the two great commandments since the time of Exodus. What makes Jesus’ commandment “new” is Jesus’ living example of the lengths to which that love will go. God will surrender everything else in God’s unsurrendering love for sinners – and in telling the story and remembering that love, we are caught by its power and unsurrendering resolve.

The first letter of John says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” Take this time tonight and consider what it means to be the object of God’s unsurrendering love. Leave behind our superstitious belief that the cross was the sacrifice demanded by the Father for our sins, and consider that the cross is actually the final proof of the relentless, unsurrendering love of God for us, God’s children. The gospel says “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” You are his own, brought into the body of Christ through your baptism in his name. You are his own in the world, tonight, remembering the night long ago when Jesus gave us this meal by which we remember his love for us. Now, friends, know this – to the bitter end of all that is, you are the object of God’s unsurrendering love. Live in that love – serve in that love – believe in that love, and be God’s beloved children, now and forever. Amen.

Lenten Journal: This Is Maundy Thursday

Lenten Journal: Hello, Old Friends - Goodbye, Old Friend

So, color me "fail" as a blogger this week. Not "Epic Fail," necessarily, but certainly "Medium Fail."

Due to an oncoming winter storm, we left Chicago at 9:00 PM Saturday night, arriving in Ames at 3:30 AM and me totally ready for bed. I slept until 9:00 AM, then promptly fell asleep during morning prayers downstairs in the recliner. On a funny note, I did manage to continue holding my cup of coffee after I fell asleep - and didn't spill a drop when one of our students woke me up when she called to ask if we were still having worship in spite of the six inches of snow that was falling rapidly. Anyway, other than somehow getting through worship Sunday was pretty much a wash for me - I spent most of the day trying to regain consciousness and failing miserably.

Monday - what did we do Monday? I forget, but I know I spent some time in the office catching up post-retreat, and I spent a lot of time with the girls. Tuesday we left for Minnesota and today's funeral, the reason for our trip. I, of course, managed to forget the charger for my MacBook, and so was unable to take advantage of time in the van to put together power points for Triduum services. Also, I couldn't blog, as Mac was at about 1% power when we left and I didn't want to chance running the battery completely dry.

So, here I am tonight, with a new power cord (a planned purchase that I just moved up a week) and blogging, finally. It's good to be back.

We rolled into Alexandria just in time for me to vest and join about twenty of my old colleagues for Eric's funeral procession. I must admit it was absolutely wonderful to see all those faces light up when we walked into the room; apparently the love I felt for these old friends is definitely reciprocated. We had a number of short conversations with some of these folks, lots of hugs, and even some tears since, unfortunately, we had come together to say goodbye to Pastor Eric Erickson, our friend and colleague.

About Eric: if I am remembered half as fondly by family friends and professional colleagues as Eric was, I will have lived a truly wonderful life. This funeral was sorrowful, of course, but it was also a joyous celebration of Eric's love for his family, his faith, his marvelous intelligence and his zealous pursuit of abundant living. Not abundance, mind you - abundant living, wherein one lives every day to the fullest extent possible. I'm going to post a few quotes later in the week to give you a sense of who this man was and what made his passing such a loss for the church and his family. He was a good friend and an extraordinary colleague; I'll miss him more than I realized.

Even with our sorrow at Eric's passing, and our joy at being with old friends, there were some regrets for us as well. We didn't go back to Barrett on this trip, for two reasons. First, it's Holy Week, and I need to get back to Ames right away tomorrow to prepare and carry out our Triduum celebrations. Second, it's still too soon, as much as we miss our good friends there. We heard a rumor that a new pastor has been called this week, and that's wonderful news. The best way for us to ruin that great new step for our old church would be to come traipsing back into town before a new pastor has even gotten her/his feet wet in the church. It sucks, because we miss our friends, but that's the life to which we're called as a clergy family. Someday, we'll go back, and it will be wonderful to see the town, to say hello to friends and remember the good years we had there; but that day isn't here just yet.

This life we live is full of greetings and goodbyes. We might never again see some of the folks we so hurriedly embraced today. But in Christ we are assured that all goodbyes will be overcome by one great final greeting - and we celebrate another step toward that final greeting this Sunday. I, for one, can hardly wait.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Lenten Journal: Big Fun at the Big House

I'm in Chicago with 16 Lutheran college students from Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa, gathering for the Lutheran Student Movement Central Midwest Retreat. Let me say, just one more time for those of you who haven't been paying attention: I LOVE MY JOB.

Yesterday we drove to the Windy City, parked our van behind University Lutheran Church (pictured left) at Northwestern University, and sat down for a delicious chili supper prepared by members of a local church. We met with a local homeless advocate from Connections for the Homeless, met in small groups to discuss how that conversation changed our understanding of homelessness, especially in a massive urban area like Chicago. This morning, we split into two groups. One group went to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, one of the largest food banks in the world, to pack over 1,300 emergency food boxes. The second group, whom I joined, went to Good News Partners and spent the morning sanding bannisters in a building being renovated for low-income housing. This afternoon we heard from the Night Ministry, another homeless advocacy and partnership organization. Quite the whirlwind for this twenty-four hours.

I'm amazed all over again at these college students. Anyone who says young people don't care about the church needs to come join us at one of these retreats. More than that, we need to LISTEN to these young leaders of the church. There is a passion for service, for leadership, for partnership in these folks. Watching events like this take place is what keeps me going as a campus pastor. These students are passionate about ministry and shaping the future of our church, to the point that, as I'm typing, they're arguing about the reshaping of our national group and the necessity of plenary sessions for governance and advocacy. That's right, folks: college students want to meet in assembly, as boring and frustrating as it can be.

That's the good news from Chicago tonight - I'm soon to leave for home and my girls, whom I miss terribly. But I wanted to add a happy post since I've been on such a downer lately. No bad dreams, no sympathetic cons - just good ministry today. Thanks be to God.

Lenten Journal: Death and Goodbyes

This is not going to be one of my happier posts - consider yourself warned.

Early this morning I had a terrible dream. I was riding a roller coaster with Ainsley in my lap (no, I don't know why - it was a dream). Suddenly, we rocketed skyward, until about a mile or so above ground we flipped upside down, at which point Ainsley slipped out of my grasp and I watched her falling, screaming, toward the earth below. Yeah, that one woke me up right away, gasping and heart racing until I calmed down enough to get out of bed and go make the coffee. You try to sleep after that one - I knew I was up for the day at that point.

The day just got happier from that point on. First there was the whole Guy episode. Then, as I was writing that post this afternoon, Beloved called me and told me that Pastor Erik Erickson, our friend and colleague from Minnesota, died of brain cancer this morning. We knew things hadn't been good, but didn't know it would be so soon.

It got me thinking about the first time I met Erik. It was our annual Runestone Conference Christmas Party, held in the Depot in Alexandria. I had only been in Barrett a few months, so I hadn't met many of my colleagues just yet. I sat down at the table and introduced myself to the balding, spectacled guy to my left, and before I knew it, we were deep into a discussion of the finer points of Tolkien and how much we loved the Peter Jackson movies. I knew I had a good friend from that moment on, and four years of collegiality proved me absolutely right on that account. I remember watching him strap up his arm braces so he could play a round of golf without aggravating his tendinitis, how much he loved his Toyota Prism and the 60 MPG he was so proud to be getting, his droll sense of humor that led to some of the best one-liners and worst puns I've ever heard.

Tonight a lot of folks said goodbye to the show ER. I caught a few minutes of the 'Retrospective' show between reading books to Ainsley and folding laundry, and I was struck by how much Mark Edwards resembles my friend Erik. Same balding head, glasses, obvious intelligence, goofy charm. As I sat and thought of Erik, I remembered the episode in which Dr. Green died. It was the spring of 2002, a rough time for me: first marriage falling apart, living by myself in Florida while finishing an internship, supervising pastor assigned to Patrick AFB and unable to do much more than help keep me sane in our weekly meetings. I was an ER regular back then, mostly because I loved Dr. Green, and the night his final episode was finished, I bawled like I'd lost my best friend.

I know, I know - it's a TV show. But Dr. Green left behind a wife he loved and a daughter he was just getting reconnected with, and now, as a father of two daughters, I think I know why I reacted so strongly: then, and now, I couldn't bear the thought of being separated from people I love.

Loss sucks. Loss effing bites. There aren't words strong enough to encompass the pain of losing someone you love. All night there's been a 'retrospective' of conversations with Erik running in my head, paired with vague memories of that awful dream from last night. I even waited to blog about this until all my girls were in bed, so I could spend time with them rather than waste it staring at this computer screen.

I don't know what all of this means. I do know that the people I love who've gone before me into death are in a continual retrospective loop in my memories: my grandfathers, my grandma Johnson, Pastor Larry, Dr. Forde, Dr. Kittleson, Erik and all the others to whom I've been forced to say goodbye are never completely gone. But they're not here, either, and there's no way to fill the empty space they've left behind. Whatever it means, one thing's for certain: I'm going to check on those baby girls before I go to bed. I'm going to kiss their foreheads and say goodnight while they sleep. And I'm going to pray with all my heart that we won't have to say goodbye for a long, long time.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) would be a good song to listen to right now. I'm going to be off to Chicago for a campus ministry retreat this weekend, and I hope to have some happier blogging to do when I return.

Lenten Journal: Innocence Lost?

I've blogged before about how ministry sometimes means giving people a hand without expecting anything in return. I still believe this is true. But today a recurring phone call and two coincidental conversations reminded me that sometimes people can get really good at playing on people like me who believe we're called to help.

Guy called again today. This time he needed $200 to keep from being evicted. The emergency shelter was full, he had nowhere else to go, and the sheriff and the landlord would be there to evict him at 10:00 A.M. - even though Guy was expecting a disability check tomorrow and could certainly cover the back rent at that point.

Like most ministry sites, we don't keep cash on site and as pastor, I'm the last one who can write a check, so my hands were tied, and I felt awful. All I could do was tell Guy that if he needed to keep a roof over his family's head, he was welcome to crash with us for a couple of days. Then we said goodbye, I hung up the phone and spent the better part of the next hour feeling terrible, as though I were letting Jesus down by not dropping everything, running to the apartment and personally handing the landlord the money he was unsympathetically demanding.

At 11:00 I had a meeting with a seminary student who has asked me to be her mentor. I shared the story of the phone call with her, and she immediately said, "That's what 'Good Neighbor' is for: are you telling me Guy didn't call them?" When I told her he'd claimed they couldn't help him, she said, "Guy's taking advantage of you. I don't see how they could be unable to help, even with the economy as bad as it is."

Well, that made me feel just a bit better. Then, this afternoon, I delivered something for Beloved to her office, and happened to catch Beloved in a meeting with the pastor of our church. When I told Beloved about Guy's phone call, the pastor said, "Guy Smith." He said it without even a hint of a question in his voice. He then proceeded to tell me how Guy was known around town as a "frequent flier." Turns out he calls churches every few weeks with stories about eviction, his disabled wife, his diabetic daughter, and no one knows for sure what's true and what's fabricated.

Those of you who've been in ministry longer than I have are probably smiling and saying, "No shit, Sherlock?" Here's the thing, though: this guy is really, really good. I've seen his apartment - it's a shithole, and that's putting it kindly. There's got to be some truth to what he claims, because when I filled his tank two months ago, he had a woman and child in the back seat. So there are certainly issues there - but dammit, I should have known this was a play because it's always an emergency with Guy and it's always cash he's after. Chalk it up to Questing Parson's determination to help the genuinely needy, I guess - I'm a romantic and sometimes people can use that to their advantage.

It's certainly nothing new for a church to get played by an experienced player. But this isn't a con. Like our pastor said, "this is what survivors do." Whatever the story is, there are genuine issues in Guy's life, but now I've got to take care and make sure I'm helping properly, not enabling further abuse of my sympathy and the sympathy of those who come after me.

Jim Nestingen, my professor of church history and Lutheran theology, once said, "The last thing a good pastor should be is surprised." Well, hell, the thing that sucks about that being true is that the romantic, innocent pastor who left seminary wanting to genuinely help people is growing more and more suspicious, and it's hard to keep that from becoming outright cynicism. Sometimes learning more about the world in which we live makes me want to spend more time as far away from it as possible.

Grace and peace,
Scott

Lenten Journal: Holy Time

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

for my hope is from him.
⁶He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
Psalm 62.5

It was there for the briefest time tonight: holiness - the presence of God in the community. I felt it, and I'm sure others did, too.

We gather on Wednesday nights for Evening Prayer. We usually use Holden Evening Prayer, a service written by Marty Haugen that has become very popular among Lutheran churches. But before we begin the singing, we gather, greet one another, share some timely announcements, and then partake of some minutes of silence.

Tonight was special for some reason. Normally there are the sounds of campus life all around us. Occasionally there's a bit more campus life than we'd like: I remember the night the fraternity next door started their party at the same time as our Evening Prayer service. But tonight, the whole campus seemed hushed with us. We gathered in silence.

True, it didn't last. I turned the words around on the first line of the call and response, and immediately the laughter cascaded through our small group of worshipers. But there's holiness in laughter, too; even the uncontrollable guffawing that seized some of our folks later had the holiness of safety and comfort woven through it.

Tonight was holy time, from the moment we walked in the door. The church exists to provide time such as this, the kairos in which the world's demands are made to wait while the needs of our souls receive our attention. I'm glad to be part of it, and I hope that you, wherever you are, are part of it as well.

Grace and peace,
Scott

Lenten Journal: Chewing On the Word

But now hear, O Jacob my servant,
Israel whom I have chosen!
²Thus says the Lord who made you,
who formed you in the womb and will help you:
Do not fear, O Jacob my servant,
Jeshurun whom I have chosen.
³For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour my spirit upon your descendants,
and my blessing on your offspring.
⁴They shall spring up like a green tamarisk,
like willows by flowing streams.
Isaiah 44.1-4

Tuesday afternoons are text study afternoons at the Lutheran Center. Clergy from area congregations (not all of them Lutheran, but the majority are) come for coffee, treats if anyone brings them, and conversation. The talk is usually about the texts and what they might or might not mean/suggest towards preaching - but it never starts at that point.

Like most pastor gatherings, we start by checking in with each other. Text study is the one place where a pastor can declaim, "Well, that's just horseshit!" and not worry about being called before the church council the next day (and if you think your pastor doesn't use such language, chances are you're dead wrong, my friend). Our time together isn't merely for expelling all the pent-up profanity, however; we take time to laugh together, to bear one another's burdens, to be colleagues in a profession where that sort of time is hard to come by and more precious than gold.

At some point, one of us breaks out her/his Bible in a somewhat pointed fashion, and we know that it's time we delved into the appointed texts for the week. Then the fun really starts. Today's gathering was especially delightful, challenging and fulfilling. We discussed the positive and negative aspects of Palm/Passion Sunday, of Holy Week observance, of what Jesus meant when he rode into Jerusalem on a jackass, what it means for us to be participants in the empire Jesus was likely protesting. We chewed on the Word today: we masticated what it means to be nearing Palm Sunday and savored each and every delicious flavor the Word had to offer before we reluctantly went our separate ways.

If your pastor isn't regularly meeting with other clergy to discuss his or her sermons, give them a nudge in that direction. Not all gatherings are as healthy as ours has come to be lately, but pulling sermons out of your own head without input from others leaves you parched and dry eventually. I know fellow pastors can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but I honestly don't know how I'd survive in this profession without colleagues on whom I can depend - they water my dry ground with the gifts they bring to interpreting the text and the world in which we live, and today I'm profoundly grateful.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Lenten Journal: Lord, Let My Heart Be Good Soil

How can young people keep their way pure?
¹⁰ By guarding it according to your word.
With my whole heart I seek you;
¹¹ do not let me stray from your commandments.
I treasure your word in my heart,
so that I may not sin against you.
Psalm 199.9-11

Thanks be to God in heaven: I am at peace tonight. Yesterday's debacle is passing and I'm feeling far more capable of actually being the sort of pastor who does good work.

I'd like to say a little more about our friend K's sermon from worship yesterday. She told a story about her ridiculously expensive bicycle that has now journeyed all over the U.S. with her, mostly unridden and packed away with other items. She then proceeded to tell us that while we may carry our guilt with us like an unridden bicycle, God does not. Forgiven means forgotten in God's eyes - there are no unridden bicycles in God's closet.

I've been in this business long enough to know how impossible it is for us to forgive as Jeremiah suggests God forgives. Even the best-intentioned and most-determined of us can't simply forget the deep wounds caused by our mistakes and the mistakes of others. I certainly won't be forgetting yesterday's mistake any time soon, though I am beginning to forgive myself for it.

We can be changed, however, over time. The older I get, the more I see the need of Christians to practice the work of forgiveness with one another. When spring came last year, we started to see what years of neglect had done to the perennials and gardens around our house. I spent a lot of time weeding, thinning, pruning, splitting and moving plants last year. This year, the effort will be less intensive. I'll still be required to weed; you could say that our yard is captive to weeds and cannot free itself. But because we've practiced the art of tending to our property, the yard will require less work to regain its health this spring. Likewise forgiveness: a Christian who practices the work of forgiveness on a regular basis finds herself more easily forgiving as God would have us forgive - I believe that with all my heart.

Can peace come through practice? I think so - at least, the peace that comes with understanding ourselves and the God we worship more deeply. And I don't mean narcissistic self-idolatry, either; I'm talking about realizing who you are, warts and all, learning how to forgive yourself, and in so doing learning to live as a more forgiving person in every sense of the phrase.

Spring is coming - and so are the weeds. Lord, let our hearts be good soil.

Grace and peace,
Scott

Lenten Journal: Open Mouth, Insert Leg Until It Chokes You To Death

Yeah, so it wasn't the best morning ever today.

During our announcements, I made a comment, in jest, that I would never, ever, in a million years, say in public - except for this morning, for reasons only known to God and my freaking mouth. It was one of those moments when you hear what you've said and you think, "Holy mother of God, did I really just say that?"

I felt absolutely horrible. What had been, up to that moment, a wonderful worship service, including an incredible sermon by our friend K, went into "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?" mode in about three nanoseconds. After letting one of our students make an announcement, I stammered an apology to everyone present and asked for forgiveness. Then I somehow staggered through the rest of the day.

Thankfully, I serve a very gracious community; at least, those who were present were gracious. There might actually be some consequences to this. I hope not, and I don't think it'll come to that, but the possibility exists. Regardless, it was a thoughtless, stupid and offensive remark with which I'm going to be suffering personally for quite a while.

A few weeks ago, our president did something similar on the Jay Leno show. I thought at the time that he did exactly the right thing: he apologized publicly, quickly, and completely. I've tried to do the same thing today, and from what I can tell, the apology has been heard and accepted.

The worst thing, though? I have to live with myself after having said something absolutely out of line. Again. I only wish this were the first time I've done something like this, and unfortunately, knowing my propensity for quick comments that sound funny in my head but are hurtful, stupid or outright offensive, this likely won't be the last time, either. "Like a dog that returns to its vomit," says Proverbs 26.11, "so is a fool who returns to his folly." *sigh* At this point, I wish I'd given up folly for Lent instead of meat. So goes another day in the life of a sinner. Thank heaven for K's sermon this morning, reminding us that God forgives and forgets. Now for the hard work of doing the same for myself.

Grace & peace,
Scott

The pic is from despair.com, which sells "Demotivational" stuff that is riotously funny. Finding it to go with this post did bring a smile to my face - hope it does the same for you.

Lenten Journal: Telling the Truth

Wednesday night was the celebration of the Anunciation of our Lord. Nine months prior to our celebration of Jesus' birth, we remember the night the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced (anuncio in Latin) she was to bear the Son of God. This is prior to her marriage with Joseph - they were betrothed, not married, so this child would be a scandal to those who can count to nine and remember wedding dates. All of which makes the book I read last night most curious.

A friend gave us a sack full of children's books, and after I brought them home our Ainsley, of course, wanted to read through the lot. In that group of books was a children's version of the Nativity. I thought it looked sort of cute, until I opened it up and read the first page:

Joseph and his wife Mary lived in Nazareth. Joseph was a carpenter. They had a house, and a donkey, but they had no children of their own, even though they loved each other very much.

It's not an exact quotation, but it gets the important stuff right. I'll give you a second to go back and read it again in case you missed the problem the first time.

There's a basic responsibility being shirked here, for reasons that I don't even pretend to understand. Somehow this little nugget of untruth got past the editors, printers and whoever else was in charge of the production of this book for the company who made it. Are we to believe that no one noticed what is, in the best scenario possible, a monumental oversight?

It's both tragic and funny at the same time. Virgin birth or not, even the most dedicated "historical Jesus" scholars agree that Mary and Joseph were not married at the time Mary became pregnant. It's not a matter of propriety: it's a matter of overwhelming historic record, regardless of whether God was involved in the conception or not.

We owe our children the truth. No, perhaps not the whole truth: somehow I think explaining the vagaries of ancient Palestinian marriage covenants might not be the best course of action with our two year-old. It's not easy telling telling the truth - every child old enough to talk knows that. But it's our job to teach them to tell the truth, even when the truth is inconvenient, unflattering or downright painful. Let's be honest: we cutesy-up stories because they make us uncomfortable, not our kids. And part of me wonders if God didn't choose such a scandalous natal situation on purpose, to deliberately provoke our discomfort and expose it for the hypocrisy that it is. God, at least, has always told the truth - at the very least, we who claim to be God's people ought to be about the business of doing the same.

Grace & peace,
Scott

The painting is "The Anunciation" by Henry Tanner. I think it captures the hard reality of what was about to happen to Mary, as well as her youth and innocence. Stunning, isn't it?

Lenten Journal: Pilgrimage

This reflection was prepared by G, a recent graduate in our campus ministry, for last week's Wednesday services.

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
²My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.

³Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
⁴Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.

⁵Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
⁶As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
⁷They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.

O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob!

Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed.

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.
¹¹For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favour and honour.
No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly.
¹²O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.

Psalm 84

The psalm spoke loud to me as I prepared my reflection. I have recently been in the search for a place to live, as I was evicted from my apartment February 24th. I spent the last week of February and the 1st week of March working on securing living arrangements. As I was reading, reflecting, and preparing I came to be like the birds in the psalm; both having found and made a nesting place, as I have. I, like the pilgrims in the psalm, was journeying and looking for Zion; which has come to mean, aside from a specific place near Jerusalem where God was believed to live, a safe home for a wondering people. The safe home that the psalmist is looking for is his true home, God's house.
The beauty and awesomeness of the Lord's house, which mentioned in verse 1, is the reason people make pilgrimages. On the pilgrimage one would travel through the Valley of Baca. The valley is not a location but a symbol for the hard road through the desert to Jerusalem; a journey filled with many hardships and toil, and only driven by conviction to meet God. Where the psalmist and his peers would actually travel, we are called to make this journey through reflection and a season called lent. The travel through this “valley” changes/transforms people and making them blessings upon everywhere they go.
My journey of lent has been filled with questions like “where am I going to live?” “how will this make me stronger?” and “how is God speaking to me?” The 1st of the three being taken care of I have been able to address the other two more actively. And these two questions we all should be asking ourselves. One program at LCM I participate in is Reaching In/Reaching Out. Through RI/RO we learn of our gifts and how we can use them to better the church and society as a whole. RI/RO has allowed me the opportunity to grow in faith, but I think my experiences have made me even stronger in faith. I knew the situation would work out and I think that was also how God was speaking to me. Assuring me that I have not been forgotten and it WILL work out.
As we all journey through lent we are looking towards Easter and renewed life in Jesus, we long (like the psalmist) to share in the presence of God. The psalmist know God as we have come to know him (as the Lord of all and able to be controlled by none, but also as the very personal God that we all hope for). With his expressions in verses 1, 8, and 12 the psalmist refers to God as LORD of Hosts, which roughly translated means all powerful, but he then refers to my God/King in verse 3 and addresses Him directly in prayer in 11. The Psalm assures us that the person trusting in God is the most blessed, as God will with hold no favor or honor from those that trust and travel; with power like that on our side, how can we not be blessed?

Lenten Journal: Faith Seeking Understanding

"For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."

First Corinthians 1.25

Discipleship and Bible Study were the name of the game tonight at University Lutheran Center.  First, our Reaching In/Reaching Out group met and discussed "Called to Life," a chapter in the book The Centered Life by Jack Fortin.  Fortin writes that as Christians, "we are not called to a different life; we are called to live life differently."  Vocation is a calling from God within the lives we lead, not away from the lives we lead.  And in our discussions tonight, I realized how very fortunate we are to live in this particular church.  

Each week one of our students gives a "Faith Story" as part of our RI/RO group, and the student who spoke tonight mentioned that one of the things which led him to be an agnostic for a while was the insistence in all the churches he intended that all faith questions have simple, inviolable, untouchable answers that must not ever, ever be questioned.  The Bible is completely inerrant, infallible, and descended like manna from heaven, for example.  And heaven forbid you ever get out of line or question authority in such a church, right?  

We have the great fortune of living in a church, the ELCA, which genuinely believes, endorses and lives the work of "Faith Seeking Understanding."  That's not to say that others don't as well, but as a pastor I'm encouraged to help the students I serve learn to feel confident enough to ask questions, tough questions, heretical questions, rather than live in ignorance and fear.  From the days when our church was building great cathedrals on the backs of the superstitious who bought indulgences (notice I use the word "our church" - that was all of us back then) we have come to a day when we are encouraged to struggle, to engage, to wrestle like Jacob on the banks of the Jabbok with those questions that will not let us rest.  

Do I believe that there are core doctrines which are true beyond all our questioning?  Of course I do.  Like the confessing princes and theologians at Augsburg, I feel called to retain the essentials of the faith - but they remain a foundation upon which the faithful stand, not a shield with which an aggressor bludgeons heathens into theological submission.  

The pictures accompanying this post show the opposing sides at the start of the Reformation.  The first is Johann Tetzel selling indulgences, the second is Luther refusing to recant at the Diet of Worms.  Sadly, there are still churches in the present where tradition and the office of ministry are sacrosanct, beyond questioning, and the emotion under which the entire church moves is fear.  How glad I am, right now, to be a member of a church where the driving emotion is faith seeking understanding; it's a great gift to be here.

Peace,

Scott

Lenten Journal: One Body, Many Gifts

I think I realized what was going on with me over the last week.  In proceeding with the daily devotions as I had been doing, I was essentially trying to create a short sermon out of whole cloth.  

Every.

Single.

Night.

It's like running a marathon every day.  No one can do it.  Well, no one except Dean Kazarnes, and he's just effing crazy.  

I can't do that.  So I won't.  I'll still be reading the daily lectionary - that's been a helpful practice I've let slide over the past few months.  But from here on out I'll only reflect on the scriptures if I have something worth sharing without busting my hump for two hours every night getting it right.  With two girls under the age of three in the house, I can't be spending that much time on the lappy; I need sleep.

But I will keep a Lenten journal, along the lines of what Milton is doing over at Don't Eat Alone.  What I see that's worth sharing, I'll share, even if it has nothing in particular to do with the appointed scripture for the day.

Tonight I spent a few hours meeting with the Lutheran Campus Ministry Board.  This is the group of students and community members charged with oversight and vision for Lutheran Campus Ministry.  We have been trying to move more and more purposefully from a "reporting" board to a "ministry board" that actually carries out tasks rather than just rubber-stamping whatever I happen to send down the chute.  Tonight I think I saw the first steps toward that re-definition taking place, when no one had anything to report for any of our ministry teams.  

Kind of a curious way to see progress, but it makes sense if you think about it.  In many congregations and campus ministries, the pastor is the convener, director and definer of every group and ministry that falls under the congregation's purview.  "The Decider," if you will.  I've been trying to do that for over a year now, with very little success involving anyone beyond the people I've asked directly.  In the process of trying to make things happen myself, I've shortchanged other things:  sermons, reading, continuing education, time for reflection, prayer, and a number of other responsibilities and ministries that belong to me alone.  Everything has suffered because I've been trying to do everything.  And that needs to change.

What I saw tonight tells me it can change.  I watched our very capable Board President move the meeting along briskly, refocusing the group when we moved off topic and keeping us on task.  And as I watched her do this, I realized that others have these gifts, too; and they should be encouraged to put them to good use.  Without delegation of ministry items, we are going to fall apart, and quickly, too.

I've known this intellectually for a long time, of course, but I think that knowledge embedded itself in me tonight.  I am NOT a trustworthy scheduler or a reliable convener and director of ministries.  I can't get bogged down in the nuts-and-bolts of everything that happens under the umbrella of campus ministry, because it will drive me to distraction and the ministry I provide will be like the Platte River in my beloved Nebraska - a mile wide and an inch deep.  

I'm an aesthete at heart; a poet; an artist; a creative worship leader who wants to observe, reflect and creatively report on what God is up to in the world.  But to minister well in these areas, I need to help others do ministry, even if it means things falling through the cracks because I didn't do it myself.  The only way artists can work is when there are electricians to keep the lights on and accountants to handle the money - and as you've probably heard, artists are notoriously prone to bad management.  I don't want that to happen here.  So it's time to find ways to spread the ministry among others before I spread myself too thin.

The good news?  There are incredibly gifted people here, talented, driven folks who blow me away with what they can do.  I've seen it in our speakers for worship this Lent, and I'm looking forward to setting more of our student community "under the yoke" and stepping back to watch them do incredible things.  An aesthete is one who seeks beauty - I need to seek the beauty of capable people for a while, so that our entire ministry can grow as a result.  

Lenten Devotions: Radiance

"Look to God, and be radiant;

so your faces shall never be ashamed."

Psalm 34.2

I am going to take a couple of days off.  For some reason, the words just aren't coming lately.  Life is good, emotions are steady, work is fulfilling:  I just don't have words to share right now.  So I'm going to stop writing here until after the Sunday sermon is ready, then see what Monday holds.  

God bless you all.

Scott

Lenten Devotions: This Dangerous Church

"And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill [Jesus]; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching."  

Mark 11.18

A Lutheran congregation in the western suburbs of Des Moines, IA has become one of the largest Lutheran churches in the country very quickly.  Some of the folks around here are none too happy about their growth, especially the satellite sites they've been planting in towns where other Lutheran churches of our flavor exist.  At our Synod Assembly last year, several of the smaller churches in the Des Moines metro area brought a resolution that, if adopted, would require all congregations seeking to plant satellite ministries to do so only after consulting with the Synod council.  The resolution didn't name any names, of course, but even I, a newbie to the Synod with as much innate ability to sense political undercurrents as your average glazed doughnut, knew exactly which congregation this was meant to curtail.  

Those of us who aspire to ministry in and to the body of Christ live in a peculiar, dangerous world.  On the one hand, we're all overjoyed to see growth in churches, especially among segments of the population that haven't previously been a strong part of our ministries.  On the other hand, we are human and prone to jealousy, control issues and all sorts of grumbling about 'personality cults' and the like when our colleagues really get a good thing going.  And, should we ever be so fortunate as to enjoy a stretch of successes that become noteworthy, there's always the danger of beginning to believe our own press, to where we start to engage in messianic thinking (always a danger for pastors to think about any messiah except THE Messiah, you know).  

Garrison Keillor makes jokes about Lutheran humility; a source of Lutheran pride, but not too much.  We think he's just poking fun, but I think he's actually insulting the way we try to 'out-humble' each other.  Heaven forbid that excellence and success would be two virtues to which a church might aspire, or that a pastor might be someone with gifts for evangelism and outreach rather than pastoral care!  We all know churches where newcomers and the "wrong sort" of people are passively (sometimes actively) rejected for fear of how the congregation might change as a result.  Like the priests and scribes in the Mark reading for today, there lives within us all a desire to control our communities, to restrict change, to set inflexible, impermeable boundaries so as to minimize discomfort and maximize our own personal gain.

Prophecy and popularity can be a deadly mix:  an extreme case would be the tragedy at Jonestown in 1978.   We walk a fine line as we do ministry; we are called to work as hard and faithfully as we can to be both prophetic and popular, but also to avoid taking so much credit for any success that might happen that we lose sight of the fact that this is the church's ministry, not our own.  It is next to impossible to get the balance right.  In fact, so far as I know the only one who never, ever stepped out of line in this regard is Jesus.  Still, in the end the popularity died away, as it often does, and the prophetic teachings of Jesus became so scandalous that we killed him rather than endure the scathing truth any longer.  

Maybe that's why we call him the Savior and no one else.  Only Jesus was willing to forsake all popularity in order that prophecy might win out, the prophetic call from Jesus to turn to His Father and live.  As those who minister, we are not called to do the same.  We are called to point to the One who lived prophetically, whether he was surrounded by thousands of followers or forsaken on the cross, and remind our listeners and ourselves that ministry is not a popularity contest:  it is a prophetic call to follow Christ, in all times and places, in success and in failure, despised and rejected or popular and welcomed.  Following Jesus is the only safe way to navigate the dangerous waters that are His church; I wish you smooth sailing.