2011 Book List - August Update

Pretty much my idea of a perfect day.

Sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost - Matthew 14.22-33 - "Ready for the Storm"

            In the mid-1990s I worked five summers at Carol Joy Holling Camp, a Lutheran church camp in Nebraska.  Toward the end of my time there, our program director became enamored of the works of John Ortberg, particularly a book entitled If You Want To Walk On Water, You Have To Get Out Of The Boat.  I will admit to being a sucker for a clever book title, particularly when it comes to books about the church.  Some of my favorites are Sacred Cows Make Great Hamburgers and When Bad Christians Happen To Good People.  But as much as I admire Ortberg’s title, and as much as I admire my program director, there has always been one assumption made by this title that has bothered me:  who said anything about any of us wanting to walk on water? 

Parables Re-interpreted

In going over the Gospel text for this coming Sunday, I'm struck by a need to contemporize what Jesus is saying for modern ears. 

Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost, L11A - Weeds and Wheat

A few years ago, my wife Kristin and I took a group of kids to Sault Ste. Marie, MI for a service trip.  My work group was assigned to weed flower beds along one of the main thoroughfares in town.  From 10AM to 3PM.  Under the sun, with no shade.  In a week that set records for high temperatures.  

Speaker for the Dead

I had one of those odd pastoral experiences yesterday - a funeral for someone I never met.

Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost - Isaiah 55

This is not an exact copy of my sermon from this morning.  I preached from a series of notes and included some improvised reflections based on conversations I'd had with people prior to the start of the service.  But as I noted on Facebook, I was mainly preaching to myself today - thankfully, the folks to whom I was preaching seemed to be in a similar state of being.  

As you know, it’s been a bit dry around here lately.  Last night I got our sprinkler out for the first time this summer and gave the backyard of our house in Ames a good thorough soaking.  If it doesn’t rain today the front yard gets one tonight.  When it’s been scarce, rain is a good, good thing.  My dad is a third-generation corn and soybean farmer in Nebraska.  I know what it means to get the rain you need, the rain that can do exactly what the prophet says it will do in our Isaiah text this morning. “…the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater…”

            I wonder how this text is being received in Minot, North Dakota this morning. 

Hope Reframed, Trust Re-founded

Subtitle: "The 2011 Lutheran Campus Ministry Staff Conference in Review"

God is our refuge and strength, our safety in times of trouble.
We are calm though the whole earth trembles, and the cliffs fall into the sea,
Our trust is in the Unnamable, the God who makes all things right.
Come see what God has created the miracles God does for humankind.
God puts an end to our wars and snaps our weapons like twigs.
God offers us God’s abundance and God’s peace, to the ends of the earth.
God whispers to the heart, “Be still and know that I am within you.”
Our trust is in the Unnameable, the God who makes all things right.

A Gathering of Spirits, A Flashlight, And A Talk With Larry

Oh, Larry - I thought of you often tonight.  And I really wish you were here.

Evangelizing Ourselves

Sunday night meal at University Lutheran Center

According to some statistics my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, accounts for some 62% of Lutherans in America.  Every year, Iowa State University compiles and distributes the religious affiliation, if any, of its students to their respective denominational campus ministries.  For the 2010-2011 school year, the “Lutheran list” had about 2,500 names on it.  62% of 2500 is 1550, so one could say that as the ELCA campus ministry at Iowa State, we are a “congregation” of 1550 members. 

We average 25 people at worship.  That’s less than 2% of our own young people making worship, much less dedicated membership in a faith community, a priority in their lives.  There is only one way to interpret those numbers:  we, as a whole denomination, have failed, miserably, to live out the vows we make at baptism to nurture the spiritual lives of our young people. 

We are our own mission field.  We are called to evangelize ourselves. 

I love my church.  I love being a Lutheran by birth and by conviction.  I love telling people my church encourages cultivation of mind and spirit.  I love explaining how we believe God’s children are always simul justus et peccator.[1]  I love dropping Luther’s thesis from The Freedom of a Christian:  “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.  A Christian is a perfectly bound servant of all, subject to all.”  I love being a spiritual descendant of Augustine, Luther, Melanchthon, Bach, Muhlenberg, Kierkegaard, Prenter, Tillich, von Rad, Bonhoeffer, Forde, Marty and many, many others.  I love so many things about my church.  I just wish to God I could love my church for nurturing and cherishing and intriguing and challenging and forgiving and receiving and sending our young people and the families in which they are raised.  But I can’t – because we haven’t. 

I started making notes about this post in a conference hall in Iowa City at the Southeastern Iowa Synod Assembly.  I often make jokes about how much I despise Assemblies, but those jokes are not entirely true.  It’s great to see colleagues and old friends.  I get a chance to tell people about the wonderful work I get to do on campus.  This year, for the first time, I was a co-sponsor of a resolution our Synod considered in assembly.  The ELCA Church Council has proposed a budget for 2012 which includes a 38% cut in churchwide support to campus ministry throughout the denomination.  This proposed cut is far greater than that asked of any other churchwide ministry, and takes the highest percentage of financial support away from the ministry least able to absorb it.  We in campus ministry are currently organizing to attempt to amend the budget so that cuts are equitably shared among the vital ministries of this church.  But regardless of whether our attempt is successful or not, it is becoming abundantly clear that our denomination is divesting, on a national level, from support for ministries to, with and among those between the ages of 18 and 25.  This is why I’m having a hard time loving my church just at the moment.

Churchwide budgets won’t be the answer, however.  Even if we had all the financial support for which we could ask, that would only be one failure averted, and a minor one at that.  The far greater failure is this: our young people and their families are abandoning the church in droves, and we are letting it happen. 

Another example:  as a member of our campus ministry association at Iowa State, I’m one of several religious leaders who staff a table at Resource Fair, where incoming students can meet businesses, service organizations and other community folks they may get to know during their time at the University.  It’s a great chance to meet face to face with students, and to live out the ecumenical nature of what we do on campus.  Yesterday, I had a conversation with a young man who asked about one of our local non-denominational ministries; a friend had invited him to come check it out when he got to campus.  Let’s call him “Alex” (not his real name).  I gave Alex the information he requested and asked him to fill out our information sheet so we could send his contact information to the ministry in question.  When I looked over the info sheet at the end of our day, I noted that in the “Faith Community/Denomination” section, Alex had written “Lutheran.” 

I wish I could say this is an unusual occurrence, but it’s not.  Pastors and families tell me their Alex stories over and over again, and I don’t have a satisfactory answer when they ask “Why?”  What it comes down to is this: we have failed to present a compelling case for our church to Alex and thousands like him.  Alex’s friends evangelized where his own church, his own family, his own faith had not.  Alex’s friends gave him “good news” about their faith community, while we failed to do the same in an even remotely effective manner.  Because of this failure, the chance that he’ll consider campus ministry as a locus for faith formation has become infinitesimally remote, and the difficulty of our calling to tend to his faith is raised a hundredfold.

This crisis in our church is far bigger than campus ministry funding, though I would argue that our Churchwide divestment is a symptom of the crisis.  For the sake of our young people, we must create and nurture communities of compelling, life-changing, authentic, forgiving faith.  We must re-discover why “Lutheran” is a good thing to be, and we must communicate that goodness in everything we say and do.  We must live our faith in such a way that the good news of Jesus Christ becomes infectious in our daily living.  We must accept that our church is, in itself, a mission field in serious need of tending.  In these times, when the attrition of our young people is an epidemic that will take years to cure, we must be about the work of evangelizing ourselves.

---

[1] Latin, “simultaneously saint and sinner.”

Dwelling Places

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” ⁸Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.     John 14.1-14

My Birthday Wish

This was supposed to post first thing this morning, but before I could finish it, I had to take our 13 year-old cat Ike to the emergency vet clinic.  I didn't get back until 2AM, and my Beloved let me sleep in, so I'm just now getting started on my day.  Ike is okay - damaged nerves and broken ribs from what was likely a fall somewhere (we didn't see it happen).  Anyway, here's the post that was halfway finished before evening prayer last night.

Wednesday Night Reflection - The Allergic Body of Christ

¹²Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. ¹³Until I arrive, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching. ¹⁴Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders. ¹⁵Put these things into practice, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress. ¹⁶Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.  1^st Timothy 4.12-16

My campus pastor died six years ago this week.  When we went down to Lincoln for the funeral, I had what I thought at the time was the world’s WORST cold:  completely stuffed up nose, scratchy throat, watery eyes, lost my voice the week before and the occasional sinus headache.  It was at its worst the night of the visitation at the funeral home, so in I walked looking like I’d been crying non-stop for like a week, blowing my nose every 30 seconds or so and actually spending a few minutes talking with one of Larry’s daughters with a shred of Kleenex stuck to my moustache until my wife came by and whispered the news into my ear.  I mean, not that I was embarrassed to cry at the funeral, but you’d rather people knew the whole truth at times like that, right?

Sermon for Easter Evening - "Ever Walk With Me, Lord."

Preaching Texts

On the third day, after he’d risen from the dead, Jesus…took a walk. 

Sermon for Maundy Thursday - "Belonging in Love"

Preaching Texts

God uses the church to show the world what God’s reign looks like.  The church observes Holy Week to remind itself of the full story of Jesus Christ, the one who we follow, worship, and adore. 

Jesus, Self-Awareness and Stones In Need of Dropping

³The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, ⁴they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. ⁵Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” ⁶They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. ⁹When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  John 8.3-9

Ash Wednesday - Giving Up

"Create in me a clean heart, O God,
     and renew a right spirit in me."  Psalm 51.10

Gerhard Forde, one of my professors at seminary, was famous for saying, "Whenever I get the urge to do a good work, I lie down until the urge passes."  I've been thinking about that a lot this Ash Wednesday.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany - "Foundations"

Preaching Texts

How many of you have seen a sign like this in the various places you’ve worked or studied so far in your life?

I Honestly Don't Know If I Can Do This

So here's a visual representation of the last twenty-four hours:

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany - "God-Centered Life"

            I hung a BC comic strip on the door of my study at my last call, in Minnesota.  When we moved, I accidentally ripped it in half, and without thinking I just threw it away.  Now I can’t find it online, but I remember that it said, “ser-mon: An inspired message directed mainly at those who are not in attendance.”  It’s been informing how I preach ever since I first read it, laughed out loud, and then winced. 

2011 Books: The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Eleven years ago I fell in love one long, hot summer.

FW was away at her second round of Army Reserve training, and I was working for the summer on the grounds crew at Luther Seminary.  No classes, just hours upon hours riding a lawnmower, moving sprinklers and the like. Work was done every afternoon at 4:30, which left a lot of daylight hours to fill.  On a whim, due to the advice of a friend, I picked up The Eye of the World, the first book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.  Within a few pages, I knew I'd found something really, really wonderful.  I spent many of that summer's late afternoons on an old wooden church folding chair outside our apartment, smoking cigarettes and devouring the first few books in the series. 

Minnesota Blogger Con-Fab Thingy (In Which I Forget Proper Documentation, But Consume 1X1023g Saturated Fat. YUM)

I'm a good blogger, I'm a bad blogger.  But you knew this already.

2011 Books: The Inextinguishable Symphony by Martin Goldsmith

My goodness, am I ever on a roll for books this year.  First Driftless by David Rhodes, now The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany by Martin Goldsmith.  Both are books you should read (or hear, if you're doing audiobooks like me) soon.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: "All the World's A Stage?"

Preaching Texts

         Did any of you have to memorize Shakespeare when you were in high school?  I did.  Mrs. Sundell made us memorize a few things, and one that has stuck with me over the years is the soliloquy from “As You Like It:”  “All the world’s a stage / and all its men and women merely players / they have their exits and their entrances / and one [person] in [their] time plays many parts…

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

This was the weekly email to our students in LCM this week.  The Quadrennial Review process is something I'd love to see required of all ELCA churches, and I wish I'd known how to do it at the congregation I served prior to this call.  Anyone care to share review procedures at their own congregations?  

Our LCM Board spent Saturday morning and afternoon beginning the Quadrennial Review process for our campus ministry.  Every four years, each campus ministry in the ELCA goes through a review process where we look at the previous four years, evaluate what's gone well and what hasn't, look at our context to see if we have a good view of the environment to which we are called, and (I might say, most importantly) identify a few strategic goals for the next four years. 

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany: "Unitas, Libertas, Caritas"

             If you hang around long enough in the church, you start to hear a lot of things more than once.  Some of us pastors call it the book of Hezekiah: the stuff that isn’t in the Bible, but sounds like it is.  “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.”  “The gospel is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  “Those who sing pray twice.”  One that I heard quite often during seminary was this:  in necessariis, unitas; in dubiis, libertas; in omnibus, caritas.  “In necessities, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.”  According to Wikipedia, it is often misattributed to St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the great early theologians of the church, but the earliest known use of the phrase was by a  Croatian archbishop in the 1600s, more than a thousand years after Augustine was dead and buried. 

Random Wednesday Is Random

M.C. Escher.

This is a pretty good approximation of my life right now.

Just a few random observations throughout the day today.

• I watched the movie "Shutter Island" Monday night.  I thought it was really good, especially after overcoming a clumsy first act.  Beloved would have hated it, for reasons I won't go into here, as they'll spoil the movie for those of you who haven't seen it.  But when I went to check out the book at our library this morning, I couldn't find it.  The library computer insists there are copies in the building, but not on any of the shelves on which it's listed.  Considering the movie deals with our perceptions and the nature of identity and reality, I found the experience just a bit unsettling.  Which, I'm sure, would make the author very happy to know - any time art impacts life that deeply, the artist should be proud.
• It's no secret I'm quite the europhile.  Matter of fact, if I hadn't met Beloved during seminary, I might have tried to find a call in Germany or Ireland.  I believe very deeply in the roundabout, government-run health care, pension and social benefits, and much of what I've seen in trips to Ireland, the UK and Germany.  That having been said, I stopped reading Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan about halfway through.  I agreed with his central argument:  the European way of life, particularly the German version, is a far better fit for people like myself.  But his writing was so convoluted, and his argument so incredibly subjective and lacking statistical analysis (other than the ones that prove his argument, of course) that I just kept getting more and more annoyed.  It's bad enough when I find someone with whom I disagree annoying; it's much worse when it's someone who tends to see things the way I do!
• If you're looking for good "sit in my office and get lots of work done" music, the Palestrina channel on Pandora is a good place to start.  Sometimes I think I was born 450 years too late.  Then I go use the toilet, take a drink out of the tap without wondering if it'll kill me, and give my kid some medicine instead of wondering if she'll survive her most recent infection, and I remember why I've got it so good now.
• The switch to Sunday nights for worship is mainly going well.  I particularly enjoy the opportunity to break bread together, worship, then spend time around the fire talking theology (our schedule is Sunday Night Supper at 5:00, Worship at 6:00, Fireside Theology at 7:30).  I'm surprised at how much I enjoy having Sunday mornings free at the moment, but I'm also nervous that none of the congregations I've contacted about supply preaching have even responded to my queries.  And, as you might expect, our student numbers have dropped for worship.  More promotion seems in order, and as with most changes, steadfast patience during the uncomfortable first days.
• I went for my first run in over a month Monday morning.  Chris' post about running was so inspirational I decided my kvetching about running this year just needs to stop.  Now I read that he's struggling a bit, too.  This is the running life: you can only enjoy it one or two strides at a time, it seems. This could also be a metaphor for real life, not just the part of it I spend schlepping my fat ass around Ames.
• Tonight will be our second week using the "Prayer Around the Cross" liturgy from Susan Briehl and Tom Witt.  Last week I put together a very basic cross using planter boxes filled with sand, and arranged kneeling pads around the cross.  Unfortunately, there's some sort of short in our lighting in the sanctuary, so the central floods remain lit at all times.  Hopefully this will be fixed tonight and we'll be able to worship by candlelight alone.  I hope the students were as moved by the experience last week as I was - this is a wonderful addition to our worship life.

2011 Books: Driftless by David Rhodes

Every once in a while, you take a chance on a book without having a single solitary reason for doing so.  No one recommended it, no one mentioned it, you've never heard of it, but something about it grabs you.  That's rare for me - I usually have a list of recommendations far longer than I have time to even contemplate.  But last week I took a chance, and was rewarded with an even less common experience:  a literary surprise. 

Driftless is David Rhodes' first novel in 30 years.  He came back strong, if you ask me.  This was an incredible novel from start to finish.  Rhodes creates characters so accurate, so pitch-perfect you'd swear he's writing a biography of Words, Wisconsin and not fiction.  Any resident of any small upper Midwest town will recognize and appreciate the honest portrayal of small town living Rhodes composes.  Driftless is neither petty nor apologetic:  it is populated with characters who feel as solid as the dirt, trees and hills for which the novel is named. 

It's not just the characters that make this novel wonderful, however - the story is also worthy of praise, from the laugh-out-loud moments (of which there are several) to the heart-stoppers (only one or two, but they are whoppers). 

I won't say more so as to preserve the story for you to enjoy.  Driftless is the finest novel I've read since The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and I hope to see it on your reading list soon, friends and neighbors. 

Grace & peace,
Scott

Campus Ministry News - December 2010

Every semester we send out a newsletter reporting on the semester at Lutheran Campus Ministry.  This year has been particularly...tumultuous, and writing this fall's newsletter article has been difficult for me.  This morning I finally forced myself to sit down and put it on paper. 

Familiar Voices

I subscribe to the Writer's Almanac - you should go sign up before reading the rest of this.  Go ahead - I'll wait.  

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent: "What Do You Expect?"

Preaching Texts

“He emerged from the metro at the L’Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.” [1] 

Desktop Diaries

Jan Edmiston at A Church for Starving Artists posted an interesting thing last week - a picture of her desk, with no tidying or dressing up done.  Apparently NPR presented Oliver Sack's desk on Science Friday last week, and she was inspired.  I thought it sounded like a fun thing with which to play along, so here's my Desktop Diary for today.

Like Jan, I don't do a ton of writing in my office.  Work, yes, but the kind of thing during which I don't mind being interrupted.  Worship planning, professional reading, administrivia, phone calls and setting up schedules, that sort of thing.  Occasionally, because my library is in my office, I'll do my preparatory exegetical work in my office, but during afternoons when I know that my train of thought is unlikely to be derailed. 

There are a few things I love about my office.  First is the light - in the afternoon, like you see here, there's no need for the fluorescent lights and their "just-below-audible" buzz.  Even in the morning, with my four windows I only need the lights if it's cloudy or rainy.  Second, the comfy furniture.  I have two recliners, one overstuffed chair and my desk chair, all of which are good places to spend a lot of time.  I've never understood why you would want to furnish an office with chairs in which no one feels comfortable.  Third, the plants.  I'm developing a little bit of a green thumb at the church; that is, when I can keep my youngest from ripping the plants out of their pots.  The peace lilies you see will soon be going into the big pots and back into our sanctuary, and hopefully we can keep little fingers away from them until they're good and toughened up.

Anyway, that's where some of the magic happens.  Tomorrow or Friday I'll send a picture of my sermonating table at Cafe Milo - I know, I know, you'll be waiting with bated breath.  All three of you.  Until then -

Grace & peace,
Scott

The Feel of Peace

Every night when we put the girls to bed, we lay down with each of them for a short while; five, ten minutes, tops.  This started with Ainsley, who would cry for close to an hour if we didn't stay with her for a little bit after we read a book, said our prayers and hugged and kissed good night.  Ten minutes of snuggling with your toddler is a far better use of our time than listening to one or both of them scream for thirty minutes.

Called to the Task at Hand

 Okay, first things first - being a pastor ≠ being a Jedi.  The only similarity is that we both wear robes.  And the lightsaber, of course. 

New Year, New Start

Photo by Amanda Woodward.  Used by permission.

Today is the first day of the new year.  Happy New Year!

Okay, yeah, it's the first day of the new liturgical year.  The first Sunday of Advent.  Year A, for those of you keeping score.  Gospel of Matthew. 

Liturgical geekery aside, I'm ready for a new start.  It was approximately a year ago that the Unbloggableness got started, and even now, several months after the last bit of official handling that mess required, the healing process is continuing in fits and starts - sometimes it's weeks without considering it, and sometimes something trips your memory and you're furious all over again.  It's well past time to be done with this, and well past time to be doing something instead of dealing with something.  So, a new year, a new start.

The U.B. isn't the only thing I'm anxious to put behind me.  I've gained another fifteen pounds this year through lousy diet and sloth.  I've spent far too much time messing around on message boards and not nearly enough time reading books, watching good TV and good movies.  I've put off house projects and dithered on things that could have been handled much more quickly if I'd put my mind to it.  In general, it feels like I've been sleep-walking for about a year now, and I'm ready to be awakened. 

Right now I'm sitting next to the fire at the Lutheran Center in Ames.  Six students are here with me, doing homework, the Sunday crossword, and just hanging out.  These incredible people have deserved so much better from me this year:  better sermons, better attention, better leadership.  This Advent I want to start over with all of them.  Thanks be to God, one can do just that.  Maybe I can't undo the sloth of the past 12 months, but I can sure as hell spend the next 12 making up for it.  So:  commence.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Fifty Book Challenge 2010

Here it is: my reading list for 2010. Recommended titles are in bold, and formats are +(Kindle), *(audio/iPod).

1. The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson
2. Watchmen (Absolute Edition) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
3. V For Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd 
4. The Sandman: World's End by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King et al.

5. The Sandman: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub et al.

6. Providence: The Madigan Trilogy Book 1 by Tawn Anderson

7. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman et al.

8. The Sandman: The Wake by Neil Gaiman et al.

+9. Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt.

10. Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

11. Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell

+12. The Great Hunt: Wheel of Time Book 2 by Robert Jordan

+13. Dragon Reborn: Wheel of Time Book 3 by Robert Jordan

+14. Shadow Rising: Wheel of Time Book 4 by Robert Jordan

*15. Dune by Frank Herbert

+16. Anxious Souls Will Ask...: The Christ-Centered Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by John W. Matthews

17. On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

*18. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougal

+19. The Case for God by Karen Armstrong

*20. The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

*21. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

*22. Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

23. Fires of Heaven: Wheel of Time Book 5 by Robert Jordan

*24. Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
*25. Genghis: Birth of an Empire by Conn Iggulden

+26. Lord of Chaos: Wheel of Time Book 6 by Robert Jordan

*27. Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

28. The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

*28. Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

+29. A Crown of Swords: Wheel of Time Book 7 by Robert Jordan

*30. Odd Hours by Dean Koontz
*31. The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team by Jim Dent
+32. Path of Daggers: Wheel of Time Book 8 by Robert Jordan

+33. Winter's Heart: Wheel of Time Book 9 by Robert Jordan

*34. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler
35.  Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
*36.  Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
*37.  Duma Key by Stephen King
+38.  Crossroads of Twilight: Wheel of Time Book 10 by Robert Jordan
*39.  Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
40.  Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
*41.  Man In The Woods by Scott Spencer 
42.  Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction by Rodney Clapp
43.  Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell 
+44.  Knife of Dreams:  Wheel of Time Book 11 by Robert Jordan
+45.  The Promise of Despair:  The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church by Andrew Root

Blargh.

Yeah, I'm home sick today.  Woot!

I could probably be working by now, but I'm a firm believer in staying home when you're not feeling well, so here we are.  Besides, with my MacBook and cell phone I'm still able to accomplish quite a bit on a "sick day," to the point that I'm not actually taking the whole day off today anyway. 

One of the things I've been doing is catching up on blogger friends and actually reading stuff rather than skimming it per usual.  Every once in a while you follow the rabbit down the hole into a world you never knew existed, and I got a look at one such hole today - unfortunately, this one wasn't a particularly good one to follow. 

I stumbled on a website which seems completely dedicated to taking down the ELCA, the denomination in which I currently serve as pastor.  Whoever is running this thing is a disgruntled former ELCA member who has spent far too much time going over ELCA documents and websites with a fine-toothed comb, intent on finding every questionable phrase or sentence that could be exploited for his/her disingenuous, unfair and ultimately toxic agenda.  No, I'm not linking to it, nor will I give any more hints as to how to find it.  The last thing I want to do is increase the traffic over there.  Let's just say that after a few minutes reading thosee suspicious, conspiracy-theory mis-interpretations, I felt like I needed a shower (though, I admit, it might have also been because I've spent most of the day in this recliner in the basement).  

No one is surprised to note that a year after the ELCA's decision to embrace the ministry of same-gender persons in monogamous relationships and allow churches to bless same-gender unions, the fallout is still, well, falling.  Churches are leaving the ELCA:  this is a cause for sorrow even when that departure might be the healthiest way forward.  No one wants to leave the denomination with which they have been connected for so long.  But as an internet friend said the other day, at some point you get to the point where you think, "How can I miss you if you won't go away?" 

There's a fine line between honest disagreement and spreading poison.  I walked it here while the UB was going on, and some accused me of crossing it.  That's part of the reason I haven't been blogging much lately: I'm worried about crossing that line.  When Susan Hogan was running Pretty Good Lutherans, I thought she provided a great space for people of diverging opinions to talk about what was happening in the ELCA.  I wish she were still doing it, because efforts like that stand as a counter to the site I visited today, where the primary hermeneutic lens is one of suspicion and the default setting is somewhere between soapbox and BOMBAST.  There's a need for genuine criticism and loyal dissension in every denomination, especially in these days when staff layoffs are camouflaged as new structures designed to increase flexibility.  I just wish this small portion folks who disagreed with the ELCA's decisions in 2009 had chosen healthier means of expressing that disagreement.  I think I'd have been that much closer to feeling better if they had.

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints - "Winners and Losers"

Before reading this sermon, you should know I'm a Nebraska alum (though you probably already knew that) and the ELCA campus pastor at Iowa State, where this happened yesterday:

Preaching Texts

            When I was 9 years old, a football game made me cry.  I have a feeling there were some young Cyclone fans who felt the same way last night.  The 1984 Orange Bowl.  Nebraska was down 31-30, back in the days before overtime in college football.  They went for two and didn’t get it.  I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.

            That seemed to be the story for Nebraska fans in the 1980s and early 1990s.  It seemed like the Huskers were always one game away.  Oh, I don’t expect any sympathy from Iowa State students about struggling football teams – I’m telling this story to make a point, and the point is this:  we don’t commemorate losers, even the glorious ones.  As great as that game was yesterday, it won’t get celebrated nearly as much as last year’s slapstick in Lincoln, even though both teams played much, much better yesterday.  Why?  Because ISU won in Lincoln last year.  Winners get celebrated.  The 1983 Cornhuskers don’t get reunions, but the 1994 Cornhuskers do, because they won a national championship.  People will remember ISU beating Texas this year a lot longer than they’ll remember losing to Nebraska.  If you win, you get trophies, placques, and reunions.  Lose, even gloriously, you get a rueful shake of the head, but that’s about it.

            So, on the surface, it might appear that Jesus is just trying to even out the balance when he teaches in our reading from the gospel of Luke this morning.  We might think, “Oh, there goes Jesus:  he’s such a good one for making the losers feel good about themselves.”  Meanwhile, we’re either trying to find a way to avoid being lumped in with the poor, the hungry, the crybabies and the religious nutcases, or you’re trying to figure out if you’re poor, hungry, sad or crazy enough to be blessed without too much more inconvenience.  After all, when it comes to Jesus, up is down, left is right, rich is poor, poor is rich and humility is the best way to make a name for yourself in the kingdom of God, am I right?

            Back to football for a minute.  When I was growing up, people would complain about Nebraska never winning enough games.  You heard me right.  Tom Osborne once said, “My hardest job is to convince the people of Nebraska that 10-1 is not a losing season.”  When I would join the critics while I was growing up, my Mom would try to set me straight.  “You just wait,” she said, “someday we’ll know what it’s really like to have a terrible football team.”  I’m most proud of her for never once saying “I told you so” from 2002-2007.  But my point is this:  perspective has a tendency to get skewed no matter where we are in life.  When you’re up, you think you’re going to be up for the rest of your life.  When you’re down, you think that you’ll be down for the rest of your life.  Either way, you adjust your expectations accordingly and go on living the best that you know how to live.  At least, that’s what you do if you’re not a saint.

            Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints.  Traditionally, today is the day we remember those who have died in the past year, and we’ll do just that later in our service.  But right now, I want to talk a bit more about living saints, and what it means to live as God’s saints now, in this life, and why I think Jesus is talking about sainthood when he teaches his disciples like he does in this morning’s Gospel text. 

            Let’s make sure we understand what it is we’re talking about when Jesus says “Blessed are you” and “Woe unto you.”  It’s easy to think that, because Jesus says “yours is the kingdom of God,” that he’s talking about salvation and damnation.  Jesus is telling the people listening to him how to live in this life, not how to get into the next.  This is not advice given for the best way to score points with God:  this is God himself defining reality for people who don’t have the ability to see it.  Jesus is the living hope of God revealing the truth to those who haven’t seen it yet:  what we see on the surface is not the reality God knows down to the core.  Poverty is not always marked by misery.  Wealth does not always guarantee unlimited happiness.  Hunger and sadness have their seasons, as do satisfaction and joy.  Most of all, we who believe in what God is up to in the world are called to trust in God no matter how much ridicule the world might heap upon us.  This is what Jesus is calling ALL of his followers to understand, rich and poor, hungry and fed, weeping and rejoicing, losers and winners alike.  THESE ARE ALL SAINTS:  it’s just that these are saints in all their different places in life, but still called to worship and serve the same living, loving God who welcomes them all.

            Don’t believe me?  Look at the last few verses of our reading today.  “I say to you that listen…”  Not “I say to you poor.”  Not “I say to you joyful.”  Not “I say to you who’ve gone and made somebody mad for my sake.”  “I say to you that listen…”  Wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, in whatever circumstances you may find yourself, here is how you follow me:  “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”  This is what it means to be one of God’s saints.  Jesus calls us to open our eyes, to see with perspective and understand that life is constantly changing.  If he’d been talking in political terms this past week, he might have said, “Blessed are you Democrats, for yours is the Senate Majority.  But woe to you Republicans, for you have received your reward.”  Six years ago he might have said the exact opposite.  Either way, Jesus would have said to BOTH parties:  “Love your enemies.  Reach across the aisle.  Don’t make that commercial and call your opponent names.  Do unto your opponent and you would have them do unto you.” 

            I’ve been haunted by a song this week.  

            If you look at the face of Johnny Cash in that video, you look at the face of a man who’s known both blessings and woes.  He was rich, and he was poor.  He laughed, and he wept.  Most importantly, Johnny Cash did some wonderful things for a lot of people, but he also did some terrible things to his family and friends over the years.  You see in this song a man who knows the core of his life, its depths and its heights.  I call Johnny Cash a saint, not because he’s dead, and not because he was a vision of perfection in life, but because you get the sense that he knew the whole story of human sinfulness and yet trusted in God to overcome the hurt he himself had caused to others and himself. 

            Paul says in our Ephesians text today, “I pray that…God may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation…so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know the hope to which God has called you, the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints.”  This is the life of a saint: eyes wide open, with perspective and wisdom enough to see life in its totality.  This is the life of a saint:  understanding that circumstances are constantly changing.  This is the life of a saint:  to know that in these constantly changing circumstances, one thing that is guaranteed is that we will make mistakes in the midst of everything.  This is the life of a saint:  to know that in the midst of everything, whether it’s poverty or riches, hunger or fullness, sorrow or joy, God is bigger than our hopes and our fears and we are called to trust in God come what may. 

            Open your eyes, you saints of God.  Understand that wins and losses are part of what it is to be human.  Believe that God knows the depth of who you are and how you’ve struggled, and loves you with all your faults and virtues intact.  This is a day to celebrate, but not because you’re rich or poor, hungry or full, weeping or rejoicing.  This isn’t even a day to celebrate a Husker win or mourn a Cyclone loss!  This is a day to celebrate because the God the Father is your Creator, Jesus Christ is your Savior, the Holy Spirit is moving within you, and this company of saints is here to journey with you.  The life of a saint awaits you:  now is the first step, and may God bless all the ones that follow.  Amen.

Wednesday Evening Prayer: God's Beloved, "Pride and Joy"

Hebrew script for Song of Solomon 6.3:   "My Beloved is mine, and I am his."

I’ve complained long and loud about the lousy sort of praise music that we call “Jesus is my Boyfriend” music.  In fact, my colleague Nadia Bolz-Weber tweeted the lyrics to one of those songs the other day:  “"I'm Special", "I'm special because God has loved me, for He gave the best thing that He had to save me: His own Son Jesus , crucified to take the blame, for all the bad things I have done. Thank you Jesus, thank you Lord for loving me so much; I know I don't deserve anything, help me feel Your love right now, to know deep in my heart that I'm your special friend" #barf

At the same time, I’ve been intrigued by the fact that we cheat God’s passion when we throw the baby out with the bathwater here.  I do think God can’t stand those sappy love songs – but I also think God is a passionate, jealous lover who hates it when people mistreat God’s beloved.  Unfortunately, we tend to lump all that love over onto Jesus most of the time, which isn’t fair, and frankly isn’t even right, because if the Old Testament is any indication, God the Creator loves every bit as passionately as Jesus.  Listen to this, for instance:

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
   and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
   and her salvation like a burning torch. 
² The nations shall see your vindication,
   and all the kings your glory;
and you shall be called by a new name
   that the mouth of the Lord will give. 
³ You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
   and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. 
⁴ You shall no more be termed Forsaken,^*
   and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;^*
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,^*
   and your land Married;^*
for the Lord delights in you,
   and your land shall be married. 
⁵ For as a young man marries a young woman,
   so shall your builder^* marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
   so shall your God rejoice over you. 

            Isaiah 62.1-5

God is obviously worked up about God’s beloved people – and we often miss it entirely.  My Old Testament professor Terry Fretheim wrote,

“Attributes such as love, compassion and mercy, accompanied by acts of healing, forgiving, and redeeming, tend to become narrowly associated with Jesus, while the less palatable attributes and actions of holiness, wrath, power and justice are ascribed only to God.  What tends to fill the mind is God as Giver of the Law and Judge of all the earth.  If God is not the cause of all the ills in the world, God is still seen as the one who is to blame for not really doing anything about them.  It is the goodness of God that is ignored, not the goodness of Jesus.  One can almost hear someone say: ‘If only Jesus were here, he would do something about all our troubles!’  People often seem to have a view which suggests that Jesus is friend and God is enemy.  An understanding of the atonement gets twisted so that Jesus is seen as the one who came to save us from God." The Suffering of God (c) 1984, Fortress Press.  p. 2

Leaving the sappy music aside, God the Creator loves you.  God the Father gets worked up when you get mistreated.  God the Giver of all good things is deeply concerned for your welfare.  God the Maker has knit you together fearfully and wonderfully.  Dare I say it, you are God’s pride and joy.

 

Sure, this song is about a woman on the surface.  But is there really so much difference between “You mess with her, you’ll see a man get mean” and “I will not rest until her vindication shines out like the dawn?”

There is ample evidence within Holy Scripture that God loves you.  God passionately, recklessly, agonizingly loves you.  Forget the cheesy Jesus music that makes it sound like you have to be on Team Jesus instead of Team Edward or Team Jacob.  Forget it, not just because it’s awful music, but because it cheats God’s love for you – you’re more than a romantic interest as far as God is concerned.  You are God’s delight, God’s pride and joy, and no one can take it away from you.  Amen.

Sermon for Reformation Day - "When Do We Get To See Jesus?

Preaching Texts

Last summer, a woman called her pastor on a Sunday morning, sobbing.  When she finally calmed down enough to speak coherently, she said, “I’m at my parents’ church - they’re doing communion - and they won’t let me take it.”  Let us pray:

We come to you, Almighty God, in all of the wrong ways.  We demand, we bargain, we insist, we judge - and all the while you give, you pay, you ask and you love.  Change our hearts - change our lives - make of us people who serve you gladly and willingly.  In the strong, saving name of Jesus we pray.  Amen.

Friday Sermonating

The sermon station at Cafe Milo, Ames, IA.

Spent the afternoon preparing for Sunday.  Good coffee, good reflections from commentaries, websites and *gasp* yours truly.  GREAT conversation prior to teh sermonating in our Theology for Lunch book group:  we're reading Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction by Rodney Clapp, and I love it even more the second time around.  Here's a song that was mentioned today:

It's stuff like this that makes my job truly enjoyable.  In some ways this has been a really crappy week:  continued financial fallout from the ELCA budgetary issues, trying to figure out how we can manage our own money better, marriages we thought were good falling apart, and, of course, the never-ending shitstorm that is the upcoming midterm elections.  But the chance to ponder all that God may be up to in the midst of this muck always brings a spring to my step and hope to my heart.  May your weekend be blessed, whatever it entails.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Wednesday Night Prayer: Psalm 121 and "Faith My Eyes"

Psalm 121
¹I lift up my eyes ^| to the hills;
     from where is my ^| help to come?

²My help comes ^| from the LORD,
     the maker of heav- ^| en and earth.

³The LORD will not let your ^| foot be moved
     nor will the one who watches over you ^| fall asleep.

⁴Behold, the keep- ^| er of Israel
     will neither slum- ^| ber nor sleep;

⁵the LORD watches ^| over you;
     the LORD is your shade at ^| your right hand;

⁶the sun will not strike ^| you by day,
     nor the ^| moon by night.

⁷The LORD will preserve you ^| from all evil
     and will ^| keep your life.

⁸The LORD will watch over your going out and your ^| coming in,
     from this time forth for- ^| evermore.

This week's lectionary gospel reading is the story of Zaccheus.  Short guy.  Wanted to see Jesus.  Got what he wanted.

I've been thinking about Zaccheus this week - I'm going to preach this text for Reformation Day on Sunday.  (Frankly, I'm a little disappointed there's only one text for Reformation Sunday, given the reformers' love of scripture in all its variety and glory.)  Maybe you know the song I used to sing in Sunday School:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man

A wee little man was he

He climbed up in a sycamore tree

for the Lord he wanted to see.

And as the Savior passed that way,

He looked up in that tree,

And the Lord said, "Zacchaeus!

You come down!  For I'm going to your house today!

For I'm going to your house to stay!"

The song, of course, misses the point.  Zacchaeus isn't remarkable because he's short: he's remarkable because he's a tax collector whom Jesus forgives and with whom Jesus eats and drinks.  Jesus chooses the disreputable tax collector to prove to the upstanding Pharisees that tax collectors need saving, too.

But what happened after Jesus left?  I'll bet that after Jesus wasn't around anymore, plenty of folks found ways to bring Zacchaeus back to earth.  That's what we do, after all.  How many of you have heard or seen someone experience a moment in the spotlight, only to get dragged back down by the jealousy of everyone around them?  And even when the people involved in the story aren't petty and envious, life in general has a way of humbling us sooner or later.

Here's the thing about mountaintop experiences like the one Zacchaeus experienced:  they are the exception in our lives.  Life can be grand and beautiful, or dark and tragic, but most of it is somewhere in between.  Zacchaeus appears in one brief story here in Luke:  what do you imagine the rest of his life was like?  Bills, groceries, the wife, kids, taxes and death - just like you and me.

But.  That one encounter.  How that changed everything.  We can't forget it, can we? 

No matter what may come, we are Jesus' own now, gathered and sent in grace to serve.  Sometimes, like Derek Webb sings, we are called to leave familiar places and beloved people behind, to strike out on the road.  Zacchaeus had an incredible encounter with the Savior of all - and, after he exited the stage on which Luke presents his story, he kept on going.  He lived.  We don't know how long, or with what struggles, but we know at least for a while he lived, without the immediate presence of Jesus.  Such a life requires much grace, and much faith.

The Spirit in you calls you, like the psalmist, to look to the hills and be reminded:  you are not forgotten.  The road you travel is not without a guardian.  You may not be on the mountain, or deep in the darkest valley, but wherever you are, your feet do not walk this path alone.  Zacchaeus saw his Lord, and knew grace and faith - you and I know it, too.  As Derek Webb sings, "[We] walk with grace [our] feet, and faith [our] eyes."  May it always be so.  Amen.