Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost - "There's No Wrong Way..."

            Do me a favor, folks – tell me your favorite kind of pizza.

            Now:  what would you do if I told you you’re all wrong?  That the best kind of pizza is Fat Pat’s Canadian Bacon and Sauerkraut pizza?  Right or wrong? 

            How about college rooting interests?  Care to argue about that?  How many University of Iowa freshmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?  They can’t:  at Iowa that’s a sophomore course.  How do you get an Iowa State grad off your front porch?  Pay him for the pizza.  What does the “N” on Nebraska helmets stand for?  Knowledge.

Friday Five: Blogging

I am making yet another attempt to be more regular in blogging - not that you've noticed.  Right now I have three posts in semi-finished state and hope to finish one or two over the weekend.  For now, though, just to get something on the page, I'm playing this week's Friday Five from RevGalBlogPals.

Blogging at Google's Blogger, I recently was boondoggled by the new designs of the site, which includes my blog. I felt like I had lost track of all the blogs I daily check so that I asked for help both at my blog and on Facebook! Still trying to learn the ways of these new ways of blogging, I am turning our minds to blogging for this Friday Five.

Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost - "Inside-Out Christ"

Mark 8:27-38
²⁷Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” ²⁸And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.³¹Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
³⁴He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Welcome to the homestretch of the presidential election of 2012.  It’s a season of big questions and big answers, none, apparently, more important than this:  “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”  We will spend billions upon billions of dollars on politics this fall.  Estimates suggest this will be the most expensive election in history (at least until we do it all over again in 2016).  You can’t turn on the TV or even watch a video on YouTube without sitting through commercials telling you how wrong Candidate A is, and why you should vote for Candidate B.  Meanwhile, Candidate B spends his time reminding you what makes America great, why he’s a good example of those American values, and why you should vote for him instead of Candidate A. 

            Now, I know who has my vote in November, and maybe you do, too.  Imagine, though, that you’ve been waiting all your life for your chosen candidate to come around.  And your parents and grandparents died without ever seeing the candidate they hoped they would see.  Imagine that instead of a system of free government, you’re trapped under the thumb of foreign rulers, and you have been for almost a thousand years.  Finally, you think the person you’ve been expecting for generations has arrived – and best of all, you’re in early, before the Iowa primary.  And one afternoon, your candidate turns to you and says, “Here’s the deal:  I’m a dead man.  Sooner or later, I’m going to die at the hands of the people I’m working so hard to save.  You’re going to abandon me, one of you will hand me over to the powers that be, and they’re going to make a public spectacle of my death.  The same thing will happen to you if you stick with me – and I hope with all my heart you’ll stick with me.”  Who wouldn’t want to vote for a candidate like that?

            In the Gospel of Mark, these verses we read this week mark a major turning point.  It’s the first time the word “Messiah” or “Christ” has been used since the very beginning of the gospel.  And it is a LOADED term for Peter and any Jew who believed such a thing about Jesus.  God’s “anointed One” was almost universally assumed to be a figure of great political and cultural power.  God’s victory through the “Messiah” would be marked by the triumphant rise of a free people who would no longer be prisoners to tyranny.  So when the one Peter identifies as “Messiah / Christ / Anointed One” starts talking about betrayal, abuse and crucifixion, the reaction of his disciples is what you’d expect:  they don’t like it one bit.  Put it in our modern context, and there’s one phrase that might sum it up in three words:  “That’s not Presidential.”

This is who we are – and this is the delusion we have about both our Messiah and our presidential candidates.  We want the person we vote for to lift us out of the doldrums we largely created for ourselves, and we want Jesus to be a King or a modern-day President:  powerful, dignified, but most of all, dedicated to changing the world for us.  But no president can save us from ourselves, and Jesus did not come to change the world through power exerted from the outside in.

There’s a Latin phrase we learn in seminary to describe what it is to be human and sinful:  incurvatus in se.  It means “the self turned in upon itself.”  It was first coined by St. Augustine but was expanded on by Luther, then later theologians like Karl Barth worked with it as well.  The basic image is this:  in sinfulness, we turn in upon ourselves, thinking only of our protection and our own needs and desires, turning away from the world around us and hiding from the people around us.  It drives almost every impulse we have as humans and, unfortunately, as members of a church.  Incurvatus in se drives us to resist any challenge to the reality we have constructed for ourselves in our homes, our schools and our communities. Incurvatus in se drives us to base our political decisions on whether or not we’ve got more money in our pockets and who we think is to blame if we don’t.  Incurvatus in se drives us to look for churches the way we look for health clubs:  offer programs we like, help us get a good workout now and then, keep the place clean, and we’ll be happy – even if we only come once a month. Incurvatus in se drives us to bind ourselves up with policies and constitutions so we can protect the institution that is the church.  Incurvatus in se is what makes us think that God is out to change the world into something that more closely resembles what we think it should be.  Incurvatus in se is wrong, wrong, wrong about all of these things, but most importantly about the last few.  The Gospel of Mark teaches us that God is indeed out to change the world, but not from the outside in.  Jesus says he has come to change us for the world – an inside-out change marked by death, humility, vulnerability and a self turned open to the world.  Jesus has come to open us up so that we might make the world better than it was four years ago.  Our Messiah, our Anointed One, the candidate we’ve expected for so long, will work from the inside out.  And he will start with the cross – for all of us. 

The best interpretation of what Jesus says here, in my mind, comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “[The cross] is laid on every Christian. …The cross is not the terrible end of a pious, happy life.  It stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.  [Every call of Christ leads into death.][1]  Whether we, like the first disciples, must leave house and vocation to follow him, or whether, with Luther, we leave the monastery for a secular vocation, in both cases the same death awaits us, namely, death in Jesus Christ, the death of our old self caused by the call of Jesus.”[2]  This is how it works to be a Christian.  Jesus never says, “Vote for me and I’ll put a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”  Jesus does say, “Take up your cross, deny yourself and follow me.”  In other words, stop worrying about whether you’re better off than you were four years ago, because you’re not.  You’re the same sinner you were then, and the same sinner you will be four years from now.  I didn’t come to make you better – I came to make you mine. 

            Do you know why we gather here this morning?  Do you know why we sing, why we pray, why we read and listen and speak?  Because our captivity to sin makes us turn in on ourselves without being regularly opened up by Jesus.  We live in a world that operates under the question of “What have you done for me lately?”  In a world like this, we need opening up.  We need a Messiah who changes us from the inside out.  We need to be reminded the cross is how God claims us and how we follow.  Dr. Don Juel said “Taking up your cross should be seen less as a project than as the character of discipleship.  We follow because we trust that God will complete what [God] has begun at our baptism…and if our vocation is to care for the neighbor, Luther insisted, we will not need to seek out suffering.  It will come routinely, as any parent will attest…Following Jesus will not involve a cross of our choosing – and it promises deliverance that is likewise not the result of any grand project.”

[3] 

            We gather to be opened up together because this way of following Jesus is hard on our own.  We gather together to confess, together, that we’re sinners in need of forgiveness.  We gather together because, on our own, we turn in on ourselves and forget there’s other people under the cross with us, doing our best to follow Jesus. 

            In this homestretch of election season, it’s easy to get swept up thinking your candidate is the one who can make things better than they were.  Maybe there’s some truth to it, but only in a limited sense and only for a limited time.  As the psalmist reminded us last week, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.  When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.”  That goes for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.  That goes for Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton.  That goes for Terry Branstad and Chet Culver, Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley, Christie Vilsack and Steve King and every candidate of every party in every state that has ever existed.  Their work is important - laudable - inspirational, but it has its limits.  Not a one of them is going to save the world – that contest has already taken place. God’s “anointed One” was a figure of great political and cultural power – and Jesus continues to challenge culture and politics even after his crucifixion and resurrection.  God’s victory through the “Messiah” was and continues to be marked by the triumphant rise of a free people who are no longer prisoners to tyranny – Jesus defeated the tyranny of our sinfulness, not the tyranny of governments.  And our Lord, who emerged victorious from that battle, is still at work, changing the world from the inside out through sinners like you and me.  Take up your cross, citizens of God’s kingdom.  Be opened to the world around you, and make it a better place.  God be with you all.  Amen.

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[1] This is an alternate translation offered in the footnotes of this text.  The original German text reads “Jeder Ruf Christi fährt in den Tod.”

[2] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich.  Discipleship. © XXXX by Augsburg Fortress Press.  p. XX

[3] Juel, Donald.  Word & World, Vol. XIV, No. 3, Summer 1994.  © Word & World, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.  p. 354

After Eleven Years: Nothing Has Changed / Everything Is Different

Eleven years ago this morning I drove from Titusville, FL to a church in some other town in the Space Coast Conference for our monthly Conference gathering, my first as an intern at Trinity Lutheran Church in Titusville and Sunrise Lutheran Church in Port St. John.  As we sat in the meeting, the senior pastor was called away around 10:00, and when he returned his face was white.  "Two planes hit the World Trade Center this morning," he said.  "I think we'd better get back home to our people."

In the blink of an eye, our world became different.  Families were torn apart by loss and grief.  We began to question everything.  That night, at a hastily arranged prayer service, Kris, my supervisor, said, "Today I'm ashamed to call myself a human being."  It remains one of the most profound sermons I've ever heard - an outpouring of grief and horror at what we do to ourselves, and at the same time, a desperate plea for God's grace and mercy to cover us all.

These eleven years have been hard years for most of us.  The obvious wounds are slow to heal:  those who lost friends and family in the attacks or in the wars we started in response.  The world seems a more dangerous place these days, as though every advance in communication and technology quickly becomes an avenue for violence and destruction.  My own litany of hard times includes divorce, death(s) and disillusionment after disillusionment.  One broken marriage, grandmothers and mentors gone to their rest, bitter church struggles and scraping by fueled by coffee and a prayer.

Maybe your story is similar. (Maybe I've been the one disappointing YOU - if so, please know I'm sorry, and I'm trying to do better).  Maybe you're like me tonight; reflecting on how the world has changed, and in so many ways for the worse.  If so, let me share another thought with you: the good has held on also, and the God who has created this world has not abandoned us to its tempest just yet.

I shudder to think of how different I was on 10 September 2001 - and how little of it I would trade for the wisdom I've gained through all the hard times since then.  I'm a better husband, better father, better son, better brother, better pastor.  Maybe it's just maturity, but it feels like more than that.  It feels like God has continued to mold and shape me, even in the many, many times I though God wasn't listening or acting at all.

Marty Haugen wrote O God, Why Are You Silent?, a new set of lyrics to Bach's Passion Chorale, rooted in the pain of these days.  For me, the final stanza is the clincher:

May pain draw forth compassion, let wisdom rise from loss;
oh, take my heart and fashion the image of your cross;
then, may I know your healing, through healing that I share,
your grace and love revealing your tenderness and care.

This morning I drove from Story City, Iowa to Bergen Lutheran Church in Roland for a gathering of the Riverside Conference clergy and lay leaders, my first as pastor of St. Petri Lutheran Church in Story City.  I am not the man I was eleven years ago this morning.  The world has changed, also.  But we're still gathering as God's people, still maturing, still growing in wisdom, and most of all, still being fashioned into the image of Christ crucified.  God who was and who is and who will be, bless us all.

Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost - "Sing a Better Song"

Preaching Text:  Ephesians 5.6-20

          I’d like to start this morning by doing something of a recap of where we’ve been these last five weeks in Ephesians, and not just for those of you who’ve had to miss a Sunday or two because of a wedding or vacation or whatever.  This has to do with the structure of this letter and what’s going on in it – the letter to the Ephesians is carefully constructed, built with definite intent to emphasize certain aspects of this church’s life together and what that says about the God who has made them one.  A review, then, of what we’ve seen and heard.

            In Ephesians 1 we talked about adoption, about what it means to be a people of God grafted onto the tree that was the Israelites from centuries ago.  We talked about what it would have been like to be a house church gathering to read a letter from our founding pastor, and how things would have been so very different in a culture where our faith in Jesus might have literally been dangerous for us and for our families. 

            In Ephesians 2 we talked about being a family of faith, bound together by blood – the blood of Jesus makes us one.  Both Kristin and I, when we preached on this chapter, lifted up the ELCA Youth Gathering as an example of how big and colorful this family of faith really is.  It’s much more than just our small gathering here in Story City on Sunday mornings: we are part of an international family that lives together in faith seven days a week.  Remember, we’re gumbo:  everyone belongs and everyone adds their own special flavor to the mix.  I was going to say we’re a potluck dinner, because I love potluck dinners, but that’s not good enough, really:  you can pick and choose what you like at a potluck, and that’s not what God is up to here.  God’s making gumbo:  it all goes in the pot together, and you can’t pick and choose what you like in this family of faith!

            In Ephesians 3 we talked about unlearning what we have learned about faith and life and how it all fits together.  I got to talk about Star Wars, which always makes me happy, but more importantly, Ephesians 3 reminds us that it is God who has triumphed over evil – the church gathers to celebrate that triumph.  We are not called to galaxies far, far away to battle the forces of darkness on God’s behalf.  God has already won the battle: we are called to lay down our lightsabers, to trust in God and live humbly and peacefully as God’s people after the war has been won.

            Last week, as we looked at Ephesians 4, we talked about the Olympics and what it means to be part of a global community of faith.  If you remember, the Olympics celebrates the best of what we hope to achieve, but at its best it is NOT about defeating your opponent.  Rather, we looked at those Olympic moments that celebrate the vitality, creativity and spirit we all share as members of the human race, gathered together in a gigantic, colorful community where old boundaries, divisions and hatreds can begin to be broken down.  For us, the church gathered, it is Christ who makes us one, who calls us all together to proclaim his victory over sin and death, and it happens every week in churches all over the world.

            This is where we’ve been in this letter to the church in Ephesus.  Here’s why it matters:  if you start with our reading from this morning, without everything that comes before it, you could easily turn this wonderful letter of love and adoption into a harsh demand for self-righteousness and exclusion.  It’s important to put the emphAHsis on the right sylLAble, as my choir director used to say – so we remind ourselves where we’ve been before we hear our reading this morning. 

This picture’s been floating around on Facebook this week.  (BONHOEFFER PIC)  As you all get to know me better as your pastor, you’ll come to hear a LOT about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but that’s not why this picture is important this morning.  It’s important because it illustrates both the danger and the opportunity present in our following of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If we pay too much attention to avoiding sin and evil, life becomes a never-ending game of Pac-Man:  make one wrong move and it’s all over.  One of my favorite illustrations of this comes from Father Robert Farrar Capon:

“If we are ever to enter fully into the glorious liberty of the children of God, we are going to have to spend more time thinking about freedom than we do.  The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom.  It has spent so much time inculcating in us fear of making mistakes that it has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our pieces, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music, but to avoid some flub that will get us in Dutch.  The church…has been so afraid we will lose sight of the laws of our nature that it has made us care more about how we look than about who we are—made us act more like the subjects of a police state than fellow citizens of the saints.

”..there is one thing we will need from here on out: to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home.  My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace.  Grace—the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors—makes all infirmities occasions of glory.”[1]

Well and good, Father Capon – but how do we get there from Ephesians 5?  How do we play the song right when the days are evil?  I sat over at the parsonage all afternoon on Friday, trying to figure out how I was going to get here.  If we’re not careful, we turn into exactly what Father Capon and Dr. Bonhoeffer warned us against:  the piano teacher with the ruler in her hand, ready to smack the knuckles of anyone who steps out of line.  That’s not living – that’s avoiding. 

            Thankfully, preachers never venture into the text alone, particularly if they can use the internet.  Every week I listen to a podcast from Luther Seminary called Sermon Brainwave, and when I’d finally had enough Friday afternoon, I went into the kitchen, queued up the podcast again and started making potato salad.  Finally, one sentence by Dr. Rolf Jacobsen brought it home for me:  “Sing a better song.”  Boom.  Sermon done.

            Sing a better song.  “Make the most of your time, for the days are evil.”  If we are going to live well as followers of Jesus Christ together, then it isn’t enough to just march through our lives saying, “Don’t do that.”  Wisdom does not come to those raised in a vacuum – wisdom comes from a life lived in the world.  Sing a better song.  It’s not enough for the church to become the disapproving nanny who traps her charges in their rooms and won’t let them out until they’ve eaten all their brussel sprouts – we are called to invite the world into something better than what they already know.  Sing a better song – and as we sing, teach the world to join in the song.

            This is why a recap of this letter to the Ephesians is so important:  we need to remember to keep things in order so we can sing with joy and without fear.  This letter starts with what God has done, and then moves to living with wisdom.  Those of us who’ve been in the church for a while often forget that it is God who brings us here, God who makes us one, God who calls us to sing with love.  Sing a better song.  Life in the darkness of sin and evil is not what we’re created for – but the world will not know it if all we do is point out what’s wrong.  Sing a better song.  God has made us one in Christ, adopted us into the great chorus of the saints.  We belong.  No evil can harm us.  No sin can take us out of God’s hands.  Even death itself cannot separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  Sing a better song.  Sing about what you love, about what God has done for you, about what God is up to in the world.  The very breath you breathe is a gift from God:  use it to make a joyful noise in thankfulness for what God has given you.  Sing a better song, about the family of faith God has brought together here, about the gumbo that is our church, and give thanks, people of God:  the very song you sing comes from God’s gracious love for you.  Amen.

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[1] Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law and the Outrage of Grace, p. 149

Sermon for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost: "Unlearn What You Have Learned"

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3.14-21

I'm a child of the 70s and 80s. I was raised on Star Wars as much as I was raised on Sesame Street, summer baseball and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. I had the action figures (don't you EVER call them dolls!). I was Darth Vader for Halloween at least once that I can remember. My grandfather's Gleaner combine made for a pretty cool Millenium Falcon more than once. And if all that Star Wars taught me one thing, it was this: the "Force" is the power that connects all life, but it is also a tool to be wielded by good Jedi and evil Sith alike. Luke Skywalker stands on the edge of a knife: either he'll follow Yoda and Ben Kenobi to the light side of the Force and become a Jedi, or he'll fall to the dark side like his father. There is no middle ground, and it is all up to Luke.

One of the great scenes in all of cinema (at least, in MY mind) is in the middle of the movie The Empire Strikes Back. Luke Skywalker lands on the swamp planet Dagobah and mistakes the Jedi Master Yoda for a common swamp rat. As Luke sits and complains, loudly, about wasting his time eating soup when he could be looking for the great warrior he was expecting, Yoda looks to the heavens and says, "I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience." Later he says, "You must unlearn what you have learned."

I've had some unlearning of my own to do as a result of everything George Lucas created in those glorious years of my childhood. We all want life to be as dark and light as the Force, where evil and good stand in stark contrast to each other. But it just doesn't work. The bad guys in our lives, such as they are, don't come in black capes and breathing masks. The disheartening truth is that most of us, even the folks we don't like very much, are quite often trying to be as good as we can be without screwing up too much or making life too uncomfortable.

The thing that I've REALLY had to unlearn, though, is this: the thing that connects us all, the power from which all life draws its life, is not a tool to be used for good or evil - it is much, much, much bigger than anything our minds can imagine. It is this power to whom the writer prays in Ephesians 3, but it is not a prayer for unlearning: it is, it seems, a prayer for death and life.

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father," writes this unknown apostle. There's a definite statement being made here. Kneeling was not a mark of piety or a recommended position for prayer - most people prayed standing up in those times. Kneeling was a stance of submission, of death to self. You knelt before kings and lords and masters, humbling yourself and placing yourself in the hands of the one you addressed. In the New Testament, Jesus and Stephen are depicted as kneeling - just before they are killed. So when the writer of Ephesians writes that he is "kneeling in prayer" for the church in Ephesus, he's not just asking God to bless them; he's acknowledging his death that God may live through him. Any time we kneel to pray, we say the exact same thing - maybe we should kneel more often?

Kneeling in prayer - asking for glory. The apostle dies to himself that God might live more fully through him, and the apostle prays the same for his friends in Ephesus. Riches - of God's glory. Inner strength - with power through the Spirit. Faithful hearts - in which Christ dwells, rooting and grounding his servants in love. Power - to comprehend the unknowable love of Christ. These things do not come to those for whom God is a tool - these things come to those for whom God is everything. There is no room for anything but God in this prayer - so the author kneels in prayer and places his life and the life of his readers in the hands of the living God.

This is not a prayer for his readers to overcome evil, to dare great things, to leave the dusty sands of Tatooine behind and join the Rebel Alliance in their fight against the evil Galactic Empire. There's no lightsaber waiting at the end of the prayer, no blaster pistol, no X-Wing. It's actually the exact opposite: this is a prayer for emptiness and death to the dreams we might dream so that the fullness of God's dream might be realized in us. How that dream gets realized comes later - what the author is about here is one thing: the glory of God made manifest in the ordinary lives of the people gathered to hear this letter. And even though we don't live in Ephesus, the point of the letter still stands: the prayer goes out for all of us, that we might be filled to overflowing with the fulness of God so that God's glory might shine through us.

Here comes our unlearning: we need to unlearn what we've taught ourselves about life, faith and the God who gives us both. You see what we believe about life and faith all over the place if you know how to look for it. Drive down any highway in Iowa and you'll eventually come across billboards that paint clear pictures of good and evil in the eyes of those who put the signs up. Chick-Fil-A announces they've taken a political stand, and the CEO of amazon.com answers with one of his own. We look for churches that offer the programs and staff that meet our expectations of what faith should be.

This is not a new development. Way back in the days of the Reformation, it is rumored that even as he was translating scripture into the language of the people, Martin Luther said "individual interpretation of the Bible allows each man to carve his own path to hell." Simply put, faithful Christian life does not begin with what we do with what God has given us: faithful Christian life begins when God puts us to death in our sins so that we can be raised again in love. There is a time and a place to talk about the moral considerations of the day - but that is a secondary thing. The first thing is this: God. Before all things: God. Within all things: God. Above all things: God. The maker of all things: God. The redeemer of all things: God. The sustainer of all things: God.

So it's time to unlearn what it means to be a member of this family of faith. Dr. Pheme Perkins writes, "Ephesians does recognize the existence of evil forces in the cosmos that are defeated by God. (2.2 6.12) The existence of the church serves as evidence of God's power over evil. The teaching of individuals in the church is not a contest against mythological powers." (The New Interpreter's Bible: Ephesians, (c) 2000 by Abingdon Press, Nashvilli. P. 410) We're not playing at Star Wars here. You are not the Jedi, engaged in a centuries-long battle against the forces of evil. That co-worker you can't stand doesn't wear a black cape and carry a red lightsaber. Whatever your political outlook may be, rest assured: the other party's candidate is not Emperor Palpatine. This kind of thinking ought to serve as a warning for us: Anne Lamott says “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Time to listen to the author of the letter to the Ephesians again, to hear this message: we are here because of and for the glory of God - and if this isn't the first thing, everything else is nothing. All that we are - all that we have - all that was, is and ever will be comes from the gracious, loving, live-giving hand of God. Once we've unlearned what we have learned, been brought to death and then to new life in Jesus, the only thing left to do is sing praises. Amen.

Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost - "A Family of Faith"

Preaching Text:

Ephesians 2:11-22 11So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision” —a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— 12remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 15He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 17So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

It's been a great week to be a member of the ELCA, particularly if you're at all familiar with social media like Twitter and Facebook. The nine kids we blessed last Sunday are now coming home from New Orleans, where they've been, frankly, a disrupting, overwhelming presence all week. Kristin's going to take this time next week to tell you more about their experience. I'm going to take this time together to set up what she'll be talking about next week. I think. :-)

The theme for this gathering is "Citizens with the Saints," which you'll recognize from the Ephesians reading for today. I'm sure that's not a coincidence. It works for New Orleans, not just as an homage to the football team, but to the long religious history of the city and its people. Besides, if we listen closely to Ephesians, we see that the writer is beginning to re-define what it means to be a saint.

The point the writer is making is obvious: the Gentiles in Ephesus who were once cut off from the family of God have been adopted, brought in, made members of the household with all its rights and responsibilities. Quite an argument being made here. A new reality was beginning to reveal itself in the church of that day. The outcasts have been brought into the fold. The aliens have been made part of the family.

One of the reasons I love the week of the ELCA National Youth Gathering is you get to see the wide variety of people who make up our church. You see people like Nadia Bolz-Weber, a tall, blunt, tattooed recovering alcoholic who might be leading one of the most interesting urban worship centers in our church. You see Mark Hanson, our Presiding Bishop, who Paul might describe as "a Lutheran among Lutherans," trying out his new Twitter account with 38,000 kids watching his every move. Kids from Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas, which still boast the densest Lutherans in the country, meet Lutherans from California, Florida, Mississippi, New York, Washington and places unknown. Lutherans who look, speak and act exactly like any kid you'd see on the street in Story City, and Lutherans who would stand out as much here as any of us would if we visited them where they live. This year, the ever-growing presence of social media means you can watch it happen instead of waiting to hear about it when our kids get home. It shows us, again, what a big family we really are.

But you knew that already, didn't you. You'd just forgotten it because, let's face it, it's easy to let our vision stay small in one parish in one town in the center of the central U.S. Besides that, we've got enough to deal with in our own family of faith here, don't we? That's the problem with families, isn't it? From the outside, from the wide perspective, it's easy to see how we all belong to each other. We're tall, or short; blondes or redheads. We can sing, or dance, or play sports. When we get together for those big family events, like weddings or baptisms or anniversaries, graduations, funerals, we all laugh and check in with each other and do our best to get along well. But get inside our families, to where the secrets lie, and do you know what? We've got an awful lot of stuff to deal with - every last one of us. Maybe Dad's got a temper that needs work, or Mom is taking out her job frustrations on her kids. It could be kids getting bad grades, or a grandparent falling under the power of Alzheimer's. Whatever it is, it's hard to see those things when we're getting together for big family stuff. Coming together with widespread family is usually a cause for celebration: in those moments, being together overwhelms the struggles and sins that dog us when we're back home.

 How would you define a "good" family? Healthy marriage? Good kids? Lots of laughter and love? I think those things are important, but I would argue that they're byproducts of something much more important: loving faithfulness. In the case of our real-life families, I would argue that the trust and peace that comes with knowing you are loved and will be loved no matter what makes everything else possible. I would also argue that the one thing all families have in common is this: we all try to love each other as best as we can, and we all find a lot of ways to fall short.

What happened in New Orleans this week was a big family get-together. But here at St. Petri, we live at home. We are a family of faith. We know the ways we've fallen short of being a good family. We know we've tried, and failed, and tried again. We are a family of faith. Some of us have been here for generations. Some of us are, as Ephesians says, adopted into this family and now members of the household. We are a family of faith. That means we're in the thick of things. We know what's in the closets (for the most part). And, I believe, we are called to the same loving faithfulness with each other as we are in our biological and sociological families at home. We are called to love and be loved no matter what. We are a family of faith.

What got me thinking along these lines was something Professor Sally Brown of Princeton University wrote about this reading from Ephesians: "The new household of God is not a purely spiritual reality that we visit briefly on Sundays -- a weekly "time out" in which we pretend peace is possible by sitting next to people we scrupulously avoid the rest of the time. The church is the daring practice of a new politics -- a different kind of power, the self-outpoured, boundary-crossing power of Christ's cross. We trust this power, letting it undermine every wall, until we are "built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God" (verse 22)."

Most of our families are bound together by blood: we are parents and children and brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts and grandparents because we share the same bloodline. Folks, this family of faith is also bound together by blood, but it isn't our blood that does it. "But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. Jesus has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity..."

Jesus himself is our peace and the bond that makes us a family of faith. Not our constitution or our building. Not the organ or the praise band. Not the pastor and not the Council president. Not VBS, or quilters, or the choir, or confirmation. We aren't a family of faith because we've got people with tattoos sitting next to people who don't, although that's a good sign. We aren't a family of faith because we've welcomed new members and put their gifts to good use, although that's a good sign, too. We are a family of faith because Jesus has made us a family of faith.

If you've been following the news from New Orleans this week, you know that the gathering going on in the LutherDome has been a pretty fantastic celebration of our family. But now all those kids are heading back home, coming back to their families of faith. They're coming home to the local family God has planted where they live, the family that is one in Christ and gathered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim God's abundant grace and love. They are the saints come marching in, and we are the citizens welcoming them home. Thanks be to God that we have this family of faith - and help us, good and gracious Lord, to love one another in our family as you have loved us. Amen.

Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday - "God Is Already Here"

Preaching Texts

            Hearers of God’s Word, grace and peace to you from God the Creator, Jesus Christ our Redeemer, and God the Holy Spirit, active here in our midst this morning.  Amen. 

            One of the names you’ll hear a lot from me over the next few years is Larry Meyer.  Larry was my campus pastor, mentor and friend.  He died after a long battle with esophageal cancer in 2005.  I graduated from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln in 1998, but instead of enrolling in seminary straightaway, I decided to take a year off and work.  Larry knew my plans and made some of his own – when the seminary which had supplied our campus ministry with interns came up short for the coming year, Larry asked me to come on staff and work full time for campus ministry until I enrolled in seminary.

            One of the first things Larry asked me to do was write a fundraising letter to parents, friends, alumni and other supporters.  I don’t remember much of what I wrote, except for one sentence.  Originally it was something to the tune of “you are helping us bring Jesus to campus.”  When Larry and I sat down to go over it, he said, “We aren’t bringing Jesus to campus.  God is already here.  Our work is to find where God is already at work.” 

            Today is Trinity Sunday.  It is, according to theologian Mary Anderson, “the only Sunday that asks us to ponder a teaching of the church instead of a teaching of Jesus.”  You won’t find an explicit reference to the Trinity in the Bible, at least not in any way that establishes Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a doctrinal, dogmatic way.  Trinity is not God’s thing for us – it’s our thing for God.  In other words, just like Larry said, God is already here.  Trinity is just the way we try to wrap our heads around who God is and how God is already at work. 

            Trinity Sunday is not something God needs.  God does not descend from on high with an order: “Every year thou shalt devote one Sunday to the pondering of trinitarian theology.”  Honestly, I think God couldn’t care less about whether or not we have an intellectual grasp of what “the Trinity” means, because claiming you’ve got God figured out if you can wrap your head around the Trinity is like claiming you’ve seen the whole ocean once you’ve scooped up some seawater in a glass.  It might seem like a silly distinction, but it’s important: God is beyond our comprehension.  God is bigger than anything we can conceptualize.  In an age where instant communication across the globe is possible, where we’ve split the atom and sequenced DNA, we tend to think of God as just one more piece of information to be processed, understood and tucked away for when we need it.  If we’re not careful, we can turn God into just another being, just one more person we have to keep satisfied as we go our way through this life.  This will not do at all.  The great 20^th century theologian Paul Tillich said,

“God does not exist. [God] is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny [God]…We can no longer speak of God easily to anybody, because he will immediately question: “Does God exist?” Now the very asking of that question signifies that the symbols of God have become meaningless. For God, in the question, has become one of the innumerable objects in time and space which may or may not exist. And this is not the meaning of God at all.”[1]

Spend too much time thinking intellectually about theology, about the Trinity, about the concept of God, and you wind up losing the wonder of the experience of God.  It gets banal.  Ritual for its own sake.  It might look something like this:

            Compare this ‘prayer’ with what Dr. Rolf Jacobson has to say about the Isaiah.  How many of you have always thought of the angels song as heavenly, a beautiful hymn to a God they love?  Not Dr. Jacobson.  He reads it far differently.  He says the angels are crying out in agony and ecstasy, delirious and terrified at being so close to God’s unmediated holiness.  The hem of God’s robe fills the temple.  The great doors shudder at the thunder of God’s voice.  Smoke and fire fill the air.  The Source of all that is, was, and ever will be is here, the Being who knows you down to the very first sub-atomic particle – you stand exposed before Being itself.  Would you not also cry out, “Woe is me!”

            So, in the face of this, our insistence on a Trinity Sunday seems trite at best, utterly banal at worst.  Except that it isn’t trite at all.  Trinity matters because that same Being in the throne room has revealed itself to us through a Trinitarian means.  Two thousand years ago, the Being whose robe filled the temple took on flesh and bone and came to dwell among us in Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus walked into the darkness where we hide from the holiness of God the Creator, bearing His holy light in humility and love.  Jesus of Nazareth is Emmanu-el, “God-with-us,” and in this way God loves the world and reveals himself to us.  And not only this, but our very belief in this same Jesus of Nazareth comes through the work of God the Holy Spirit, the one under whose power we can actually call ourselves children of God.  We Lutherans have a particular love for the Trinity because without the work of the Holy Spirit, we cannot come to faith at all:

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with [Its] gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as [It} calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian Church [the Spirit] forgives daily and richly all sins to me and all believers, and at the last day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give to me and to all believers in Christ everlasting life. This is most certainly true.[2]

You are not here by coincidence.  God has been at work all along; calling, gathering, enlightening and sanctifying here, now, in this place, for this time.  The Trinity matters here and now – not as some doctrinal proposition or theological checklist to be marked off so you can go to heaven when you die, but for this day and life that you’ve been given.  The gospel reading for this morning tells us that God is already at work here:

Nicodemus said, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."  ³Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Nicodemus saw it, even though he didn’t understand it.  He knew God was working through Jesus, and Jesus confirmed what Nicodemus saw – “You wouldn’t have seen the kingdom of God at work in me without God showing it to you, Nicodemus.”  The Spirit shines the spotlight on Jesus, “God-with-us” who bears all the holiness of Existence itself in his human flesh and bone.  Trinity is how we understand that God is already here.  Our work is to reveal what God is doing in our world. 

            My prayer as we start this journey together is that we might always be looking for ways God is already at work.  It will mean seeing things in a new way, breaking free of what we think God ought to be doing so we can see if that’s really what God is doing.  God is already here.  The Creator continues to make all things new.  Jesus our Redeemer fills the world with his love and mercy.  The Spirit moves and blows the Breath of Life within us, creating faith where there was none before.  God is already here.  Let’s begin by looking for what God is doing in our world, together, and may the peace of God, which truly surpasses all our human understanding, keep our hearts and minds, this day and always.  Amen.

---

[1] Armstrong, Karen (2009-09-11). The Case for God (p. 282). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

[2] http://bookofconcord.org/smallcatechism.php#creed [bracketed edits mine]

Friday Five: Summer Edition

In my neck of the woods folks who have children of a certain age are doing a dead sprint through end of school year activities: piano recitals, baseball tournaments, travel soccer games, gymnastics meets, dance recitals, graduations, band concerts, field trips and end-of-the year fill in the blank.

When Did You Realize You Were Lutheran?

I enrolled at Luther Seminary in August 1999.  I'd love to say that, upon discerning my call to ministry, I was a Lutheran through and through.  I certainly thought of myself as Lutheran.  I was born and raised in this tradition.  My ancestors come from Sweden and Germany, staunch Lutherans all (even if my parents' marriage was "mixed" between Augustana and Missouri Synod families).  I planned to follow my vocational calling in the ELCA, and aside from briefly investigating the groups breaking out after the passage of Called to Common Mission, I've never wavered from that plan.  But these things meant I was a person of faith by circumstance, not conviction.  That came later.

In my classes with Jim Nestingen and Gerhard Forde, I began to understand what it meant to be Lutheran by conviction.  Upon reading Forde's article "Caught in the Act," and then his book On Being a Theologian of the Cross, a whole new theological world was opened to me.  It was in those months of study in spring 2000 that I became Lutheran by conviction.  I realized that not only was I Lutheran because my parents had raised me that way, but the teachings of our church and the theological viewpoints of Luther, Melanchthon and other reformers made sense to me.  When I really started to dig into Lutheran theology, I discovered an interpretation of God's creation and our place in it that seemed to fit what I saw all around me.  This is how and when I realized I had been fortunate enough to be raised in the faith tradition that closely reflected the way the Spirit was showing me the world as it was.  I felt swept up into an understanding of faith and life that included

• Our utter dependence on God for life and faith.  
• A fresh understanding of "I believe I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in my Lord Jesus Christ or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me with the gospel, enlightened me with its gifts, sanctifies and keeps me in the Christian faith..."  
• When God says "You shall have no other gods before me," it's as much a promise and statement of fact as it is a demand (possibly more promise than demand).
• We live in dialectical tension all of our lives:
• simultaneously sinners and saints
• God's kingdom already/not yet here
• Christian freedom, in which we are perfectly free lords of all, subject to none/perfectly dutiful slaves of all, subject to all
• being saved by grace by faith, apart from works of the law / faith without works not being true faith
• Baptism drowning the old sinner in us, putting us to death in our sins, that God might raise a new saint to live and serve daily in Christ's name

This is the Lutheranism with which I fell in love in those heady years.  It is the way I continue to interpret the world God has created, the lens through which I see my life and the lives of the people I serve as pastor. It is more than a label, more than a construct or group.  It is, at its core, who I am.

This is not to say that everything fell into place in those times.  I still struggle with what this all means.  And there are a plethora of Lutheran lenses through which we can look at the world - within our own ELCA, we have some serious disagreements on a host of issues, to say nothing of the breaches between this branch of the Lutheran tree and other branches like the LCMS, WELS, LCMC, NALC and all the other bodies out there.

So I'll ask the same question of you:  when did you realize that "Lutheran" was more than the name on the sign outside your church building?  Who or what helped you realize that "Lutheran" made more sense than any other faith?  Or, are you still figuring out that part of your faith?  (Note:  this does not mean you're not welcome at any Lutheran church, particularly the one I happen to serve.  By all means, come with questions.  If you're not asking questions, you're not growing in your faith, either!)  If you're reading this from another faith perspective, when did that one start to make sense to you? 

We are all called to be proclaimers of the good news, by whatever means we have at our disposal.  But this means we're called to understand at least a little bit about what that good news is for us, where we are, in our own lives.  Take a moment and think about what it is that has made you the person of faith that you are - and share a bit about it if you will.  The better we are at telling our own stories, the better we will be able to see where God has been weaving us into the Story that is creation itself.

Blessings to you all,
Pastor Scott

New Starts

These are the bookshelves in my office at University Lutheran Center today.  In two days, I'll begin a new call at St. Petri Lutheran Church in Story City, Iowa.  Seems a good time to get a fresh start here as well.

There are a lot of reasons why I haven't been posting regularly over the past two years.  Most of them have to do with time: I simply haven't had much free.  Some others I won't bring up here.  I've learned a lot about ministry since about December of 2009, and much of it has been the kind of wisdom that comes from challenging circumstances. What I'm going to try to focus on in this new start is how to handle those challenging circumstances better as a minister of the gospel, leader of a congregation and child of God.  That we are broken and make mistakes should surprise no one anymore.  The problems rise, from what I've seen, when we compound those mistakes by additional misbehavior.  Humility, kindness, patience, humor, a healthy dose of self-deprecation, teamwork, and joy: these are the traits I believe every faith community must have if it is to survive into whatever is coming next for the church.  So these are also the traits I need to develop more fully in myself and in those to whom I minister.

I leave this current adventure with joy and sadness.  There have been some wonderful, wonderful moments of ministry here.  I think on the whole I've done good work.  But we could have done more, and I've been trying to reflect on why we didn't and where I'm called to change to be better in the future.  But regardless of our mistakes, I believe we've been as faithful as we knew how to be, and there's not much more anyone can ask.  That's the mission going forward as well: to be faithful to the future God has in store for us.  Please pray for me and for the members of our new church as we set out together!

Peace,
Scott

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Easter - "Hunger and Nourishment" (Bread for the World Offering of Letters)

Tonight our Lutheran Campus Ministry was joined by a local Bread for the World group inviting us to take part in the 2012 Bread for the World Offering of Letters.  So, fortuitously, the gospel reading addressed eating and community.  Sometimes pastors get lucky like that.  

Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Easter - To Be a Child of the Light

            You know this song – sing it with me:

                        I just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAA.

                        I just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAA.

                        I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

                        I just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAAA.

            What if we wrote a verse about Thomas?  Would it go like this?

                        Don’t wanna be a doubting Thomas.

                        Don’t wanna be a doubting Thomas.

                        Don’t wanna be such a total wuss.

                        I just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAA.

           

More than a Sentence

In addition to being Holy Week, last week saw the annual publication of articles from major newsweekly magazines addressing faith, the church, God, etc.  Andrew Sullivan's piece for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, "Christianity in Crisis," was a valuable contribution to the conversation about the end of Christendom and the new reality in which we who profess faith in Jesus find ourselves.  But I was dismayed by one sentence in particular: 

 For their part, the mainline Protestant churches, which long promoted religious moderation, have rapidly declined in the past 50 years. 

Sermon for Good Friday - "Behold the Life-Giving Cross"

O sacred head, now wounded,

with grief and shame weighed down,

now scornfully surrounded

with thorns, thine only crown;

O sacred head, what glory,

what bliss till now was thine!

Yet, though despised and gory,

I joy to call thee mine.

Sermon for Palm Sunday: Caught In The Act

Mark 12:1–34, 14.1-2

Jesus spoke to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the winepress, and built a tower. Then he rented it to tenant farmers and took a trip. ² When it was time, he sent a servant to collect from the tenants his share of the fruit of the vineyard. ³ But they grabbed the servant, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ Again the landowner sent another servant to them, but they struck him on the head and treated him disgracefully. ⁵ He sent another one; that one they killed. The landlord sent many other servants, but the tenants beat some and killed others. ⁶ Now the landowner had one son whom he loved dearly. He sent him last, thinking, They will respect my son. ⁷ But those tenant farmers said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ⁸ They grabbed him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

⁹ “ So what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰ Haven’t you read this scripture, The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ¹¹ The Lord has done this, and it’s amazing in our eyes? ”

¹² They wanted to arrest Jesus because they knew that he had told the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away.

Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent - "Bearing the Light"

            Let us pray:  God of light, you reveal all that we are, and we choose darkness.  You would love and redeem us, but we choose the false security of the lies we believe about ourselves.  Draw us to Your light.  Put us to death in our lies, and raise us up in truth, made new in the blaze of your glorious love.  Amen.

           

Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent: "Baptized for the World that Is

We celebrate a baptism today!  [Name] receives the gift of baptism tonight.  Baptism is water joined with God’s promise, connected to the story of the flood by our reading from 1^st Peter.  God is making a promise to [Name] tonight, a promise we are privileged to witness and which we will be pledged to support and cherish.  But this is not a safe, lovely promise of fuzzy rainbows, clouds and happy little cartoon Bible people.  God’s promise in baptism is perhaps best seen in what happens in our reading from Mark:  Jesus is baptized, and then is driven out into the wilderness.  When God claims us in baptism, God isn’t just inoculating us for the life to come: God is claiming us for the world that IS, now, a life in this time, in this world.  Baptism claims all of us into a covenant of steadfast love, God’s promise to God to have mercy, to forgive, to heal and to send us back out into the wilderness where the wild beasts live. 

An Evening with Shane Claiborne

 Tonight I had the rare privilege of meeting and listening to Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistable Revolution, Jesus for President and Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.  Here, posted without comment, are some of the many noteworthy things said throughout the evening.  What a night!

"This country spends $20,000 every second on war. Don't you think that's a little messed up?"

"We're gonna stop complaining about the church that we see and start becoming the church we dream of."

Quoting a judge who ruled in favor of The Simple Way against the City of Philadelphia: "If it weren't for people who broke the bad laws, we'd still have slavery."

"Everything in the world is going to push you away from suffering."

"How do we re-imagine our lives in the light of pain and suffering?"

[American soldiers in Iraq, asking why their Christian Peacemaker Team would want to go into Iraq to visit friends]: "No one crosses this border without a gun in their hands." [Response]: "Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it?"

Quoting Tertullian, "When Jesus disarmed Peter [at the garden of Gethsemane], he disarmed every Christian."

.

Happily Weary, Ready for Rest

http://www.imagesbyjasonandtonja.com/

This seems to be the picture of a pretty happy guy.  Thankfully these days I'm the one who gets to be that guy in the picture.

"Half a Mile a Day"

So, worship at University Lutheran Center last night was stumbling, to put it kindest.  Halting singing - unfamiliar hymns - a discombobulated delivery of the sermon - there was a general feeling of unsteadiness to the entire affair.  I say this not to denigrate our musicians, the students or myself, but just to acknowledge what was there.  As one community member put it afterwards, "Worship isn't a 'performance' but every performer knows that some nights you're just off - it happens in churches, too."

Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany - "By Whose Authority?"

            A few years ago, my brother and his wife gave me a Stephen King book on tape for Christmas.  It was an early Stephen King book, so it’s got all the subtlety of a freight train; he goes straight for the throat with blood, guts, nightmares and boogeymen.  One of the stories involves a machine at a commercial laundry that is possessed.  The main characters try to drive out the demon in “The Mangler” without success, mostly because they don’t know the kind of demon they’ve got on their hands. 

Friday Five: Odds and Ends

Sally from RevGalBlogPals has had a crazy week. Just like all of us, I suppose.  :-)  She asks what, in the past week, has:

1. Inspired you

2. Challenged you

3. Made you smile

4. Made you cross/ made you want to weep

5.Kept you going?

To Ainsley, the Day AFTER Your Fifth Birthday

Sermon for the 1st Sunday after Christmas - "At the Name of Jesus"

Simeon said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant go in peace…for my eyes have seen your salvation…”  What did Simeon see?  How is it that Simeon knew, in one instant, that something of God was at hand?

Today is the first day of a new year.  Sure, in cosmic terms there’s little difference between yesterday and today, but we begin the new year in hope all the same.  What do we see?  What are your hopes?  Your fears?  Where might God meet those hopes and fears in this place, at this time, in this life you’re living?

Random: Posting a Friday Five

One possible way to get back to more regular posting is to use the memes like I had done in the past.  One of my favorites was the Friday Five at RevGalBlogPals - which is just random this week.  Count me in!

1.  I might actually reach my goal of 50 books read/heard/digested this year, if I work particularly hard over the next few weeks.  Unfortunately, some of the books on my upcoming "to read" list are rather thick, but they aren't particularly taxing, so we'll see if I get it done or not.  This year 50, next year 60, right?  In the next few weeks I'm going to go through my book list for the year and give short reviews of everything I've read - hopefully I'll get through it all before New Year's Day.

2.  The past few months have been pretty rough in the exercise department.  It's hard to find the energy when you're only getting 5-6 hours of sleep per night, but I don't know any other way to do what I need to do in a day.  Here's hoping sometime soon I can look back on the past few months as one of those "it was rough but we lived through it" times in our life.  At any rate, I'm back up to "hefty" size right now.  I'm hoping to drop five pounds in the next month by choosing my moments for holiday splurging wisely.  Task #1 on that list will be getting all the leftover cookies from last night's Open House out of the kitchen, right?

3.  I had a lovely hour reading by the fireplace at the Lutheran Center this morning, even if it did get interrupted a couple of times.  I haven't had time to sit and read at work in a long, long time, but there was time and a need for it today.  Hopefully I'll find some time to do more of it after finals week.

4.  Ainsley will be 5 in January.  That just doesn't seem possible.

5.  Alanna has to have her tonsils and adenoids removed on the 23rd of December.  On the good side, at least we get it in this year and insurance should cover most of the cost.  On the bad side, that means no trip back to Nebraska for the holidays.  After our wonderful Thanksgiving in Oregon on vacation, we were looking forward to quality time with the other half of the family for Christmas.  Here's hoping we get back sometime soon!

2011 Book List: December Update

Pretty much my idea of a perfect day.

For those with rambunctious children in church, let us pray to the Lord: Lord, have mercy.

My earliest memories of church revolve around two things.  I was four when the Lutheran Book of Worship was published, so I remember the old, worn red Service Book and Hymnal giving way to the new green book.  I think I learned to read going to worship with my family.  I know I learned to sing in church.  I remember standing and singing, first on the pew, then at my parents' side, holding the book and saying the creeds, the Lord's Prayer, the wonderful hymns.  Earth and All Stars!, Children of the Heavenly Father; Love Divine; All Loves Excelling; these are some of my happiest early memories.  That's the one thing I remember.  The other?  Being regularly dragged out of church by my parents for misbehaving.  Dreading Sunday mornings and getting dressed up, knowing at some point I would be in trouble.  Not wanting to go to church at all.

See this?  This is not my child.  Not even a little bit.

Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost - "Having Nothing and Having Everything"

I have to make a confession: I really, really don’t like this parable. This story of the three slaves and their master raises as many questions as it answers. The profit-seekers walk away righteous and the one who plays it safe is cast out of his master’s house. There is nowhere to hide in this parable: the master is as harsh as he seems, the prudent slave is punished, and the rich get richer. But perhaps this is a chance for us to think about what we have and what we do not, and how our fears, prejudices and trust can shape the life we live. Let us pray: Heavenly Father, the life you’ve given us is one of uncertainty. We don’t know if we’ve been given seventy more years or seven. We can’t see to the end of the day, much less the end of time itself. But we know that you have blessed us with gifts beyond believing, and we ask you to help us number our days in wisdom and trust. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Why We SHOULD Celebrate Reformation Sunday

It's Reformation Sunday this week in Protestant circles, which for us Lutherans means we're into the season of questioning the benefit of the thing.  One particularly well-stated article was posted by Clint Schnekloth at LivingLutheran.com:

As it stands, Reformation Sunday is the only Sunday of the entire church year that commemorates a moment in the history of Christianity rather than a moment in the narrative of Scripture itself. It is elevated and idealized precisely because it is so unique. This needs to stop.

Creative Morality: A Non-Ideal Kingdom - Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost

There’s a quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck:  “If you like laws and sausage, you should never watch either being made.”  I will add one exception to the rule:  when it’s God who is creating, it’s always a good idea to watch carefully.  Let us pray:  Lord, you give commandments and we ask Your power to obey.  Create Your will in our hearts, that we may love what you love, serve those whom you would have us serve, and live forever under Your reign.  In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost: "Who Do You Play For?"

            In our reading from the gospel of Matthew today, there’s a question that goes unasked and unanswered.  The fact that we don’t ask it shows that this parable was, is and always will be about us.  The answer, when we finally have the eyes to see it, reshapes everything.