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. 

Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost - L20A - "Unfairly Loved by an Unpredictable God"

Preaching Texts

            My friend Brittany and I had a funny little Twitter exchange this week.  First she said something about “another 14 hour work day” (she’s an English teacher and they’re in the midst of their first round of parent-teacher conferences).  I replied “you get summers off – kwitcherbitchin – sez the guy who works one hour per week.”  And just like that we were off to the races.  She told me I could do her conferences for her if I liked, and I told her if I did they’d be a lot shorter and to the point: “Your kid rocks/Your kid sucks.”  She said she didn’t know many pastors who’d be satisfied saying things in one sentence when an entire paragraph would do. 

So... Um... yeah...

Been a while.  I know.

2011 Book List - September Update

Pretty much my idea of a perfect day.

To Walk the Lonesome Valley - But By Ourselves?

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."  Matthew 16.24

I have always loved this spiritual - but today I wonder if its message is entirely correct.

A Day at the Iowa State Fair

This is what our most recent family trip looked like.  My goodness, it's been a while since we've gone and done a day for just the four of us.  What a wonderful time we had.

We disembarked for the Iowa State Fair at 8:30ish yesterday morning, returned in the late afternoon and watched a little TV together before bath, books, prayers and bed.  Many, many pictures follow.

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?