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.