Beyond--Way Beyond!--Wishful Thinking

Let us pray:   Almighty God, your Son came into the world to free us all from sin and death.  Breathe upon us the power of your Spirit, that we may be raised to new life in Christ and serve you in righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.   Amen.

Devotional Reflection for Lent 5

Ezekiel 37:1-14 and John 11:1-45

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Earlier this week I was part of a prayer group in which we were asked to share a word that describes how we’re doing.

When my turn came, I said that I was feeling “sobered”—sobered by how heavy this whole pandemic is feeling.

One of the things I’ve found especially sobering is that little “death ticker” in the upper right hand corner of our TV screens during the news networks non-stop coverage of the pandemic.   That “death ticker” reminds me of another “death ticker” that I saw decades ago while watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS nightly news, during the war in Viet Nam.

That old death ticker is back, because another “war” is being fought—this time a war we’re waging with a viral disease—a war that’s taking its inexorable toll, day by day.

With our eyes glued to all our electronic screens, we grimly watch the fatal numbers go up--reminding us of both the magnitude and the tragedy of each victim’s death.

So as we approach the Fifth Sunday in Lent, we “sobered ones” really could use a respite, a break from death….

…and yet as weary as we are of dealing with death, our scripture lessons seem (at first) to grab us and force us to stare right into the jaws of death again.

So, in our reading from Ezekiel we witness the aftermath of the mass destruction that Israel as a nation experienced in exile.   And that aftermath is deeply haunting…because Ezekiel shows us a valley of human bones, very dry bones, “dead as a doornail” bones—bones far past any reasonable hope of living again.   

Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones impresses upon us the enormous magnitude of death…

….and our gospel reading from John 11 exposes the wrenching tragedy of each and every death.

For this is the story of just one dead man, Lazarus, beloved by those closest to him including Jesus—who is so overcome by grief that he joins the other mourners bewailing their loss.

As if you and I weren’t already sobered by the relentlessly rising death toll of this global pandemic….today’s scripture lessons force us to look again at realities we’re weary of seeing.

If we had our druthers, we’d opt for some wishful thinking….about the possibility that this whole thing could be over soon, with life returned back to normal—maybe even by Easter….

….but wishful thinking will not take us where we need to go…and God—out of love for us—will not let us take any shortcuts to the happy ending we long for.

These two scripture lessons show us no easy escapes from death.   Rather, these lessons draw us to look deeply into all that’s happening to us….just as the prophet Ezekiel looked deeply into the death valley right before him…just as Jesus insisted on grieving with all the other mourners near Lazarus’s tomb.

And here—precisely here—is where biblical wisdom diverges from our temptation to embrace wishful thinking….for in addition to making us take the full measure of death’s awful presence in our lives….these stories also point us beyond this present moment, by opening up for us a vision of God’s promised future.

In the valley of the dry bones…and centuries later in Bethany’s cemetery where dead Lazarus was buried….as we stare into the starkness of death…we also behold God taking on death, beating back death, depriving death of ever having the last word with us.

And just how does God do that?   Not with a magical wand or a mysterious incantation or some secret potion…but with God’s own living Word..a Word that always does what it says.

“Prophesy” God commands Ezekiel---“prophesy to the bones, prophesy to the breath,” shout my death-defeating, future-opening Word right into this catastrophe!

In the same way, God does this again, when Jesus, standing downwind from the tomb where Lazarus’s body is already decomposing—Jesus roars God’s life-restoring command:   “Lazarus come out!”

What’s happening in these two wild Bible stores?   

What’s happening is that just when all seems utterly lost—Ezekiel and Jesus, God’s messengers pay complete attention to the disaster that’s right there….even as they also peer beyond that disaster to behold God’s final future…in which God restores life, for us and in us and in all of God’s creation.

My dear friends, strengthened by God’s Word, let us take full stock of what’s happening all around us and let us resist sugar-coating this public health crisis.    As we do so may we also look beyond these harsh realities…to behold what God has in store for us and God’s whole groaning creation…may we keep our eyes fixed on God the LifeGiver, the LifeRestorer making all things new, in God’s good time.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

The Harbinger of God's New Creation

Greetings to all of you.   I’m Pastor Larry Wohlrabe, currently serving as interim bishop of the Eastern North Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

I’m so glad we can share this online devotion as we approach the Fourth Sunday in Lent.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Let us pray:   Bend your ear to our prayers, Lord Christ, and come among us.   By your gracious life and death for us, bring light into the darkness of our hearts, and anoint us with your Spirit, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”   Amen.   (Prayer of the day for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A, ELW p. 28)

Like a surprising but most welcome guest, we hear the appointed psalm for today, Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
   he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
   for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff—
   they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   my whole life long.

Here ends our psalm.

Dear friends in Christ:  grace, mercy and peace be multiplied unto you through Jesus our Savior.

In the summer of 1977, eight weeks before my fianceé and I got married, I dived into an intensive language course at Luther Seminary in St Paul that immersed and marinated me in the Hebrew language—the mother tongue of our Old Testament.

Learning a new language is always an enlightening, eye-opening experience….and during those eight weeks I received some new tools that enabled me to take a fresh look at Bible passages I had lived with all my life.

Take, for example, verse 4 of this beloved psalm.    When I started to translate this  from the original Hebrew, I didn’t find what I expected to find:  “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death….”   

Instead I discovered words that are best translated as we just heard them:   “Even though I walk through the darkest valley…”

Walter Brueggemann, a veteran teacher of the Old Testament says that this beloved psalm “is not idyllic and romantic…[but] rather the psalmist speaks out of a context of deep danger….Entry into ‘death valley’ is indeed ominous….a high-risk exposure that makes the traveler exceedingly vulnerable.”[1]   (p. 125)

My friends, doesn’t that sound like what we’re experiencing right now with the  the corona-virus pandemic sweeping across the globe?

Indeed these are dark days….not necessarily a literal darkness, but an emotional, mental, and spiritual darkness of anxious uncertainty.   Never before in my 65 years have I felt so engulfed by a situation like this, a pause in “business as usual” that could last for a long, long time.

As so many of us are “sheltering in place,” hunkered down in our homes, waiting for this crisis to pass, we have no clue how long that will take—no idea about when we’ll be able to step out into the light again.

Earlier this month, I heard our church body’s presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, preach an amazing sermon on the promise and the blessing of darkness.

What? (you might be wondering)… Isn’t darkness a thing to be feared—filled only with doom, gloom and terror?

How could anyone speak of darkness as a time of promise, blessing, or fresh possibilities?

Bishop Eaton in her sermon, simply walked us through the Bible, drawing our attention to things many of us had missed about the redemptive possibilities of darkness.

So, she reminded us, the creation of the world according to Genesis began in darkness….darkness that covered an as-yet unformed void…that primeval darkness that blanketed the water, over which the Spirit of God hovered…the Spirit who was preparing to create light and every thing else--a very good creation that began in darkness.

Later, when God called Abraham and Sarah to set out for the Promised Land in order to be fruitful and multiply into God’s chosen people….it began with the darkness of the night sky, so they could see the stars and realize how vast God’s promises to them would become.

Centuries later, when Abraham’s and Sarah’s descendants were enslaved in Egypt, God set them free in the darkness of the night of Passover….when the slaves burst their bonds and escaped from cruel Pharaoh….

And then in the fullness of time, when God took on human flesh in Bethlehem’s manger, the birth of Jesus happened in the darkness, on a night when shepherds were awakened by angels piercing the night sky with their own Hallelujah Chorus…

And when that child became a man who went to the Cross for us….he entered that eerie mid-afternoon darkness on Good Friday in order to win God’s decisive victory over sin, death and the devil…

And when the crucified Jesus was buried--it was in a borrowed tomb…wherein the utter darkness of Holy Saturday slowly gave way to the first streaks of sunlight on Easter morning….as the Resurrection began in darkness….

And we could go on and on and on through the scriptures—and if we did, we’d come across other tales of how darkness is always about more than doom and gloom…because this same darkness is also the first inkling, the harbinger of God’s next new creation!

What if the darkness in which God is working right here and now—what if the shadows of this pandemic—what if this strange, uncomfortably dark time turns out to be a cosmic “reset”--an unanticipated “reboot” of life as we have known it.

Author Ann Lamott in a popular TED talk entitled “Twelve Truths I Learned from Life and Writing”…Ann Lamott says that “almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes—including you!”[2]

What if THAT’s what’s going on right now?   This darkness of anxious uncertainty we’re experiencing--what if it’s also a time for us and the world and the church to be reset by our Creator?

And what if this isn’t the darkness of death valley—but rather the darkness that hung over the formless void before God began the good work of creation?   Or what if this weird situation we’re in…turns out to be like the pre-dawn darkness through which those daring women scurried only to find Jesus’ borrowed tomb empty?

What if you and I and everyone else are experiencing in this dark time an amazing “this changes everything” hint of God’s next new thing?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

---

[1] Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger, Jr., Psalms (New Cambridge Bible Commentary, 2014), p. 125.

[2] https://blog.ted.com/12-things-i-know-for-sure-anne-lamott-at-ted2017/

God's Got This....God's Got Us!

Messiah Lutheran Church, Fargo, ND

Lent 2/March 15, 2020

Psalm 91:1-2, 5-6

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,

   who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,

will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress;

   my God, in whom I trust.’…

You will not fear the terror of the night,

   or the arrow that flies by day,

or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,

   or the destruction that wastes at noonday. 

Dear friends in Christ:   grace, mercy and peace be multiplied unto you through Jesus Christ our Savior, Lord and Healer.

Less than 2 ½ weeks ago I was among thirty community leaders in the Fargo-Moorhead area who attended an information session sponsored by the Cass Clay Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster--and the disaster that was “front and center” that afternoon was an anticipated flood.

Together we assessed the likelihood of a “Top 10” or even a “Top 5” major spring flood here in the Red River Valley.

As we stared at charts, graphs, maps and statistics…the information we received was very sobering.  The high water saturation we had in the ground last autumn, combined with record snowfall this winter, pointed toward a flood that would at least match if not exceed the flood of 2009.

As the meeting was winding down, one of our local emergency management directors declared:  “Before we adjourn, we should probably ALSO factor into our planning the possibility that we may be dealing with both a major flood AND a viral pandemic at the same time.”

Today, smack dab in the middle of March, fears of a spring flood have taken a back seat to the fact that we’re under both state and federal states of emergency due to the global COVID-19  pandemic.

Wherever we turn these days, we’re constantly bombarded by news, information and dire predictions of how this pandemic might run its course.

As frightening as the physical health issues might be…we also have a nagging sense that overwhelming mental and emotional pressures are also bearing down upon us.   We’re facing not just a biological pandemic, but a spiritual pandemic marked by paralyzing fear, panic and anxiety. 

Because the critical challenges we’re facing are both physical and spiritual in nature, we realize that as Christians we need to be re-grounded in the bedrock reality that whatever happens, God is still in charge.

As dismal as things appear to be God will not allow anything to stand between us and God’s unfailing love.   God accompanies us and will keep on accompanying us through whatever may come our way.

Or as our younger generation might put it:  Don’t be afraid--God’s got this!

“God’s got this” is a 21^st century way of expressing the sentiments of  the psalmist in our text:

You will not fear the terror of the night,

   or the arrow that flies by day,

or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,

   or the destruction that wastes at noonday.  

In other words:  Have no fear!   God’s got this!

But let’s also be clear that when we say:  “God’s got this!” we aren’t just assuming God is going to whip out a magic wand and make it all better just like that!

To declare that “God’s got this” is so much more than “magical thinking.”   

If God’s got this—this pandemic—let us also lean into the promise that God’s also got us.    

God’s got this….because God’s got us--you and me--living human instruments through whom God’s intends to guide us through this unsettling time.  

But what does that look like?  

First and foremost, it looks like the church of Jesus Christ continuing to be the church—faithfully, fervently and winsomely serving God’s mission of making us and all things new through the life, death and resurrection of  Jesus Christ.   

So even though TV, newspapers and social media constantly bombard us with the latest bad news, we also keep listening for and proclaiming God’s Good News in Jesus Christ.    Which means we’re going to continue worshiping and praying even if we maybe won’t be able always to gather together as we are here, this morning.   We will not stop praising God and seeking God’s blessings---whether that happens in our homes, or around our family circles, perhaps using words and songs we share together using social media platforms like Facebook.

Second, God’s got this…because God’s got us…means that we expect our faithful prayers to lead us toward righteous, healing actions.  We’ll follow the trajectory of our prayers and follow our Lord’s leading…. toward supporting our governmental leaders, our first responders, our medical personnel, our military men and women, our pastors and deacons and lay ministers, and all our neighbors.

Third, God’s got this because God’s got us means that rather than getting completely lost in our understandable concern for ourselves and our families….we’ll also keep turning our eyes and our hearts toward the lost, the last and the least…whether they’re sick, grieving, poor, frail elderly—all our neighbors in deepest need.   To undergird our care for those who need it the most, we’ll also make sure that we continue to give our offerings to our congregations along with generous gifts to a whole array of frontline charities and helping agencies that also are doing God’s work in this critical time.

Fourth, God’s got this because God’s got us….means that in this time of disruption God is opening us to new practices and pathways to do what matters most.  To be faithful and fruitful in the midst of this global pandemic, we ask God to make us flexible in how we do God’s work and also to give us the foresight to realize that what works today might need to be replaced by other ways of serving God and our neighbors in the days to come as this crisis unfolds. 

Fifth and finally, God’s got this because God’s got us---persons who are being given a cornucopia of creative resources for doing what matters…like…

·       Staying in touch by phone or email or the U.S. mail with nursing home residents and hospitalized persons when we can’t visit them in person;

·       Providing meals and care for youngsters who’ll need nutrition and loving guidance if it becomes necessary to close our schools; and

·       Opening up and offering our church buildings to fill gaps and provide services that our community might need as the pandemic grows and spreads.

So here we are, facing a public health emergency none of us anticipated just a few months ago.    How will we live through these disturbing days without losing our minds or our bearings?

We can face this challenge because--in the long, winding history of God’s people--challenges like this one often become critical moments where God’s saving, intervening arm becomes most visible….calling forth from us a bravery, an imaginativeness, and a resolve we didn’t even know was in us!

Take a good look at the whole biblical story, at the center of which we see the crisis of Christ’s cross becoming the paradoxical means whereby God rescues us and gives us new life….

Take a good look at the whole biblical story, and notice that this is actually what God does best:   rescuing, preserving and leading us through whatever crisis comes our way.

So, my dear friends:   have no fear!   God’s got this…because God’s got us!

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Tribute to Bishop Tom Aitken

TRIBUTE TO BISHOP TOM AITKEN

ELCA Conference of Bishops

March 6, 2020

Our Lord is pleased that we have gathered here to honor and give thanks for our colleague and friend Bishop Thomas M. Aitken….and I thank Tom for asking me to offer these words.

After eleven years of sharing responsibility for the wandering woebegone Lutherans of northern Minnesota—God’s  “frozen chosen!”--I give great thanks to God for both Tom and his wife Beckie (who has become a good friend of my wife Joy)—and I rejoice in Tom’s outstanding service to the people, the congregations and the ministry partners of the NE MN Synod….not to mention the thousands of folks who are in that synod’s mission field

So in the next few moment I want to thank God for five of Tom’s finest gifts as a bishop, colleague and friend:

1.    First of all, Tom has been given an extraordinary gift for storytelling.

I got my first taste of this in 2008 when newly installed Bishop Bill Rindy of the Eastern ND Synod, Bishop Aitken and I all headed west on Interstate 94, like the pioneers wending our way across the stunning prairie landscape of the Great State of North Dakota in order to participate in new Bishop Mark Narum’s installation.

We stopped for a stretch break in Jamestown ND, home of the world’s largest concrete buffalo…..and as we stood there together, gawking at this amazing statue of a bison…..Tom shared a few hilarious observations with us, and I knew that the next twelve years would be filled with fun and laughter, thanks to Tom.

When Tom spins a yarn his hearers often laugh so hard that they leak a little—whether from their eyes, or their bladders, or both..  

To make his stories all the more memorable Tom often veers off into a spot-on impersonation of someone—his impersonation often being a better rendition of the person than the person herself or himself could offer.

Last June at my retirement banquet in Moorhead MN Tom even did an impersonation of me….which I thought was “so-so”….but the other 499 guests ate it up and howled with laughter.

What we in Region III have come to realize is that Tom Aitken is much like a human Juke box:   just stick a nickel in him and he’ll tell you one of his many funny stories. 

Tom is a storyteller, and thank God, he uses that great gift in service to the greatest story of all, the story of the Gospel

2.    Second, God has lavished on Tom (and his dear Beckie) a superb gift for hospitality….not just in their home in Duluth but throughout all the arenas of his service as synod bishop:  whether Tom is holding forth at a little Friday afternoon theology brew pub on tap at one of Duluth’s many watering holes…or whether he’s serving up his latest Bishop’s Brew beer at a synod assembly or pastors’ conference…or whether he’s planning the gustatorial delight of our Region III dinners at COB events.  

Off-the-charts extravert that he is, Tom often “inflicts” his hospitality on total strangers…whether they’re seat-mates on planes or buses….or some poor, unsuspecting Uber driver who shows even a hint of interest in matters of the spirit, paving the way for evangelist Tom to recruit  said Uber driver for the nearest friendly neighborhood Lutheran congregation!

3.  Third, our Lord is pleased with Tom’s deep dedication to connecting with virtually all the middle-school youth of his synod driving out of Duluth into the hinterlands of northeastern MN for Bishop’s visitations with confirmation classes:  teaching, communing, anointing and blessing these dear teenage brothers and sisters in Christ.  A relentless “road warrior” Tom has made his way to virtually all the congregations in NE MN.

4.  Fourth, our Lord has made of Tom a consummate colleague, who doesn’t hesitate to ask a fellow bishop for advice….who generously shares  good ideas with  colleagues….especially around issues that challenge us all:  whether it’s pumping new life into a neglected global companion synod relationship….or inspiring synod teams to address the timely and pressing issues of creation care, reconciliation with our Native neighbors, or helping congregations warm up to the idea of calling a pastor or deacon who identifies as GLBTQIA+.

5.  Fifth and finally, our Lord has inspired in Tom a compelling public voice and presence….regularly authoring timely op-eds for the regional newspaper….co-hosting Catholic-Lutheran gatherings in and around Duluth…or building on his work with the board of LSS of MN to help birth the Center for Changing Lives in Duluth:  a safe, central site where young people who are at-risk or experiencing homelessness can find holistic guidance and support.