Larry Wohlrabe

Jesus Takes On Sin

2012-01-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

Baudette Lutheran Parish (Clementson, First and Wabanica)

January 8, 2012/ The Baptism of Our Lord

Mark 1:4-11

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

This first Sunday after the Epiphany always wakes me up—rather rudely!—in much the way a cup of overly-caffeinated coffee might jolt me out of my holiday slumbers.

Christmas always concludes too quickly, with the season of Epiphany knocking on our doors….and Lent not that far behind.

1.      Why, most of us haven’t even gotten all our Christmas decorations “down” yet! And yet today the Baby Jesus has suddenly grown into an adult.   We’d rather linger longer at the manger, with the Christ Child in swaddling clothes….but the church’s calendar forces us to see him as a full-grown man, who shaves and is making his way in the world.

It’s as if someone hit the “fast forward” button on the DVD player, making thirty years of Jesus’ life disappear just like that.

What a caffeine jolt to our systems!

And yet, it’s probably a good thing. For the fast pace, especially of Mark’s gospel, obliges us to remember that God in Christ assumed human flesh, not to make small talk with us, not to have a picnic or a joyride, but to get on the road and make his way toward the Cross, for us and for our salvation.

If the season of Epiphany is about the meaning of that word (Epiphany)—a revealing, a drawing back of the curtain about Jesus….this first jolt reveals something magnificent and world-turning:   that the Word became flesh not for beating-around-the-bush….but for the sake of doing vital business with us, rescuing humanity and renewing the whole creation.

2.      But there’s a second “jolt” in this morning’s gospel lesson—a second “shock to the system” that wakes us up.   Jesus doesn’t just come on the scene a grown-up adult.   He comes to the River Jordan to be baptized.

The “jolt” in this is that baptism is for sinners.   Baptism is a washing-away of filth and dirt, a cleansing from sin. Baptism is for the desperate, the lost, the god-forsaken!

Baptism is for sinners.   And Jesus is no sinner.

The second “jolt” this morning’s gospel lesson administers to us is that it shows us the one, the only person who has ever lived who doesn’t need baptism…and yet he comes to be baptized: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”

And there’s nothing “accidental” about this.   Jesus fully plans to be here, up to his neck in the muddy water, with all the sinners who flocked to John the baptizer.

Jesus insisted on getting in line with everybody else, to receive “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

What jolts us here is that Jesus isn’t the least bit shy about getting “up close and personal” with all manner of sinners. Jesus isn’t worried about being caught in the wrong crowd. Jesus seems to have no interest in keeping himself above the fray, unstained by contact with the ungodly.

Here, once more, we receive an epiphany, a revelation about who Jesus is and what he does.   Jesus befriends sinners.   Jesus gets close to sinners.    Jesus, we can say, even “takes on” sin.

Here’s a little image that might help.   During the recent holiday season, I washed a lot of dishes.   We hosted a staff party and family. Dirty dishes piled up, and so I spent some time at the kitchen sink.

When you’re washing a lot of dishes, the water can get pretty grungy. In fact, you reach a point where a dish going into the water might come out dirtier than it was to begin with.

I picture the Jordan River like that.   It was literally a muddy river….but it got even dirtier with all those sins being washed away.

But Jesus came to this dirty water and intentionally insisted that he be washed in it….even though he probably came up out of the water, dirtier than when he went in.   Because the sins of others--the sins of the whole world--were now clinging to him.

St Paul takes this whole notion as far as he can in II Corinthians when he writes: “for our sake [God] made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (II Cor. 5:21)

3.      And this leads me to the third jolt we get in this gospel lesson: Jesus gets baptized with sinners, Jesus “takes on” the filth of sin in the muddy river, and God lets it be known how pleased he is with that!

In a way, this is the sharpest jolt of all. It’s surprising to see Baby Jesus all grown up, even though we still have the manger scene set up in our house. It’s shocking to see this adult Jesus getting baptized with all those sinners.

But what defies all our customary ways of understanding God is that God looks upon this baptism scene and smiles broadly.   God is utterly pleased with what is happening as his beloved Son “takes on” sin in the Jordan River.

God wants it this way.

And we see that here in three ways.   First, God himself “tears open” the heavens.   It’s a jarring word in the original Greek—“schizo” (related to “schizophrenia”). God rips the heavens apart. God makes a deliberate tear, a permanent opening in the veil that separates heaven from earth.   There is no turning back from this! This tearing-apart of the heavens signals a new state of affairs. Indeed, it is an overture to the New Creation God is initiating in Jesus.

Second, the Spirit of God descends like a dove on Jesus.   The same Spirit who “moved over the waters” in Genesis 1, the dove that Noah released from the ark—the dove that flew “over the waters” of the receding Flood--the Spirit and the dove come together as one, a powerful image of blessing.

And third, the Voice of God is heard, for the first time in Mark’s gospel: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

This is just how God wants it to be: Jesus, doing vital business with humanity and the whole creation, Jesus taking on sin and rising from the water to begin his journey toward the Cross and the Grave, for us and for our salvation.   Capture that image—hang on to it.   This is what God has had in mind since before the first star began to twinkle.

For here, the most amazing epiphany, the greatest revelation, “shows itself” before our wondering eyes: God knows how to do what we’re never all that sure about. God knows how to deal with sinners.

Our natural inclination is to keep our distance from sinners--notorious, headline-grabbing sinners especially.   Someone messes up big time—and we turn away, we shun them, we keep them at arm’s length.   We avoid being tainted by them, “spoiled” by their manifest sinfulness.

But Jesus always made a bee-line toward sinners.    Jesus got close to, befriended, embraced sinners.    Not to roll around with them in the mud like a bunch of pigs, though.   Jesus didn’t “take on” our sin so that he might revel in sin with us.

No.   Jesus “took on” sin in order to “take on” sin, in the sense of defeating it, once and for all.
Jesus “took on” sin but only so that he might “take away” sin.   We might say that Jesus captured sin, kidnapped sin, in order to bear it away from us, so that sin might no longer control us, have its way with us and kill us.

Jesus is head-over-heels in love with sinners, and that’s great news for all of us here this morning—a bunch of sinners, gathered together on January 8, 2012.

But just because Jesus loves sinners unconditionally, he does not love sin. Jesus positively cannot stand our incurable obsession with ourselves. Sin and Jesus have no future together.   One of them must go away, disappear.   And that’s exactly what happened whenever, wherever Jesus encountered sin. He took it on in order to make it go away.

So Jesus cast out demons, healed sickness, rebuked the recalcitrant, and finally went to the Cross to nail sin onto that accursed Tree.   Jesus buried sin in his own Grave, to send our sin away from us forever, as far as the east is from the west.

But there’s even more.   This same Jesus who died to take our away our sins, rose again to pour out his Spirit upon the church—even as Jesus is making all things new.

And we get to be in on that action—with our Living Lord, reclaiming God’s whole creation, one sorry sinner at a time. One broken relationship, one god-forsaken wanderer at a time.   God enlists us—forgiven sinners—to be part of that great rescuing action.

And that just might be the best “Epiphany jolt” of them all.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Light We've Been Waiting For

2011-12-10T07:52:00.000-08:00

Kirkebo Lutheran of Perley, MN

Nora Lutheran of Gardner, ND

Advent 3/December 11, 2011

John 1:6-8, 19-28

The fact that we are in a thus-far “snowless” December is freaking some folks out. Just the other day I was speaking with a friend, a fellow who is prone to SAD—seasonal affective disorder. He was bummed that there isn’t snow on the ground yet.

Why? I asked (thinking that a break from the record snowfalls we’ve seen over the last few years isn’t all bad).   “Why do you miss the snow?” I asked my friend.

“It’s because the snow reflects light. It makes the daytime brighter.   Right now it’s too brown, too dark out there for my soul.”

My friend has a point, of course, and maybe you share it. We need light to live—to get around in the world. Our bodies need light for good old Vitamin D, if nothing else. Our eyes need light for them to work. Our souls need light because God did not create us to be bottom-dwellers of the ocean, like those fish who live so far below the water’s surface that they don’t even have eyes.

We need light to live, pure and simple.

But there is a catch here. Like so many other good things God has given to us, we need some but not too much.   If we utterly lack light, we die (in one way or another).

But too much light will kill us, too.

My mother, who passed away at age 93 this past July, was a Twin Cities girl transplanted to the family farm in southern Minnesota back during WWII.   She went from being an urban dweller to being a dirt farmer, helping my dad in virtually every aspect of farming.   My parents farmed at a time when no one was wearing sunscreen—when we weren’t conscious of the cancer-causing qualities of ultra-violet radiation.

So in her latter years, my mom—perhaps like some of you—had to make repeated visits to her dermatologist, to have a little slice of her beautiful face removed—little patches of skin cancer on her ears, her forehead, her cheekbones.

Light is good.   Without light we die.

But with too much light, we also suffer and die.   Light is also bad.

So which will it be? Is light good or bad?   The biblical witness is clear on this point—it always “sides” with light.   The scriptures that we treasure are not big on window-blinds, shades, curtains or sunscreen.   In our story of God, light is always something to be welcomed.

In fact, our faith consistently describes God in terms of Light—God is filled with Light.   God is always dispersing the darkness. In the first epistle of St John we read: “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5).

So in today’s gospel lesson from the first chapter of St John’s Gospel we have John the Baptist. Only, in this gospel (as opposed to Matthew’s, Mark’s or Luke’s gospels) John the Baptist isn’t so much a water-guy, as he is a light-guy.   The Fourth Gospel emphasizes John as a testimony-giver more than as a washer-away-of-sins.

John the Baptist, to be sure, was a pretty bright fellow. No wallflower, he made a splash wherever he showed up.

And yet, to John’s credit, he knew his place. John realized that he wasn’t the Light of God itself…but rather, he came to “testify to the light.”

There’s a reason why so many artistic portrayals of John the Baptist show him with his forefinger outstretched. It’s because John was always a “pointer”….his finger was always directing the gaze of others toward Him who is the Light of God in this cold, dark world—Jesus Christ our Lord.

Friends, we have this gospel lesson before us in these Advent days because this Light is coming to us once again.   He who is the Light of the World is making tracks in our direction once again.

And, as always, he comes to us “in the bleak midwinter.”   Well that’s not exactly true. Christmas doesn’t come in the middle of winter. Rather, Christmas falls just a few days after what is technically the start of winter—the winter solstice, the shortest, most light-deprived day of the year.

In that winter darkness, when we wake up in the dark and come home from work in the dark, precisely when light is most scarce and therefore most precious, as the hymnwriters like to put it: in the darkness of our sin, Jesus comes bearing light.

So, to give our own witness to that fact, we go a little nuts in Advent and at Christmas-time decorating our homes and workplaces in ways that spread the light of Christ.    This becomes the time of the year when I hope and I pray that the fire marshal will not visit the Wohlrabe home in north Moorhead, where Mrs. Wohlrabe (She Who Must Be Obeyed) goes a little overboard with the decorating. She loves Christmas because so many of her decorations have her name on them (her name is Joy).   And she really loves Christmas lights and candles—and like a typical guy, I just hope we don’t knock over a burning candle or blow a circuit breaker or two and burn the whole place down. Now THAT would be a light to behold!

But, all kidding aside, there are good reasons why we upper Midwestern “Luterans” crave the light right about now. It’s because we know, deep down, that despite the perils of too much light, most of the time we never get enough of it. We all have a touch of SAD—seasonal affective disorder. We all crave the light.

And I think that’s because we know, deep down, that the light is good for us. And the light of God that comes to us in Jesus Christ is the best Light there is—end of story!

This Light is always, always, always good for us—but not because it is always gentle with us or kind to us. No, that’s not how it works.

The Light of God shines upon us and the first thing it always does is to expose us, to bring to light all the things that are making life miserable—all the things that are killing us. Luther nicknamed them “sin, death and the power of the devil”—an evil trio!

God shines his light upon us, and at first we want to cover our eyes. It’s a little like when the eye doctor dilates your pupils and shines that awful-bright light into your wide-open eyes, to see if your retina is A-OK (I know—I do that twice a year!) It hurts like the dickens!

And God does that sort of thing to us as well.   God’s light exposes all the ways we’re pretty much “stuck on ourselves,” all the ways we imagine that the world revolves around us—what we call sin.   God’s light exposes how, even though we think we’re in control of ourselves, we’re not.   We’re prone to being led astray—we call that “the power of the devil.”   And God’s light forces our eyes to see how we do not possess life—how easily and swiftly life slips through our fingers.   We call that death.

The Light of God is good for us, but only because the first thing it does is diagnose us and confront us with all the things we’d rather keep under wraps, hidden in the darkness of our souls.

God’s Light in Christ forces all of those things out, into the bright light of day….not so God can hold them over us, but so that God can deal with that old nasty trio on our behalf.

God’s Light in Christ exposes what is wrong with us, so that it can reveal to us all the ways God in Jesus Christ is going to work to forgive sin, to defeat the power of the devil, and to put an end to death’s hold on us.

In Jesus, in the Baby who came at Christmas-time, God’s Light shone with a clarity and a power, the likes of which this world has never seen.   Jesus pulls back the curtain and puts the spotlight on who God is for us and what God graciously does for us:   ending sin’s stranglehold, sending the devil scurrying, depriving death of its stranglehold on our souls.

This is the Light John the Baptist came to point us toward. This is the Light that is coming right toward us this Advent.

My dear friends, don’t flee from this light. Embrace it. Bask in its beauty.   Allow the Light of Jesus Christ to burn away all that needs to be discarded in your lives. Let the Light of Christ shine as you decorate your homes—even if you risk getting a citation from the fire marshal!

For this is the Light we’ve been waiting for forever.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

The Next Generation: Going the Distance

2011-12-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

The Next Generation: Going the Distance

“In [Jesus Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him…” Colossians 1:19b-22

“The offense of the Cross began with the offense of the Incarnation. The bloody public death was foreshadowed by a bloody stable birth.” Virginia Stem Owens, “A Hand in the Wound”[1]

Once more we enter the season that remembers how far God has gone to embrace us, to melt away our distrust, to enter deeply into our fleshly lives. Advent and Christmas reveal a God who goes the distance from highest heaven to the lowest spot imaginable: a crude cattle shed.

And there is nothing airy or vague about this. It is a shockingly physical, jarringly specific, jaggedly concrete thing that God does: taking on “bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh” (Genesis 2:23) in the wailing newborn son of Mary.

Isolating Ourselves from the Incarnation

Recently, in my daily devotions, I read a piece that woke me up to this reality in a fresh way. Reflecting on her regular visits to the sick, writer Virginia Stem Owens observes: “We are not so familiar with freaks as Jesus was. He daily handled as bad or worse than what I see weekly in the hospital. People coming to him for healing were maimed, mutilated, and desperate. They didn’t even have on clean pajamas. It is we who have isolated ourselves from the Incarnation. Our fear of the flesh is so deep that we institutionalize death and decay wherever it breaks out. There would be little chance of Jesus meeting a leper on the road today. Any kind of freakishness, whether physical, mental, or emotional, must be put away from our midst. People on public view must be at least superficially healthy. The lame, the halt, and the blind may not have had Medicare in the first century, but neither were they incarcerated for their offense against the sensibilities of the whole.”

Although they sting, Owens’s words also ring true. And perhaps such reflections can help us resist the urge to reduce our December holy days to the gauzy, disembodied sentimentality so prized by our culture. Owens seeks to recover “our ardor for the Incarnation and…our sense of the profundity of our Lord’s bodily death and resurrection.” Encountering real live persons in the extremities of life—mental confusion, chronic illness, horrible abuse, tragic death—makes plain the lengths Christ went, going the distance for us and our salvation.

“Are we not already a little secretly ashamed of the stripes that heal us, wishing instead for an unscathed savior, Jesus Superjock, borne aloft by teams of angels unwilling to let him stub his well-shod toe?” Owens asks. “As I struggle to insert the purple swollen foot of a [hospitalized] diabetic into his slippers, I am also asserting my allegiance to the flesh, loved and not rejected by our Lord, who did not hesitate at the unhealthy, the flesh he clothed his own glory in, thus sanctifying it forever.”

The same Lord Jesus Christ who went the distance for us in his Incarnation, invites us to go the distance for our neighbors—including a willingness to enter deeply into their embodied lives. This, too, is part of the Next Generation vision we’ve been pondering over the past year. “Calling forth, raising up, forming in faith and spiritual leadership, and sending the next generations of disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ” is not a vague, airy enterprise. There is nothing disembodied about it. Our Lord invites us to roll up our sleeves and be ready to address the particularities of fleshly life, including the fleshly lives of our precious children.

The Safety and Well-Being of Children and Youth

Here’s a recent, disturbing example. In the last weeks we’ve been stunned by revelations of long-term sexual abuse of young people by a coach associated with one of the most successful programs in Big Ten college football. As a forty-count indictment is being drafted, new reports of abuse surface daily. Most shocking is the fact that some responsible adults had some awareness of the abuse that was happening—but they did little or nothing to stop it.

Our Lord’s incarnation among us, deep within the flesh of Jesus, son of Mary, commits us to care about things like the safety and sexual well-being of children and youth. Our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America stands squarely on the side of “the least ones” in such matters. In social statements like Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust[2] our church has identified specific ways in which we will pursue the health and well-being of the Next Generations among us. For example:

· “Safety within and outside the family is of overriding importance because the damage done to children and youth through sexual abuse or molestation can be remarkably deep and lasting….”

· “This church supports the prosecution of any individual who commits a sexual crime against a minor, including people in leadership positions in the church….”

· “The ELCA also recognizes that congregations and other ministry sites must continue in their efforts to be safe places for children and youth….This church calls for the adoption of preventive measures, including educational programs, appropriate policies, and screening of individuals who care for, supervise, or work with children within this church. It expects that all church leaders will report all instances of suspected child abuse….”

· “Commercial sexual exploitation is widespread throughout the United States and around the world. It continues to grow and involves surprising numbers of youth by taking advantage of their vulnerabilities….The ELCA regards the over-exposure of emotionally maturing children and teens to adult sexuality as a failing on the part of adults and society….”

· “Expanding cyberspace and other electronic media create new challenges to the protection of children and youth….How to address this problem is one of the most important child-protection issues of our time, and our church will be an active participant in this important conversation….”

· “The sexual education of children and teens will be supported as a priority by this church. Anecdotal evidence among teens suggests that few parents or congregations meaningfully engage young people in either sex education or healthy conversations about sexuality, even though teens would welcome them….”

· “…the ELCA reaffirms its interest in and responsibility for the care and protection of vulnerable children and youth. It understands itself as called to this mission through the vocations of its members, its own institutional practices, and its public policy positions. This work involves all adults, not only parents, since all contribute to the well-being of children and youth in untold creative ways. It understands that all children and youth, both inside and outside the church, are deserving of this church's concern.”

Going the Distance, Despite our Discomfort

You may be chagrined that I’ve dwelt on such an uncomfortable topic at such length—at the start of Advent, no less. Yuck! Not very “Christmasy” is it?

Oh but it is, my dear sisters and brothers. The Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ is about God entering deeply into the thorniest, most anxiety-producing, disturbing aspects of human life. This includes all the joys and perils of human sexuality. While it might seem that we’ve been paying too much attention to this topic in the life of our ELCA over the past two years, in truth we have focused so narrowly on one aspect (same-sex relationships) that we’ve virtually ignored all the other facets of human sexuality. And we adults have--in my experience in many congregations--largely left our children and youth out of this critical conversation.

Our God, who has gone the distance in becoming flesh, calls us to go the distance with our children and youth—to wrap them in a crucible of safety, to share with them our core values about human life in all its splendor and perplexity, to listen deeply to their piercing questions, to pick them up when they fall and reassure them of God’s unconditional love, and to walk with them and engage them in honest conversation about how we might faithfully incarnate the life of Christ in our flesh—including our sexuality.

In the name of the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ,

Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

Northwestern Minnesota Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work. Our hands.

For reflection and discussion:

1. Why do we tend to isolate ourselves from the Incarnation? How do you see this played out in today’s world?

2. When you read news stories about abuse perpetrated against children and youth, how to you respond?

3. How does your congregation foster the health and well-being of the Next Generation? How many of the seven topics mentioned on pp. 2-3 of this article have been engaged, in some way, by your congregation? How might your congregation do more?

This is the twelfth and final in a series of columns on Bishop Wohlrabe’s “Next Generation” vision (available at http://www.nwmnsynod.org/BISHOP'S%20PAGE.htm) for the NW MN Synod. These columns are designed to equip the disciples and leadership groups such as church councils, for faithful and fruitful ministry. Feel free to use the column for personal reflection or group discussion, e.g. church council meeting devotions/discussion.

[1] “A Hand in the Wound,” by Virginia Stem Owens, quoted in For All the Saints: A Prayer Book For and By the Church (Volume IV) 1996, American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, pp. 980-982.

[2] Available at http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements/JTF-Human-Sexuality.aspx#IV. All quotations in the following portion of the column come from the section of the social statement entitled “Protecting children and youth in and for trusting relationships.”

Comfort, O Comfort...

2011-12-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

Trinity Lutheran Church, Detroit Lakes, MN

Second Sunday in Advent—December 4, 2011

Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8

On this Second Sunday in Advent I am drawn—as a moth is attracted to bright light—I am drawn to our reading from Isaiah 40: “Comfort, O comfort my people…”

I am drawn to these words not because I need the soft, downy comfort of a warm winter-time comforter on my bed….and certainly not because I need the comfort of mashed potatoes and home-made meatloaf, those quintessential comfort foods.

No, my friends, my heart is longing for the industrial strength version of what old Isaiah sings about this Second Sunday in Advent.

Comfort. Comfort. What my heart longs for more than anything else…is the deep comfort, the wide consolation that can heal the dull ache in my heart since July 6^th when I became an orphan.

And this year, 2011, it wasn’t just I who lost a mother, but my dear wife, too…less than a month ago. Grief may not be stabbing the two of us with sharp pain these days. But it is there, like a constant, lowgrade gnawing…grief chews at us from the inside out.

We are fresh out of parents—my wife, Joy, and I—it’s down to the two of us, now. We are next in line. We have our own reasons for hankering for Isaiah’s “comfort, comfort” in these dreary blue days of Advent.

And maybe you are, there, too. Maybe you are nervous this morning because everything we thought we could count on seems up for grabs: our economy sputtering, our government flummoxed, the sorry state of our world—all so uncertain.

Perhaps this old dying age has taken its best shot at you…leaving you feeling out of sorts, off-kilter, at odds with yourself. Maybe you or someone you love is struggling with a bad marriage or a chronic illness or unemployment or under-employment. Or maybe some great or not-so-great loss has overtaken you….a dull, nagging ache now tugging incessantly at your heartstrings.

It makes you want time to stand still and simply allow this ancient prophecy to wash over you: “Comfort, O comfort my people. Speak tenderly….speak ‘to the heart,’ …bear this dull ache away.”

But this is more than a fond wish on our part. Isaiah tells us in no uncertain terms that it is God’s will that we be comforted. The grammatical form here is an imperative: “Comfort! That is: you shall be comforted!

“Comfort is what I the Lord your God intend to be yours. I will make it happen.” There is a blessed insistence here, and the repetition of the word underscores that fact: “comfort, comfort”…..comfort must wash over you, ready or not, whether you deserve it or not. It is God’s will for you, to be comforted.

When these verses were first spoken, God’s people were in a world of hurt, hauled off to Babylon, forced into exile in a foreign land. And, as if to add insult to injury, they had brought it upon themselves. God’s people had blown it, time and again—their cheating ways, their wandering eyes, their willingness to settle for less than the promises of God, their waywardness had caught up with them. God loved them enough to chastise them—Isaiah tells us again and again—in order, though, to bring them back…back from exile.

What made it “exile” for God’s chosen ones to be stuck in Babylon was their profound sense of being away from home, cut off from the place and time and circumstance that marked their true soul, their deepest identity, their safest and most secure homing place. Exile isn’t defined by your enemies or the strange place they may have taken you. Exile is marked, rather, by your longing for that one place on earth that you call home.

But exile was not to have the last word for the chosen people of God. “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Even if you had it coming—and Israel most certainly did have exile coming!—exile was not to be the final word. God may have allowed his precious people to be wrenched from their homeland—but God was also going to set it all aright again…even if God himself had to bulldoze a super-highway, right through the desert wasteland, as Isaiah envisions it.

And all of this—this return to home--would come about not because the children of Israel finally got their acts together. God released them not because Israel had “learned its lesson and would never sin again.” No—comfort, O comfort would come despite the here-today-gone-tomorrow inconstancy, the utter undependability of God’s people.

Comfort would come purely because of who God is, how God goes to work, how God pursues God’s purposes—in us, with us, usually despite us.

The then-and-thereness of exile in Bablyon, would be replaced by a new Now…a new thing God would be doing that would spell “comfort, O comfort”….a return to home.

And for the ultimate shape of that new Now in all its fullness, we have to crack open our gospel, from the first chapter of Mark.

One thing you and I will learn again in this “year of Mark” is just how urgent, how breath-takingly immediate everything is for Mark. There is no beating around the bush here. Mark doesn’t go into a big long rigamarole to get his gospel launched…

No, it’s as if Mark simply spills his words out on the page, and here it is: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God…”

Mark can’t hold back. He just has to spill the beans—just like that. Whatever Jesus means, it always starts with “good news.” In Jesus, comfort takes on flesh and bone and DNA and personality—all of it for the sake of those he came to rescue.

Jesus is God’s embodied “comfort, comfort” par excellence. Jesus is God’s consolation of a people who feel out of kilter, “homeless” even at home. Jesus epitomizes the new Now Isaiah spoke of…the advent, the coming of God into our lives, to set all things right: Jesus, Jesus…comfort, O comfort!

And make no mistake about it: Jesus knows just what we need. Jesus knows we need more than a “little dab will do you” kind of comfort.

Jesus knows that the ache in our hearts, wherever it comes from, will be healed only by the very coming of God into our lives. We must settle for nothing less.

So, even as old Isaiah envisions the coming of God, along a royal highway hewn through the desert wilderness….a highway that has had all the twists and turns, all the ups and downs wrestled out of it--so that God might come to those ancient exiles….

Even as old Isaiah envisions God coming to restore his wayward people via a road through the waste places…

Mark envisions Jesus, following in the footsteps of his Way-Preparer, John the Baptist, and giving us something even better than John was able to give: “I have baptized you with water;” cries John, “but he—Jesus!-- will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Here, we would have settled for pardon, and a fresh start, and a shimmery hope….and Jesus comes to us and gives us even more, gives us God, the Holy Spirit, God present-tense, in our aching lives, right here, right now.

And even then, there is more.

For with the Holy Spirit unleashed among us, God keeps bringing it on, “comfort, O comfort” for those with whom we Spirit-endowed ones now come into contact.

Jesus puts a word on our lips, a word for others: “Comfort, O comfort my people…speak tenderly, speak to their hearts. Tell them that this is God’s good and gracious will for them: that they be comforted in the deep and wide way that only God doles out comfort. Tell them that their sentence is completed, their time of aching and longing is over.”

And don’t just tell them of such comfort, my dear friends. Be the comfort, even as God became our comfort in Jesus.

Once again, comfort takes on flesh and blood and DNA and your personality, for the sake of your neighbors.

You make God’s comfort real in generosity shared, in acts of mercy accomplished, in deeds of advocacy enacted for those whose voices are drowned out by din of this old dying world.

Comfort, O comfort….that is God’s will for you and by Christ’s mercy, it is God’s will in and through you, as well. No matter how much others might even deserve the anxiety or the aches they have, it is God’s will that they be comforted—deeply, widely, finally, in Jesus and through you--a living, breathing embodiment of “the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God.”

Comfort, O comfort…

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

"But Now..."

2011-10-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

Reformation Sunday—October 30, 2011

Bethany Lutheran Church, Red Lake Falls, MN

Romans 3:19-28

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

This morning I have bad news, good news and better news for you.

1. First, the bad news: what you’ve been trying to do isn’t working.

You’ve been trying to do the right thing—attempting to live in a way that is good and true and beautiful. You’ve been doing your duty, obeying the rules, tending your responsibilities, working hard.

But it’s just not working. Somehow, somewhere along the way, you inevitably fall short—experience disappointment.

And that’s the pits, isn’t it?

Here, you do your best, but it’s never good enough. It just can’t quite get you to your final destination. Even if everything seems to be going swimmingly—even if the world is your oyster—there’s still that big dark hole at the end: the hole where what’s left of you will one day be deposited after you die.

Nothing you do can make that hole go away!

Five hundred years ago there was a man named Martin Luther who was intimately acquainted with this sorry state of affairs.

Luther was born in 1483, just nine years before “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” He lived in a world so very different from this time and this place. His mother thought demons caused milk to sour. His father insisted that Martin become a lawyer. His church thought he needed to shape up—and it offered a hundred and one ways for Martin to do that.

Martin Luther shared one thing in common with us: he wanted to do the right thing. And he didn’t just WANT to do the right thing—he made a valiant effort actually to accomplish the right thing.

Luther sought to align himself with Whoever was at the core of his universe. Martin Luther wanted to please God above all things—and so he poured himself, lock stock and barrel into this worthy effort.

“How can I find a gracious God?” was Luther’s nagging question. How can I get on the right side of the One who created me, the same One who will someday judge me?

You and I may not put it in exactly those terms, but we surely are attempting—every minute of every hour of every day—we’re trying to do the right thing, to align ourselves with the Source of all that is.

But try as we might—we always fall short. St Paul says so rather bluntly in our Second Lesson when he declares: “No human being will be justified in [God’s] sight by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes knowledge of sin.” End of story—there is no law, no rule, no way of life, no moral uprightness that can ever bring us home—put us right with the Source of our life.

That’s the bad news—as old as the hills, and as fresh as this new day. And if that bad news was all there was, we would be of all persons most to be pitied.

But remember: I said that I had bad news, good news and better news for you.

So here goes: what you’re trying isn’t working….but there is another way, a whole different way, a way that we’d never come up with all on our own.

2. The good news is that there is this other way. And it has nothing to do with what we think or say or do—thank God! It’s a way that’s simply bestowed upon us--comes to us out of the clear blue. It descends like gentle rain on parched earth. It “happens” to us when we least expect it.

Martin Luther was about ready to throw in the towel. He had tried everything he could think of to strike a bargain with God—get on God’s good side.

And if anyone could have pulled it off—it was Martin Luther. He tried to fulfill those 101 expectations of his church, he confessed his sins and made amends every day. He was so obsessed with that that one day his priest-confessor turned Luther away at the door of the confessional—telling him to come back only when he had some real, serious sins to confess!

At the end of his rope, Luther dove deeply into the Word of God…searching, seeking out, trying to find a way out.

And then one fine day “the way out” found Luther!--right here in our Second Lesson for today (that’s why we read this every year on Reformation Sunday!) Here’s how the good news begins: “but now!”

These might be the two sweetest words in the whole Bible: “But now”—something new bursts forth…something other than “trying just a bit harder” to live our lives well.

But now—a path is opened up that we weren’t even looking for. It just appeared—took us by surprise, showed up in our midst.

“But now,” sings Paul, “apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

Here we thought that righteousness, being right with God, being aligned with God’s Kingdom was something we had to pursue with every fiber of our being….”but now”—lo and behold!—it dawned on Paul, it dawned on Luther and (pray God!) it dawns on us that God’s righteousness has been pursuing us, all along.

God’s right-wising of the world is never our do-it-yourself project. It is God’s project, through and through. It is God’s great work on our behalf. And God delights in simply forking it over, letting it wash over us, covering all our sinfulness and waywardness with the waters of grace flowing from Christ’s pierced side, cascading now from the baptismal font, sweeping away all obstacles in the path, catching us up in the gracious current, the glorious under-tow of the Good News.

Good news: there is another way. And this way has found us. It has captured us with God’s astonishing mercy. It is, even now, making us brand spanking new—new creatures, in Christ Jesus.

Bad news: what you’re trying isn’t working.

Good news: there is another way—God’s way of hunting us down with mercy and a fresh start and the promise of new creation.

3. But here’s even better news: this other way isn’t just a bright idea or a “live option” or a great possibility plopped down in our laps—an alternative God cooked up for us in the spur of the moment—something that might do the trick, if we’ll just be smart enough to choose it.

No, the better news is that this way, Jesus’ way is what God had in mind all along. As Paul puts it in our text, Jesus “disclosed” what God has always been about—Jesus has revealed that God’s righteousness isn’t God’s possession—but it’s God’s modus operandi…God’s action plan played out in the world.

God is, always has been, and always will be in the right-wising business! God isn’t just coming to us, hat in hand, to make us a great offer. God intends to effect this way in our lives. It is our destiny!

Before the first star began to twinkle, God was thinking of you. Before God created anything, he was imagining a cross and an empty grave. God was getting ready to send his beloved Son into the world. Before the first sunrise ever took place, God had designs on you to name you and claim you and never let you go.

And because all of this is God’s gift to you—a sheer, unadulterated bonus of undeserved mercy—you now have better things to do than nervously trying to measure up to expectations that will always be beyond your grasp.

You now can just float—float in God’s mercy.

I often think of a Roman Catholic bishop I knew down in southern Minnesota. Raymond Lucker served the Diocese of New Ulm until cancer stole him away. While he was dying Ray often spent free time at a little farm place he owned near Renville, MN. Once a friend found Ray, sitting in a lawn chair in the bright sunshine of a Minnesota summer morning. “What are you doing, Ray?” the friend asked. “Nothing,” Ray replied. “I’m just sitting here, letting God hold me.”

Reformation Day is about floating on the sheer grace of God, living in the confidence that before you ever lifted a finger to do one good thing for God, God had already done all good things for you, in Christ Jesus.

And where does that now leave us? Floating in the grace of God, held tightly by God, riding the baptismal river, and calling to others on the shore: “Come on in. This water is fine!”

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Lighting up the Cosmos

2011-10-16T05:18:00.000-07:00

75^th Anniversary Sunday—Immanuel of Wadena
October 16, 2011
Matthew 5:13-16

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

“You are the light of the world,” Jesus tells us here in Matthew chapter 5. Ponder that simple statement with me for a few moments. Notice some things that might easily escape us in this overly-familiar passage.

1. First, you are. You are the light of the world.

Our Lord Jesus doesn’t give us something to aspire to here. He isn’t like the proverbial commencement speaker who challenges graduates bedecked in their caps and gowns to see that “the sky’s the limit—they can reach for the stars,” if they simply put their minds to it.

Our Lord doesn’t lay an assignment or a project or a “woulda coulda” on us, here. Jesus doesn’t tell us: you really should be light. You oughta try real hard to shine.

No, instead Jesus says simply: you are. You are the light of the world.

It is a fait accompli—an accomplished fact. It is a promise, not a possibility. It’s true simply because the Author of Light and Life says so. When Jesus speaks, things happen, identity is given, purpose is granted, reality is transformed in the most unexpected and amazing of ways: you are the light of the world.

This morning we give thanks for the light that has shown forth from this congregation for three-quarters of a century. This amazing historical booklet—one of the most thorough, most thoughtfully-put-together anniversary booklets I’ve ever seen—this booklet offers more than a Joe Friday “just the facts” rendition of information. This is a journal of highs and lows, opportunities and challenges, even successes and failures—making it one of the most honest congregational histories I’ve read, as well.

But what shines through, again and again, is the giftedness of this community of light and life in Jesus Christ. There is a givenness—a God-givenness—about your life as a church. You came into being--in the Great Depression no less!--and you survived and thrived and weathered all sorts of storms and went through a killer tornado….because God apparently has wanted you to be here.

God has said to you, and God keeps saying to you: you are! You are the light of the world. You are because I have brought you forth, given birth to you, kept you going, continued to trim your wick and replenish your oil so that your light might blaze forth--unabated, unabashed.

You are. You are here. You are Immanuel (God-with-us!), because God has seen to it. Thanks be to God.

2. But there is more here in this verse. Jesus says YOU are the light of the world.

What’s curious about that is that, if we know our Bibles, we remember that elsewhere Jesus described himself in the same terms. John 8:12 (my confirmation verse!) goes like this: “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’”

So, here we were thinking that Jesus is the light of the world, as by rights it should be. Jesus is the one who shatters the darkness of sin, death and the power of the devil. Jesus shines the piercing light of God’s Word and God’s truth into all the dark corners of this world. Jesus is the light of the world—according to John’s Gospel.

But this same Jesus puts a different spin on that phrase here in Matthew’s gospel: looking us right in the eyes, telling each one of us and anyone else who cares to listen: “YOU…you are the light of the world.”

So, which is it? Who is the light of the world—Jesus, or those to whom Jesus speaks when he says “you are the light of the world?”

The answer, I think, is that Jesus sometimes has a hard time telling where he leaves off and we begin—we who are his beloved ones, his sisters and brothers, his Body in the world. Jesus identifies with us for whom he has suffered, died and risen again. Jesus the Light “identifies” so closely, so completely with us, who now live in the Body of Christ, that he who is the light thinks nothing of calling us the light of the world as well.

Jesus takes us that seriously, don’t you know? YOU are the light of the world.

Which is to say: you shine in dazzling ways because you bear the light Jesus has put within you. It’s a borrowed, reflected light that shines through us—always, always, always….and yet just because it is a borrowed light (we borrow the light from Jesus!) it shines no less brightly.

YOU are the light the world, declares Jesus….and there’s another thing we need to say about that YOU. It’s a “you all” sort of pronoun. It’s plural, not singular. YOU ALL…YOU TOGETHER….YOU IN THE COMPANY OF YOUR FELLOW DISCIPLES…you collectively are the light of the world.

And that shines through in the story of Immanuel Lutheran Church, too, doesn’t it? For 75 years you have learned and relearned how the “holy togetherness” of the church frees you to tend the gospel, encourage one another, create vital programs, and sustain sacred space for all those things to happen--while supporting God’s mission in the world.

You ALL….you together have borne and continue to bear the light of Christ in the world.

I’m struck by how often in your history you grappled with the dilemma of taking care of internal matters in the congregation—while also finagling ways to reach out into the community and beyond. That has been a lively debate, a healthy discussion here.

You’ve been unwilling to have it only one way—looking after yourselves. You have persistently wanted to have it both ways: tending your life right here as Immanuel Lutheran, but also expanding mission efforts beyond your four walls….whether through Habitat for Humanity…or generous mission support giving….or your “mission of the month” emphasis….or projects like Mission Jamaica. You’ve been able to cover all those bases because it has never been about you (a single congregation all by itself)….but it has been about YOU ALL, you together, whom our Lord Jesus calls (collectively!) the light of the world.

3. Third, Jesus says to us: YOU ALL ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. Your bearing of the Christ-light serves the cosmos—it’s the universe that you light up.

Rather an audacious thing to be thinking about, let alone speaking out loud!

I recall a phrase that the late President Pamela Jolicoeur of Concordia College, coined. Coming from southern California—where everything is big and splashy and colorful!—and arriving in the harsh environment of the Red River Valley…..Dr. Jolicoeur observed that we northwestern Minnesota Lutherans are known for our “militant modesty.”

Our motto, with apologies to Garrison Keillor, might go like this: “Don’t you be thinking you’re anything special!”

But Jesus isn’t buying any of that. Jesus isn’t looking for wallflowers who blend into the background unnoticed. Jesus, rather, audaciously tells us: you are the light OF THE WORLD, you light up the whole cosmos!

Now, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

God lays no small plans for us. God harbors no small expectations of us. God intends for us to intrude upon the darkness of this world and let the dazzling light of Jesus Christ shine to full effect.

You, my dear sisters and brothers, you light up the universe. So, please, never sell yourselves short.

And you here at Immanuel have lived that out in so many ways. You have been not just a “consumer” of pastors—but you have produced pastors and other church leaders, other servants of the Word. You have dispatched sons and daughters out across the globe. Several of your pastors have wound up being called into wider-church ministries. You have done things like “Miracle Sundays” (which doesn’t sound very “militantly modest”)….and when the Big One roared through town in June of 2010, you were bold in your efforts—with other neighbors in Wadena—to declare, rather defiantly, that a big old tornado isn’t going to get you down.

Militant modesty may have its place, but Jesus our Lord calls us to something grander. I love the fact that one of your goals for this anniversary celebration is “to create excitement for the future of Immanuel’s ministry.”

Well here’s what God has to say about that—God who called Immanuel into being, God who binds you in a holy togetherness, God who sets before you a whole world of possibilities for your next 75 years and beyond. Jesus looks you in the eyes and says to you today: “you are….you all are…the light of the world.” Whatever awaits you, you will continue to arise and shine…for this is your Lord’s promise to you: you will light up the world, with God’s own dazzling brilliance.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Right Stuff

2011-10-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

Awe-Filled Worship and Life: Rethinking Stewardship

October 9 and 16, 2011

Revelation 21:1-5a and Galatians 2:19b-20

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

When I was a little boy, like lots of other little boys back in the 50s and 60s, I was fascinated by the U.S. space program. My friends and I never missed a rocket launch on TV, and astronauts were our heroes.

Four of us, when we were all in third grade, even decided to become a team of astronauts….and, so the story goes, I would be their chaplain!

What we little boys didn’t realize, though, was how rigorous the training program had been for our heroes—astronauts like Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong.

We didn’t know, for starters, that all astronauts had to be in tip-top physical condition. We didn’t know how highly educated they were…how they had gone through basic training in the military…how they had been subjected to a host of intense simulation experiences.

The reason for all that was that astronauts needed to function in an environment of weightlessness. They had to survive G-forces of 6 or higher, had to be proficient scuba divers, had to tread water for extended periods of time. Astronauts truly had to have “the right stuff.”

What might have given us pause—my third grade companions and I—was the reality that many things astronauts went through in their training made them deathly ill. Simulated experiences of weightlessness caused dizziness, even nausea. Getting spun around in G-force simulators could make them pass out. Our heroes were always being pressed to the max!

Here, silly me, I thought reading a book or taking a class might be enough, to become an astronaut.

But no. The hundreds of men and women who became U.S. astronauts all had experience a world that they had yet to know—a world so unlike this world—the disorienting, gravity-free world of outer space.

Here in the 21^st chapter of Revelation we catch a glimpse of how God is even now fashioning a new creation—a new heaven and a new earth that we are destined for, that we have yet to experience in its fullness.

Through our baptism, through being incorporated into Jesus Christ, we are already, in a sense, residents of this new world…though we’ve just started to experience its height and breadth and depth.

God’s new creation is so unlike this world—so very different from our life in the midst of space and time and gravity—that we can only imagine it, in tiny “bites,” and fleeting glimpses. Truly Paul was right when he wrote that for “now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” (I Cor. 13:12)

We venture to speak of the “life of the world to come,” only because we are already in training for it even now. And, as was the case with U.S. astronauts, such training involves so much more than passing a class or reading a book.

You and I are, rather, called to prepare ourselves for God’s new creation now, by experiencing, by practicing intensely the life that God is giving us, the life to which God is leading us.

This analogy of the astronauts and their training is a way for you and me to think about our lives as Christians, as followers of Jesus.

Indeed, everything we do and are as God’s beloved people is preparing us for the amazing life that yet awaits us. God invites us to start living now, in eager anticipation of the fullness of life in God’s kingdom.

God invites us to lean into his promised future, by acting today in ways that will become natural for us in God’s tomorrow.

Hence, all the talk about and attention to “faith practices” in the church.

Think of “faith practices” as what Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong did to become astronauts—rigorously, continually, painstakingly preparing themselves for a world they could only imagine.

That’s what it’s like for us to be “in training” now for the New Creation that God is surely bringing our way.

We know how to live in this “heavy,”gravity-ruled world that is passing away—but what about living into the freedom and gracious “weightlessness”--of the world that is to come? That is something else!

So, living in this old world that expects us to fill up every available minute with work and play and “busyness”….God cajoles us into acting as if our time were in God’s hands, and not our own. And so we regularly observe Sabbath time, ceasing our killer schedules and intentionally doing nothing productive once a week, so that we might learn afresh how well God runs the universe without any help from us!

Or, swimming in a culture that throws at us all sorts of competing “scripts” and “stories,” designed to claim our complete loyalty…God comes along and draws us out of ourselves, weaves us into God’s story. God frees us to dwell regularly in another Word, God’s Word, that turns everything upside down. God helps us master a new script, in which God is all in all, thus giving us a new GPS coordinate to aim for.

Or, instead of only seeking our own self-interest in this passing-away world….God pries us lose from ourselves, uncurls our turned-in-upon-ourselves ways, lures us into seeking the good of our neighbor above our own self-interest…through the faith practice of serving our neighbor.

Or, most apropos for today, living by a code that convinces us we must spend every last red cent on ourselves, a code that says, “the one who winds up with the most toys wins”…God instead catches us up into the crazy joy, the hilaritas of generosity, introducing us to the lightness, the “weightlessness,” the freedom of grace.

Doesn’t this sound great?

But, truth be told, embracing this training, trying on these faith practices also disorients us and makes us dizzy….because living now in a way that leans into God’s future inevitably causes some motion sickness.

If we’re really lucky, in fact, it will kill us.

Faith practices like Sabbath-keeping, dwelling in God’s Word, praying, serving our neighbors, and embracing generosity…these faith practices will be the end of us, the end of the old person inside each of us who clings to this dying, passing-away world.

We live here. We die here. End of story!

But it’s not the end of the story. This life is just the beginning.

Just look at Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. All these faith practices are Jesus-practices! They have an unmistakable Jesus-shape about them. They imprint Jesus on our lives!

…which is why Paul rhapsodizes about Jesus living within us. “I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul declares in the second chapter of Galatians, “and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:19-20)

Herein lies our only hope—that the God who got inside this old gravity-laden world in Jesus, will keep getting inside us in the power of Jesus’ resurrected and unending life. Unlike the astronauts of the 1960s, we do not embrace “faith practices” as solo performers. There are always at least two persons embracing these “new creation” practices—you, and Jesus.

And precisely here we see “the right stuff” that makes us new, gets us ready for the life of the world to come. The right stuff is the Jesus-stuff, getting down under our skins, and flowing out through us into the world around us.

So these “faith practices” are actually Jesus’ own life, being replayed now through you and through me.

For you see, what Jesus gets a kick out of is this: Jesus loves dressing up in our flesh and blood. Jesus loves getting at this old dying world through us—thus refashioning it into the new heaven and the new earth where all God’s children are destined to live.

· So Jesus in us, re-centers us in God’s own life, in which we’ll never again need to think that our “busyness” justifies us.

·       And Jesus in us, helps us learn God’s script for our lives, marinating us in a Word that re-orients everything we used to think and feel and assume.
·       And Jesus in us gets us turned “inside out” for the sake of our neighbors in the world.
·       And Jesus under our skin inspires in us the sheer delight, the wild joy of going crazy with our possessions, giving generously for the sake of God, God’s mission, God’s people and God’s world.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Next Generation: "The 2020 Crossover"

2011-09-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

The Next Generation: “The 2020 Crossover”

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. Psalm 127:3-4 (NKJV)

Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Deut. 5:16

One of the privileges of my ministry is the opportunity to meet and learn from other leaders across our state and nation. Last month, as I retreated for 24 hours with other “heads of communions” that are part of the Minnesota Council of Churches, we heard a compelling presentation from Mr. Tom Gillaspy, the state demographer for Minnesota.

Statistics or “Sadistics?”

Now, I realize that statistics aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. (When my daughter took a college class in the subject, she deliberately mispronounced “statistics” as “sadistics!”) But we can learn much, for the sake of mission and ministry, about what statisticians study on a daily basis. Demographers like Gillaspy carefully count the “trees” so that we can discern how the “forest” seems to be growing or not growing, as the case may be.

In the midst of a wide-ranging presentation on the U.S. Census of 2010, Mr. Gillaspy dropped one factoid that has been exercising my imagination. As I reported in my Next Generation column last March, it may surprise us to realize that in 17 of the 21 counties of our synod there are more children and youth under the age of 18 than there are senior adults who are age 65+. In fact, this is and has been true across our entire state of Minnesota, as well.

But in less than a decade all of this will change. Gillaspy shared a chart that revealed the population trend-lines, for youth and seniors, as crossing over in 2020. When this “2020 Crossover” hits, our state will have more seniors than youth.

Awareness of this reality is already influencing political debate in Minnesota. Two of the biggest portions of our state government’s budget involve education aid to public schools offering K-12 education and support for long-term care for needy seniors. In this regard, Gillaspy pointed out that what it costs us to educate one K-12 student for one year is roughly what it costs us to maintain one senior adult in a long-term care facility for one month.

Pause for a moment, and let that sink in.

Having recently served as power-for-attorney for a frail elderly adult, I can testify to the truth of Mr. Gillaspy’s observations. I was startled at how quickly my late mother’s financial resources were drawn down by each monthly rent check paid to her assisted-living facility. Yikes!

Inter-Generational Competition

One of the implications of these demographic trends is the disturbing specter of inter-generational competition and even strife. Frail elderly persons (whose ranks many of us will be joining!) will need more and more from a system whose resources are not infinite. Young workers will be supporting—through their Social Security and Medicare taxes—a burgeoning number of senior adults, making it all the more challenging to save up for their own retirements.

Precisely at this point we as people of Christian faith are called to speak up and enter the political discussions swirling around us. Perhaps even more vitally, we need to engage deeply in the cultural conversation about the place and role of all the generations on our planet—from the youngest to the eldest.

Getting In A Word Edgewise

We come to these encounters with some deep convictions, drawn from the wellspring of biblical wisdom.

First, we have a bias against viewing the world solely through the lens of “what’s in it for me.” We have been fashioned by a generous Creator who bestows gifts in just one way: abundantly. There is enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed. Living as Christian disciples we are called to speak out from the profound apostolic perspective that “you are not your own…you were bought with a price” (I Cor. 6:19b-20a).

Second, we will resist every effort to pit the interests of one generation over against the interests of another generation. The scriptural witness is that God values the whole human family and the whole human being in every stage of development from the dawn of life to the sunset of earthly death—and, indeed, God’s care extends beyond earthly death, in the power of Christ’s Resurrection!

The psalmist rightly calls children a heritage from the Lord (Psalm 127). We have a profound stake in the Next Generation of disciples. But we also care deeply about those who have walked long in Christian faith. The Fourth Commandment was given, originally, for the sake of older parents—an injunction to adult “children” not to abandon or dis-respect the generation that brought them into this world. When we exercise proper care for all the generations, we will taste the fruits of the Fourth Commandment, which includes a promise: “so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 5).

Third, we will cling to the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus. These are sobering, even desperate, times. If we stare right into the teeth of the awful truth that demographers bring to our attention, we will lose heart.

But, as I am fond of saying, demography is not necessarily destiny. We believe, teach and confess that the God in whom we trust is the God who specializes in “hopeless cases.” The great British writer and Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton, hit the nail on the head when he observed: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

Beating Back Paralysis

As I write this column, I have fresh memories of our two weeks with five visitors from the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC). The AELC carries out its mission and ministry on the teeming sub-continent of India—with 1.2 billion citizens of the world’s largest democracy. A signature ministry of the AELC involves youth and education; church-sponsored schools are one of many “open doors” to India’s “seekers” who want to find out about the way of Jesus Christ.

As we visited some of the splendid long-term care facilities in our synod that are affiliated with our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, our AELC friends talked about the fact that they don’t have anything comparable to our long-term care system. All too often, the elderly in India are reduced to begging—and their families end up abandoning them. (This isn’t necessarily as cruel as it sounds; some families are forced to choose between feeding the children or caring for the seniors, as a matter of economic necessity.) This is a source of piercing pain for our sisters and brothers of the AELC.

As we express care for all the generations on Earth, let us not allow paralysis to keep us from pondering the ministry implications of the “2020 Crossover.” Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ cannot sit out this critical discussion in our political life and in our wider culture. God calls us to give voice to the convictions that arise from the Word of God, for this time and place. God invites passionate Jesus-communities to enter the fray and ask ourselves: “How might we reshape our ministries to respond to the challenges that will come with the ‘2020 Crossover?’”

Walking together into God’s tomorrow,

Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

Northwestern Minnesota Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work. Our hands.

For reflection and discussion:

1. What feelings do you experience as you read about the “2020 Crossover?”

2. Where do you already see signs of inter-generational competition in our communities?

3. The column lifts up three implications from biblical wisdom for how Christian disciples will engage in the cultural conversation about the “2020 Crossover.” What other implications for this discussion do you draw from God’s Word?

4. What is one way your congregation might start preparing now for the ministry challenges that will come with the “2020 Crossover?”

This is the tenth in a series of columns on Bishop Wohlrabe’s “Next Generation” vision (available at http://www.nwmnsynod.org/BISHOP'S%20PAGE.htm) for the NW MN Synod. These columns are designed to equip the disciples and leadership groups such as church councils, for faithful and fruitful ministry. Feel free to use the column for personal reflection or group discussion, e.g. church council meeting devotions/discussion.

Renewing Strength

2011-09-10T19:51:00.000-07:00

NW MN Synod Women’s Organization Convention

Redeemer Lutheran Church, Thief River Falls

September 10, 2011

Isaiah 40:31

“…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

When I turned 40 my dear sister sent me a birthday card that I’ve never forgotten. I don’t remember the artwork or the sassy verse that was on the card, but I do remember what my sister wrote to me, inside that card.

She was trained as a nurse, you see, and for some reason she thought that my turning 40 was a good time for her to remind me of all the ways that life declines at that point—to remind me that age 40 truly is “over the hill.”

My sister poured it on pretty thick…mentioning the loss of brain cells, loss of visual acuity and hearing, loss of muscle tone, loss of bone density. You name it—everything starts falling apart, heading downhill after age 40

“Gee, sis—thanks for bringing this to my attention!” Thanks for making sure I remember all the ways that as I age, I lose the strength I once enjoyed.

I thought of that as I pondered your theme verse about “renewing strength.” Yes, that’s what we’re all looking for—isn’t it? A way to regain lost territory, recover lost ground, get back in the game, be restored to what we once were.

But how does that happen?

A couple of years ago my physician gave me his answer, in the form of a book entitled: Younger Next Year. It’s a book about how one can halt, even reverse the effects of the aging process. Not by going on a particular diet. Not by taking a special pill. Not by resting or doing yoga or engaging in some sort of mind-over-matter meditation.

No, the way to restore strength is to exercise, pure and simple….to be so committed to regular, vigorous physical activity that you make plans now to spend some time exercising on the morning of the day you die.

Strength is restored, not by resting, not by reposing on a feather bed, not by taking it easy.

Strength is restored by regularly encountering, bumping up against, “pushing yourself” against some form of stout resistance.

You get stronger when you work, even over-work, your muscles. When the coach yells “make it hurt,” he’s doing you a big favor, urging you to take a step toward restoring your strength.

In short you restore your strength by expending your strength.

Now, you might be thinking: that’s all well and good—if we were here for advice on our physical health, here to think about restoring the strength of our bodily muscles.

But what’s the connection between all of this and the “things of God?” What if the “muscle” that needs to be worked happens to be your soul, your faith?

Strange as it might seem, ask the question that way and the answer is still basically the same: if your soul has grown weak, if your faith is flabby, if your spirit is what needs to be restored, the best thing that can happen to you is to exercise it by encountering some resistance—especially resistance that God allows to come your way—maybe even resistance that God actually brings upon you.

There is a deeply biblical pattern in that, and we see it in spades here in Isaiah 40—the source of your theme verse about “Renewing Strength.”

In the first 39 chapters of Isaiah we see how God allowed, how God handed over his chosen people to come up against some of the worst resistance they ever experienced: the soul-robbing, strength-draining resistance of the Exile.

After centuries of disobedience and waywardness, God allowed his precious people to reap the fruits of their faithlessness by permitting their enemies, the Babylonians, to kidnap them, remove them from their home in the Promised Land and haul them off to a far country.

Talk about “encountering resistance!” Exile like that wiped out most other ancient nations and tribes—and by all accounts the Exile nearly spelled the end for the people of Israel, too.

But if God allowed the extremity of exile to come upon them, it was not in order to bring Israel’s life to an end.

No. God, instead, tested and tried the temper of his people, in the refining fire of persecution and exile, to bring them up against the kind of resistance that could have killed them—all of it, in order to bring them out of exile, restore their strength, and give them wings to soar like eagles once again.

That’s what Isaiah starts to sing about starting here in this hinge chapter—chapter 40 of his book. Here in chapter 40 the prophet hones in, like a laser, on the two questions that dogged the people of Israel as they languished for years in Exile, far, far from home.

First, they wondered if God still had the stuff to help them, to bring them out of the hole they had dug for themselves. Israel wondered, in the first place, if God could help them….

…which is why Isaiah goes to such lengths earlier in this chapter to magnify the immensity and the incomparability of his God:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?...

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;…

who brings princes to naught,

and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

Could God help us? That was the first question the exiles asked themselves…but it quickly led to a second, even more poignant question: if God indeed could help us, would God actually do so? Does God still care enough about us, to give us a second chance?

If the first question inquired into God’s power, the second question delved even deeper, into God’s mercy….which is why just two verses before our theme verse, we read this hinge sentence in this hinge chapter of Isaiah’s book:

[God] does not faint or grow weary;

his understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless.

Isaiah is sure of two things—two things his exiled sisters and brothers longed to know for themselves. Isaiah recognizes the incomparable power of God….a power that is seen most clearly in the unfathomable mercy of God.

God can help them in their weakness—with one hand tied behind God’s back.

But the even better news is that God will help them in their weakness. God’s power is made known chiefly in showing mercy.

….those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint.

Notice please, the deep comfort of all these “shalls.”

But notice also the strenuousness of these “shalls.”

God restores strength to his people as they exercise the strength that God alone gives them. Faith’s muscularity is restored as we flex the faith-muscles that God has already given to us.

We realize that we’re not weary—because we’re already running. It dawns on us that we no longer feel faint—because we’re up on our legs, walking brisklytoward God’s tomorrow.

This is a peculiar business, isn’t it? It’s about God’s ways, not our ways. It’s about God trying and testing those whom God loves. It’s about faith more precious than gold, being purified in the Refiner’s fire. It’s about Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the … joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame…” (Hebrews 12:2).

I don’t know that we should think of ourselves as living in an Exile time. But I do know that these are scary, unsettling days on our planet. Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Over this past decade it has come to seem as though everything we thought we could count on is up for grabs—my goodness, even the post office is ready to go belly up! In our country, across our world, even in our church—everything we used to just take for granted seems to have evaporated. The only constant is change. What can we count on? Who can restore us?

Can God get us out of this mess—does God have the power to do that? And even more importantly, will God save us—does God still care about us enough to draw us up out of the soup we’re in?

Listen to Isaiah as he pours the gospel into our ears!

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth….

He gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless….

…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint.

The resistance you feel, the obstacles you’re up against just may be how God is restoring your strength in your exercising of it.

Why are eagles so good at flying? Because they fly a lot, every day, in the strength that God freely gives to them.

God can give you this same strength. Better yet, God will give you this same strength.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Untying the Knot

2011-09-10T19:43:00.000-07:00

Dedication of Church Entryway

Faith Lutheran Church, Wolverton, MN

September 11, 2011

Matthew 18:21-35

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

So what’s so special about the number 77?

Here in this gospel lesson, Peter comes to Jesus with a very good question: “If another member of church sins against me, how often should I forgive?”

And like an eager-beaver, impress-the-teacher student, sitting in the front row of a classroom, straining to be noticed….Peter offers an answer to his own question. “Should I forgive someone ‘as many as seven times?’”

What you may not know is that Peter was being pretty generous here. The great rabbis of his day taught that Jews owed one another three gestures of forgiveness.

But Peter had been hanging around Jesus long enough to sense that Jesus would want to raise that number…..so Peter doubles the rabbi’s number and adds one more for good measure.

Seven! Is seven the number of times I should forgive someone who does me wrong?

Peter comes off like a young man who really wants to impress the adults.

But Jesus immediately deflates Peter’s pretentiousness, upping the ante elevenfold.

“Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times” (some ancient manuscripts read: seventy times seven).

Wow! Peter undershot that one by a country mile. Forgiving someone seven times—really quite a feat, when you think about it—but that doesn’t even come close to what Jesus is after here. Jesus increases Peter’s seven by a magnitude of eleven.

So I ask you, what’s so special about the number 77?

We could come up with all sorts of answers, most of them having to do with seven being the perfect number in the mindset of first-century Jews….but I don’t really think this particular number matters all that much. It’s not a password or a PIN number or an access code to deep mysteries.

I think Jesus hit upon 77 as the number of times we need to forgive someone, because if you even try to do that—to forgive someone 77 times--sooner or later you will lose track. You will forget what the “count” is—in fact, you’ll probably chuck it all and simply stop bothering to keep score at all.

And then you will understand that the number “77” is a placeholder for “countless.”

“If another member of church sins against me, how often should I forgive?” Peter asks.

And Jesus, in effect, says: “forgive count-lessly….forgive so many times you lose track of the score….forgive as God forgives….anything less than that will be the death of you…”

So now the question becomes less about arithmetic, and more about the very heart of forgiveness, and here’s where we hit pay-dirt. Because at its core, the biblical notion of forgiving someone has to do with freedom….with setting someone else free, and in the process yourself also being set free.

Because in God’s Word, the root-word for “forgiveness” conjures up the image of untying a knot.

Have you ever been stuck, annoyingly delayed, trying to untangle a pesky knot in a thread, a shoelace, a cord, or a rope? When that happens, time stands still. Everything grinds to a halt until you untie that pesky knot.

Then you are free. Free to move on. Free to be, once again.

THAT’s the picture I’d like to imbed in your brain, your heart, your soul today. Forgiveness is about getting unstuck, it’s about untying a deadly knot in your life, it’s about moving out, moving ahead again into a vast sphere of freedom and a new future in which God intends for you to love and live and have your being.

And freedom is what this day is about, isn’t it?

Freedom is the red thread that draws together all that’s on our minds on this September 11, 2011.

“Freedom” helps us understand the deep meaning of this accessible entryway that you have labored long and hard to make happen.

I trust that you made this investment for the sake of freedom, freedom for everyone to find their way to this house of God, where the liberating Word and the future-opening Sacraments of our Lord Jesus Christ can be accessible to, available to ALL.

Several years ago, I was in another congregation of this synod—a church that had recently constructed their own accessible entryway—and the pastor told me about an elderly man who came to that church on dedication day, with tears streaming down his old wrinkled face.

That man proudly drove his motorized wheelchair up the street, onto the sidewalk and through the front door of his church—a sacred space he had not been in for decades….and now he could be where his heart had always longed to be, in HIS church, once again.

It was about freedom for that dear old soul—freedom from all the barriers that had tied him up in knots. Freedom to feed again on the precious Gospel, as it was proclaimed from a pulpit he had not sat beneath for ages.

This day is about freedom—the “untying-the-knot” freedom that is Jesus’ specialty, God’s forgiveness that drives our sin away from us, as far as the east is from the west, that restarts the clock, that sets aside the stumbling blocks and other obstacles between us and God’s overflowing goodness.

And in a way, that red thread also ties us to the other story that’s on our minds this morning: as we recall the tragedy of ten years ago, what for a decade we have called “9/11.”

Most of us who were alive in 2001 will remember where we were and exactly what we were doing on that fateful morning.

I was living in Redwood Falls, MN, where I had been on the synod staff for over a decade. I was returning to my home from my morning workout at our community center….and as I got out of my car I caught just a word, just a phrase, about a building being hit by an airplane in New York City.

When I got home, I dished up a bowl of breakfast cereal and went down to our family room to turn on the TV….and two hours later I noticed I still hadn’t eaten that bowl of breakfast cereal—so mesmerized was I, so “stuck” in watching the cascades of heart-rending images that poured forth from my television set.

9/11 was for many of us, the scariest day of our lives—the day we began to wonder if the whole world had gone mad, if everything we thought we could count on had simply evaporated.

It was easy, as I recall, easy to get stuck on 9/11: stuck in our fears and anxieties and hatred for those who did this vile thing—murdering over 3,000 innocent Americans on one day, the worst attack on our homeland in our nation’s history.

But thank God, we did not remain stuck for long. We roused ourselves, took action to restore a measure of safety and security to our lives, and brought justice to those who perpetrated this outrage.

But still, I wonder, if we Americans have truly gotten ourselves completely “unstuck” from the events of 9/11. I wonder if at times we still allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fear and anxiety, tied up in a quest for revenge that has taken us beyond the pursuit of justice, drawn ourselves into ourselves, made us less open to our neighbors, to the world, and to the future.

Our great country--and indeed every people and place on the face of the earth--we still all need to know what brings joy to the heart of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ….and that is the freedom that only God gives to us, the freedom that is centered in the astonishing forgiveness we have received and in which we are invited to live every day of our lives, in Jesus Christ.

It’s really the red thread that ties it all together this morning: it’s about freedom. God intends for us a life that is unshackled by paralyzing fears, smoldering resentments, and foreboding about the future. Jesus came to untie all those “knots.”

And this freedom is meant to be shared, pure and simple. I take that to be the central point of the parable of the two debtors that Jesus tells in the second part of our gospel lesson. The freedom that comes from forgiveness is something for us to receive—but never to keep, for ourselves.

Try to “freeze” it or hang on to it selfishly, and it melts in your hand. Share it, as lavishly as God forgives you, and it keeps coming back to you, eleven-fold, a full measure heaped up, pressed down, and overflowing, right in your lap.

Freedom. God created you for that. And Jesus Christ is recreating you, even now, to bask in, to receive, and to pass on this freedom. The freedom that is forgiveness.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

A Confession on Which a Church Can be Built

2011-08-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

Grace Lutheran Church, Detroit Lakes, MN

August 21, 2011—Pentecost 10

Matthew 16:13-20

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Jesus asks two questions in this gospel text—two questions that, at first, sound a lot alike.

But these questions are really miles apart! They’re separated by light years!

First, Jesus asks his followers, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (v. 13) In other words Jesus asks: “What are folks saying about me?”

This first question requests information. It fishes for the local gossip.

You and I kick around questions like this all the time. We love it, too--especially when we’re drinking coffee or sitting in the local watering hole or wherever it is we like to trade “the latest” on what’s happening in the lives of others.

And as we share this information with one another, we invariably spice it up a little. A friend of mine calls that “value-added hearing.” Gossip tends toward becoming juicier as it is shared.

Ask me to share what I’ve heard about someone else, and I can talk your arm off. Ask me to talk about anything—and you might not be able to shut me up. And I bet that some of you are like that too.

So when Jesus asks this question, immediately he hears a flurry of responses: “Some say [that you are] John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (v. 14) I think the disciples could have gone on and on responding to this first question, because all it asked of them was to talk about Jesus.

So also, you and I love to talk about people or news or ideas. Talking about someone or something else requires nothing of us more than a good memory and articulate speech. Trading gossip entails no deep investment of ourselves in what we are saying—we don’t even need to think about it all that much.

But Jesus wasn’t patient enough to just let the disciple jabber on about him. Cutting them off, he launched his second question in our text—and, warning!—it’s the second question that usually gets us! “But who do you say that I am?” (v. 15)

Now I picture a moment of silence—a pregnant pause—in the bantering of the disciples, because they know how different this second question is from Jesus’ first question.

And we would do well to pause and notice that difference, for ourselves. If Jesus asks for information about what people are saying about him, in the first question, he is asking for something deeper, something far more potentially life-changing in the second question.

Jesus is calling his followers to look him square in the face, to gaze right into his eyes and speak for themselves. Rather than talking about Jesus, this second question asks them to talk of Jesus, to speak to Jesus….and these small words (the prepositions!) make all the difference.

I imagine a moment of silence at this point in the story—indeed, I hope there was such a silence—because to do justice to this second question, the disciples had to take some deep breaths, gather their thoughts, and steel themselves for a worthy answer that needed to come from somewhere other than “off the top of their heads.”

In short, this second question was designed to call forth a confession—a confession that would determine how these twelve men would spend the rest of their lives and how they would probably all die, as well.

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” (v. 16) proclaimed Peter, perhaps after clearing his throat.

“You are the Messiah—you are the One we’ve been waiting for!”

And when Peter said those words, I picture them hanging there in mid-air—for just a few seconds. And I hope that Jesus and the other eleven disciples paused, to let Peter’s words sink in.

We know moments like this. We’re all caught up in the hurly-burly of a wide-ranging conversation….and then someone asks or says something that stops everyone dead in their tracks, because the conversation has suddenly dropped to a deeper level of significance.

That’s what’s going on here, as we can tell from Jesus’ response: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it….” (vv. 17-18)

Wow! Can you see, can you hear how Jesus and Peter took this whole exchange among the disciples and drove it to a deeper level? Jesus asks his disciples to speak for themselves—and Peter does that—and Jesus calls Peter’s confession the kind of thing upon which he can build a whole CHURCH!

Some answers to questions are like that. Some confessions we blurt out can heal our pasts and open up new futures.

Such deep, “I-Thou” communication always includes the word “you.” This is not talking about someone else. It is speaking to someone—we call that “direct address.”

So in that great old Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, in the middle of a long discussion about their three daughters and the young men who are courting them….in a conversation about love…..Tevye blurts out to his wife, Golda: “Do you love me?” And Golda gets so discombopulated—she can barely respond.

Or you’re in the food court of your favorite mall, and it’s jam-packed with people, and the racket is so loud you can hardly hear yourself think….but then a silence engulfs the cacophany as everyone notices a young man, down on one knee, giving a very small box to his beloved, who has tears streaming down her lovely face….and suddenly everyone knows that something life-changing and world-transforming has happened, right there at West Acres. A new life has begun.

Or you’re in your physician’s office, and she’s going through the results of labs with you, and she says: the test came back positive—you’re going to have a baby.

Or you’re in that same doctor’s office, in the same kind of conversation all about medical tests you barely understand, and the word “cancer” pops up….and suddenly your life gets a lot more complicated.

Or you’re here in this very sanctuary….and someone brings a child to the font, someone holds out their hands at the communion rail, someone (maybe you!) names in your heart the sin that is killing you….and you hear God’s amazing promise: all of this is FOR YOU—the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is for the sake of your life, your death, your resurrection.

God specializes in this sort of speaking—a speaking that actually alters reality and creates a whole new world. And God is mighty good at it. God speaks and the whole universe is created. God speaks and your slate is wiped clean. God speaks and death no longer has dominion over you. God speaks and you are given a mission big enough to claim your life. God speaks and the Devil runs for cover. God speaks—and the Cross of Calvary leads directly to the Empty Tomb, Good Friday gives way to Easter.

God specializes in this sort of speaking. God loves this way of communicating so much that God calls you and me to enter into it, ourselves. For this is how the Church is formed and sustained and extended throughout the world.

Jesus lays claim to others when you and I stop talking ABOUT him, and starting talking to him, and speaking of him to those we meet. “You are the Messiah,” Peter blurted out. “Jesus is my everything,” we stammer. “Death doesn’t have the final word now,” we whisper in the funeral home, to a beloved one in grief. “God has a purpose for your life,” we murmur to a young person, wondering what to do in the world. “Your mistakes, the mess you have made of things, God has redeemed all of that. Jesus has carried it all to his Cross and buried it in his grave. You get to have a fresh start again, in Christ Jesus.”

Dare we speak that way to one another, my dear friends?

Yes, by all means. God is counting on us to do precisely that. The church our Lord Jesus Christ has built and is still building feeds off confessions like these. God is staking everything on words that he will give to us, opening our lips, untangling our tongues and saying—loud and clear, to anyone within earshot—“this Jesus—he really is the One we’ve been waiting for, the only One we can count on in life and in death and in everything else that will ever come our way.”

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

How God Inflicts Abundant Life on Us

2011-08-02T21:42:00.000-07:00

Ordination of Jeanette Bidne

Trinity Lutheran Church, Kiester, MN

July 31, 2011

John 10:10b

[Jesus said] “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

You love this verse, Jeanette…and as you’ve made your way through seminary and the ELCA candidacy process, you’ve kept coming back to this promise of our Lord—again and again and again.

And you are by no means alone. Any number of us here this afternoon, if asked to name our 20 favorite Bible verses would probably include this one: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

This is one of the Bible’s “keepers,” isn’t it? This is a wall-plaque, embroidered-pillow, tattoo-it-on-your-forehead verse: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Amen and amen!

But can we really talk this way nowadays? Can we get by with it—especially now when ANY talk of “abundance” seems out of place?

Thomas Friedman, one of my favorite newspaper columnists, says that “we are leaving an era where to be a mayor, governor, senator or president was, on balance, to give things away to people. And we are entering an era where to be a leader will mean, on balance, to take things away from people. It is the only way we’ll get our fiscal house in order before the market, brutally, does it for us.” (New York Times, December 25, 2010)

Abundance, argues Friedman—in any meaningful sense—abundance is a thing of the past. We have entered the lean years for our country and our planet. Life is a zero-sum game. The pie is only so big…and we all need to learn how to live on a smaller slice of it.

“Abundantly” is a word destined for the moth balls. Abundance is a thing of the past in all aspects of life. We are short in the marketplace, but also we’re short on intangibles like civility, reasonableness, goodwill, compromise and mutual sacrifice for the common good.

And, as if all that were not enough, we also seem to be fresh out of things like safety and security and hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Deprivation, not abundance, feels like the “coin of the realm.”

And yet Jesus, here in John chapter 10, goes against the grain, speaking a distinctly counter-cultural word: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Jeanette, are you sure you really want to invest so much in this one verse and all that it represents? It’s a little naïve, don’t you think? How about, instead, a dose of cold, hard realism?

Unless, of course, that’s exactly what this verse is setting forth here, right under our noses. Because the context of this beloved verse is the sheep-fold. The “frame” for this passage in John is filled with cold, hard realism that boils down to this: there is always something or someone who wants to fleece the flock, attack the sheep, and have fresh mutton for supper.

Jesus comes on the scene here, fully aware that wherever there are sheep there are thieves and imposters and rustlers who only want to “steal and kill and destroy” (v. 10a). Deprivation, oppression and loss mark the natural state of things in this fallen world. And Jesus is no Pollyanna about that.

It’s just that Jesus is not willing to allow those harsh, cold realities to have a future with us--his beloved flock.

Jesus isn’t some serene guru teaching timeless truths here. Jesus is, rather, the tip of the spear of an invasion force that’s taking over this poor, old, dying world. And his aim is quite simple: to inflict life, God’s life, upon us! “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Today, Jeanette, you formally help lead this invasion force that even now is turning the world upside down and challenging every bit of conventional wisdom we live by. Jesus, having already recruited you, now formally enlists you to “call out” everything and everyone who would “steal and kill and destroy” members of his precious flock.

You are being set aside to announce until you’re blue in the face this fresh new reality: “I—Jesus!--have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

And what might that look like?

In her book Almost Christian, Kenda Creasy Dean suggests that the abundant life Jesus brings is marked by at least four things: a creed that grounds us, a community that enfolds us, a mission that captures us, and a hope that draws us into God’s tomorrow.

So in a world filled with all sorts of competing God-stories and alternative explanations of reality, the church invites you, Jeanette, to sally forth with the greatest story, the truest account of what matters most. It is the story of God’s intoxicating love for all that God has made, a mercy so overpowering that God couldn’t resist becoming one of us, entering into every nook and cranny of our lives, even to the point of dying with us which was also a dying for us, in Jesus Christ. That’s how God has unleashed, how God has inflicted “abundant life” on the world—life that in the power of Christ’s resurrection continues to expand and multiply and grow—through us—until it fills the universe, until God is “all in all.”

That, Jeanette, or something like it is the creed that claims us, the story that grounds us. We Christian preachers are the original Johnny-one-notes, because when all is said and done, we just have Jesus to offer to a depleted, dried up, “fresh-out-of-everything “world.

This creed that claims us produces a community that enfolds us. Think of the “abundant life” that Jesus came to bring less as a deep, pristine lake and more as a wide, swift-flowing river….catching up in its compelling current everyone it washes over. For that is how Christ’s abundant life keeps expanding—it invades us and commandeers us to invade others with it as well. Jesus’ abundant life is the only thing that multiples as it is divided.

I have not yet come to know directly the community of Christ at Esther Lutheran Church. But this much I do know: persons who come in contact with this congregation have a hard time keeping their feet on the ground afterward. I’ve heard that in your voice, Jeanette, as you breathlessly tell others about your first few times at Esther….and I run into it every time my colleague Pastor Laurie Natwick comes back from a meeting with the council or call committee or members of Esther. It sometimes takes me a day or two to bring Laurie back down to earth. It’s as if the folks at Esther have gotten a little giddy on God’s intoxicating love in Jesus Christ, so much so that they’ve forgotten all the reasons why things will never work. The Esther congregation has gotten to thinking that God is alive and well and catching them up in his mission. (I wonder, Jeanette, whether in addition to issuing you a ministerial stole this afternoon, we perhaps should also hand over a crash helmet and a life preserver or two…)

Which brings me to the third mark of what Christ’s abundant life is like: it’s a life centered around and fully invested in God’s mission of rescuing and reclaiming the whole creation. This mission of God captures our imagination and gives us purpose.

Awash in Jesus’ abundant life, we simply know in our heart of hearts that this is too good to keep for ourselves. As Kenda Creasy Dean puts it: “When we realize what God has done, when we discover that Christ has bound himself to us so radically that nothing can separate us from him when we gratefully reciprocate by fastening our lives to his life, death and resurrection in baptism, the Holy Spirit empowers us to consciously participate in the life of God. Where Jesus goes, we go; when Christ suffers, we suffer; what God gives, we give. Our lives are so bound up with Christ that the Holy Spirit gives us more of God’s love than we can fathom or hold…This is how God enters the world: through people like us.” (Almost Christian, p. 88)

What kind of foolishness is this? It’s the foolishness of people who fearlessly believe that God stands at the end of history—that boundless hope draws us forward into God’s tomorrow. Jeanette, this is the fourth mark of the abundant life that Jesus rains down upon us. Let your preaching and living of the gospel be suffused with a contagious hope in Jesus Christ, that your hearers won’t be able to avoid “leaning into” God’s coming kingdom.

There is nothing naïve about any of this, Jeanette. Jesus isn’t backing down from any of his promises to us. Most assuredly—in the face of all naysayers—Jesus insists that we have life, and have it abundantly. That’s really all you have to say and live and help God’s people wrap themselves around, for as long as God gives you breath.

Jesus said: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” We take him at his word.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Keeping it Real

2011-07-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

Commissioning of Hans Vigesaa, AiM

Calvary Lutheran Church, Bemidji, MN

July 24, 2011

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

[Jesus] put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” ….

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

These last three Sundays we’ve been wending our way through this 13^th chapter of St Matthew’s gospel…pondering seven parables, seven “jewels” of Jesus’ teaching….witnessing firsthand how Jesus himself is (in his own words) “like the master of a household who brings out of treasure what is new and what is old.” (v. 52)

It occurred to me the other day how ir-religious all these parables are. They are not stories about spiritual people doing profoundly spiritual things. The parables, rather, are narratives of the sheer daily-ness of life lived close to the earth.

Jesus spins yarns about farming, weeding the fields, germinating tiny seeds, making bread, finding unexpected windfalls, catching fish. He could have lived here in our part of the world—imagine that: Jesus in northern Minnesota! That’s probably why these stories have had such a long “shelf life.” They are stories about real-life people doing real-life things.

Hans, today as we commission and install you as an ELCA Associate in Ministry, I remind you that the ministry to which you are called is also about real-life people doing real-life things: working and paying bills and tending homes and trying to get along with one another and mending fences and raising kids and sharing good news. I think you already get that—and I urge you never to forget it.

There’s a story about a Scottish minister who sequestered himself in the parsonage of the church that he served, which was connected by a covered walkway that led him straight from his home right into his pulpit. All week long the minister labored over his Sunday sermon, and he took pride in the fact that he could walk directly from his home to his pulpit without being distracted by anyone or anything.

It was said of this Scottish minister that “six days of the week he was invisible, and the seventh day he was incomprehensible.”

Although this story is a bit far-fetched, it does get at something that really bugs me: the fact that so much of what we do and say as Christian people seems to be divorced from the daily-ness of life. How far removed we are from our Lord Jesus who loved to tell tales of sowing and harvesting and mustard seeds and buried treasure and sorting out the “keepers” from the rough fish.

Hans, I urge you to “keep it real” in your ministry with children, youth and families. We have a real Savior who walked in real time on the real earth and now in the power of his Resurrection walks among us in the same way still.

But there is more here in these parables of Matthew 13. It’s not simply that these are down-to-earth stories about stuff that happens all the time.

These are also stories about how God’ has a predilection, a preference for salvaging lost causes….redeeming confused, hardscrabble, fault-filled lives.

Because in each of these parables in Matthew 13 there is ample recognition of the dark side of life. The seed that is sown appears mainly to go to waste—it lands in all the wrong places, gets choked out by all sorts of malevolent forces. Enemies come along and plant weeds in our gardens--there’s always someone or something throwing a monkey wrench into our best-laid plans and efforts. It’s debatable whether mustard was a cash crop or a prolific noxious weed—whether leaven was an ingredient to be used or a mold to be avoided. The treasure hidden in the field may well have been stolen goods. The pearl of great price shouldn’t have been lost in the first place. And the rough fish—the carp, the suckers the zebra mussels—why do they proliferate so much faster than the walleyes and the northerns?

These parables are not pristine tales of a too-good life in a perfect world. Like all good stories, there’s always a problem, a dark side, a tension needing to be resolved…..just as it is in life itself, don’t you know!

And God is smack dab in the middle of all that, as Jesus never tires of reminding us. God is working out God’s renewing, faith-creating, future-opening activity in the midst of all the “problems” in this real-life stories.

And Hans, there’s another keeper, I hope, for you and your colleagues and those whom you serve….perhaps especially in the “worlds” of youth and family life in this 21^st century.

This is a hard time to be growing up. This world is a broken, treacherous, terribly uncertain place. I can’t blame young people for wondering what the future holds for them. There are all sorts of reasons why folks could well be tempted to pull the covers over their heads, just stay in bed, not venture out, not risk themselves in the treacherous adventures of work and learning and faith and family life.

You are here at Calvary, Hans, to speak up for our amazing God who does some of his best work with bent lumber, flawed building materials, twisted situations….starting with the Cross itself, a perverse sign hoisted up in Jerusalem’s garbage heap—a perplexing sign that nonetheless rescues us from all that would do us harm.

There is one last thing I want to say about these treasured parables in Matthew 13. There’s a little bit of sheer, off-the-wall craziness in each one of them. Jesus portrays things and persons and situations that end up blowing our minds—knocking our socks off, surprising the heck out of us.

So even though most of the seed doesn’t germinate properly, the kernels that do grow produce astonishing off-the-charts yields. The “mixed bag” of the church provides a fertile seedbed for all sorts of persons to grow up together into Christ. Stumbling upon the treasure, the pearl leads people to go a little nuts—to liquidate all their earthly assets in order to possess the treasure. The mustard seed that can barely be seen, winds up producing a tree that birds can call home; the yeast multiples the bread-making capacity of the baker so that hundreds might be fed.

You get the picture: God takes ordinary, even twisted things and God produces totally-unforeseen, amazing, life-enhancing results. God gets his way—and God’s way means life for us, freedom from all the ways we mess up, and a wide open future to boot, in Jesus Christ whose very life for us is the parable of salvation par excellence.

There’s a take-away here for you, too, Hans. I admire you and anyone else who works full time in youth and family ministry. Although I’ve always had my finger in that pot, I haven’t made it the focus of my working days as you are doing.

But I know what keeps you going—I understand why it’s gotten into your bones.

You get to see the results, the payoff. You have the joy of witnessing all the ways God takes confused folks, crooked lumber and fashions out of them a thing of beauty.

My prayer for you, Hans, is that in the midst of the dry and challenging times you will inevitably experience—the promise of that payoff, God’s New Creation beckoning and continually bursting in, will keep you faithful, steadfast and excited to come to work every day.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

A Mess of a Church

2011-07-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

Summer Campus Ministry Conference

Bemidji State University—Bemidji, MM

July 14, 2011

Matthew 13:24-30

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

It’s midsummer, and the crops and gardens are all growing. Seedtime is weeks past—but you wouldn’t know it to encounter the parables that come at us in the lectionary these hot weeks of mid-July.

Here in God’s Word, seeds are still being sown—and in a manner that drives 21^st century farmers in the Upper Midwest stark raving mad.

First, there are entirely too many seeds being flung around willy-nilly, “broadcast” hither and yon, a real hit-and-miss operation if ever there was one.

My father who farmed for over 30 years in southern Minnesota was a stickler for not wasting any seed. He adjusted and readjusted the old John Deere planter to deliver each kernel into the soil, not too close, but not too far away either,from the next kernel, each precious treasure deposited at just the right depth. It was both an art and a science, to trust the seed so painstakingly, so stingily to the well-tilled soil.

But not so in Matthew chapter 13. Whole handfuls of seed are flung with wild abandon all across the un-cultivated landscape, as we heard in last Sunday’s parable, repeated now in this one. Don’t spare the horses—don’t skimp on the seed!

But the farmer in this parable isn’t the only prodigal sower. By night his nemesis slinks through the same field, just as lavishly sprinkling weed-seed, to germinate alongside and hopefully over-power the good seed.

The Word of God, like the night-time cold cream my mama used, the Word is meant to be applied liberally. Slather it on, overdo it whenever you get the chance, don’t hold back. The Word is not some pinched, parsimonious spice to be sprinkled here and there—just a pinch, just a dash. Let it fly! Fling it as far and as fast as you can…

….because Lord knows, there are other sowers eagerly spreading other “words,” with no compunction, no reluctance to “let ‘er rip.”

David Lose of Luther Seminary observes: “In recent years, the presence and influence of the Christian story in contemporary culture has shrunk considerably. The proliferation of different and competing stories about reality—some of which are religious, while many more are about material wealth, nationalism, or ethnicity—has occupied more and more of our attention.

We may see these stories proclaimed on the front covers of magazines or more subtly hidden in the logo of a powerhouse brand, but they are all around us, each inviting us to subscribe to a particular understanding and worldview about what is good, beautiful, and true. Taken as a whole, the proliferation of all these different worldviews has crowded out the biblical story as the narrative by which to make sense of all others and rendered it just one among a multitude of stories.” ("Stewardship in the Age of Digital Pluralism, p. 112 in Rethinking Stewardship--Word and World Supplement Series 6, October 2010.)

Campus ministry offers the church a strategic foothold in the world of American higher education, sowing the Word where it desperately needs to grow. And, now more than ever, we need to remind the whole church that if we’re not in this game—flinging the seed of God’s word on campuses all across this land, we will be missing “big time” a golden opportunity to be out there, meeting young adults where they are already choosing to be, contributing to the marketplace of ideas, trusting the seed of the Word to find places to grow on territory we dare not abandon.

Moreover, campus ministry cultivates a generosity of spirit and a yen for adventure, even a little craziness about how far and how fast we are ready, willing and able to “broadcast” the good seed, wherever and whenever it might germinate.

The second thing about this parable, is the way it portrays the farmer’s willingness to tolerate all sorts of messiness in his field.

My farmer-dad knew that, as Garrison Keillor puts it: farming is a spectator sport. So every summer, when our work-day was ended, our family climbed in the old galopy to go inspecting the fields—ours and our neighbors’ fields as well.

My farmer-father loved rows that were straight and hound’s-tooth clean of weeds. He was a lot like the farmhands in this parable. When they realize their enemy has sowed weed-seed on their turf, they’re eager to do a little separating of the wheat from the weed, while it is still growing…

…..but the farmer in Jesus’ parable will have none of that. “Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” This farmer is less interested in “appearances,” less enamored with “purity” than most of his peers.

Now more than ever it seems clear that there are two dominant ways of being Lutheran in North America. There is the way of “enclave Lutheranism”—marked by tightknit circles of the likeminded—straight as an arrow, neat as a pin, all the rough edges rounded off, pure doctrine producing a putative pure community.

And then there is the messy alternative, the expansive, experimental, ecumenical, “almost-everything-is-up-for-discussion” Lutheranism of our own tribe, the ELCA. Lord Almighty, but we are a mess of a church! We let in all sorts of rabble and we tolerate all sorts of nonsense, and sometimes I wonder whether God doesn’t just wonder what to do with us.

In short, we who are the ELCA look an awful lot like that farmer’s field must have looked—with weeds and wheat all over the place—a source of head-wagging and tongue-clucking by our neighbors, no doubt. A mess—but what a glorious mess…..and if the farmer in the parable is the God-figure, well then it’s the kind of mess that only God could love.

Campus ministry has always had a high tolerance for such messiness; perhaps that is one of our “charisms.” We stubbornly keep prying open doors that others thought they had safely nailed shut. We’re always on someone’s hit list, always in the cross-hairs of some neatnik repristinator of the “good old church,” trying to circle the wagons and batten down the hatches….but to no avail, because—wouldn’t you know it?--some hippy-dippy campus pastor keeps coming along and inviting in all the wrong crowd.

What the church hasn’t always realized or treasured is how desperately we need to cultivate hothouse experiments, demonstration plots, like campus ministry….to intrude upon the buttoned down closed-system that some in the church always find alluring.

And perhaps even now, in the midst of our understandable angst over little things like money and support—we’re receiving a chance to revel anew in the glorious messiness that the Lord of the Church seems to covet.

But why? To what end? For what reason does this parable’s farmer sow seeds so recklessly and cultivate messiness so ridiculously?

It’s for the sake of the harvest, don’t you know? The farmer doesn’t want to lose one single stalk of wheat, one solitary sheaf—none of it must be wasted. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that this crazy farmer even imagines that some of those weeds might—when day is done—turn out to be wheat after all!

Such wishful thinking is called erring on the side of grace, and it’s God’s favorite way of making mistakes. The bean counters, the heavenly hall monitors, the guardians of a mighty fortress of “orthodoxy” fret that somewhere someone might be whispering something that verges on universalism---but they haven’t taken a good gander at this goofy farmer in Matthew 13, have they?

For what appears to be wastefulness and a tolerance of messiness is none other than a fierce determination to demonstrate power chiefly in showing mercy, which is the hallmark of the God who has drawn near to us in Jesus the Christ, crucified and raised again, for us and for our salvation.

It is for the sake of this divine “erring on the side of grace” that we care so passionately about and give ourselves so recklessly to campus ministry, is it not?

It is for the sake of this confession—that surely deserves a place on every campus devoted to the fearless quest for truth—it is for the sake of contending that at the center of the universe there beats a passionate heart of unconditional self-giving, a self-emptying love that will not let us go.

It is for that that we believe campus ministry deserves the very best we have to offer.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Dear Minnesota Politicians....

2011-06-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Minnesota Politicians...

Get this state budget crisis fixed NOW.   Stop your preening and posturing and pontificating.

Stop describing "the government" as an entity outside of yourselves--for sure, stop describing government as an enemy.   Hey, Bucko, if you hold elective office in this state you are part of the government.   Heck, if you're a citizen (a "citizen" not a "taxpayer", by the way!) YOU ARE PART OF THE GOVERNMENT.

While you're at it, stop comparing the state budget to my household budget.   Cut that out.   Quit saying inane things like "Just as we have to tighten our belts in our families, so also state government (there you go again, speaking about the government as if it were an "other" and not a shared enterprise you are part of) must tighten its belt."   Sorry--that's not even close to being a valid analogy.   My little household, our little platoon, is small potatoes compared to the State of Minnesota....not just in terms of the dollars in our respective budgets, but also in terms of the scope and mission of our state's government.

What really isn't going to wash with me or other true-blue Minnesotans is tightening the belt of our state government around the necks of the poorest of the poor.   Don't even go there!

Read my lips:   politics is the art of compromise.   In Minnesota right now we have divided government--a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor.   We Minnesotans like it that way, apparently.   Compromise in this case means that the state budget will be balanced by a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.   Get on with it!

And one more thing: our family is going to vacation on the North Shore in another week.   I expect all those gorgeous state parks to be open.    Don't disappoint me and my loved ones.

As my namesake the Cable Guy likes to say: "Get 'er done!"

Your fellow citizen of Minnesota, a great state, worthy of our support, including our taxes....
Larry Wohlrabe

Tree-Hugging Dirt Worshipper

2011-06-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm a sucker for clever bumper stickers--on other people's car bumpers, not mine.   When Joy and I were over at Itasca State Park last Sunday afternoon I saw one that was new to me: TREE-HUGGING DIRT WORSHIPPER.

"Nice to know there are still some unreformed hippies running around," I mused.   But then I pondered those four words more deeply...

"Dirt worshipper."   Pretty down-to-earth, one of my favorite ways of talking about God's way with us...incarnational to the core, wrapped in flesh, fully human (a word related to "humus," dirt) while fully divine.

The One I worship is described, in at least one place in the scriptures, as a Second Adam ("Adam" from "adamah"--dirt, in Hebrew, cf. Romans 5:12-21).    Dirt has worked its way into God's DNA.

Am I, in some sense, a "dirt worshipper?"

But "tree-hugging?"   I don't think so....unless...we're talking about that Tree, the one on which the Savior of the world hung.   The Tree to which we cling for life and freedom and a fresh start.

I guess I do hug that Tree--yes? And I hope you do, too.

TREE-HUGGING DIRT WORSHIPPER.

An appellation for only neo-pagan eco-freaks?

Or might that bumper sticker describe even souls like me, who worship the Word-made-human (humus), who hug for dear life the Tree of Life on which was wrought the salvation of the whole world.

Hmmm. I wonder where I can get me one of those bumper stickers....

Cracked Pots

2011-06-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

Ordination and Installation of Margaret Jacobus

Oklee Lutheran Parish, Oklee, MN

June 25, 2011

II Corinthians 4:1-7

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Margaret, it’s customary in an ordination sermon for the preacher to offer some sage advice to the candidate for ordination.

So, here goes: don’t try to be too good a pastor.

Let me say that again: don’t try to be too good a pastor.

And above all, avoid saying, doing or being anything that might cause someone to say of you: “Oh, Pastor Margaret—she’s such a perfect pastor!” If anyone starts saying THAT you surely will have failed as a minister of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, you’re probably thinking: who let this guy into our pulpit? This is about the last thing anyone gathered here this afternoon wants to hear—especially the parish call committee and parish council that met with Margaret, discerned her strengths for ministry and perceived a “match” between her gifts and the gifts of this parish. Surely your call committee and your council did not go casting about for mediocrity….they weren’t just looking for “an OK pastor.”

No, far from it! In fact this afternoon we are all here because we want you to succeed, Margaret. This is your cheering section—in full force. We want you to be a good, maybe even a great pastor. We are pulling for you!

And yet, I caution you: just don’t try to be too good a pastor.

And really, those aren’t just my words to you today, as much as they are the words of the apostle Paul in our second lesson. …where we read: “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”

You and I, Margaret, as pastors of the church, and indeed all of us who are baptized into Christ, called to bear God’s redeeming Word in the world…..all of us gathered here this afternoon are “clay jars,” earthen vessels--some have suggested “cracked pots.”

And yet God chooses to do God’s work through us—the work of pastoral ministry in the church, the work of daily life ministry among our neighbors in the world. God has a predilection for, a preference for, flawed vessels….and thankfully, there seem to be plenty of such flawed vessels at God’s disposal.

But that isn’t exactly what we want to hear….and it’s not what Paul’s first hearers of this word, the Christians in Corinth, wanted to hear either.

You see, our second lesson is an excerpt of a much longer conversation between St Paul and one of the churches he helped start, the church in the Greek seaport city of Corinth.

It was a stormy, love/hate relationship that existed between Pastor Paul and the Corinthian church. We know that Paul served among them and revisited them in person, but mainly we know that he wrote letters to them….probably at least four letters, though we have only two of them in our New Testament.

The Corinthian Christians were confused and conflicted over many things, not the least of which was the nature of pastoral leadership—the faithfulness and fruitfulness of those who had preached the gospel in Corinth. Paul may have jump-started this congregation, but he was followed by a whole succession of other preachers….some of whom were apparently much more impressive, more charismatic, (we might say) more EFFECTIVE than the Apostle Paul.

It got to the point that there were even “favorite pastor fan clubs” within the Corinthian congregation, with members of the church haggling over which of their pastors had been the best (I Cor. 3)….so much so that Paul had to go right after the whole notion that faith and discipleship and mission are dependent upon the personal gifts or qualities of any pastors, including himself.

And how Paul did that was to use himself as an example of how God often does some of his best work through his least-impressive, least-gifted, least-powerful preachers (I Cor. 4). Why, Paul even boasted of his weaknesses and drew attention to something about him—a physical disability, a speech defect, epilepsy, some “thorn in the flesh”—that made him, Paul anything BUT a “perfect pastor.” (II Cor 12:5-10)

Now, we could chalk all of this up to a flaw in Paul’s fragile psyche, I suppose—his frail ego, his desperate need to defend himself, raise his own stock and curry favor in the Corinthian congregation…were it not for the fact that Paul finally didn’t make this all about himself.

Finally, Paul made it all about God, specifically the God who meets us in the foolishness of the Cross and the weakness of the incarnate, in-the-flesh Jesus Christ who demonstrated his power chiefly in showing mercy, submitting himself to sinners, being betrayed by his friends, dying on a cross, and being buried in a borrowed grave.

Paul argued with the Corinthians and right here in our text for today, that it’s not about the preacher, it’s not about who’s the most persuasive or witty or impressive speaker of the Good News. It is rather about God who works through our weaknesses and deficits, who takes us and hides the treasure of the gospel in us, clay jars, “cracked pots,” so that no one will miss the point: it’s not about us. It’s about God, the God who meets us in the weak, vulnerable, crucified, dead-but-now-risen-again Jesus.

So I repeat, Margaret, don’t try to be too good a pastor. If you do that, people might forget that they still need Jesus!

It’s easier said than done, though—this “don’t be too good a pastor” thing. It sounds like it should be simple, but it’s not.

It will go against your grain, Margaret, trying not to be too good a pastor. Because that’s how it is for all of us called to the office of Word and Sacrament. There is so much to do—and we want to do all of it as well as we can.

Take preaching, for example. Preachers, good hardworking preachers, want to “say it all” in every sermon. That is a temptation, especially when a pastor is starting out—“give them the whole load of hay” every Sunday.

But here’s the kicker: you will find that the sermons that “hit home” are the ones you feel least good about. Every preacher I’ve talked with about this can tell stories to that effect. You think you have a pretty good sermon—but it falls flat, goes nowhere! Then the next week, you’ve been distracted by other things and you didn’t prepare as well as you’d like—so you go into the pulpit on a wing and a prayer—and afterwards some of your hearers request a manuscript, so they can ponder this magnificent sermon again.

Here’s what I think is going on in all that: when we step down or step back or step aside, as preachers, Jesus steps up. Where we are lacking or incomplete or just plain weak—Jesus has a chance to shine all the brighter.

More than once in my many years of being a traveling preacher, I’ve stepped into a pulpit on which is carved this verse from John 12:21: “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

That’s what it’s all about, my friends. Ministry is about stepping back so that Jesus can shine all the brighter.

So Margaret, I say to you again: although we all know you bring wonderful gifts and ardent passion to this work, and although we know you are eager and ready to “dig in” in here in the Oklee parish, with heart and soul and mind…..please don’t be too good a pastor. Please don’t think you need to say it all, do it all, be it all.

And you, people of God, you can do your part by not trying to be” too good” Christians, as well. Because Christians who are hung up on being “too good” usually become hung up on themselves, often in ways that divide them from one another…no longer focused on or trusting in Jesus, no longer united in Christ.

Give Jesus time and space and ample opportunity to do what Jesus does best: save us from our self-centeredness, our mortality, our captivity to forces that mean us harm.

Give Jesus a chance to save us and to send us, not as perfect specimens, but as “clay jars,” flawed vessels, cracked pots through whom God nevertheless does God’s amazing work in this world.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

All About the Future

2011-06-18T20:53:00.000-07:00

75^th Anniversary of Immanuel, Bejou, MN

Trinity Sunday—June 19, 2011

Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Matthew 18:16-20

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

I love days like this--church anniversaries--when we “militantly modest,” shy, understated Lutherans give ourselves permission to “cut loose.”

I love how days like this feel like big old family reunions. I love how we wheel in the old pastors, gawk at them, whisper to one another over who has gotten the grayest or lost the most hair. I love how on days like this we look back, tell ancient tales, and relive episodes from our church’s past. I even love all the “stuff”—the cookbooks, the wall plates, the ornaments and gizmos and nick-nacks that we let ourselves get talked into buying to remember our dear old church.

What I maybe love the most is the food—the big dinner (sometimes under a rented tent) and the cake and all the trimmings. We Lutherans don’t know how to celebrate anything without eating too much—and today is no exception.

I love days like this, and I get invited to church anniversaries every summer, and that always surprises me—because usually I’m the most unfamiliar face in the whole crowd. Makes me feel a little like a “reunion crasher.” Why in the world do congregations like yours ask a total stranger to come and even preach on a day like this, anyway?

Perhaps it is because you realize a congregational anniversary is always about more than the congregation. Deep in your bones, you recognize that Immanuel Lutheran Church isn’t your cozy club—your private preserve. This whole, glorious history that we revel in today is about you and those who came before you—but it is also all about God—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and everyone who belongs to God. Today is about all the “operations of the Holy Trinity,” coming sharply into focus in one small corner of God’s vast domain.

Years ago I heard an anniversary sermon I will never forget. The pastor brought into the pulpit an eight foot-long stick on which he had he had painstakingly marked off, in 100-year segments, highlights of the history of the whole Christian church on earth, from the Day of Pentecost down to the present moment.

The pastor used this wooden timeline to give us all a lesson in church history, scrolling through all the events that have defined Christianity, until he arrived finally at the last 100 year segment—the century in which his congregation had been in existence.

To tell the truth, measured against the whole sweep of church history, the time this one congregation had occupied looked like a blip on a screen.

Which was precisely the pastor’s point. The years a single congregation has been around--though precious us who love the congregation—are like a drop in the bucket of eternity. So we would be wise, the preacher urged us, to keep all our anniversary reminiscing and remembering in proper perspective.

Well, this morning I didn’t bring an 8-foot stick along with me, but I did bring along the scripture lessons for this Trinity Sunday, which point, in three specific ways to all the “operations of the Holy Trinity” that will help us keep this 75^th anniversary here at Immanuel in proper perspective.

First, to keep us from getting too tightly focused on this single congregation, in this tiny village, God’s Word for today calls us to take a wide-angle lens view of all that God has been and still is up to across the panorama of the whole universe.

So, it’s good to hear the poetry of the Genesis 1 creation story, to see the cosmic backdrop, across which God’s “portrait” of Immanuel Lutheran has been painted. For the God who called your congregation into being in 1935 is the same Creator God who spoke all things into existence…

…the Lord to whom this congregation belongs is the one who according to our gospel lesson has “all authority in heaven and on earth.” Wow!

There may be 1.3 billion persons in China who will never hear of Immanuel Lutheran of Bejou—but the Creator of all that exists, Jesus the Son who is Lord over all has called you, Immanuel Lutheran Church, to be one of his kingdom outposts. Big enough for you?

Second, to help us resist turning inward (as can happen so easily in any congregation), God’s Word for today invites us to consider the entire web of relationships and connections that have made and still sustain Immanuel as the congregation that it is.

Relationships, you see, are in the spotlight on every Trinity Sunday. Relationships, after all, are at the core of God’s very being. God is “three in one” because God is a relationship of mutual self-giving in which the Father gives the Son, even as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son for the life of the whole world.

It is this Triune, three-in-one God out of whose abundance of love and relationships that Immanuel Lutheran Church was formed 75 years ago. And that’s why for these last three-quarters of a century, you have continually tended relationships both within, but also outside of this congregation. It’s what Christians do, after all—as persons who’ve been commissioned to expand God’s life-giving web of relationships, making disciples of “all nations.”

So today, rather than risk getting turned inward, God’s Word bids us give thanks for all the relationships that got Immanuel going and kept it going, through thick and thin. As I’ve gotten acquainted with your congregation’s history, I’ve been struck how often Immanuel has been threatened by forces that could have wiped you out.

Founded during the Great Depression, you had to reorganize yourselves in your first five years of life, recognizing that you would survive only in relationship with others…with neighboring congregations like First of Mahnomen and now Calvary of Winger….with part-time pastors who served here for many years…with financial assistance from the old ALC back in the 1970s…and, after a tornado struck Bejou, with the prayers and support of others who helped you put up a new church building that serves you still.

Your ongoing life, my dear friends, will be full and rich as you keep on tending relationships with God, with one another and with your fellow believers across this region, this country and this world.

Third (and finally), lest we get stuck in nostalgia—looking back only--on this anniversary Sunday, God’s Word for today reminds us that God is all about the future—and that God’s mission is always beckoning us forward, toward the New Creation that God is bringing our way.

What we might miss, in this morning’s gospel lesson from Matthew 28 is the fact that here at the very end of the gospel is the first time the disciples show up since they forsook Jesus on the night he was betrayed. As Matthew narrates Christ’s passion, the disciples run and hide like scared rabbits. Only some women followed Jesus to the Cross and ventured to the tomb on Easter morning….the disciples are nowhere to be seen until these last five verses of Matthew’s gospel.

You’d think, under those circumstances, that the Risen Christ would turn back the pages of time and rub his disciples’ faces in their cowardice, reminding them of all the ways they let him down.

But not the Risen Lord Jesus Christ: he meets his disciples, some of whom still have their doubts, and he sends them—woefully inadequate though they may be—Jesus sends them out to turn the world upside down with the astonishing news of life, forgiveness and freedom.

The Risen Lord Jesus who commissions those scared rabbits is all about the future, all about what lies ahead, and his final words in Matthew’s gospel drive us and all who hear them toward this same future: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

We will do some history-sharing, we’ll engage in a little nostalgia today here at Immanuel. But may our looking back serve the purpose of charging us up, in order to move ahead, with our Risen Lord who is indeed all about the future.

You may have your doubts about that future—especially now as you say goodbye to a beloved pastor and prepare to call a new pastor with your parish partners of Calvary. But have no fear: you will never be alone, never far from the One to whom has been given all authority in heaven and on earth.

The future, your future here at Immanuel, is God’s future. It’s a gift from the Living Lord Jesus who has death behind him, who has promised to continue being Immanuel, God-with-us, forever.

In his name. Amen.

Out of the Boat

2011-06-05T12:23:00.000-07:00

Grace Lutheran Church, Ada, MN

Installation of Pastor Matthew Williams

Easter 7/June 5, 2011

Acts 1:6-14

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

So it was two weeks ago this past Thursday. I was in a meeting, and I get a text message from my 29-year-old son Erik, who lives in the Twin Cities. Our brief exchange went like this:

ERIK: “Is it true that “May 21 is Doomsday?” Some nut got (on) the front page of the (Fargo) Forum today…

ME: Yeah, there’s a guy who is SURE the Rapture starts on Saturday. From the standpoint of what Jesus (actually) said on the subject, the world will NOT end on Saturday.

ERIK: OK, but just in case you and mom do get raptured, can I have the snowblower?

Now this little text message exchange went on a while longer, but you get the picture. Erik and I were hardly the only ones “buzzing” about radio evangelist Harold Camping’s prediction that the Rapture would happen at 6 p.m. on May 21st. All over the world billboards got put up, possessions were sold, fiery “get-ready-for-the-rapture” sermons were delivered and “Left Behind” parties were planned.

Of course, we know now that our Lord didn’t return two weeks ago to gather up the faithful—all two or three hundred million of the “elite” whom Harold Camping predicted would “measure up” and qualify for the heavenly updraft.

Undaunted, though, Mr. Camping quickly revised his prediction, saying that it would be October 21st, not May 21st when the celestial fireworks would go off….so I’m sure we haven’t yet heard the end of this business.

And really, that shouldn’t surprise us one bit!

Because speculation about the “mechanics”of the End of the World has been around at least since the Ascension of our Christ, as recorded in today’s 2nd Lesson from Acts.

“Lord,” the disciples asked the resurrected Jesus, “is this the time—is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

That question has been asked for nearly 21 centuries. “Is this the time…?” Is this when God is going to wrap up this whole business?

It’s an old, old question….that is also as fresh as this morning’s news. And why does it fascinate us so?

There is, to be sure, something vital at stake here. We long for God’s final purposes to be achieved. We ache for God to consummate, to draw to a decisive conclusion all of God’s saving work.

And the fact that God will do that is taken for granted by Christians of all stripes. The last word about Jesus in our Creed, after all, asserts that “he will come to judge the living and the dead.”

But how and where and when exactly will that happen? The Bible dangles out some hints about that, here and there….and that has led some earnest souls to try stringing together all those hints into some meaningful whole—to produce a heavenly timetable….

….even though the clearest and most compelling word of Jesus on the topic is usually forgotten. It goes something like this: “No one knows. Not the angels in heaven. Not even the Son. Only the Father knows….and he isn’t telling!”

The surest word we have on the “mechanics” of the End of All Things is that it’s way above our pay grade to know all the details….so we would be wise to focus on other things.

And fortunately, Jesus, tells us—flat out—what those other things just happen to be.

Reading from our text: So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ 7He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

It is not for us to be privy to the heavenly timetable. That isn’t within our purview. We best leave it alone by leaving it to God.

What is within our purview, our capacity to grasp and “do something” about is this: bearing witness here and now in this world.

And if Jesus does provide any timetables or itineraries, it’s about this down-to-earth, here-and-now work that we HAVE been given.

Picture it, for the first Christ-followers, as a series of concentric circles…moving outward from Jerusalem.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witness in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. It all starts where it all started for Jesus, in Jerusalem, where the Cross was raised up on the city’s garbage heap….and where the crucified Jesus was raised up three days later.

Start here—in Jerusalem…and then move on out to the first ring of witness, Judea and Samaria—walking where Jesus walked….and then keep on moving out to territory the earthly Jesus never covered, “to the ends of the earth.”

This, my dear friends, is what God in Christ would have us be about—speaking, acting, living the Christ life…”witnessing” to the life, death and resurrection of our Lord….to the ends of the earth.

Anything else, everything else, will too easily become a distraction.

One of my seminary professors recalled a bumper sticker that said: “In the event of the Rapture, the driver of this vehicle will not be responsible.”

“Yes, that’s the problem with so-called ‘rapture theology,’” my professor observed. “No one is responsible for God’s people or God’s good earth.” We can become so heavenly-minded that we’re of no earthly use.

We can become so distracted by other things---end of the world speculating, moralizing about other people’s behaviors, arguing church politics, you name it---we can become so distracted by other things (and the Lutheran tribe has its own favorite ways of doing that, mind you!)…we can become so distracted by other, lesser things that we miss the Main Thing, which is sharing Christ.

A Christian leader from Africa put it this way: “Oh, you American Lutherans! You’re always trying to fish INSIDE the boat.”

But Jesus is crystal clear: our place to fish is OUTSIDE the boat, in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth. Move on out, Jesus says.

But all too often, we prefer to hunker down inside the boat. If you follow the narrative here in the Book of Acts carefully, the first followers of Jesus don’t actually DO what Jesus told them to either until the 8th chapter of Acts.

The first disciples got “stuck” in Jerusalem, until the horrific martyrdom of Stephen (which we read about in Acts 7), which in turn led to the first general persecution of the Christian church in Jerusalem. THEN, finally (as it says in Acts 8:1)…”a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria.”

The call and command of the risen Jesus in Acts 1:8 comes to fruition only in the persecution “scattering” of his followers in Acts 8:1.

God uses whatever’s at his disposal—even the horror of persecution—to pursue God’s purposes, through God’s people. God didn’t call us to duct-tape together clues scattered across the Bible, God didn’t call us to expend our energy debating secondary, here-today-gone-tomorrow “hot button” issues, God didn’t call us to stay stuck in one place or to even try “fishing inside the boat.”

God in Jesus Christ calls us to move out, to move forward, bearing the Good News about Jesus, wherever we are sent.

And when we get stuck, mind you, God will get us unstuck.

In her provocative book, The Great Emergence, author Phyllis Tickle suggests that every 500 years or so, the Christian church holds a big rummage sale. Every five centuries, give or take, God turns the church upside down, in order to get us off our duffs and move us out once again, to recapture for a new generation the freshness, the sweet inviting aroma of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

I think we’re in such a turning-point time right now. Even the upheaval in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America may be akin to what happened in the first eight chapters of the Book of Acts: God getting us “unstuck,” God getting us all shook up, so that God can get us all sent out once again.

And here’s how it always begins, though: in prayer and worship, as we await with Jesus’ first followers the gift of the Holy Spirit. How apropos for this service of installation for Pastor Matt Williams, whom you have called to help lead you in the two chief activities of the people of God: prayer and work, worship and mission--especially the good “work” of passing on the faith to the next generation of disciples.

Notice how our text concludes, with Christ’s followers caught up in prayer and worshp. Maybe that’s how the next chapter in our lives of faith will always begin: in prayer, gathered around Word and Sacrament, awaiting the fresh air of the Spirit to blow through us and scatter us and send us just exactly where God needs us to be--Out of the boat. Into the world. Bearing witness to Christ

.In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Ahead of the Curve

2011-05-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

Bethany Lutheran Church, Nevis, MN

May 22, 2011-- Easter 5/Year A

John 14:1-14

Are you ever part of a conversation in which you and your conversation-partner seem to be “talking past each other?” Here you are--reasonable and articulate persons, saying good things-- but you just can’t “connect.”

It’s like you’re on difference planets or something.

As I read, with great care, the gospel according to St John…that sort of thing seems to be happening all the time.

There is a lot of talking going on in John’s gospel. It’s a gospel that—unlike Matthew, Mark or Luke—includes extended discourses, delivered by Jesus. Jesus has most of the “speaking parts” in John’s Gospel, but always in dialogue with others—his disciples, honest questioners, random strangers whom Jesus encounters.

Now, to be sure, John’s gospel is rich stuff—containing some of the most memorable, challenging, and comforting portions of our whole Bible.

But there is also something frustrating about these “dialogues” between Jesus and his conversation partners. They talk a lot, but often they seem to talk past one another, unable to connect.

Why is that?

I think it’s because Jesus and those he talks with in John’s Gospel have such different perspectives on everything under the sun.

Picture it this way: most of the persons Jesus speaks with have about as much perspective as does the pilot of a crop-dusting airplane. They see things from a very “low altitude.” They’re “close to the ground” and so they speak out of a pretty small worldview.

Jesus, though, looks at everything from a much higher altitude. Jesus’ view of things is more like what our astronauts might behold this morning as they orbit the earth in the space shuttle Endeavour. Jesus is like astronauts who can literally see “ahead of the curve,” the curve of the earth, that is!

Think about it: Jesus knows, Jesus sees, Jesus lives on a whole different plane of reality. Jesus is equally at home in heaven or on earth. Jesus is not stuck in the past, the present, or the future—Jesus is not hemmed in by time.

But everyone with whom Jesus converses in John’s gospel is a finite creature, stuck in one place, capable of living only in the present moment. They’re like bewildered visitors to a shopping mall, all desperately searching for that map with the red arrow that says: YOU ARE HERE.

So Jesus—with his high-altitude, wide-angle lens view of reality—Jesus sees where he is going—back to his Father—and he assures his disciples that they’ll be joining him, and not to worry because “in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” No one needs to sleep on the living room couch in God’s heaven! There is never a “no vacancy” sign on the Father’s house.

And that should comfort Jesus’ disciples, but when Jesus assures them that they know the way to the Father’s house, Thomas—always the voice of realism—interrupts: “No Jesus. We’re not familiar with this ‘way’ that you’re talking about. Could you Mapquest it for us? Could you give us the GPS coordinates? Could you show us where ‘X marks the spot?’”

To which Jesus replies: “The way isn’t a route. The way is me. You’re looking at the Way to the Father. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. There is no other Way.”

And I picture Thomas staring back at Jesus, dumbfounded, (as Luther liked to say) like a newborn calf staring at a freshly-painted barn door.

But Jesus just keeps rolling on, assuring his followers that they will know this Father he’s talking about—indeed that they already know him….

And then another baffled disciple, Philip, putt-putting along in his low-altitude crop-dusting plane says: “Time out, Jesus! We’d like to see this Father of yours with our own two eyes. Show this Father to us, please. Produce your Father so we can identify him on sight….”

And Jesus just keeps rolling along, telling Philip that that’s all been taken care of—in fact, if they’ve seen him (Jesus!) they already have seen, they already know the Father. The Father/Son resemblance between the two is, in fact, unmistakable… “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

…and it just keeps going like that throughout John’s Gospel. Although Jesus and the ordinary human beings he converses with share many words, that doesn’t mean that they’re always connecting—not by a country mile.

And yet here’s the great thing—here’s the wonder of it all: despite the fact that Jesus lives way above and beyond us, he keeps coming back down to us, keeps hunkering down on our level to help us catch glimpses of the full, rich life that Jesus knows—the abundant life Jesus wants to shower down upon everyone.

So, rather than losing patience with the likes of Thomas and Philip, Jesus backs up and finds fresh new ways to say the same thing. Jesus uses the anxious questions of bewildered disciples like Thomas and Philip as jumping off points to utter promises that fill them—and us!—with faith, hope and love.

In fact, as we sort out the meandering “two steps forward, three steps backward” conversation here in John 14, we hear—unmistakably—we hear three amazing promises from our Lord—promises that give us a faith-engendering glimpse of what Jesus knows and sees and lives…what Jesus wants to give to us and anyone else who has ears to hear.

First, Jesus tells us that in the full, rich life of God, we belong—there is and always will be room for us in the Father’s house. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”

Wow! What a promise!....a promise that has cheered us at countless funerals, right?…a promise that we cling to whenever we face up to our finitude, our unworthiness, our mortality.

But this is so much more than a promise to fall back on when we face death. This is a promise not just for the future, but a promise that transforms our present: God has room for us, now and always. We don’t deserve that—not one bit—but God in Christ just keeps coming back to us, filling our ears with hope. The door is open, the place card with our name correctly spelled on it has been set out, God has room for us, not because “we’ve got that coming” but because God is unfathomably good and gracious.

Second, Jesus promises us that if we’ve come to know him, we know all that we’ll ever need to know about God. In Jesus, we have all the “God” we will ever need.

If the whole notion of “God” is too much for us to wrap our arms around—and it is!—here is Someone we can wrap our arms around: Jesus of Nazareth, who walked on this earth, Jesus who lived among us, Jesus who stretched his arms out on the Cross to embrace all sinners, Jesus who could not be kept in the grave but rose again, nevermore to die, “for us and for our salvation.”

If you’ve seen Jesus, known Jesus, grasped Jesus….you have come as close to God as you possibly can.

And then there’s a third promise here—a promise that surpasses the first two: God has a life and a purpose for you. You belong to the God who hopes that you will “outdo” Him in this world. You belong to the God who believes in you more than you may believe in yourself.

This final promise in our text, I must admit, is so mind-boggling that I “scarce can take it in”: “Very 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.”

What I hear Jesus saying is this: as he “goes to the Father,” his mode of living and moving and acting on earth will be entirely through you and me. As we like to say in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: “God’s work. Our hands.”

So what Jesus did, we do and will keep on doing as long as God gives us life. That means, at the very least, that

• we will turn sinners loose, as Jesus did;

• we will bring resurrection hope wherever death seems to have the upper hand, as Jesus did;

• we will fill empty bellies, as Jesus did;

• we will embrace outcasts, as Jesus did;

• we will bring cheer to this world’s sadness, as Jesus did;

• we will walk on earth in faith, hope and love--as Jesus did.

And maybe, just maybe, as Jesus lives in us, we’ll gain some altitude with our little crop-dusting planes…and start to see “ahead of the curve,” start to see and know and live the way Jesus does.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Aftershocks of Easter

2011-05-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

Aftershocks of Easter

Northwestern Minnesota Synod Assembly

May 15, 2011 (Easter 4, Year A)

1 Peter 2:18-25

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Christian worship is always an “aftershock of Easter.”

You know what an aftershock is. Just two months ago an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter Scale devastated parts of Japan, causing a massive tsunami, killing thousands and leaving tens of thousands unaccounted for or homeless.

What you may have missed is that aftershocks from the March 11th earthquake continued for over a month—some of those “aftershocks” serious earthquakes in their own right.

…Not that that’s so unusual. Throughout history, after some major earthquakes, the aftershocks have lasted for up to ten years.

Awe-filled worship is always an aftershock of Easter.

Three weeks ago the ground shook under our feet as we heard the story of Easter in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 28:1-10)—an amazing account that begins with an earthquake and an angel descending from heaven, rolling away the stone in front of Jesus’ grave—and then sitting on the stone, as if to say: “Now what do you think of them apples?”

Easter, in Matthew’s telling anyway, commences with an earthquake….an earthquake the aftershocks of which are still sending tremors through the church and the world.

Like all major earthquakes, the Easter earthquake affected everyone, turned everything upside down, altered the landscape permanently.

Unlike most major earthquakes, though, the Easter earthquake’s aftershocks are not subsiding. Indeed, the aftershocks of Easter, the reverberations of the Resurrection retain all the force of the original earthquake—so much so that we say that every Sunday, every worship gathering around the Cross is itself another Easter Day.

And none of us comes through the aftershocks of Easter unscathed.

Here’s how author Annie Dillard describes Christian worship: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? …It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

How can we speak this way? Is the community of Christ, really shaken regularly, in worship, by what happened on the Third Day after the Crucifixion?

Beyond the shadow of a doubt! Because Easter means at least three things:

• We have a living God on our hands.

• God has a living people on his hands.

• And the future is no longer filled with foreboding….the future is fundamentally open, in Jesus Christ.

And that means that everything we thought was true is up for grabs. We thought that sin would never release us. We thought that death would always have the last word. We thought that the future was gray and hazy and utterly uncertain.

But the Easter earthquake permanently altered all those things. Dwelling now in the awe-filled worshiping community of Jesus Christ is like living in the midst of an ongoing earthquake, walking on ground that’s still trembling, moving ahead not in terror—but in boundless hope.

Worship in the name of Jesus taps into incredible, unbelievable, bigger-than-the-biggest-atom-bomb power.

Because worship connects us to a God who is best spoken of in the present tense. If you wear a WWJD bracelet I invite you to stop talking about What Would Jesus Do?….and shift gears to a better, Resurrection question: What Will Jesus Do?--Jesus on the loose, at-large in the world, Jesus living inside of all who are “in Christ,” Jesus showing up at least once a week in your congregation.

Yes, you heard me right: Jesus “shows up” every time we worship. When the Word is read, it’s Jesus’ voice we hear. When the preacher preaches, it’s Jesus getting in a Word edgewise with us. When water, bread and wine are wrapped in the promises of God, Jesus is rescuing, restoring, setting us and all things right.

We have a living God on our hands, my friends….

….and God has a living people on his hands.

Without Easter, without the Cross and the Empty Tomb, we are all toast. We’re goners. Here today, gone tomorrow, fresh out of life, fresh out of hope.

But Easter presses the “reset button” on all of that! When Easter dawns upon us, it’s like the First Day of Creation all over again, God’s great “do-over”…and that means life for us. Sin no longer has a future with us. Life, in Christ, will have the last Word!

Every time Christians gather for worship we experience an aftershock of Easter. Because we have a living God on our hands…and God has a living people on his hands….and the future is no longer a dark question mark. In the Risen Lord Jesus Christ the future is fundamentally open, because it’s God’s future, and God beckons us out of our guilt-ridden past, out of our anxiety-driven present, into God’s hope-filled future.

…and that’s because every syllable of the New Testament was written in the glow of the Easter Sonrise. If the New Testament seems to describe a world that is “all shook up”…if it appears as though the world of the New Testament is all topsy-turvy, it’s because the New Testament is filled with rubble--the rubble of an old world destroyed by the Cross…a dying world rendered passé by the surpassing power of the Resurrection.

So, if the New Testament strikes you as being sort of a “wild ride”—it’s because folks are always poking their heads up out of the rubble left by the Resurrection.

We see that in our Second Lesson from I Peter. Picture a slave poking his head up out of the rubble from the Easter earthquake and wondering: “Now what? I’m a slave. I belong to my overseer, my guardian. I’m totally at his disposal. But Christ has suffered, died and risen again for me—so now what?”

The writer of I Peter takes a first run at that piercing question. What does the Easter earthquake do for a first-century slave who’s been embraced by the Risen Christ? He’s still a slave, right? He still has a master, a guardian—who may or may not treat him well.

But this slave now lives life in a brand new key. Even his sufferings have been transformed, but only “in Christ.” Suffering itself has been redeemed by the suffering of Jesus. “[Jesus] himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” (v. 24)

And what’s more, this slave now has two owners—and the New Owner is the Ultimate Owner, the Shepherd and Guardian of this slave’s soul. Jesus has dibs on this slave—so now what?

It just keeps going on and on like that across the pages of the New Testament, down through the history of the church and even into our own day. Folks—you and I--keep poking our heads up out of the rubble left behind by the Easter earthquake—and we keep wondering: “Now what?”

My life has been a mess—but now Jesus, the Best Shepherd, has waylaid me and made me his own. All around me—the rubble of my stupid choices, my abject failures, my wayward ways—but those no longer define me. Jesus, the Guardian of my soul has called dibs on me, on us. So now what?

Isn’t there even a word for our congregations, our synod, our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America here? It feels as though nothing is the way it used to be—everything is up for grabs—we’re rethinking everything about how to be the church in the 21st century.

But what if we, too, are simply poking our heads up out of the rubble of a tired, old dying world…poking our heads up out of the rubble left by the Resurrection…and looking to Jesus, the Shepherd and Guardian of our souls?

Where are you taking us Jesus? We’d really like to know that.

But, Jesus, if you’re not ready to tell us just exactly where you’re taking us, reassure us of just one thing: Let us know, deep in our bones that you’re the one taking us there, into God’s tomorrow, into the future that belongs solely to you.

Because if that is true, nothing else matters.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

The Next Generation: Practicing Resurrection at Home

2011-05-01T05:13:00.000-07:00

The Next Generation: Practicing Resurrection

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” Acts 2:42-47

The title of this column might puzzle you. “Practicing” Resurrection? What’s that? The Resurrection is an event, not an assignment, right? The Resurrection is God’s greatest miracle, the Father’s vindication of the crucified Son, the definitive defeat of death. What’s to “practice?”

Lutheran Christians rightly raise such questions. It’s in our DNA, it’s part of our vocation within the Body of Christ. We get nervous whenever someone tries to turn a gift into a duty or an obligation or even a “practice.”

But sometimes our nervousness betrays us. The “happenedness” of the Resurrection too easily leads us to treat Easter as an event in our past. But what if Easter isn’t over yet? What if the Resurrection is an event that unfolds in a transforming way of life?

Living Into God’s New Future

This seems to be what happened in the Jerusalem church that was birthed on Pentecost, the 50th Day of Easter. In Acts 2:42-27 (the basis for our 2011 Synod Assembly theme, Awe-Filled Worship: Doing Acts 2) we behold a gathering of Christ-followers living in this world still, but mindful that God in raising up Christ has opened up a brand new future for them, also.

So, rather than waiting for God to do something amazing, they live new lives characterized by Easter awe—a palpable sense of dwelling in the presence of the Risen Christ. God is active—outside of them but also in and through their faith-filled lives. They extend the Easter event through learning, worshiping, sharing, praying, breaking bread, working wonders, welcoming new believers. Every day became a new adventure!

And notice especially the interplay between their public and private lives in verse 46: “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts…” There was a rhythm established, hot on the heels of Pentecost, that valued both what happened in the public church (“the temple”) but also in the domestic church (“at home.”)

The Four Keys

This dynamic interplay of public-and-private undergirds the Next Generation vision for our synod. My March column (The Next Generation: Deep into the Marrow) offered a high-altitude overview of the Vibrant Faith Frame. This month we bring the plane down to a lower altitude, to focus on the Four Keys—ways “practicing resurrection” in the 21st century.

The Four Keys take seriously the experiential side of being Christian. Dr. David Anderson of Vibrant Faith Ministries quotes appreciatively from the American sociologist of religion, Robert Wuthnow: “Effective religious socialization comes about through embedded practices; (emphasis added) that is, through specific, deliberate religious activities that are firmly intertwined with the daily habit of family routines, of eating and sleeping, of having conversations, of adorning the spaces in which people live, of celebrating the holidays, and of being part of a community.”

Indeed, all living faiths have some sort of “embedded practices”—some very similar to our own. What makes these “practices of resurrection” is that we do them “in Christ.” The Four Keys represent four ways that the risen Christ lives in and through us, for the sake of the world.

Caring Conversations

This one sounds so easy, so basic. The First Key—caring conversations—nudges us toward a practice that used to come more naturally for Christians, i.e. to check in with one another regularly on how the Christian walk is unfolding in the daily-ness of life.

In our atomized, cocooned, “wired” 21st century lives it is so easy to miss chances to connect with one another personally in our congregations and our homes. The more high-tech our lives become, though, the more we hunger for high-touch encounters with one another.

Caring Conversations need not be highly organized or intricately choreographed. A simple, leading question may be all you need: “How was your day? What happened at school or work? How did you meet God today?” Some households and church groups share “highs and lows” as part of the “agenda” of every meeting.

It’s tempting to skip over these brief personal sharing times, though. Parents of ‘tweens and teens can’t always get their kids to talk—so why bother trying? Or in church committees we want to “get on with business.” Ironically, as studies have revealed, we actually handle “business” more efficiently and effectively when we start our gatherings with some personal checking-in-time.

Moreover, caring conversations keep the boundaries of the Body of Christ “permeable,” i.e. able to invite and include seekers who are looking for the one true God. What if our homes and congregations became known as places where no topic is off limit and no potential conversation-partner is turned away?

Devotions

Caring conversations prepare us for the Second Key: devotions. Remember the verb that dwells within this word: devote. Devotions center us in the One who is utterly devoted to us, the God to whom we are utterly devoted. Devotions place our busy lives in the presence of the God and Father of us all, who raised Jesus the beloved Son from the dead.

Having devotions in our households or church groups need not be burdensome. Instead of setting the bar too high, let’s view devotions as moments-in-time when we take a brief break from the routine and remind ourselves that the Risen Christ is always with us—that we are not alone in the universe.

So reading Christ in our Home or another daily devotional guide—at the breakfast table or before bedtime—is never wasted time. Homes that include small children will want to use age-appropriate devotional resources. Dwelling in a verse of the Bible sustains us. More and more Lutherans are following ancient prayer practices like lectio divina (sacred reading): a four-step way of living with a verse or two for some moments that lead to prayer. (For a simple introduction to lectio divina go to http://archive.elca.org/prayer/resources/jump.html and scroll down to #4, “Pray the Bible.”)

Rituals and Traditions

Closely akin to devotions is the Third Key: rituals and traditions. These are healthy habits and routines that sustain the Easter life God has opened up for us by raising Jesus from the dead. The rituals and traditions we actually embrace will be many and varied. The Third Key includes

• How we adorn our homes and church buildings with symbols of living faith;

• How we pray upon rising, before meals, and at the close of the day;

• How we bless and commend one another to God every day or before every journey or farewell;

• How we immerse ourselves in art, music and other forms of beauty that reveal God’s love;

• How we mark life’s milestones in homes and in congregations;

• How we practice forgiveness and reconciliation with one another;

• How we baptize, affirm, marry, heal and bury “in Christ.”

I suggest a spirit of playfulness, imagination and variety--especially in our homes, as we develop rituals and traditions that “work” for us. When our children were little, Joy and I included very long “God bless” lists in night-time prayers (including even blessings for favorite stuffed animals—“all God’s creatures”), brought home fun table graces learned at family Bible camp (“Be Present at Our Table” to the tune of the Flintstones theme), and precious children’s hymns (“Have No Fear, Little Flock” was a favorite).

Service

The Fourth Key draws us out of our tight circles and into God’s wider world: service. Our caring conversations make us wonder how others are doing. Our devotions and traditions ground us in God who is always showing up in the face of the “least ones” around us (Matthew 25:31-46). Families, homes and congregations “practice the Resurrection” as they follow the Risen Christ out into our communities and beyond.

Last November our family did something we’d thought about for years. We helped serve the community Thanksgiving Dinner at St Joseph’s Catholic Church of Moorhead (in cooperation with Trinity Lutheran Church and the Moorhead community). It was great: being with our neighbors, giving thanks for God’s abundance, reducing the loneliness that is a daily reality for so many. Afterward I was struck by how serving together in this way fed back into our family’s own caring conversations and prayers. Indeed, the Four Keys are intimately related to one another—playing off each other as “practices of the Resurrection.”

In the Risen Christ,
Lawrence R. Wohlrabe
Bishop, Northwestern Minnesota Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work. Our hands.

For reflection and discussion:

1. The Four Keys aren’t the only “practices of the Resurrection” in the church. What are some other “embedded practices” that enliven faith in your homes and congregation?

2. How have you observed “caring conversations” opening up a home or a congregation to include an outsider (or outsiders)?

3. What pattern of devotions do you find to be most faith-strengthening and sustaining?

4. How do you perceive connections between the Four Keys?

This is the fifth in a series of columns on Bishop Wohlrabe’s “Next Generation” vision (available at http://www.nwmnsynod.org/BISHOP'S%20PAGE.htm) for the NW MN Synod. These columns are designed to equip the disciples and leadership groups such as church councils, for faithful and fruitful ministry. Feel free to use the column for personal reflection or group discussion, e.g. church council meeting devotions/discussion.

Downward Mobility

2011-04-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

Sunday of the Passion/Installation of Pr. Karen Young Trenne

April 17, 2011

Bygland and Fisher Lutheran Churches, Fisher, MN

Philippians 2:5-11

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

This past Tuesday Civil War buffs converged on Charleston, SC to re-enact the attack on Ft. Sumter that marked the start of the War Between the States, 150 years ago on April 12, 1861. No doubt we’ll be learning more during this sesquicentennial year about this tragic chapter in our nation’s history—a civil war that claimed over 1 million lives, including over 600,000 soldiers on both sides.

From our perspective a century-and-a-half later, it all seems like such a terrible waste of life and resources…but in 1861, the brave soldiers who enlisted thought they were making a noble sacrifice—offering up their very lives for a cause they believed in.

Sacrifice.

You and I enjoy the life that is ours because countless others have made sacrifices on our behalf….in wars, in the hard work that built this nation, in the costly investments that others have made, in the multitude of ways our forebears denied themselves so that we might enjoy a life that is full, free, and rich.

Indeed, you and I live every day off the sacrifices of others.

So, it’s interesting—is it not?--that as beneficiaries of such sacrifices, we find it so hard to make sacrifices of our own.

Right now, in our state capital and in Washington, DC, there’s a political donnybrook going on over what sorts of sacrifices folks will need to make in order for us to continue to enjoy the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to. All of us in America agree that sacrifices need to be made….but our strong preference is that someone else should make these sacrifices.

I like benefiting from the sacrifices of others. I don’t like making sacrifices for the sake of others…..which is just another way of saying that I’m a sinner. I am sinner—and you are too! We are curved in upon ourselves, utterly preoccupied with ourselves—our wants, our needs, our comfort, our security. We may admire the language of “shared sacrifice,” but we’d just as soon see others do the sharing and the sacrificing.

When we’re asked: “Who will step forward to share their wealth, to put themselves at risk?” we stare at our feet, in the hope that someone else will pipe up and say: “I will. I will sacrifice for the sake of my neighbors.”

On this Sunday of the Passion, we embark upon the holiest week of the year. We focus our eyes on Jesus--betrayed, handed over to thugs, convicted in a crooked trial, executed like a common criminal, his lifeless body tossed into a borrowed grave.

This is the week when we recall how Jesus stepped up to say: “I will. I’ll go. I’ll make a sacrifice—indeed, I will BE a sacrifice for the sake of my beloved ones. I will go where no one else wants to go—where no one really CAN go.”

Matthew’s passion story which we just heard is summarized masterfully in our Second Lesson from Philippians chapter 2. Here St Paul quotes a hymn that was already well known by the time he wrote his epistle to the Philippians just after the middle of the first century. Paul starkly, strikingly puts the spotlight on Jesus and his uncanny willingness to do what comes so hard for us: to sacrifice himself, to let go of everything that was rightfully his, so that we might have a second chance at a life we would never deserve.

This astonishing passage depicts, as it were, a scene in the heavenly courts in which God the Father asks the whole company of heaven: “Who will go for us? Who will travel down there and rescue these creatures made in our image? Who will descend from heaven to clean up the mess they’ve made of things?”

In the silence of that celestial gathering, a lone voice speaks up: “I will go,” replies the only beloved Son of the Father. “I will relinquish all that I have, set aside what is by rights mine, empty myself out into the womb of a human mother. I will be born in the usual way, occupy the lowest rung on their social ladder, and hand myself over to death—even death on a cross. Whatever it takes to win their trust, I will do it. I will sacrifice myself for them, because I can’t stop loving them, and I can’t rest until they love me just as freely and just as passionately.”

This amazing descent from heaven, undertaken by the only Son of the Father, for us and our salvation—this is what Holy Week is all about.

And come to think of it, it’s what our whole life of faith is about, as well.

We’re born into a world that simply assumes life is about getting ahead, pulling our own strings, pursuing upward mobility—whatever it takes.

But our Lord Jesus comes along and cuts against the grain, embracing his own wild brand of “downward mobility,” willingly going down for us, down from heaven, down to earth, down to “get” us and make us his own forever.

And when we come under Jesus’ spell, when we find ourselves in Jesus’ power, we start to “reverse course,” and we begin to realize that Jesus’ downward mobility is really what it’s all about.

Jesus invites us to join him in letting go of all the things we thought we had to have.

Jesus draws us into emptying ourselves, divesting ourselves of what we thought we couldn’t live without.

Jesus even woos us into seeing his accursed cross as the royal way, the sovereign means, whereby God has communicated to us, compellingly and convincingly: “I love you with an everlasting, undefeatable love. I love you—and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

Jesus calls us to be people who go down, down to this good earth, down to our neighbors—especially the lowliest and the least, down to our daily vocations—the callings we embrace in service to others, not because we have to, but because we get to.

Jesus calls us, even as he invites our congregations also, to live like that—a life of total abandon and bracing trust. Here, we thought we needed to hang on for dear life, to cling to what we’ve been given, to secure our lives as best we can.

But Jesus has another idea—Jesus has a better future for us, one in which we live by letting go, we survive by emptying ourselves out for this good world. We come out ahead—by giving it all up, for the sake of our neighbors.

God sees the world, still in terrible shape, and God asks: “Who will go for us?” And before we even know it’s happening, we find ourselves saying—with our Lord Jesus: “We’ll go. We’ll sacrifice ourselves as Jesus did for us. We’ll empty ourselves, giving away what we’ve been given, trusting that just as God raised up the crucified Jesus, he will raise us up as well. So really, now, there is nothing to fear.

In the words of the great church historian, the late Jaroslav Pelikan: If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. If Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.

And that, my dear friends, is what we believe to be true. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. End of story!

That’s what forms our lives of faith, gives our congregations compelling purpose, and transforms how we conceive of the all the work God has called us to do.

Downward mobility—that’s the Jesus-way, the way of the cross, the only way to the only life worth living.

Downward mobility—may that also define the faithful, fruitful partnership in God’s service that formally begins for you, Pastor Karen, and the people of this congregation today. Live in the embrace of Jesus’ way, the downward path of humble service to one another and to all whom God places in your paths.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

What a Way to Die...and to Live!

2011-04-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

Midweek Lenten Worship/Installation of Pr. Christopher Eldredge

PioneerCare Center, Fergus Falls, MN

April 13, 2011

“It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.” Luke 23:44-46.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

For some time now I have had a fascination with “famous last words”—you know: the words, the phrases, the statements that famous people utter just before they die.

For example, some famous last words are profound:

“All my possessions for a moment of time.” …the last words of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” ….uttered by the American spy, Nathan Hale just before he was hanged by the British in 1776

Other famous last words are more perfunctory, almost matter-of-fact:

“Gas is running low.” Amelia Earhart’s last radio transmission in 1937, before her plane was lost forever in the Pacific.

“I have a terrific headache.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945, just before he succumbed to a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

“Don’t you go making a fuss over me now; I’m just fine.” According to Garrison Keillor, the famous last words of just about every Norwegian Lutheran who has ever lived in Lake Wobegon, MN.

Some famous last words are profound, others are perfunctory, and a few famous last words simply take us by surprise.

For example, do you know whose famous last words went something like this:

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…”??

Who said those words, just before dying? The answer will surprise you, because it’s Jesus.

Well, OK, that’s not exactly what he said….

Jesus didn’t really pray, “Now I lay me, down to sleep”…..but he did take on his lips the words of a favorite Jewish bed-time prayer of his day, drawn from Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Jim Limburg, who taught Old Testament at Luther Seminary for many years has even wondered whether Jesus might have spent much of his time on the Cross, reciting (to himself) whole psalms, taking these venerable prayers from the Bible and making them his own, including this favorite Jewish bed-time prayer from Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

That is not how most crucified men in first-century Judea met their deaths. Many of those executed in this most barbaric of ways, died with curses for their executioners dripping from their lips: maledictions for, condemnations of those who inflicted such unspeakable pain and shame upon them. That’s how most crucified men died.

But not Jesus. Jesus died precisely as he lived. Jesus died as you and I can only hope to die—freely, willingly, completely, handing his whole life back to God the Father, the source and goal of all things.

Father….in the Greek, pater….a term of intimate address….

Father, into your hands….which is to say: into your power and your protection, for that is what “hands” represent….

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit: I freely, fully return to you the entire life that you first gave to me.

What a way to die! If it is true that most of us face our deaths in stages…that we more or less go through steps such as denial, anger, bargaining and other reactions before finally arriving at acceptance….well then here is acceptance in its deepest and most faithful form. This is no grim resigning of oneself to one’s fate. It is, rather, acknowledging, in the most heartfelt of ways, that our times—all our times—belong to the only One who made us from nothing and to whom we shall all one day return.

What a way to die!

….and come to think of it: what a way to live! What a way to live every day we have on earth, up to and including our final day.

Since becoming bishop, over three years ago, I have come to treasure a similar night-time prayer supposedly coined by Pope John XXIII who ended each day with these words: “Dear Lord. Another long day is about to end, and I am very weary. This is your church. I’m going to bed now. Amen.”

If we don’t see Jesus’ famous last words as words for every day of our lives, chances are we’ll live as if it’s all about us…as if our times, our decisions, our actions, our lives were all in our own hands--accountable to no one else.

If we don’t see Jesus’ famous last words as words for every day of our lives, chance are we’ll take ourselves way too seriously. All of us, every last one of us, needs to cultivate the gentle art of confronting our dispensability. We are wise to recall the simple truth that on the morning of the day that we leave this earth, there will be things on our “to do” list that simply will not get done.

So Jesus’ famous last words aren’t just good for dying. They’re indispensable for living—each and every day, always and forever praying: “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit. Whatever good I am privileged to do this day, whatever grace I am allowed to receive, it all comes from You. So at the start of this new day I pray: Father, in your hands I commend my spirit. Let me live, and truly live, before I die.”

These are particularly good words for us to ponder this evening, not only as we conclude the season of Lent, but also as we gather here for worship—for the first time in this lovely new facility, the PioneerCare Center--and as we formally welcome and install Pastor Christopher Eldredge as a valued member of the ministry staff.

PioneerCare has been around since 1928 and this organization still exists to help persons—whether they be residents, staff, visitors or members of sponsoring congregations—PioneerCare is about helping us all pray (and live!) as Jesus did: “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.”

As a treasured partner in social ministry and a fine representative of Lutheran Services in America here in Fergus Falls, I am struck by how PioneerCare views its mission in such a faithful, well-rounded way--to “promote quality of life in a Christ-like way for those we serve by providing diverse and holistic care focusing always on individual dignity and worth.”

PioneerCare and all of its services and programs, is here to help persons of all ages and circumstances say, with their Lord Jesus: “Father—you who have fashioned my life, you who are my source and my goal—in your hands, into your power and into your protection—I commend my spirit, I turn over my whole life, now and forever.”

That my dear friends is the business we are in together—whether we’re talking nursing care, social services, housekeeping, food services, chaplaincy or administration—everything we think, say and do through ministries of caring like this—is aimed at making that ancient Jewish bedtime prayer, Jesus’ famous last words, …making them our own words to live by and words to die by: “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.”

What a way to die!

And, better yet: what a way to live!

In the name of Jesus. Amen.