Don't Waste a Crisis!

Opening Word
Northwestern Minnesota Synod

Stewardship Events
April 19-20, 2009

“We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints—and this, not merely as we expected; they gave themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us…” II Cor. 8:1-5

How many crises are staring us in the face this evening? Let’s see now…
· We’re in the midst of a global financial crisis.
· Many believe we’re facing an unprecedented environmental crisis, marked by manmade climate change.
· And, just for good measure, here in the upper Midwest we’re recovering from our second “500-year flood” in just the last 12 years!

And those are just the BIG world-spanning, history-turning crises. How about the individual crises you and I may be facing as well: health crises, work crises, family crises—whatever?

Sounds like a good time to pull back, hedge our bets, and play it safe--right? If we soberly assess all these crises, that seems like the reasonable thing to do.

And yet, voices--some rather surprising voices--urge us to do anything BUT “hunker down.”

Last November, as he was preparing to assume his new position, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made a bold statement that’s been quoted time and again, ever since: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”[1]

How does that strike us as followers of Jesus Christ?

Whether or not he intended to, Rahm Emanuel echoes the biblical witness in uncanny ways.

The God of the Bible is forever redeeming crises, taking disasters and using them to open up a fresh future. This Easter season is the best example of that: out of the dark crisis of Good Friday God has worked the future-opening miracle of Easter Sunday….out of the dire disaster of Jesus’ death, God has brought the splendor of New Life, in the power of the resurrection.

And that amazing pattern, that astounding template, keeps getting repeated throughout the pages of the New Testament and—indeed—in the pages of our own lives.

All of this speaks powerfully to the issue that has brought us together this evening—the issue of generosity, the issue of how we live out our stewardship of all God’s good gifts.

Stewardship! This might seem like a terrible time to be talking about that: our care-taking, our giving, our generosity. This might seem like the last thing we should be considering during a global recession.

But, in truth, this may well be the best time, the opportune moment, a critical-turning-point for reconsidering and re-imagining just what it means to belong to a God of grace and abundance, whose generosity washes over our lives so lavishly that it spills over, through us, into the whole world.

Ponder, for example, this amazing story in II Corinthians, chapter 8.

It’s impossible to piece together exactly what happened, but here’s our best guess: the early church, which was first established in Jerusalem, endured horrific persecution and impoverishment in the first few decades of its existence.

This extreme crisis experienced by the Jerusalem believers became known throughout the fledgling Christian churches scattered around the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
And through preachers like St. Paul, an appeal went out—not unlike the email alerts some of us receive whenever some disaster or human crisis cries out for our help.

In response to this appeal, one of the least-likely churches insisted on helping out. Christians in Macedonia, who were themselves hungry and persecuted, insisted--absolutely insisted!--on making an eye-popping donation, far in excess of what they seemed to be capable of.

There simply were no “deep pockets” in Macedonia…no “low-hanging fruit” just waiting to be plucked. The Macedonian Christians were dirt poor, wretchedly persecuted, utterly impoverished.

But that would not stop them from giving far more than they could afford to give.

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while, I have had to encourage a Christian to be cautious in his or her generosity. Every once in a great while I have encountered someone who wanted to give more than they could really afford to give, someone whose generosity was so overflowing that she could end up impoverishing herself.

When I have done that, I have always wondered deep down inside myself, whether it’s any of my business to offer such advice. And all the while this story of the Macedonian believers, has stuck in my craw!

What if, just what if, one of the most breath-taking ways God cares for the world, what if one of the greatest ways God pursues his mission in the world is by using the poorest of the poor to grab our attention, put all our middle-class “poor-talk” into proper perspective and simply “goose” us into generosity?

What if God still uses modern-day Macedonians to wake us up, to stir us from our crisis-induced stupor and say to us: “I am still in charge here. I am still the God of Good Friday and Easter. I remain the God who knows only one way of giving: abundantly, over-flowingly, never stingily. And I call you, my dear and precious people, to throw caution to the wind and spend yourselves utterly, in witness and service and generosity, all for the sake of my crucified and risen Son, ….who ‘though he was rich, yet for your sakes…became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’”? II Cor. 8:9.

Let us pray: God of abundance, you have poured out a large measure of earthly blessings: our table is richly furnished, our cup overflows, and we live in safety and security. Teach us to set our hearts on you and not these material blessings. Keep us from becoming either paralyzed by crises or captivated by prosperity, and grant us wisdom to use your blessings to your glory and to the service of humankind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Based on a prayer for “the proper use of wealth,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 80.


[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/us/politics/07obama.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all (accessed on 4/18/09)

Doubters Into Shouters

Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church, Puposky, MN
Trinity Lutheran Church, Debs, MN
April 19, 2009
Second Sunday of Easter/John 20:19-31

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

One of the things I love about the Bible is that it has dirty laundry hanging out all over it.
The folks who put the Good Book together could have cleaned things up, smoothed over the rough spots, rounded off the jagged corners--but they didn’t.

The Bible tells the story of God and God’s people “warts and all”—no holds barred, no apologies offered. Nothing gets sanitized or swept under the rug--even episodes that don’t exactly put believers in the kindest light.

Take this familiar gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of Easter.

There are no two ways about it: This is a story about unbelievers....unbelievers who because they were Jesus’ disciples should by rights have known better.

This morning’s gospel lesson is about unbelievers.

First there are those ten men, huddled together behind locked doors (in a “safe house”) on that first Easter. They have spent years with Jesus. They have walked miles with Jesus. They have heard Jesus teach, seen Jesus work wonders. They have lived as close to Jesus as anyone. But still they’re clueless.

They thought Jesus was done for.
They assumed that their adventures with Jesus were over.
They had nowhere to go, no place to turn, no future to look forward to.
So, fearful that Jesus’ fate might come their way as well, these ten disciples pulled the shades, locked the doors, put out the cat, and hid.

They were (at this point) unbelievers. They couldn’t muster even half-an-ounce of faith that God might still have something in store for Jesus or for them.

This gospel lesson is a story about unbelievers like those 10 scared-rabbit disciples, huddled behind barricaded doors on the first Easter.

And then there is that disciple who was missing--good old Thomas.

Thomas missed all the hoopla when Jesus showed up three days after his burial. Thomas had pressing business elsewhere that day. Perhaps he was out “on assignment.” For whatever reason, Thomas didn’t get to see the risen Christ.

And so--simply because that’s the kind of guy he was--Thomas declared that he wasn’t going to believe without at least as much proof as the other ten disciples had already received.

You’ve got to love Thomas.

He was no dummy. Every church council needs at least once Thomas on it--and God seems to make that happen.

You have to love Thomas. He was the kind of fellow who never got snookered, who took absolutely nothing at face value, accepted no wooden nickels, bought no cut-rate swampland in Florida.

I sometimes imagine Thomas as the Eeyore of the disciples.

You remember Eeyore--the stuffed donkey in the Winnie the Pooh stories. Eeyore is a cold, hard realist. He never views the world through rose-tinted glasses. No matter how brightly the sun might be shining, Eeyore always knows that a storm cloud will show up on the horizon soon enough. “Always look on the dark side of life”—that’s Eeyore’s motto.

And it seems to be Thomas’s motto too--at least as we encounter him in the Gospel of John.

Although Thomas is mentioned in all four gospels, he only speaks in John’s Gospel. Thomas has four brief “lines” in John’s script—and he always speaks with the voice of cold, hard realism.
In John, chapter 11, when Jesus tells his disciples that his friend Lazarus has died and they must go to him, Thomas--always Mr. Sunshine!--glumly responds: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

In John 14, just after Jesus tells his disciples that they know the way to the place where he is going, Thomas the Realist begs to differ: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

And then, here in John chapter 20, we see Thomas in all his skeptical glory. Demanding certified proof--visual and tactile evidence--that Jesus is really alive again.
You’ve got to love Thomas--unvarnished skeptic that he is.

And you’ve got to love the fact that his story didn’t get edited out of the Scriptures! His story didn’t wind up on the cutting-room floor.

There is good news in that, good news for unbelievers like you and like me....folks who can go head to head, toe to toe with Thomas in his dark doubting.

Because there is room for Thomas in the Bible, there is room enough in God’s story for you and for me as well.

For we certainly are all capable of Thomas’s skepticism--aren’t we? We have our own doubts about this whole Easter/resurrection/life beyond the grave business. We stoic northern European type-Looterans, know just how to take the wind out of the sails of whoever has the audacity to get too enthusiastic about anything.

Thomas fits us like a glove. Thomas is you and me. And the Bible--miracle of miracles!--does not shrink from telling his story.

But that’s not all.

The Bible doesn’t simply make us feel at home with all the other unbelievers who dot its pages.

The Bible doesn’t merely make us into more healthy, well-adjusted unbelievers. The Bible does more than make us comfortable with our doubts.

The Bible also tells us what God does with unbelievers, how God deals with doubters.

And what God does is simply this: God turns unbelievers into gospel-speakers.

God transforms doubters into shouters.

That, too, is the story--in fact it is the real story--of this gospel text.

First Jesus comes to those ten little lost lambs on that first Easter evening. Although the doors are locked, Jesus stands among them and gives them--not a stern lecture about the dangers of unbelief--but a word of gentle peace.

“Shalom!” That’s the first word Jesus has for this pack of unbelievers. “Peace to the nth degree,” Jesus says to them. And then, so that they will know he is truly Jesus and he now has death behind him, Jesus shows them the scars of his crucifixion.

Curious--isn’t it--that Jesus doesn’t offer proof that he is alive. Jesus doesn’t strap on a blood pressure cuff or a heart monitor or a brain wave detector. He doesn’t offer a DNA sample for testing.

Jesus proves he is alive by reminding his disciples that he was really dead. Then, and only then, do the disciples rejoice, in giddy recognition of their risen Lord.

And then, not wasting a second, Jesus gives these unbelievers work to do and empowers them to do it--all in one breath (literally--all in one breath!) “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”(v. 22-23)
What does Jesus do with these ten, knee-knocking unbelievers? He drafts them for his service, makes them his ambassadors, catches them up in his own work of piecing back together the whole creation--one shattered relationship, one jaded unbeliever, one repentant sinner at a time.

And Thomas? What does Jesus do for Thomas?

Two weeks after the first Easter Jesus does for Thomas exactly what Thomas needed him to do. Jesus graciously, lavishly gives Thomas the grounds he needs to become a believer. “Put your finger here, Thomas...Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do whatever you need to with me in order to have faith. Do not doubt but believe.” (v. 27)

What does Jesus do for Thomas? He transforms Thomas the doubter into Thomas the shouter.
Thomas doesn’t have very many lines in the Gospel of John, but Thomas does finally get the best line of all, Thomas’s last line in this Gospel: “My Lord and my God!”(v. 28) he exclaims.

And may we so declare those very same words! May Thomas’s good confession find its way to our lips, as well!

It is for us, you see, that the Bible tells us this story--warts and all.

It is for us that the Bible lets the dirty laundry hang out all over. Or as John the gospel writer puts it: “These are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (v. 31)

There’s the pay off! It is for you and me that the Bible allows the stories of unbelievers and doubters to be told....for only in so telling do we also come to behold what God does with unbelievers and doubters.

And what God does with them, in the pages of Scripture, is what God still does with the unbelievers and doubters in our midst, with you and with me.

God in Christ turns unbelievers--you and me!--into gospel-speakers.

God transforms doubters--you and me!--into shouters who love to deliver Thomas’s greatest line: “My Lord and My God!”

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Acts of God

Comments at "The Crest"
Fargo-Moorhead Community Worship Event
Fargo Theatre--Saturday, April 4, 2009

”Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

Have you noticed how insurance policies, laws, and newspaper accounts often call tornadoes, earthquakes and floods “acts of God?” Why do we so often hear this phrase “act of God” in the same breath as we hear of a natural disaster?

Doesn’t that amount to a huge “bum rap” for God? In these last weeks I’ve witnessed all sorts of other “acts of God”—and I bet you have, too!
· I’ve seen aching arms and tired muscles filling millions of sandbags. That’s an act of God.
· You’ve eaten bologna sandwiches, and pizza, and all sorts of other food, lovingly prepared by hands perhaps not strong enough to haul sandbags. That’s an act of God.
· We’ve observed governmental officials, relief agency workers, National Guard members, church folk and neighbors from all over…working 24/7 to save life and preserve property. That’s an act of God.

Dear friends: “acts of God” are all around us here in Fargo-Moorhead! Acts of God have drawn us here this afternoon. God is all over the place….and we’re counting on God to keep acting among us, in us, and through us in the weeks of cleanup and recovery yet to come.

Those of us who represent the Lutheran branch of the Christian family are here and will continue to be here through the arm of Lutheran Disaster Response--often the last church relief agency to leave the scene of a disaster. We will be here because God is here, acting among us.

Let ‘s pray: God, you are awesome. We see how amazing you are in forces of nature that take our breath away. But we also perceive your presence in acts of kindness, aching muscles, sandbags, bologna sandwiches, homes opened to evacuees, and the dedication of our leaders. Keep our eyes peeled, gracious God, to see you wherever and whenever you are among us, acting in us and through us to save your people and renew your whole creation. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"But God..."

Halstad and Augustana Lutheran Churches, Halstad, MN
Installation of Pr. Christine Iverson

March 22, 2009 (Lent 4)
Ephesians 2:1-10

Earlier this month I had my first-ever MRI. I had been noticing that something wasn’t quite right, a part of me was hurting that shouldn’t have been hurting, and after putting it off and putting it off I finally saw a doctor.

He examined me and told me he thought nothing was wrong, but just to be sure, he ordered the MRI. “I really don’t think it’s anything serious,” the doctor murmured, trying to reassure me.

But deep down I knew that when a doctor orders an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) something awful, something deadly could show up….and as I waited to receive the results of my MRI, my mind played out all the scenarios, imagined all the possibilities—including the possibility that I had a fatal disease and that pretty soon this world would have to go on without me.

Some of you have been there, I’m sure.

Some of you have had MRIs or blood tests or biopsies….and then you’ve had to sit wait helplessly for the results, wondering whether it was nothing (as your doctor tried to reassure you)…or whether you might be very sick--sick enough to die.

This season of Lent, it seems to me, is the most honest season of the church year. I say that because Lent doesn’t let us off the hook. Lent exposes the inconvenient truth of our mortality.

Lent begins and ends in death--the thing we most avoid thinking about. Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, with a sooty cross on our foreheads, and the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Lent begins with that grim reminder, and Lent ends on a Friday afternoon, with a man dying on a cross, crying out: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.”

Lent, I suppose you could say, is good for us. It’s like 40 days of waiting for the MRI results, the pathology report to come in. Lent causes us to fess up and face up to the fact that this world did fine for eons before we were born, and one day soon this world will go on again without us.

Death will overtake us, swallow us up.

That’s where this morning’s Second Lesson begins, knee-deep in death. “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.”

You were dead, the apostle writes. Your sins were killing you. The evil one had a hold on you. You were all toast.

On one level we already know that. We realize that no one is going to get out of this world alive.

And yet we sure don’t live that way. We go about our business, play with the kids, work too hard, shop, watch TV, play cards and while away the hours….until some visit to the doctor, until the season of Lent, until some other “wake up” call reminds us: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Our Second Lesson dives deeply this death that haunts us and hunts us. No one escapes it--nobody gets a free pass. ”All of us,” the apostle continues, “all of us once lived…in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.”

And then, all of a sudden, the mood of this Second Lesson changes.

Having rubbed our noses in our waywardness and mortality, the apostle takes a sharp turn. “You were dead,” all right….”But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—…”

Here are the Lenten lab results, dear friends: we are all goners…but God has something more in store for us.

There they are: two of the sweetest words in the whole Bible: “but God…”

It seems as though death is going to have the last word here, but God will not let that happen!

God always, always, always gets the last word—and don’t you forget it.

God doesn’t let minor inconveniences like us being dead in our trespasses and sins keep God from doing what he does best: raising the dead, forgiving sins, saving us—rescuing us—even when we were toast!

Nowadays some folks suggest that such “salvation” talk is passé.

Speaking of Jesus rescuing us or saving us—that smacks too much of revival tents, sawdust trails and televangelists interviewing tearful sinners who “once were lost, but now are found.”

But this is not passé.

What we have here in Ephesians 2 is (in the words of one teacher of preachers[i]) the “molten core of the Christian faith.” The name “Jesus” literally means: “the Lord saves.”

Here’s the molten core of our faith: we are dead, but God’s going to raise us up with Jesus Christ.
The God we meet in Jesus Christ is, quite simply, a rescuing God. That’s what God does. God is forever stooping down and scooping us up, tearing us loose from death’s tentacles, cleaning us up, raising us up with the crucified Jesus, and seating us “in the heavenly places” with our Savior forever.

And all of that is like a solitary moment in time here in Ephesians 2—collapsed into one shining instant: dead, made alive, raised to the heavenly places—all in one fell swoop!

And as if this weren’t already too wonderful to be true…Ephesians reminds us that all of it comes as sheer gift—unvarnished grace—undeserved mercy!

Pastor Christine tells me that verses 8-9 here in Ephesians 2 were her confirmation verse: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

I’m guessing, Pastor Christine, that you’ll want to share this message here in the Halstad and Augustana parish. This will be your song, right? Sing it for as long as you serve here…and you will do well.

None of this is passé.

The God who has called you from Kansas to Minnesota is a rescuing, saving God. These people know the bite of death, the anxiety of wondering what the future holds. Set them free. Say to them: “Things may look bleak right now, but God’s going to have the last word.” Let all your preaching, all your teaching, all your consoling, all your leading be variations on that theme.

And you, dear people of God, I know how long you’ve been pining for this day to come. Your long wait for a new pastor seemed unending, didn’t it? At some points you felt as though you were maybe dying—that God had forgotten you.

But God had another idea. God kept reviving your hope. God never let you forget the greatest promise of all—that God will have the last word, and that word is forgiveness, freedom and life forever in Jesus Christ.

Now I realize that I’ve come to the end of this sermon and I still haven’t told you how my MRI turned out. Here’s what I learned: I was OK. No signs of cancer or any other “awful awful.” God must have further use for me, I guess.

….Which brings us to the last line in our lesson from Ephesians 2. Why does God bother with us? Why doesn’t God just leave us dead in our sins and trespasses? Why does God raise us up to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus?

Because God loves us, of course,….but also because God wants to get some use out of us for the rest of our earthly lives. ”For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. “

God beats back death, God forgives sins, God opens up the future for us in Jesus Christ to make us forget ourselves long enough to do some good for others.

God goes to the trouble of rescuing you and me, so that God can catch us up in God’s great rescue mission. God has brought Pastor Christine to you, not just to make you safe in the arms of Jesus…but to send you, with the risen Jesus, into the world—making peace, speaking truth, and rescuing the lost, the last and the least.

[i] “Just As I Am (Eph. 2:1-10)” by Thomas G. Long. The Christian Century (March 21, 2006, p. 18). Accessed at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3334.

Truth or Love?

Synod Theological Day
March 3, 2009 at Trinity, Pelican Rapids
Moral Conversation Process

Ephesians 4:11-16
"The gifts [Christ] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love."

“Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ….”

Truth and love: now which will it be?

In the Lutheran church of my youth—that would be the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church of my youth—folks actually put the question like that: which is more important, truth or love?

If memory serves, there were even church convention resolutions that took up that question, arguing for the supremacy of the one over the other….the truth team duking it out with the love squad….the vote tally, finally tipping the balance.

I’m not making that up.

Truth and love: which is most important?

There is only one answer to that question, I believe, and the answer is YES. The answer must be one that refuses to drive a wedge between those cardinal principles, those core values for Christian folk, truth and love.

Which will it be—truth or love? YES, yes, yes to both…don’t you dare think you can have or will have the one without the other. “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up,” pleads the apostle, refusing to pick one over the other.

In the church of Jesus Christ there is no room for truth that runs roughshod over love for real human beings….nor is there room for love of the “sloppy agape” variety that has no substance, no concreteness, no rootedness-in-truth to it.

Today, we gather to learn one way of speaking the truth in love. We gather with a view, obviously and specifically, toward the continuing conversation about human sexuality that we’ve been having for a long, long time as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Today we gather in the conviction that the apostle got it just right. We will take no votes about which should prevail—truth or love. We say yes to both, we commit ourselves to both, we will not pursue the one without the other.

Not that that will make everything all right or cause thorny issues to get simpler to puzzle out….far from it. In some respects, the easier path is to choose one over the other, truth over love….or love trumping truth. It’s harder, always harder, to hold the two together….

But that is what God, through the apostle, is calling us to do, linking that (by the way!) to our growth, our maturing in Christ.

I just wrote the last of an 11-part series of articles on Healthy Congregations. In his writing, Dr. Peter Steinke offers his own commentary on this text from Ephesians chapter 4. He speaks about the church as a human community, an emotional/relational family system….and he holds up two cardinal values: (1) Define yourself—take stands—speak with your own voice….
….but then Steinke adds: “and (2) stay connected with those who disagree.”

Sounds like another “take” on truth and love. Stand up and speak the truth….but not in such a way that you drive a wedge permanently between a brother or sister in Christ. Take stands….as you stay connected.

Our goal today is not to pull a rabbit out of a hat and give you a “magic bullet” for having consistently great, deep, satisfying conversations about vexing moral issues. Our goal is to equip you to do what the church needs to do in times like these.

As our culture seems to be divided, increasingly, by the extremes….enthralled by the cable TV news “talking heads” who represent the predictable blue/red, traditional/progressive, secular/religious polar opposites…..as that happens, we in the church have a marvelous opportunity presented to us—a chance to be and do something else.

This is our time, the right time, to provide an exceedingly rare thing in our contentious culture: a free and open space for people of goodwill to come together around neuralgic questions and vexing issues without hurting each other…..we are invited into that sacred space where people speak out of their hearts, but also speak to the hearts of others…refusing, steadfastly refusing to drive a wedge between the truth and the love that have met us in Jesus Christ.

In Healthy Congregation People Develop Caring Relationships and Empower Others

“We now want to return to the gospel, which gives guidance and help against sin in more than one way, because God is extravagantly rich in his grace: first, through the spoken word…second, through baptism; third, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar; fourth, through the power of the keys and also through the mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters.” Martin Luther, Smalcald Articles, III:4.

When Luther wrote these words in 1537 he came close—very close--to placing our relationships within the Body of Christ on a par with Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Caring relationships and loving conversations with other Christians are almost sacramental in the life of the church.

A Network of Connections

In itself the church is a gathering together of God’s people—a sharing of goodwill, energy and gifts of the Spirit. It’s not far-fetched to define the congregation as a “network of connections.” This tracks with the language of the New Testament which consistently favors organic—not mechanistic--images for describing the church, most notably as “the Body of Christ and individually, members one of another.” (I Corinthians 12:27)

Yet even within this lovely image there is place both for differentiation and togetherness. God doesn’t fuse us into a formless “blob.” The Body of Christ consists of members who are wonderfully diverse, but also connected inextricably, one to another.

Our challenge is to find balance between our identities as members of one another and the relationships that give us life. “How can a separate self relate with others in a healthy way?” asks Dr. Peter Steinke, in his Healthy Congregations training materials.

Steinke points to four ways that members of the Body of Christ relate to one another:
· Playing together. “If you cannot get connected to others through relaxation, spontaneity, and letting go,” notes Steinke, “ the only alternative is to connect through hostility or ‘dead seriousness.’”
· Touching one another, verbally as well as physically. Words we share are “touching” when they convey support, care, and comfort.
· Mirroring--simply looking into one another’s faces so we can tell whether we regard one another as important, noticed, and valued. How vital it is for us to know one another’s names and call each other by name!
· Nurturing connects people. There’s a reason why church suppers are so popular. “Half of Jesus’ parables,” observes Steinke, “are about food, feasts or farming.”

The Difficult Business of Helping

Helping one another, though, isn’t always as simple as you’d think. There are ways of “helping” that wind up hindering the growth of both the helper and the one being helped.

If our helping of one another always takes the form of fixing or rescuing someone, we could be tending to our own needs more than to the needs of the one being helped. Ask yourself: am I driven by compassion or by my own anxiety at seeing someone who is hurt?

There is a kind of helping that dis-empowers the one being helped. Some helpers have a sick “need to be needed.” Their tendency to over-function can foster an unhealthy dependency in the one being “helped.”

It’s important to watch for this sort of behavior in our congregations. Peter Steinke suggests that overly-needy helpers can be spotted by their tendency to
· Listen ad infinitum to a friend’s problems
· Volunteer for every job that needs doing
· Stay up all night to do a project
· Do others’ work for them
· Try to provide the perfect environment
· Please others at the expense of their own well-being.

Another example of unhealthy helpfulness is when leaders of a congregation adapt to the weakest or most disgruntled members of the church. When such leaders try to appease or satisfy the chronically anxious or complaining, the whole congregation usually suffers. Writes Steinke: “Healthier functioning on the part of leaders involves keeping their focus on a goal, a direction, not the noise of the needy.”

So what should be our goal in helping others? The founder of the modern servant leadership movement, Robert Greenleaf, has provided this helpful test: “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

For reflection and discussion:
1. How well does your congregation play? Touch? Mirror? Nurture?
2. What connects people in your congregation?
3. How can you tell if your desire to help someone is motivated more by compassion than by your own anxiety?
4. Recall a time when leaders (perhaps in an attempt to be “helpful”) adapted to the weakest or most unhappy members of your congregation. How did this affect the whole congregation?

This is the final in an 11-part series of articles, based on the Healthy Congregations training materials by Dr. Peter Steinke. Bishop Larry encourages church councils and other leadership groups to use these articles for devotions/discussion as they meet together. All eleven articles are available for download on the Northwestern Minnesota Synod website: http://www.nwmnsynod.org/

Let It Fly!

New Salem Lutheran Church, Turtle River, MN
March 1, 2009
Installation of Pastor Karol Hendricks McCracken
Mark 4:1-9

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Growing up on a farm, as I did, makes it both easier and harder to understand the Bible.

Growing up on a farm in southern Minnesota, as I did, makes it easier to understand the Bible….because the Bible comes to us largely out of an agrarian, rural culture.

The people of the Bible, by and large, were my kind of people—farmers, tillers of the soil. Rural folk have a leg up on urban folk in making sense of the scriptures….because rural folk know where the food comes from, they live closer to the land, they have an innate sense of how the natural world works. When a country boy like me hears this famous parable of the Sower, at least he knows something about what happens when seeds are planted in soil.

Growing up on a farm makes it easier….and it also makes it harder…to understand the Bible.

The “harder” part has to do with how much agriculture today has changed since “Bible times.”

For example, when my dad was farming between 1942 and 1975, we all knew that seed was precious and needed to be planted carefully.

Seed corn was and still is expensive. You dole it out sparingly, plant it cautiously, let none of it go to waste.

On our farm down near Mankato, one of the most complicated pieces of farm equipment was our corn planter. Right about now, every year, my dad started fussing with that machine, treating it almost like his fourth child. Integral to the operation of the corn planter were the round plates, situated at the bottom of the seed bins, that metered out the corn seed, in line with the speed of the tractor as it pulled the planter through the field, so that the corn plants would be spaced out just right….not clumped together too close, not scattered too far apart. Planting corn was a precision operation, designed to conserve the seed and sow it sparingly.

Take a look, though, at the Sower in Jesus’ story. He “spends” the seed like a drunken sailor….flinging it by the handfuls, in all directions. He lavishes the seed, wastes the seed, “broadcasts” the seed every which way.

You’d think, to read this parable, that there was an inexhaustible supply of seed!

Second, notice how and where the sower scatters the seed.

My dear father, back in the days before “minimum tillage,” prepared the seedbed with multiple passes of tillage equipment and administration of scientifically-measured fertilizers and herbicides. We planted the seed ONLY in the best possible seedbed. We avoided, wherever possible, the pathways, the rocky places, and the notorious weed patches.

Thanks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we could “divert” those marginal acres with a cover crop to prevent soil erosion. The government paid us NOT to farm wherever the paths had run, wherever the ground was rocky or the thorns and thistles had taken over.

Not so, with this Sower in Mark, chapter 4. He is as indiscriminate as my farmer-father was discriminating, in deciding where exactly to plant the seed. This Sower in Jesus’ story—by my lights, at least—lets the seed fly in all the wrong places—flings recklessly the precious seed in areas where it doesn’t stand a chance of growing, or so it would seem.

What a reckless, wasteful, stupid way to plant seed!

And then there is one last thing that shocks a modern farmer in this parable. I’m talking about those fantastic, off-the-charts yields this Sower achieves. “Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold: (v. 9)

The farmers I have known are sober, realistic, scientifically-minded people. They deal in probabilities and hard realities, they work toward growth (of course!) but always within the bounds of what’s possible.

Growing up on the farm in the 150s, 60s and 70s….I remember seeing corn yields in southern Minnesota grow from 100 bushels an acre to over 200 bushels an acre, an impressive Green Revolution….but still not fantastic enough to strain sober reason.

Here in this parable, though, it’s as if the Sower is planting “magic seed,” achieving Jack-and-the-beanstalk yields that strain our credulity and make us wonder if it’s all smoke-and-mirrors. A hundredfold yield! Don’t be ridiculous!

And here, precisely here, of course, the Good News of the Gospel breaks through once again.

For the Gospel isn’t about probabilities and possibilities….the Gospel isn’t subject to hard realities and pure logic…..the Gospel of God’s extravagant love in Jesus Christ bursts through all of that, as it does here in the parable of the Sower.

Because, you see, the seed is the Word of God, and that changes everything. All bets are off!
The seed is the Word of God, and the Word, dear friends is inexhaustible. It’s meant to be flung, hither and yon, broadcast far and wide, unsparingly, “un-stingily”—just let it fly in all directions.

There’s a first Word for you, dear Pastor Karol, as you are installed today. God calls you to be lavish and wasteful with the Word. It’s none of your business to dole out the Word in measured, safe, bite-size, reasonable portions. Let it fly, broadcast it, spread it around rich and thick…and God will take it from there.

The seed is the Word of God, dear friends, and this Word wheedles its way into the most unlikely of places, finds a home in the most unworthy of persons. This world is full of persons who don’t, by rights, “deserve” the Word of God.

Come to think of it: none of us “deserves” the Word of God. We all, at various times and under certain circumstances are like the hard pathway, the stony soil, the prickly weed-patch. Look at any of us—honestly and directly—and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say: “The Word will never have a chance with THAT person….”

But the Word finds a way. It’s not up to us to deny it to anyone—that’s way above our “pay grade!”

For you, Pastor Karol, there is another call here: never underestimate the capacity of the Word of God to make someone new in Jesus Christ. Some of your greatest ministry will happen with some of the least likely characters.

And then, one last thing: get ready to have your socks knocked off, with the results, the yield of all that indiscriminate, wild-eyed seed-flinging.

Stand back, and be ready to be amazed by what God will do with the Word. It’s like super-seed, it works its own kind of germination-magic, in our midst. The Word, truly does yield thirty-fold, sixty-fold, one-hundred-fold and even more…

I love stories about Martin Luther--who reformed the Catholic church in the 16th century and started the Lutheran movement within the church. One of my favorite Luther stories has to do with the Reformer’s utter confidence in the power of the Word to work in the world.

Luther once wrote: “See how much God has been able to accomplish through me, though I did no more than pray and preach. The Word did it all….while I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.”[i]

If the Word of God is as powerful as Luther said it was, as mighty as Jesus proclaimed it to be in this parable, there is wondrous relief that should wash over us, especially us preachers of it: It doesn’t all depend on us. Hear that, Pastor Karol? You’re important—but you’re not indispensable. Neither am I. Nor are any of us, gathered here this morning.

God is at work through God’s Word, even when we’re blowing Z’s, taking our beauty-rest, or maybe (like Luther) quaffing our favorite beverage. We can be out of sorts, out of good ideas, or simply “out of it”—but the Word is still at work.

To be sure, we want to serve this Word as best we can. But most of all, we need to know when to let it fly and then get out of the way.

Our prayer, a prayer that will shape our life, goes like this: “Almighty God, grant to your Church your Holy Spirit and the wisdom which comes down from heaven, that your Word may not be bound but have free course and be preached to the joy and edifying of Christ’s holy people, that in steadfast faith we may serve you and in the confession of your name may abide to the end; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”[ii]


[i] Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Luther, p. 214.
[ii] Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 137.