Keynote Address at
Prayer Breakfast
First Lutheran
Church, Detroit Lakes
Centennial of the
Congregation/August 27, 2017
Thank you for the kind invitation to Joy and me to
participate in your Centennial celebration.
Thanks, especially, to Terry Kemmer and Pastor Peterson for helping me
understand how you’ve prepared yourselves for this banner day--and what it
means for First Lutheran now and in the future.
I greet you on behalf of your sisters and brothers of
our NW MN Synod ELCA—nearly 90,000 Lutherans in 229 congregations spread across
the 21 counties here in the northwestern corner of our state. Congratulations, blessings and best wishes
today and in all the days yet to come for First Lutheran. You are a strong congregation, with a
promising future. Thank you for your
partnership in the gospel and for your financial generosity last year that
moved you to share $29,879.32 in mission support and sponsorship of ELCA global
missionary Chandran Martin.
I love your theme:
Celebrating the past, embracing the future. It’s so true to life, for as Danish
philosopher-theologian Soren Kierkegaard once said: "Life
can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
Your theme is also true to our Christian
life: Luther’s Small Catechism invites
us to begin each day remembering our baptism—something that happened in our
past, but continues to unfold in our present and our future.
Celebrating the past, embracing the future—it’s like a
two-step dance we’re doing together!
OUR
FIRST STEP: Celebrating our past.
Today we celebrate those flinty Norwegian Lutherans
who merged their two congregations together in 1917 to form First Lutheran. Most if not all of them were immigrants or children
of immigrants.
Lately I’ve been inviting folks in our synod to reflect
on the experience of immigration,
because the Lutheran church in North America has been and remains an immigrant
church. Most of our ancestors came from
northern Europe—the birthplace of Lutheranism 500 years ago.
We celebrate the fact that of the nearly 200,000
Norwegians who emigrated to America in the 19th century, some of
them found their way to the Detroit Lakes area when Minnesota was still a “new”
state.
To fully understand what motivated them, ponder the
difference between tourists and immigrants. Tourists, you see, always carry round-trip tickets with them. They travel abroad, but always with the
intent of returning to their homeland. Immigrants, on the other hand, carry one-way tickets.
Immigrants realize that their future is no longer in
the land of their birth. To be an
immigrant is to set your face toward a new future, in uncharted territory.
What motivated your immigrant forebears to take that
audacious step?
It usually involved some
sort of pain—whether caused by war or
poverty or oppression. Many Norwegian
immigrants left the old country because they were tired of being dominated by
their neighbors, the Danes and the Swedes…because of food shortages, poor
crops, farm foreclosures and even the disappearance of the spring herring
run.
These restless, “searching” Norwegians caught a case
of what was called “America fever”…described
by Lutheran historian E. Clifford Nelson as a “contagion of excitement about the New World which spread over the
entire country [of Norway], touching every district, every hamlet, almost every
family…”[1]
To be an immigrant is to be moved by both pain and
promise—the pain of the old country, the promise of the new country.
As we celebrate our immigrant heritage, it’s also wise
to recall that immigrants tended to “travel light”…bringing with them just the
bare essentials. Our Lutheran ancestors always
packed in their emigrant trunks three
books: a Bible, a catechism and a
hymnal.
Immigrants had the rare experience of starting all
over again in a strange new place. Integral
to that “starting over” was their determination to band together for worship,
confirmation instruction, and evangelical mission in the wilderness of North
America.
This was a matter of urgency for these immigrants. Often here in northwestern Minnesota
congregations were birthed in unfinished
settler’s cabins. Our ancestors
frequently established a church community
before they constructed a church building.
This sense of urgency stemmed from our forebears’
conviction that among the necessities of life in their new homeland was their deep
need to gather together regularly
· to hear God’s Word
of life, freedom and forgiveness in Jesus Christ…
· to bring their
little ones to Holy Baptism….
· to kneel together
at the Lord’s Table….and
· to be sent forth
to serve in God’s world.
The little two-step centennial dance we’re doing this
morning begins with the first step:
celebrating our past…and as we do that we pivot to OUR SECOND STEP: embracing the
future.
At this point a surprise awaits us: the surprising connection between our past
and our future. For our history
is always furnishing us with the raw materials
for our future in Christ.
Let me suggest four ways that happens:
#1: think of
your immigrant forebears as risk-taking adventurers. Rather than staying mired in unbearable
conditions in the old country they “bet the farm” on the promise that God had
something better for them in America.
Your future at First Lutheran continues to be filled
with opportunities for risk-taking adventure.
Your $100,000 centennial giveaway is a great example. I bet that when that idea first surfaced some
of you thought it was crazy….but I understand it has turned out to be a
satisfying, deeply moving time of “holy hilarity”—a practice some of you
believe should continue. At our best,
we Christians are people who get the biggest kick out of giving away all our
gifts!
#2: another
gift from your history is the conviction that we Christians accomplish more of
God’s work when we do it together. So, when three Norwegian Lutheran church
bodies merged in 1917, it was only natural that local congregations would also
look at one another and wonder: “Why
don’t we link arms and join forces for the sake of God’s mission?” Such “coming together” experiments continue
to mark our best efforts in serving Christ and our neighbors.
#3: yet another
gift from your past is the commitment your forebears had to making
changes for the sake of forming a daring, living faith in the next generation. One way that happened in the first decade of
your congregation’s life was the transition from the Norwegian language of the
elders to the English language of the children and youth. Living, vibrant congregations—like
yours!—are always seeking ways to commend the faith to those who will be the
next generation of servant-leaders in our church!
#4: your
forebears also refused to allow faith to be reduced to a “head trip.” True, they cared about Bible study, pure
doctrine and fervent faith—but only because they knew that such faith would be
alive as it was practiced, transformed into “faith active in love.” Today, one of the hallmarks of your church is
the way you place faith practices at the center of your life and mission…whether
you’re practicing radical hospital, or pursuing passionate worship, or
fostering intentional growth in faith, or engaging in risk-taking missional
experiments, or giving yourselves away in extravagant generosity.
Martin Luther liked to say that faith in Christ is
always a “living busy active thing,” and that treasure from your past still
lives in your present and informs your future.
So my dear friends….as we celebrate this Centennial remember
who you are:
- heirs of risk-taking adventurers…
- pursuers of unity for the sake of mission…
- change agents utterly committed to passing on the faith….
- and Spirit-inspired activists who can’t help but show forth the faith that is God’s greatest gift to us.
No comments:
Post a Comment