Reconciling--One Sorry Sinner At a Time

Red River and Grace Lutheran Churches, Hallock, MN
Rally Day—September 7, 2008
Matthew 18:15-20

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Fifteen years ago a book came entitled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. In it author Robert Fulghum wrote: “Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten….These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people….
Clean up your own mess….
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush….
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.”

I’ve been thinking about those words as schools all across our land opened up for business this past week…and today as churches all across our land observe Rally Day. We’re rallying the Sunday School “troops” for another year of Christian learning.

Education, especially Christian education, is always about the basics—the stuff you’ve got to know, the skills you need to master, the fundamental steps in the Christian walk.

And so, appropriately enough, we have a gospel lesson that schools us in one of the basic arts of Christian living: the art of reconciliation.

It doesn’t get more elementary than this: If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.

Dear friends in Christ, if we could master that one command of Jesus, the church would be utterly transformed. Conflict would no longer suck up all the oxygen in our church. We’d climb out of the ditches and back on the road again, pursuing God’s mission in the world.

Listen once again: If another member of the church sins…go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.

I. Please notice three things about this first step toward reconciliation.

First, the responsibility rests with the one who is sinned against, the one who observes a sister or brother caught up in some wrongdoing. If you have a problem with a fellow Christian, it is your responsibility to deal with it.

Second, notice the verb Jesus uses: “Go!” Go and point out the fault….

Jesus doesn’t say: “Stew!”--as in “stew in your own juices for a while.”

Jesus doesn’t say: “Nurse!”--as in “nurse that grudge until you have a whole gunny sack of grievances that you’re ready to clobber the other person with.”

Jesus also doesn’t say: “Gossip!” Jesus absolutely forbids gossiping here. If we’ve got a beef with someone, we are NOT to blab it all over the place.

And here’s the third thing we need to notice about this first step. Reconciliation starts with the smallest possible group: just you and the one who has sinned. Always start small. Settle things personally, one on one, if at all possible.

II. But what if you are rebuffed? What if the other person blows you off? Now do you get to stew or climb up on your high horse and tell the whole world?

Hardly! If your first attempt at reconciliation is unfruitful, then you need some outside help. But again, start small. Take one or two others along with you, says Jesus, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

This step is about a couple of things. It’s about being open to correction yourself, from others. It’s about making sure that you’re seeing, hearing, analyzing things correctly. You could be wrong—and taking a couple of other persons with you could help you see that.

And if you’re not mistaken, those one or two witnesses can assist you in impressing upon the wrongdoer the gravity of his or her sin. The goal in this second step is still to regain, to win back, your erring brother or your recalcitrant sister.

And that “regaining” is so crucial. “Regain” is a soul-winning verb, an evangelizing verb. Evangelizing isn’t just something Christians do with non-Christians. No--we are always evangelizing and re-evangelizing one another within the church of Christ!

III. OK—so what if the person who’s done you wrong still doesn’t listen to you and the witnesses you’ve brought along? Only now—only after trying steps one and two—can you tell it to the church. In our current way of organizing ourselves, you bring it to the church council—although that’s not exactly what Jesus says here.

And that brings us to a challenge that we Lutherans face in 2008. We have forgotten how to be a church that exercises a godly, salvation-seeking discipline among ourselves. It’s not even in our lived experience. We shudder even to think about excommunicating someone from the church.

No, we like to say, we’re not like those other Lutherans or those other, hard-nosed Christians. We’re tolerant. We live and let live. Or, more often in our privacy-obsessed American culture, we “keep our noses out of other persons’ business.”

But right there we get it all wrong. It IS our business to care about one another within the Body of Christ so deeply, so completely, that we risk confronting one another, we dare to speak directly to a brother or sister who is captive to some deep, grievous sin that is separating him or her from God and God’s people.

And what if—what if the whole church is unsuccessful in restoring a fallen member of the Body of Christ? If that happens, says Jesus, if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector.

Here we see how incredibly serious this process is. It could end in excommunication. And that clues us in to what kinds of offenses are involved here. The reconciliation of which Jesus speaks isn’t for the little things—the “foxtails and puppy sins,” as Luther liked to call them.

No, this is a reconciliation process that involves big-time sinning, flagrantly breaking one of the Ten Commandments, bringing public shame and dishonor upon the Body of Christ.

The end of this process, if it is not the regaining of the lost one in some fashion….the end of this process is a point of discernment and separation. The church must occasionally say to one of its own—“by your actions you have separated yourself from your fellow believers and from your Lord Jesus Christ.”

And if we do that—what then? Are we through with this sinner? Well, recall what Jesus did with “Gentiles and tax collectors?” They were the special objects of his compassion, his seeking and saving work. Separating from someone is when we start all over again with them—winning them for Christ, proclaiming the Good News, praying and working for their salvation.

That whole process is scary to contemplate, though—so scary that we 21st century Lutherans don’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. And that may be killing us.

Because if a church doesn’t take God’s Word seriously enough to ever consider disciplining one of its members who have gone astray from that Word….I wonder how effective that church will be at winning persons to Christ in the first place. We Lutherans may be a vanishing species because outsiders wonder whether we take God’s Word seriously enough to expect it to transform our lives.

If you and I don’t take this reconciliation business seriously, God in Jesus Christ surely does. We see that in spades in the final three verses of our gospel lesson.

First, Jesus promises us that God stands behind us in all our efforts to regain lost brothers and erring sisters in Christ. Jesus says: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Our working at reconciliation, all of that has eternal consequences….and that should give us pause.

But secondly—and finally in our text--Jesus promises to roll up his sleeves and work with us. Jesus assures us that when we’re up to our necks in this messy business of seeking reconciliation—Jesus is up to his neck right there with us. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

This is more than just a “general truth” about Jesus’ constant presence with us. When you’re hip-deep in the soup, seeking to regain some wanderer—there, right there, Jesus walks with you in the clearest, most profound way: when you are doing Jesus’ greatest work--the work of piecing back together this whole creation, one sorry sinner at a time.

In the name of Jesus.
Amen.

Birth Pangs of the New Creation

Concordia College, Moorhead Minnesota

Chapel Service on September 1, 2008
Romans 8:18-25

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

C.S.Lewis once said that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: [pain] is [God’s] megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

If that is true, then God must be virtually bellowing to us who have read Elizabeth Kolbert’s little book, Field Notes From a Catastrophe—Concordia’s “Summer Book Read” for 2008. Last spring all of us on the Board of Regents were given a copy of this book, and I decided to read it because I thought it would be good for me—sort of in the same way that having a colonoscopy is “good for me.”

Kolbert’s writing style is lean and understated, but her message is unmistakable: we and this lovely world we call home are hurting….and hastening toward a DAI, which (we learn) is shorthand for “dangerous anthropogenic interference” –that is, the steadily rising level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and the global warming it is triggering.

Kolbert takes her readers on a globe-trotting scavenger hunt, noticing and collecting artifacts from all around the earth, all pointing to the real and relentless advance of global climate change. She is eclectic in the evidence that she marshals—whether it is the thinning of Greenland’s massive glaciers, the inexorable disappearance of Arctic sea ice, the thawing of the subpolar permafrost, the surprising expansion of the European comma moth’s habitat, or the sudden extinction of Costa Rica’s golden toad population. Kolbert just keeps rolling on, interviewing scores of scientists with multi-syllabic specialities, each one raising the ante, testifying to the stunning marks all around us that Mother Nature is not happy—that the fate of the planet hangs in the balance.

All of this is “news” these days—especially in the midst of two weeks of national political conventions as we see Gustav bearing down on the same Gulf Coast that was decimated by Katrina just three short years ago. Kolbert, in her book’s new “Afterword” conveniently informs us that between 1975 and 2004 “the proportion of hurricanes reaching Category 4 or Category 5 status increased by nearly 100 percent.” [1]

All this is “news” to be sure…and yet, in another sense, it is as old as the hills. Writing nearly two millennia ago, the Apostle Paul could also speak in Romans chapter 8 about the earth in the balance, the whole creation groaning…..groaning, mind you--the natural world, giving voice to the gnawing suspicion that things are not as they were meant to be.

How ancient and yet how contemporary our Bible is! Elizabeth Kolbert, meet the Apostle Paul, and tune in to each other as you listen to the groaning of this tired, battered, threatened world.

Our two witnesses—Kolbert and St. Paul--agree on the deep connection, the causal link between human behavior (or should we say misbehavior) and the cosmic groaning. The groaning has a source, and it is us, you and me…..through our actions and our inactions, we have all contributed to the “futility” that plays itself out in a natural world run amok.

And yet….and yet….in the midst of their agreement, Kolbert and St. Paul differ on what this planetary mess means and how we should regard it.

For Paul the groaning is of another order, it represents a different reality than Kolbert names so compellingly.

For the groaning that St. Paul speaks of is not the groaning of despair or defeat or death. No, the groaning here in Romans 8 is of a living being, preparing to give birth, the old creation laboring to bring forth a new creation.

What appears for all the world to be the groaning and “last gasping” of a dying world is, in the mercy of almighty God, the panting and pining of a mother in travail, laboring to give birth to the new creation. In Paul’s view, the groaning feeds our hope and this hope overcomes our anxieties and grants us the patience to believe that God in Jesus Christ the crucified and risen one is still at work here—in, with and under all the “stuff” that Kolbert unearths for us.

Lest you think, even for a second, though, that I’m going to pull a theological rabbit out of a hat and say: “don’t worry, be happy, God’s gonna fix up what seems unfixable to us”….

….lest I even seem to be heading in that direction, I hasten to add that while the hope God engenders in us is an unshakably gracious hope, it does not lull us into slumber. God’s answer to climate change and everything else that causes this creation to groan involves us—our will, our decisions, our passions, our politics, our gifts, our studies, our prayers and our hard work—all of it blended together in the mystery of God’s redemptive purposes.

The hope that we have in Jesus Christ, the agent of God’s new creation—this hope does not anesthetize us. Rather, it galvanizes us.

Bishop N.T. Wright of the Anglican diocese of Durham, in his splendid book Surprised by Hope, puts it this way: “People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present….God has brought his future, his putting-the-world-to-rights future, into the present in Jesus of Nazareth, and God wants that future to be implicated more and more in the present.”[2]

Listen, God is calling…calling to us in the groaning of the creation….the groaning of the birth pangs of the new creation that fills us with hope and sets our hands to work.

In the name of Jesus.
Amen.


[1] Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (2006, Bloomsbury) p. 193.
[2] N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (2008, Harper One), pp. 214-215.

A Throwaway Life

Trinity, Moorhead
August 31, 2008
Installation of Pastors Marsha Anderson, Josh Graber and Emmy Isaacson
Matthew 16:21-28

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

These days I’m thinking about teachers—especially those who teach preschool, kindergarten and first grade classes.

Why them, in particular? Because at the start of every school year our littlest ones come to these teachers…like free-range livestock, used to doing their own thing, heading off into a thousand different directions…..and these patient teachers guide our wee ones’ boundless energies into the basics of social interaction….things as basic as how to line up.

How to line up. What a crucial life skill!

I realize that “lining up” can seem like terribly “conformist” behavior….but imagine a world in which no one knew how to line up, a world in which no one had any patience for forming a line and waiting in a line?

Which brings me, curiously, to this morning’s gospel lesson. I’m pretty sure, you see, that “lining up” is what this text from Matthew 16 is all about.

Throughout Matthew’s gospel Jesus has been teaching his disciples how to line up—Jesus has been helping them to know their place in the line, and Jesus has been leading them.

But the disciples, like little “free range” children, were reluctant to line up properly. Like herding cats or hauling frogs in a wheelbarrow, Jesus has to keep stopping the parade and getting everybody back in line, back in their place.

Here in our gospel lesson, it’s Simon Peter who gets out of line—rather dramatically!

Earlier in this 16th chapter of Matthew Simon had received from Jesus a new nickname—Peter, petros, the rock of faith. He’s the one who gets out of line “big time” in this morning’s gospel reading.

What got Peter so agitated was Jesus’ prediction of where this line was going, where this parade was heading. Having correctly identified Jesus as God’s anointed one, Peter now hears Jesus describe just exactly what that means—how it means suffering, being killed and on the third day being raised again. Jesus defines his way of life as a “throwaway,” give-it-all-up-for-others way of life.

And this Peter could not bear to hear, so he fell out of line, went up front, got ahead of Jesus, got into Jesus’ face to say: “God forbid, Jesus! This must never happen to you, Jesus!”

Peter wasn’t being ornery or “contrary” here…nor was he confused. No--Peter saw all too well, where things were heading—and he wanted no part of it, not for Jesus, not for himself, not for anybody else.

It was as if Peter realized that his leader was about to march right off the edge of a cliff and take everybody else with him. So Peter got out of line (so he thought) to prevent a catastrophe.

But Jesus didn’t see it that way. In fact Jesus responded to Peter about as forcefully as Jesus responded to anyone anywhere in the gospels: “But [Jesus] turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’”

Simon the petros, the rock of faith, all of a sudden becomes Simon the satana, the Satan, the Adversary! Peter the Rock morphs into Peter the scandalon, Peter the Stumbling Block!

That’s what getting out of line with Jesus will do to you!

And so Jesus has to get Peter back into line, Jesus has to tell Peter to “fall in,” he has to remind Peter of where he belongs: behind him, following Jesus, not ahead of Jesus.

There’s only one Savior, here, Jesus (in effect) tells Peter….and it ain’t you.

And there’s a word we all need to hear. This world has exactly one savior—and it’s not you, nor is it me.

Dear pastors Marsha, Josh and Emmy….maybe this is a word especially for you, as you get put into your places (installed, that is!) this morning….as you fall into Jesus’ lineup here at Trinity.

There is exactly one Savior of the world—and you’re not it.

I say this because especially for us pastors, it’s tempting sometimes to think that maybe we are “it”—if not the Savior of the world, perhaps the savior of this congregation or this vital ministry or this crucial project or this really important team.

And if our egos don’t get us in trouble, the good people of God might help us, by saying things like: “We can’t meet that evening—the pastor has a scheduling conflict.” It can start as subtly as that, an over-dependence on pastoral leadership that joins forces with our all-too-human tendency to think too highly of ourselves.

“Get behind me,” Jesus says to Peter and to you and to me. Know your place in my lineup. I’m Jesus and I’ll be your Savior for today; I’ll take the lead here….and I call you to get behind me, to follow me, and to travel with me wherever I take you.

And where will Jesus take us? As much as Peter might have thought he was saving Jesus’ neck, he was really trying to save himself--so caught up, so bound up was Peter in doing things the human way—the safe way, the save your neck way, the stay in charge way.

Where will Jesus take us? Jesus will take us into the heights and breadth and depth of divine life—which is a life that we can ever cling to. It is, rather a throwaway life, a life that is gained only in the losing of it. Jesus bids us dare to risk everything on the reality that only as we let go of life does life come back to us and stay with us forever.

And this is more, much more than a lofty philosophical or ethical principle. This is Jesus’ own way of living and dying and living again. This is how God is bringing in his kingdom, refashioning you and me and the whole creation. This life of utter abandon and faithful recklessness is what we were created for, and what God in Christ is even now recreating us for.

Just what that might mean at any given moment in our lives, Jesus doesn’t spell out—thankfully. And yet I wonder….I wonder what it might look like to follow Jesus so radically, so totally, in this time and place.

I wonder whether following Jesus in this throwaway life of his might mean parting with our money with greater recklessness….giving so generously that the IRS suspects we’re up to something shady.

Or: I wonder if following Jesus in this throwaway life of his might mean setting aside our comfortableness, turning ourselves so completely “inside out” that we refashion every way of “doing church” so that it’s aimed at newcomers and outsiders who have yet to hear the gospel in a believable way.

Or: I wonder whether following Jesus in this throwaway life of his might mean sacrificing our respectability and embracing the marginalized so completely that we become known as “those people” who are always hanging out with the wrong crowd, letting just anybody into “their” church, helping just anybody who needs it.

Dear friends, as we line up behind Jesus our only leader, our only Savior, he will present us with opportunities to give it all up, to take breath-taking risks, to put everything that our humanity tells us is precious—to put that all in jeopardy, to embrace Jesus’ own wild, reckless “give it all away” life.

And that, dear pastors Marsha, Josh, and Emmy….is also an invitation to you , as you take up your callings here at Trinity this morning. Whatever else you are called to preach and teach and live out, let this much be crystal clear, let this message shine through (in the words of Frederick Dale Bruner): “The Christian life is a ‘throwaway’ life, a life that in a great dare decides that Jesus is what life is all about and that following Jesus is the greatest adventure” of all. (Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary — Volume 2: The Churchbook, Matthew 13–28, p. 156)

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Healthy Congregatons Act Creatively and Flexibly

NW MN Synod Bishop's Letter
September 2008

Exodus 18 contains one of my favorite leadership stories in the Bible. The children of Israel, having escaped from Egypt, are encamped near Mount Sinai for an extended period of time. Moses, their God-ordained leader, seems to be in charge of everything—even settling their petty squabbles.

Each day people come to Moses, begging him to settle their disputes with one another. During this time Moses’s father-in-law Jethro (a foreigner, by the way!) comes for a visit. He observes his son-in-law growing wearier by the hour. “What you are doing is not good,” Jethro interjects. “You will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.” (vv. 17-18)

So Jethro proposes a creative solution: Moses needs to share leadership by enlisting others (“able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain,” v. 21) to help him govern the people. Moses takes Jethro’s advice—and it worked beautifully.

But why, I wonder, didn’t Moses himself come up with such a solution? Why couldn’t Moses be creative enough to generate this idea? The text of Exodus 18 doesn’t tell us, but I suspect it’s because Moses was so weary and uptight that he had developed tunnel vision; he had become rigid and brittle. Tension robbed him of the vision to see another way of doing things.

Stress and anxiety do that to us as individuals. We feel pain or angst, and we tighten our muscles. Pretty soon a dull, tension headache sets in, and a mental fog settles over us. We’re sluggish, “stuck,” no longer quick on our feet.

The same goes for congregations. Congregations that are highly stressed (by unmanaged conflict) or anxious (about any number of things—including their own survival) grow dull, rigid, and brittle. They lose their capacity for creative thought or nimble action. They lock themselves into tired old routines and fall back on the Seven Last Words of the Church: “but we’ve always done it that way.”

Healthy congregations are flexible. They see change as a manageable process—an adventure, even. Rather than blaming or attacking others, people in healthy congregation invest energy in problem solving. They’re willing to learn and confident that things can change for the better.

Healthy congregations are creative. They make room for exploration, take time for innovation. They bounce back from adversity quicker. Realizing that they don’t have all the wisdom in the world, they ask for help—they bring in resource persons from the outside (like Jethro, the foreigner, giving wise advise to his world-weary son-in-law!)

Healthy congregations are not deadly serious or uptight about everything. They have a sense of humor and a “lightness of being.” You sense it when you walk through their doors. There may even be a little “holy mischief” afoot that keeps folks guessing, on the edge of their seats, wondering what’s coming next!

Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

Questions for reflection and discussion:
1. Think about your own experience of stress and anxiety. What bodily symptoms tell you that you’re feeling tense? How does tension thwart your own flexibility and creativity?
2. In what areas of your congregation’s life do you detect brittleness or rigidity? How is this holding you back from being faithful in God’s mission?
3. What is the most creative venture your congregation has tried in the last five years? Recall a time when your church responded nimbly and flexibly to changing circumstances.

This is the sixth of an 11-part series of articles, based on the Health 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.

We Sink--Jesus Saves!

Bethel and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches, Dalton, MN
August 10, 2008
Pentecost 12/Matthew 14:22-33

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

I have good new and bad news for you this morning.

First the good news: the presidential election is only 86 days away. Come November 4th we’ll be done with all this nasty business—the instant polls, the mudslinging, the charges and countercharges of flip-flopping and other “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Be of good cheer! This too shall pass.

Now the bad news: the presidential election is still a whole 86 days away! And even though some of us are sick of it already, we need to get over that. There are hundreds of millions of dollars that have been contributed to the candidates--and these dollars must be converted into clever TV ads, punchy radio ads, “gotcha” newspaper ads, intriguing Internet ads….every last dollar must be expended, every last debate and speech must be ended….and then finally on November 4th we will be free.

Have you noticed the lengths to which American politicians go to depict themselves in the most favorable light, at every turn? Have you observed how our candidates refuse—steadfastly refuse!--to admit any wrongdoing? Even their past histories, their bestselling hardcover campaign biographies, must be told in ways that always—always cast the candidate positively--an aura, even a halo around their heads?

No one, absolutely no one, wants to let their dirty laundry hang out--not even a tiny bit!--in an election campaign.

And in that regard, campaign literature—edited, sanitized, cleaned up after the fact—campaign literature is nothing like biblical literature.

One of the things that makes the Bible ring true, one of the reasons why I and many others find the Bible so compelling is that no one seems to have “scrubbed it up” after the fact. If campaign literature avoids hanging out the dirty linen….biblical literature seems to specialize in hanging out all sorts of dirty underwear, showing us our heroes at their worst, caught in the act, constantly making fools of themselves.

Take this familiar gospel story from Matthew 14, for example. It is, in the form it has come down to us, a product of the apostolic age. The apostles wrote it down, for goodness sake…

….so why, I ask, did the apostles leave in so much stuff that makes them look bad?

Take Peter, the prince of the apostles, the first among Jesus’ followers, the one who some believe was the first pope, the vicar of Christ on earth…..just look at Peter here in this text. Is this the kind of story Peter really wanted folks to keep telling about him?

Here in Matthew 14 we see Peter being Peter—rash, brash, given to snap judgments and reckless decisions. Peter sees Jesus walking on the water of the Sea of Galilee. Peter asks Jesus if he can try that too. (Where’d he get that idea, anyway?)

And then Peter has a go of it, Peter steps outside the boat and imitates Jesus, walking on the stormy sea for a moment. But when Peter “snaps to” and remembers what’s happening, when he realizes he’s walking on water in the midst of a violent storm, he grows fearful and begins to sink.

Peter, whose nickname meant “rock” starts to sink like one right here before the other disciples, right before Jesus, right before God and the whole host of heaven—Peter seems to fail and fail miserably, this test of discipleship.

And as if that weren’t all bad enough, Jesus hangs a new nickname around his neck. Jesus calls him not Peter the Rock, but rather Peter the oligopistos, Peter the ‘little-faith-one” not a very pretty picture, indeed!

Why oh why did the apostles remember this story, treasure it, keep retelling it down through the ages, right into our own time? Why preserve a story that makes one of its heroes look so bad?

Here’s why: because when Peter (or you or I for that matter)…when we look bad, when we are bad--when we are at our worst, Jesus is at his best.

This is the story of our lives, dear friends. Even as we live out our days as Christians, something is always dragging us down, pulling us under. We are forever sinking….sinking into the slime and ooze of our sins, our bad judgments, our fears and anxieties, our sorry mistakes. We are in each moment of our days in some dire straits, surrounded by reasons to be frightened….you and I every day are in peril of some sort….

…..and Jesus is forever rescuing us.

We sink, with Peter, and Jesus is right there, Johnny on the spot—our text says “immediately” (v. 31) Jesus is all over us, reaching out, reaching down to us and drawing us up out of the stormy waters that were about to overwhelm us.

There, right there, get that picture in your mind: this is what the life of faith is, in its essence. We sink, Jesus saves!

Is this how you want to think of the life of faith? Shouldn’t we be progressing, climbing, getting better, showing signs of improvement? Lots of Christians in this country love to talk about “living the victorious life”—isn’t that what faith is all about, putting our doubts behind us, forging onward and upward with Jesus?

Matthew 14 takes us to another place, though. It says to you and me: here is your life—get used to it. You will sink. You will be terrified. Doubt will sweep over you. And when that happens, immediately, right in that instant, Jesus will reach down and save you. Take a snapshot of that. That is the life of faith. We sin, we sink, and Jesus saves.

There are prettier, more attractive and compelling stories we could tell. But those stories would not be true—true to the life of faith. Those stories would miss something essential, some piece of bedrock in the life of faith.

Stories where you or I end up the hero—we love those stories and can tell them effortlessly. (Around the campfire I bet old Peter could tell a few stories like that, too!)

But the biblical story, the scriptural witness is more sober and realistic and transparent. The Bible presents stories like this from Matthew 14, in which human beings are anything but heroes and heroines, all so that God in Jesus Christ can be for us the only Hero, the only Rescuer, the only Savior par excellence.

So shall we become content with ourselves, content to be the sinners, the doubters that we are? Yes and no.

Yes, we best be realistic about the role of doubt in the life of faith. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus uses this term oligopistos (“little-faith-one”) five different times, always with reference to his followers, those who are at least beginning to believe in him. Jesus never calls a pagan or unbeliever a “little-faith-one.”

Most of our days here on earth, you and I will be (if we’re honest with ourselves) “little-faith-ones”….babies, infants, with just a smidgin of faith, not nearly as much faith as we wish we had, not nearly as much faith as God deserves from us. But remember what God can and does with just a smidgin of faith: the dash of salt, the pinch of yeast, the mustard seed that grows into a huge plant.

And yet, who among us will be content with being and staying a “little-faith-one?” We want more, we need more, we seek more faith, hope and love. I think that when Peter called out to Jesus there on the Sea of Galilee and pleaded “Lord, save me,” (v. 30) he wasn’t just trying to avoid drowning in H20. Peter was saying: “Save me from my fears, save me from my doubts, I’m drowning in anxiety here, Jesus—save me from all of that.”

And so also, you and I will always, in this world, in this life, want to have those same words on our lips. “Jesus, I’m in over my head. I don’t know where to turn. I’m at the end of my rope. I’ve exhausted all of my resources. I’m not even sure that YOU can get me out of this pickle. Save me!”

And as we utter those words, I ask you, are we still “little-faith-ones?” Or are words like those precisely, precisely the words of someone whose faith is maturing, expanding, right before our eyes, growing into a faith that clings to God and God alone, a trust that grasps Jesus and Jesus alone?

So is there such a thing as “living the victorious Christian life?”

Yes. And here’s what it looks like. You and I are trapped, anxious, sinking fast. And immediately Jesus reaches out to us, fishes us out of our desperation.

We sink. Jesus saves.

That, dear friends, is the victorious Christian life, in all its perplexity and all its glory.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Healthy Congregations Manage Conflict

NW MN Synod Bishop's Letter
August 2008

“So, how many conflicted congregations have we got in the synod right now?”

If I were asked this question, I’d probably respond: “About 270 of them!”

What? How can that be? Are things that bad?

Not at all! Rather, we have 270 congregations that are dealing all the time with various and sundry disagreements about things that matter. Garden-variety conflicts aren’t signs of ill health. Rather, they indicate that our congregations are alive, seeking to be faithful in God’s mission. Members of the congregation are able to manage the conflicts that are part of the fabric of parish life.

If I’m asked how many conflicted congregations we have in the synod, what the questioner really wants to know is: How many churches aren’t managing their conflict well? For how many congregations has conflict become a problem?

On any given day the Northwestern Minnesota Synod does have some congregations that have, for a time, lost the ability to manage conflict in their midst. Conflict is thwarting God’s mission.
How can you tell if your congregation is no longer managing a conflict well? Here are some symptoms:
* People vehemently deny that any conflict exists
* Members stop listening carefully to one another
* Persons withdraw their presence, withhold their support, issue ultimatums.
* Blame gets focused on a scapegoat, often the pastor
* People think less reflectively, less imaginatively
* Folks start choosing up sides
* Secrets are kept, clandestine meetings are held, anonymous letters are written, communication breaks down
* People stop taking responsibility for themselves
* Quick fixes are sought
* Members gossip about one another or “triangulate”–bringing in a third party rather than going directly to the person who troubles them

Conflict run amok damages relationships within the Body of Christ, and that in itself is tragic enough. What’s even worse is that unmanaged conflict derails the congregation’s ability to move forward in God’s mission. Rather than walking faithfully and purpose-fully behind their Lord toward God’s gracious future, members of the church get sidetracked.

Fortunately the vast majority of our congregations are not paralyzed by unmanaged conflict. Most churches have learned how to deal with conflict in the course of their common life. How do they do it?

Peter Steinke, in his Creating Healthy Congregations study guide, speaks of three characteristics shared by churches that possess a sense of coherence that allows them to manage conflict:
1. Meaningfulness. Church members have a sense of purpose and are committed to it. They take up the challenges that come to them and shape their destiny under God.
2. Comprehensibility. Folks have a framework for making sense of what is happening. Healthy interaction and clear communication are taken for granted. People see change as natural. Decisions are made on the basis of clarity, not necessarily certainty.
3. Manageability. Church folk don’t act like victims or complain about how unfairly they have been treated. They recognize the gifts and tools available to them, and they respond thoughtfully to the challenges that confront them.
Let me add two more characteristics of congregations that manage conflicts::
4. Forgiveness. When we gather weekly to begin our worship, it is not by accident that we start by confessing our sin to one another and to God. We dare to speak these words only because we know God has an answer to offer us: “I declare unto you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, for Jesus’ sake.” People who live within that confession-absolution rhythm always have the best resource for managing conflict.
5. Preparedness. Healthy congregations expect that they will occasionally encounter sharp disagreements. Just as they keep their liability insurance up to date and their fire extinguishers recharged, they have a conflict management plan “in place.” They cultivate leaders who know how to take stands and stay connected with others. They work with clear guidelines and policies. They have functioning Mutual Ministry Committees. They read and practice Matthew 18:15-20 routinely. They ask their leaders to go through Healthy Congregations training.

Larry Wohlrabe
Bishop, Northwestern Minnesota Synod

Questions for reflection and discussion:
1. Why do we avoid thinking that conflict is normal in the life of the church?
2. Recall a time when you or your congregation was involved in “conflict run amok.” How did it start? What happened? What resulted from the conflict situation? How did it end? What did you learn?
3. Recall a time when you or your congregation experienced a well-managed conflict situation. Ask yourself the same set of questions under #2 above.

Gathered, Transformed, Sent

Centennial Service at Calvary, Bemidji
July 27, 2008
Acts 2:37-47

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

What’s the difference between a person celebrating her 100th birthday and a congregation observing its centennial?

Well, the difference is that when a person turns 100 everyone worries—either about starting a fire from all those candles on the birthday cake OR they worry about the honored guest having a heart attack trying to blow out all those candles!

The 100th birthday of a person often marks the “end of the line,” the culmination of a life.

But when a congregation celebrates its 100th birthday, you ship the bishop in to preach so that (as Pastor Trandem was quoted in last Friday’s Bemidji Pioneer) “we can cast a vision for the next 100 years.”

Yikes! Steve—what an assignment! Thanks for not low-balling anybody’s expectations for this morning’s sermon!

Pastor Trandem talked that way, though, because, as the lifespan of Christian congregations go, the first 100 years is really just a good start.

The life of a congregation, you see, transcends the lives of its members. You aren’t the same Calvary Lutheran Church that got started when Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House. God is forever replenishing the church….God is continually gathering, transforming and sending his church.

Gathering, transforming, sending….those are words you’ve been lifting up in this Centennial year. They not only sum up your past—but they are clues as to how God will move you toward your bicentennial as Calvary Lutheran Church.

What will get you to the year 2108? Three things in particular: the gathering, transforming and sending work of God.

First, God will keep gathering you.

Wherever God is at work, God is always gathering his people….calling us out of the world…gathering us around Word, sacraments and mission.

Our God has always been a gathering-God. In our text from Acts, chapter 2, we see God gathering the church from every nation under heaven, drawing people together through Peter’s preaching, leading 3000 persons to Holy Baptism…

….and the first mark of that newborn church in Jerusalem was their determination to continue gathering. Verse 42 of our text says that “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” God doesn’t deal just with solitary, isolated individuals. God gathers people in, gathers persons together, gathers them unto himself.

The very first thing Calvary Lutheran Church did back in 1908 was to gather. God assembled, from among many Bemidji-ites, a congregation called Calvary.

And as long as people keep gathering here, there will be a Calvary Lutheran Church. To help that happen you have recently invested in your gathering place, your building and grounds—not ends in themselves, mind you, but means to the end of gathering around Word, bath, meal and mission.

But gathering is just the first thing—the prerequisite, if you will, for all that follows. For when God gathers you, God also transforms you.

Here in our text we see how those listening to Peter’s Pentecost sermon were “cut to the heart.” The gospel had “gotten” to them, gotten under their skins, disturbed and unsettled them, opened them up to ask: “What should we do?”

A question like that invites God’s transformative work, because transformation starts with discontent with the way we are, discontent with the way things are in this world.

On the day of Pentecost, that transforming power was more than evident. People, cut to the heart by the story of Jesus, asked “What should we do?”

And notice, please, what Peter didn’t say. Peter didn’t say: “Oh don’t worry about it. God accepts you just the way you are.”

No! Although Jesus Christ indeed HAD saved them all with his precious blood, freely shed on the Cross of Calvary….God’s great work still needed to “come home” into the troubled hearts and unsettled lives of these people…

…and so Peter responded with this gracious invitation: “Repent—which means ‘turn away from all that separates you from God’…”

“Repent,” Peter said, “and be baptized every one of you every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”

Dear friends, before we ever get it in our head to go looking for God, God has been long on the lookout for us, finagling all sorts of ways to get to us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us—Christ did the heavy lifting, Christ procured our salvation…

…but all of that reaches its destination when our hearts are cut to the quick, when we become so unsettled with our sin and the world’s waywardness that we become open to God’s transforming work in our lives.

This congregation, Calvary Lutheran Church, has been, is and shall be a dangerous place—dangerous in the sense that we are changed here. The fragmented pieces of our tattered lives are knit back together here because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.

What will the next 100 years look like for you at Calvary? These years will be filled with God’s gathering, transforming work in your midst….and all of it, so that you might also be God’s sent people, bearing Christ wherever you go.

Gathered, transformed, sent! Here in our text the people of the first church in Jerusalem obviously didn’t keep the Good News to themselves. God’s love spilled over, through them, into the wider community, with the result that, as it says in v. 47, “day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

I’m convinced that if Martin Luther were alive today, living here in North America, he would rewrite that part of his Small Catechism about the Holy Spirit calling, gathering, enlightening and sanctifying us.

If Luther were a pastor here in North America in 2008, Luther would add “sending” to that great list of Holy Spirit verbs.

You see, when Martin Luther lived in Germany, between 1483 and 1546, he assumed that almost everyone in the world had been baptized, had heard the gospel, could be called (at least in some sense) a Christian.

Luther was only 9 years old when a guy named Christopher Columbus found out that there was a whole, much bigger world “out there” in which everyone was NOT baptized or acquainted with Jesus Christ.

Unlike Martin Luther, you and I no longer live in “Christendom.” We cannot assume that everyone around us knows Jesus, believes in Jesus, has come to Jesus in faith. We live in a vast “mission field.” Just this past week I heard that 50% of the residents of Beltrami County are unchurched—and that 50% of the folks in your county also live in poverty.

So here’s the upshot, the payoff of all the gathering, transforming work God has been and will keep doing in your lives: God does all that in order to send you. The sending is what God is after.

I know that sounds scary, so let me suggest that you start close to home, and then work your way out from there.

My friend Bob (not his real name) is an active disciple at Our Savior’s in Moorhead where I served as senior pastor before I became bishop. My friend Bob once told me that there was a time when he seldom came to worship. On Sunday mornings he was AWOL most of the time….

…Until someone near and dear to him got under his skin and cut him to the heart. This person simply said: "Get up, get out of bed, and help me get these kids of ours ready to go to church. If you want them to turn out to be the kinds of kids God can be proud of you need to start coming with us, you need to keep the promises you made when they were baptized, you need to start showing up."

And Bob has been showing up ever since. No church committee made him the object of a campaign. No ordained pastor "got through to him." His wife just called him to start living by promises he had already made. Bob got back in the picture because God sent his nearest neighbor to him—God sent Bob’s wife to bring him back into the fold.

Here’s why God gathers and transforms you in this community called Calvary Lutheran: God does all that in order to send you to your neighbors with the good news of Jesus Christ.

And that’s what will get you to your bicenntenial: God’s going to keep gathering you, transforming you, and sending you. So---hang on to your hats—and enjoy the ride.

In the name of Jesus.
Amen.