Gospel Grocery Store

Salem Lutheran Church, Hitterdal, MN

Epiphany 8/February 27, 2011

Vibrant Faith Ministries Training Weekend

Matthew 6:24-34

Way back in 1988 a top-of-the-charts popular song almost ruined (for me) these immortal words of Jesus from the 6th chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel.

For a while after Bobby McFerrin’ song first came out, I had a hard time taking Jesus seriously when he declares: “therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…”

“Do not worry,” says Jesus.

“Don’t worry. Be happy,” sang Bobby McFerrin. “What’s the difference?” something in me wondered. Don’t both phrases convey pretty much the same meaning?

Well, as a matter of fact, they do not.

Bobby McFerrin’s catchy little a capelle ditty is just that—a ditty, a Hallmark greeting card verse set to a jaunty tune, an upbeat piece of “I think I can” sunny optimism.

Jesus’ friendly command, on the other hand, is a gracious, liberating invitation to live all of life in the freedom of knowing we are clutched and carried by the One who holds the universe in the palm of his hand. Jesus’ “do not worry” grows out of believing that there is one God who is before us, behind us, beyond us, yet also beside us…one God who can be trusted implicitly—in life and in death—to do well by us, to always “have our backs,” come what may.

“Don’t worry. Be happy,” is cheerful self-talk…reverberating in an echo chamber.

“Do not worry about your life,” coming from Jesus’ lips, is drenched in the promise of the gospel. It’s like a huge check drawn upon our Lord’s very own bank account—a promise sealed by a Cross and an Empty Tomb.

So there you have it, your weekly dose of the Good News. Are you not of more value than the little sparrows, after all? Do you not mean more to your heavenly Father than the wildflowers that blossom brilliantly one minute, before shriveling into nothingness the next?

Feast upon this Word, my dear friends. Drink in this promise. May it sustain you through the changes and chances of your life this coming week. May this gospel “meal” nourish and keep you strong until another Sunday rolls around.

But what if…

…what if your worries rise up and start to choke you BEFORE next Sunday…before the calendar pops up and it’s March 6, 2011? What if this morning’s “feasting” on God’s Word ends up leaving you hungry about midweek, like the proverbial plate of Chinese food—an hour after you eat it, you’re hungry again.

This weekend your congregation (along with two other neighboring parishes) is deeply pondering that very question.

We have this one treasured hour of the week, here together, in this lovely stone-hewn church building. We spend 60 minutes every 7 days here in this place, feasting on God’s Word, splashing in the baptismal water, receiving the very Body and Blood of Christ.

But what about the other 167 hours of the week—how do we invest those hours, how do we spend that precious time?

Do we sometimes wind up fasting all week, going hungry from one Sunday morning to another-- with no nourishment to speak of the other six days?

Here’s an analogy that might help. All of us go to the grocery store every week—or someone we love goes there on our behalf. We “stock up” as my wife and I like to say—whenever “Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is bare.”

But we don’t eat our food in that same grocery store. Yes, I know there are some folks who pick up a package of cookies, tear it open while still in the store and start munching away… But for the most part you and I don’t buy our groceries and eat all our groceries in the same place, at the same time.

In a word, we buy food in a grocery store so that we can eat it (most of it, anyway) somewhere else—most likely at home.

What if we thought of this congregation that way? What if we regarded Salem Lutheran’s mission center as that stopping-off place where we stock up on provisions that we’ll consume the rest of the week, mostly in our homes?

So that means that, yes, in this precious hour of the week, we will bask in promises like the ones that cascade from this gorgeous gospel lesson this morning. We will shut our eyes, ponder the birds, consider the lilies and remember that we—humans fashioned in the divine image—we are of more value to God than birds or flowers.

We will eat our fill of that this morning….but we won’t “eat” it all here in this place.

We will, rather, take most of this good news home with us…like a sack of groceries that we keep stewing on, chewing on, being nourished by for the other 167 hours of the week.

Perhaps you are already looking at it that way, living your life in Christ in all 168 hours of the week.

But then again, maybe you’re not living that way. Maybe you are binge-eating on Sunday mornings, and then starving yourself the rest of the week. If so, you realize—don’t you?--that that’s neither a satisfying nor a sustainable way to live.

And that’s what we’re acknowledging here together this weekend devoted to learning the Vibrant Faith Frame—a way of rethinking “church” that recognizes how faith isn’t just taught here in our mission center building, as much as it is caught “out there” through trusted relationships with other caring Christians.

This weekend is about remembering that where Christ is present in faith, the home is “church” too. It’s about thinking of our congregation less as a restaurant and more as a grocery store—or if you prefer, a year-around farmers market—where we go to get “stocked up” for the other 167 hours of each week.

Most importantly: this weekend is about what we’re ready to do for the sake of our young ones, the next generation of disciples of Jesus Christ. Because we don’t want them to go hungry, do we? Rule #1 of parenting is: don’t let your children starve.

We want them to have food every day, the Word in their lives that other 167 hours of every week, blessings pronounced upon them every 24 hours, prayers to go with them day by day. We want to see a vital partnership between our congregation and all the households that are also “church”….a dynamic relationship of “stocking up” on Sundays and feasting on weekdays.

Because, sure as shooting, Wednesday—hump day--will roll around….and we’ll be battered and bruised, bills piled up, bad news from the wider world shaking our optimism, worries hitting us right between the eyes…..

…and come Wednesday, once again, we’ll need to eat what we’re tasting right here, right now: Jesus’ own promise that there is a way of life as free and unfettered as the birds, as cared for and bedazzled as the lilies of the field….because there is a Father who knows that we need all these things and will see to it that we have what will keep us going.

It’s as simple as this. Please take out the “Taking Faith Home” bulletin insert and look at with me for a moment. Think of this resource as sort of a spiritual “Hamburger Helper” that will help you stretch this morning’s gospel-grocery-run throughout the coming days.

I mean, don’t you sometimes get to midweek and you can’t remember last Sunday’s sermon? That sure happens to me—even when I myself was the preacher of last Sunday’s sermon.

But here on this bulletin insert, you have some easy ways to keep dwelling in this morning’s gospel lesson. If you are like me—if you have young adult children you occasionally worry about—look at the first bullet point under “Rituals and Traditions,” and read it with me right now: “God cares for your children even more than you do and is already taking care of tomorrow.”

Wow…those words are more than leftovers! That’s a promise to savor over the next 167 hours of your life. When you can’t get to sleep…when you wake up too early and start mulling over your anxieties…repeat that promise to yourself.

And if that promise moves you, why not also use the simple table grace on the other side: “Christ our light, shine upon us. Refresh us through this meal to reflect your love to others. Amen.” (Let’s be Baptists, just for 10 seconds. Raise your hand if you’re willing to use this as your table prayer at least once this coming week. PAUSE. OK, now go back to being Lutherans.)

Dear friends of Salem Lutheran, may this hour in God’s gospel-grocery-store open our eyes to behold God lives in your house (and you live with God) every hour of every day of every week.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Deep Into the Marrow

The Next Generation: Deep Into the Marrow

“I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you.” St. Paul to St. Timothy (II Timothy 1:5)

Last month’s column in this series focused on the neglect of the role of the home in making disciples. Dr. David W. Anderson calls this “The Great Omission” in the life of the North American church over the last century.

In response to this situation, Anderson and his colleagues at The Youth and Family Institute (now better known as Vibrant Faith Ministries) have birthed a vision for the 21st century church that they call the Vibrant Faith Frame. It’s a perspective—indeed, a whole “vocabulary”—for describing the church’s DNA, “basic stuff for the life of the church that goes deep into the marrow of its very being.” (All quotations in this column are from Chapter Two in From the Great Omission to Vibrant Faith.)

Six Locations of Ministry

Let’s face it: American Christianity has all too often reflected the individualism of American culture. The ministry of the church has focused inordinately on one’s personal (read “private”) relationship with Jesus. Such an approach forgets that “to be the church and pass on faith in Christ requires attention to all that God does and all that God calls Christians to be in the world.”

The Vibrant Faith Frame broadens our horizons by asking us to consider at least six “locations” of ministry:

• Children and youth. In contrast to our tendency to place kids on the periphery, the Vibrant Faith Frame views “children and youth…[as] central to the life of the church.”

• Homes, in which persons live “in close connection to one another in family-type relationships that offer foundational care for people.”

• Congregations, which “represent the larger network of relationships that connect Christians” to one another.

• Community, the social environment in which Christians have “their most direct experience of faith made active in love that serves [the] neighbor.”

• Culture, a community of communities in which language shapes meaning and interprets human experience.

• Creation. Christians live “as stewards of God’s handiwork…serving all that God creates, redeems and sustains.”

One might envision these six locations as concentric circles that ripple outwards—like a stone tossed into a pond. Shot through these “six locations of ministry” is an emphasis on the highly relational nature of Christian faith and life.

Five Principles of a Vibrant Church

If the Six Locations describe the context for ministry that responds to all that God has created and redeemed, the following Five Principles reveal the unique heart of the Vibrant Faith Frame:

1. Faith is formed by the power of the Holy Spirit through personal, trusted relationships—often in our own homes. A simple way to understand this pivotal principle is to ask a group of Christians to do some history-sharing around the question: “Who or what has influenced your life of faith?” As staff members from Vibrant Faith Ministries have posed this question in a variety of settings they have discovered consistently that folks name those with whom they are in primary life relationships: parents, grandparents, siblings, children, godparents, etc. To be sure, pastors and church staff members are also mentioned on such lists—though usually not so much because of the positions they held as because of the relationships they had with the individual who is naming them. This reality of faith being formed through relationships is borne out, again and again, by research in the sociology of religious formation.

2. The church is a living partnership between the ministry of the congregation and ministry of the home. Consider an analogy that compares a congregation and a grocery story. Both are places where people receive food for life. But congregations and grocery stores are “secondary social systems.” You can munch on some food while in the grocery store (as long as you remember to still pay for it at the checkout counter!)—but mainly you acquire food there, in order to eat it throughout the week somewhere else, usually in the home. So also, the “food” we receive in our congregations—God’s Word and Sacraments—is intended to be “taken home” and “eaten” on a daily basis. (Don’t we say that, teach that and believe that?) Quite literally, we do not—and we ought not—eat once a week at church and then starve ourselves the other six days until we can eat again at the next weekly worship service. This second principle envisions a “dynamic relationship between the activities of the congregation and the activities of the homes that are engaged in the congregation.”

3. Where Christ is present in faith, home is church, too. This third principle carries the first two principles to their logical conclusion: the home can be thought of as “the domestic church,” a “critical arena for faith formation.” This is why, for example, Martin Luther assumed that his catechism would be taught primarily by heads of households—and why these domestic “priests and pastors” were enjoined by Luther to lead daily worship (devotions) in their homes, at the beginning and ending of each day and around every meal-time. This principle also recognizes how homes are often the doorway to Christian faith and life, because “sometimes the best way to get people into the congregational church is first through the home church.”

4. Faith is caught more than it is taught. Please read this principle carefully. It does not say that faith isn’t taught—faith is most assuredly taught! But what is taught (in a confirmation classroom, for example) “lives” or takes on flesh-and-bone only as it is also “caught” from other Christians, in daily life. This is why faith-mentors are so critical.

5. If we want Christian children and youth, we need Christian adults. I have grown weary of hearing congregational leaders moan over “the loss of our youth.” I am, frankly, tired of hearing about how “our kids leave church as soon as they are confirmed.” Such laments take aim, in my judgment, at the wrong cohort in our communities. If you are so concerned about our children, where are the adults in their lives? This fifth principle of a vibrant church “ups the ante” for all the adults in our churches, adding what the Vibrant Faith Ministries folks call a “cross+generational focus.” This principle challenges us to see that “all Christian adults are Christian parents, thereby making a difference in the lives of children whether or not the adults are the parents of the children….[A]ll children are our children. In recent years, it has been suggested that each child should have three to five to seven adults who do not live with that child in the home and yet invest in the child’s life in healthy, supportive and faithful ways.”

The Four Keys

OK, so you’re starting to catch the vision, right? So, how do we live into this vision? The Four Keys are offered as “embedded practices” that form and nurture Christian faith in the fabric of daily life, often in the homes that make up our congregations.

Over twenty years ago the Search Institute of Minneapolis (a social research organization that helped give birth to Vibrant Faith Ministries) discovered that faithfulness in youth and adults tended to result from things like “the frequency with which an adolescent talked with mother and father about faith, the frequency of family devotions, and the frequency with which parents and children together were involved in efforts, formal or informal, to help other people.”

Out of this basic research arose the notion of the Four Keys in which all members of a Christian household can participate:

• Caring Conversations: opportunities every day, often around meals, for family members to share their joys and struggles, their laughter and their tears.

• Devotions: moments of praise and prayer in the midst of daily life—upon rising, as bread is broken, before going to bed, etc.

• Rituals and Traditions: practicing forgiveness, offering blessings, observing milestones in the Christian life, adorning one’s home in ways that honor God.

• Service: moving out into God’s world, for the sake of our neighbors, “being part of a community.”

The Four Keys, we must emphasize, are not a replacement for congregational life. Rather, they are ways that congregational life “spills over” into daily life, in households where Christians live out much of their Monday-through-Saturday lives. Congregations, indeed, can be places that also practice the Four Keys—and that furnish Four Keys resources and ideas for use in the home, where Christian people actually live out many of the other 167 hours of each week.

AAA Christian Disciples

No, this is not an advertisement for the American Automobile Association! The upshot—the outcome—of shaping or reshaping our discipleship around the locations, principles and keys of the Vibrant Faith Frame is the birthing and nurturing of Jesus-followers who are authentic, available and affirming. Authentic disciples are not perfect disciples, but they are honest and “real”—“free to serve, free to believe and trust God, free to live, free to love and free to fail at it all.” Available disciples seek “to be present and aware of others and creation…available to be [tools] of God’s work and will for the world.” Affirming disciples, in the midst of sin, death and evil are disciples who believe “that God’s word gets the last word, and it is a word of hope.”

Whetting the Appetite

This column has been written to whet your appetite for more—to offer some hors d’oeuvres that will leave you hungry for the full meal. If you and your congregation are ready to dive deeper into the Vibrant Faith Frame perspective I invite you to do five things:

• Visit the Vibrant Faith website at www.vibrantfaith.org;

• Read--or, better yet, read and discuss with others--a book like David Anderson’s From the Great Omission to Vibrant Faith: The Role of the Home in Renewing the Church (2009, The Youth and Family Institute);

• Pray about and talk with others about ways you, your home and your church might live more deeply into this vision of partnership between homes and churches;

• Take a team of disciples from your church to the next Vibrant Faith Ministries conference or other VFM event in our region. Watch future issues of Northern Lights for information about such learning events.

God bless you, your home and your congregation.

Lawrence R. Wohlrabe

Bishop, Northwestern Minnesota Synod

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

God’s work. Our hands.



For reflection and discussion:

1. How and why have congregations sometimes placed children or youth on the periphery of the church?

2. Who or what influenced your life of faith?

3. How is your church already living out the Vibrant Faith Frame (please be specific)?

4. How might your church pass on the Four Keys to the homes of your parish?

5. How ready is your congregation to embrace more fully the Vibrant Faith Frame?



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

God's Precious Salty People

Epiphany 5/Year A/February 6, 2011


Bethesda Lutheran Church, Alexandria

Matthew 5:13-20

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

“You are the salt of the earth.”

Notice, please, three things about this remarkable statement that comes to our ears from the lips of our Lord.

First, Jesus says: “You are…”

You are…the salt of the earth.

Jesus could have said: “Get serious—why don’t you?—and become the salt of the earth….or: follow these ten easy steps and make yourselves the salt of the earth.”

But Jesus didn’t launch us into a self-improvement program here. Jesus didn’t set up the Salt-of-the-Earth Transformational Leadership Institute.

No. Jesus uttered a promise. He simply announced: “You are the salt of the earth.”

It was neither a command nor a wish. Rather Jesus declared the way things already are…the way that things shall most certainly be.

Spoken by the One who was present on the first day of creation, who went to the Cross and the Grave, who has death behind him…these words are a promise we can count on: “You are the salt of the earth—no use trying to be anything else.”

…because this is God’s business, first of all. This is who God has made you to be…what God has called you to do. “Be salty, because that’s what I have made of you, that’s what I call you to be: ‘You are the salt of the earth.’ Salt is your identity. Be who you are.”

Second, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth.”

You are not the honey of the earth, sent to sugar-coat all of life’s harsh realities.

Nor are you the pablum of the earth…you are not a bland, easy-to-digest food for babies and older folks with weak stomachs.

You are not the ointment or the WD-40 of the earth, sent to lubricate and smooth over all life’s hard edges.

Nor are you the duct tape of the earth, desperately trying to hold things together.

No. You are, rather salt.

Which, is to say: you are a force to be reckoned with.

Salt, after all, is not soft, delicate or inconsequential. Salt is—rather—a biting, bracing, reactive substance.

We should know. We’re Minnesotans, after all. We have two seasons of the year-- the season of ice and snow and road salt…to be followed soon by the season of road repair—fixing up all the damage to our highways done by the road-salt we can’t live without in this season.

Salt is a force to be reckoned with. Every living being needs salt just to survive. But we need our salt in the right quantity. Too little salt and we die. Too much salt and we also die.

Salt is a force to be reckoned with. Salt makes chemical reactions happen. Salt preserves food—keeps it from spoiling. Salt brings zip and zest to our eating. Salt makes food tangier, tastier.

“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus says to us. You are a force to be reckoned with in the world. You are going to make a difference—whether you realize it, whether you believe it--or not.

You are catalysts for divine change, agents of God’s preferred future. Because you are present, things happen. You keep life going. It is your presence in the world as Christ’s precious salty people that, in a sense, preserves the world. God keeps the world going for the sake of the Promise you are sent to utter and live out.

You are here to make everything more interesting, more engaging, more fascinating. Your mission is to add zip and zest, to make tasty and tangy a world that can seem so bland, tedious and tasteless. You make the world sparkle with the spice of the gospel.

All of that is what Jesus is getting at when he says: “You are the salt of the earth.”

And, you know, one of the best things about salt is that it doesn’t take much to do the trick. A teaspoon of salt does wonders in a whole pot of soup. A pinch of salt transforms the flavor of a whole lump of bread-dough.

You, God’s precious salty people in Christ, have an effect on the world that is all out of proportion to your numbers in the world. Salt is like that. It only takes a teaspoon, just a pinch.

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the bigness of the planet and the hugeness of the world’s problems? Do you find yourself lamenting the fact that you’re just one person—“and what difference can one person make?”

Never mind! You are salt and salt is most effective in small quantities. Just a pinch, just a bit of salt makes all the difference in the world. God intends to use you to change, to preserve, to make more tasty the little corner of creation where God has planted you.

Third, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth.”

Salt works only when it gets dissolved in the broth, mixed in with the stew, sprinkled on the pot roast. Salt has to get shaken out, salt needs to be scattered, salt has to lose itself to whatever dish it is being added.

When that happens, persons don’t say” “That sure is tasty salt.” No. Instead they say things like: “My this is scrumptious roast. Goodness, this is a delicious hotdish. Heavens to Betsy, this is a savory stew. My compliments to the Chef!” The salt gets lost. It “lives on” only in connection with whatever it is salting.

Salt needs to lose itself in order to be of any use.

Salt that stays hermetically sealed in the salt-cellar isn’t good for much. It may stay high and dry and “pure”…but it won’t accomplish anything. It will be useless—worthless.

I wonder if the fracas in our ELCA hasn’t gotten us overly focused on how pure we all are as salt—who is saltier, you or me? That’s always a temptation—and a danger.

Christian people who are aloof, Christians who hole up in their “mighty fortress” church buildings, pursue their “purity projects,” and never actually venture forth into God’s world aren’t good for much of anything. They may still look like salt…they may still have all the chemical properties of salt, but such salt really isn’t worth much. It’s like salt that somehow has lost its saltiness and is good only for being thrown on the ground.

You are the salt of the earth, Jesus declares to us.

Your purpose is to spend yourself, even as Christ our Lord expended himself on the Cross—to take away our sins and the sins of the whole world.

If you want to know what it means to be salt, after all, you need look no farther than your Lord Jesus Christ. He was no secluded Savior, no remote Messiah, no aloof Lord secluded safely away in a fortress—like salt hermetically sealed in a salt shaker. Jesus came among us to be expended, to be lost, to be dissolved in his calling to seek and to save the lost.

This same salty Jesus comes to say to each of us: “You are the salt of the earth.” You are salt for the world. You are most valuable when you are scattered, sprinkled, shaken out, lost—dissolved--in the world. You’re worth your weight in salt when you get close to others…especially when you get close to bland, tedious, tasteless, unsavory folks. You make them tasty by seasoning them with the Good News of Jesus Christ…for you are the salt of the earth.

On our better days, on our best days, we know that we who are Christ’s Body “live, move and have our being” for the sake of the world. Or, as one of my former pastors liked to say: “the church is the only organization that exists solely for those who aren’t members of it.”

Three astounding promises ring true and come through in this one striking sentence.

One: you are salt. God has seen to that. Salt is your identity.

Two: you are salt—not honey, not pablum, not ointment, not WD-40, not duct tape. You are a force to be reckoned with. Because of who you are in Jesus Christ, you make the world more “tangy,” you cause other persons to be more “tasty.” Because of the good news that you bear, you are the little pinch of salt that spices up all that is bland, tedious and tasteless in this world.

Three: you are the salt of the earth. It is for the sake of the world that God has sent you, just as God sent his only beloved Son. You’re here for the sake of others, here to lose yourself for others, here to be dissolved in winsome witness and self-giving service wherever God may scatter you, wherever God may send you.

For you are…the salt…of the earth.

And you have Jesus’ own word on it!

…in his name. Amen.

From Breakage to Blessing

January 30, 2011--Epiphany 4/Year A

Rebuilding the Remnant Event, Concordia College

ELCA Worship, Hawley, MN

Matthew 5:1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Later this year I will observe the 30th anniversary of my ordination as a pastor, and that means I’m officially long-in-tooth. I’ve served Christ and his church long enough that nothing much should surprise or fluster me…and there shouldn’t be too many things that intimidate me in ministry either.

But, truth be told, I still feel like a babe-in-the woods in many of the tasks of ministry, and that’s especially true whenever this gospel lesson, the Beatitudes, pops up in the church’s lectionary.

I have never felt right about preaching on these gorgeous, overflowing verses from the 5th chapter of St Matthew. I love reading the Beatitudes—it’s preaching on them that bugs me.

And with good reason. These verses, after all, are already part of a sermon….a sermon that Jesus delivered….a sermon from the One whom we confess to be “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God” (Nicene Creed)…..so how, I wonder, can a little Minnesota farm-boy possibly dare to preach a sermon based on a sermon by Jesus? It just sounds ridiculous!

But there’s more: the other reason I’ve shied away from preaching on the Beatitudes is that they always seem to induce in me a desire to turn them into a moral crusade of some sort. We hear the Beatitudes and we imagine that they are a “call to arms” to transform our lives and “do something.” And for Lutherans like us that is always a troublesome, even dangerous place to be.

So I have often “ducked” when asked to preach on this gospel lesson. And I might be inclined to duck this morning as well, were it not for the fact that two proclaimers of God’s Word have helped me, opened my eyes to see the Beatitudes for what they truly are and what they might yet be in our eyes of faith.

So, in these few moments, I want to share what I have learned from others wiser than I am.

First, someone (I have forgotten who!) declared that the Beatitudes aren’t so much a strategy for moral improvement as they are Jesus’ own version of the “I Have a Dream” speech.

The Beatitudes are Jesus’ “I Have a Dream” speech. Mull that one over for a moment, especially with the memory of Martin Luther King Day still fresh in your mind.

The Beatitudes are not about self-improvement or even “making this a better world” as much as they are a chance to hear from Jesus, very early in his ministry, a vision of how he sees the world—both now and in God’s future.

The Beatitudes are framed as promises throughout, promises of what is and what shall be, in the tender compassion of our God.

What does Jesus see as he looks out over the crowd? What does God see there?

Jesus sees a graced, gifted, blessed life where others—you and I—might see only pain, heartache, deficit and loss. Jesus beholds poor souls seemingly bereft of riches….Jesus envisions sorrowful mourners, humble nobodies, hungry hearts….Jesus sees the simply sincere, the makers-of-peace, the persecuted….and everywhere around them, Jesus pronounces, Jesus promises a circle of God’s blessing. Those whom this dying world ignores, bypasses, even curses—all of them blessed by God, blessed to be blessings.

And this isn’t something they really should do something about. This is something that they already ARE in the mercy of God.

“I have a dream,” Dr. King announced….and then in soaring rhetoric that still captures our hearts….Dr. King shared a vision not of what he hoped might happen if everybody got their acts together….but Dr. King imparted a vision of what God was already up to, what God was surely going to bring about…..a future in which all God’s children would sing—with one voice—“Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last.”

That, or something very much like it, is what Jesus was doing when he sat down on a mountainside and delivered this sermon. Not a strategy for moral action, but a panoramic vista on the future that God is surely bringing into our lives and our world, even now.

That’s the first new thought I’ve been given about the Beatitudes….

….and here’s the second insight, which I received earlier this month at a bishops’ meeting, from our Bible study leader Dr. Martha Stortz who teaches religion at Augsburg College.

Dr. Stortz began by recognizing this particular moment in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She said—honestly and directly—that there’s been some “breakage” in our church, and all of us bishops uttered a silent Amen.

But then Dr. Stortz showed us how here in the Beatitudes (and indeed through the Scriptures) God is always, always, always dealing with “breakage.” In fact, it is second nature for God to take the breakage in our lives and transform it into blessing. What else should we expect, after all, from the One who took the breakage of the Cross and transformed it into the blessing of Easter?

And then Dr. Stortz went on to show how each of the eight beatitudes begins with some sort of breakage in the lives of ordinary folks like you and me. So when all the sources of your security are broken open, you become “poor in spirit,”….and when all your hope for heaven on earth is broken open, you become someone who constantly “hungers and thirsts for righteousness”….and when you dare to name the hope that is in you—a hope that runs against the grain in this world—you are broken open in the act of suffering, being persecuted for being out of line with the world.

Each of these beatitudes begins with some experience of brokenness….a brokenness that leaves us open to God whose greatest delight is to fill our brokenness with blessing.

Does that resonate, does that connect with how things have been for you and your community of faith over the last year or so? There’s been a lot of breakage in our churches. Some of you have seen that, been part of that, “up close and personal.”

You are understandably weary, maybe discouraged, surely wondering what—if anything—good God might be bringing out of all this breakage.

Here is what God in Jesus Christ has to say to you: You are blessed. You are the apple of my eye. You are my heart’s joy and delight. You will not be disappointed. In my good time—in the future that I alone hold in the palm of my hands—in that future your future is disclosed, for the sake of my beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

It would be great—wouldn’t it?—if blessings came in a less painful way. It would be wonderful if God doled out blessings the way Ed McMahon used to pull up to some unsuspecting schlump’s house, scrambling out of the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes prize van, with an over-sized check for a million dollars.

But in God’s Kingdom, it doesn’t work that way. In God’s Kingdom we are broken open, so that God might redeem and restore and bless. Blessing comes into all our “breakage” and makes everything and everyone new, in Jesus Christ.

But even that is not the end of the matter.

Martha Stortz added one more thing to what she had to say to us bishops about blessing. She said, “God’s blessings are always ‘leaky’.” God never blesses any of us in such a way that we hang onto that blessing purely for ourselves.

No, blessings tend to “leak”—out of our hands, into the hands of other broken ones, all around us….and in fact, that’s what we’re here for in the first place: to leak our blessings so that others might hear Jesus’ own “I Have a Dream” speech…and hearing that, to be blessed forever.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Pointing Folks to Jesus

Hope Lutheran Church, Fosston, MN

January 16, 2011/Epiphany 2

John 1:29-42

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

 

When I was a little boy my parents did their level best to teach me good manners….and one of the things they told me was that it’s not polite to point.

Don’t point—it makes people uncomfortable. Good manners. Good advice.

 

But then when we look at some of the greatest works of art depicting John the Baptist (whom we encounter in our gospel lesson)—when we explore the many paintings, murals, sculptures. How is John the Baptist portrayed? He’s wearing his camel hair outfit, out in the wilderness, sometimes pouring water over the persons who come to him by the Jordan River….but often, John is also depicted as pointing.

 

John must not have been taught that it’s impolite to point.

 

John is a pointer, especially here in this portion of the fourth gospel.

 

All those works of art that show John pointing take their cues from the first chapter of John’s gospel. Today’s gospel reading is all about John and Jesus—who they each are in relationship to each other and everyone else….and John’s characteristic posture here is that he is pointing, singling out, drawing attention to Jesus.

 

It happens over the course of two days.

 

On the first day John sees Jesus coming toward him (in verses 29-34) and he gives a little speech about Jesus….he points to Jesus for two reasons.

 

First John the Baptist wants everyone to know that he’s not the One folks had been waiting for. John points away from himself—he clears up any misunderstandings that some may have had about John himself being the Messiah.

 

So, first of all, John points away from himself: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’…” (vv. 29-30)

 

The second reason John points to Jesus is to let others to know who Jesus is. Digging deep into the treasure chest of his own Jewish faith, John calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

 

Wow! What a grand introduction! John the Baptist simply jumps right in there with both feet and “cuts to the chase.” Pointing a long bony finger—pointing at Jesus!—John says: “Here….here is the One you’ve been waiting for. Here is the One whom God is sending into the world to set us free. His blood—like the blood of the lamb our ancestors sprinkled on their doors at Passover time. The blood of this ‘lamb’ will rescue us from our captivity to ourselves, our sin….and not just ours, but the sin of the whole world.”

 

John was a pointer. And there’s nothing modest or subdued about what he has to say about Jesus here. John points away from himself—making it clear that he (John) is not God’s chosen one—and simultaneously making it clear that Jesus is the Real Deal, God’s new Passover lamb, whose coming among us delivers us and redeems the whole creation.

 

This is more than a grand announcement or a spectacle, however….which we see as this story unfolds…

 

Because the next day, when Jesus approaches John once again, John repeats his message: “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” (v. 36)

 

But now John shifts gears. Rather than launching into another long speechn, John moves beyond pointing at Jesus. Instead, he takes a couple of his own followers and points them to Jesus.

 

John points in a very specific way. He doesn’t just point at Jesus….but rather he grabs a hold of persons and points them to Jesus, almost (as it were) taking them by the shoulders and giving them a good shove right in Jesus’ direction….because John knows they need to get close to Jesus, to hang out with Jesus, to remain (Greek: meno) with Jesus.

 

As I sometimes like to say, faith in Jesus is more like stewing in a crock-pot than being zapped by a microwave. It takes some time…

 

So, two of John’s followers, now spend hang out with Jesus. “…And they remained with him that day” (v. 39) I would give my right arm to know what the three of them did and said that afternoon—but the fourth gospel is utterly silent on that point.

 

What we do know is that by 4 p.m., one of the men simply has to go out and find his brother and point him to Jesus: Andrew scurries over to his brother Simon, just bursting with good news—“we have found the Messiah.” (v. 41)

 

And then Andrew takes Simon by the shoulders and points him toward Jesus, who immediately recognizes Simon and bestows on him the name that we know better: “…you are to be called Cephas (which is translated Peter).” (v. 42)

 

There’s a whole lot of pointing going on here—don’t you think??

• John the Baptist points out Jesus, points his followers to Jesus….
• and his followers (after spending time with Jesus) go out and start pointing others to Jesus.
• Those who were pointed to Jesus now themselves become pointers.

It’s as if a whole big chain reaction has been touched off.

 

And in fact, that’s what is happening here. Moreover, this very same chain reaction of Jesus-pointing is what has brought you and me here this morning.

 

I am here with you, a brother in Christ, because someone pointed me to Jesus: Lawrence and Roberta (my parents), when I was just a little baby, brought me to Jesus, washed me with Jesus, and kept pointing me to Jesus, pushing me to hang out with Jesus, so that I can’t imagine life without Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

 

And hasn’t something like that happened to each of you, too? I doubt that you got yourselves here entirely under your own power—it didn’t just dawn on you out of the clear blue.

 

No, someone pointed out Jesus to you, someone took you by the shoulders, literally pointed you toward Jesus, and nudged you in the right direction, to abide with Jesus, spend time with Jesus, get so caught up with Jesus that you’ve now become a pointer, too.

 

This all makes sense, even though we Lutherans haven’t always put it quite this way.

 

Because, truth be told, we Lutherans have tended to be setters more than pointers. (Excuse the dog pun!)

 

We Lutherans have tended toward a pretty passive, “sitting” role in this chain reaction. Here in North America we’ve counted on waves of immigrants to grow our church, and then waves of Lutheran babies who were born in the homes of all those immigrants….and we’ve been carried forward by the momentum that they created for many years.

 

It all seemed so automatic, it all just sort of happened. We were setters (or “sitters”) more than pointers….but no more.

 

Immigration and reproduction no longer carry us forward. We Lutheran “setters” are discovering our calling to become “pointers,” like John the Baptist. Thank God, we’re getting caught up in the chain reaction that started when John spied Jesus coming his way, when John lifted up his bony finger, pointed away from himself, pointed toward Jesus, taking his own closest friends, his intimates, taking them by the shoulders and pointing them to Jesus.

 

Can you teach an old dog new tricks, though? I think you can. We Lutheran setters can become Lutheran pointers, in fact it’s happening all around us in this 21st century mission field called North America.

 

And if that unnerves you, if that scares you, to think about heading out into the world and boldly pointing others toward Jesus, perhaps you need to take baby steps at first.

 

Look at Andrew. He didn’t do cold-calling on strangers. He shanghaied his next of kin, his brother, who became the prince of the apostles. “Peter, you gotta meet this guy—we think he’s God’s anointed one. Come and see!”

 

The mission field starts right inside your home. My friend David Anderson of Vibrant Faith Ministries likes to say that the prayer that is prayed most often in today’s Lutheran church is: “Dear God, please get my grandchildren to church!”

 

If you pray that prayer (or something like it), let that prayer take you somewhere you may not have traveled before. Let that prayer lead you to set aside your good manners and do some pointing.

 

Here, let’s try it right now. Take your finger, stretch it out, and point it.

 

First, point it away from yourself as a reminder that you are not God.

 

And then point your finger toward Jesus.

 

And as you do so, start imagining how you could take some precious child or grandchild or brother or sister—take them by the shoulders and point them toward Jesus, the way Andrew did with his own blood-kin Peter.

 

Point someone to Jesus. And, I guarantee you, neither of you will be disappointed.

 

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

 

Getting Under Our Skin

December 24, 2010

Christmas Eve, Christ the King Lutheran Church, Moorhead

While they were there, the time came for [Mary] to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2:6-7

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Christmas is about God getting under our skin.

God is getting under our skin.

Now, I know that saying someone is “getting under my skin” means that he’s irritating me…and if that seems like a puzzling, even crass way of talking about God, well then hang on to your hats!

Because what’s happening here on Christmas Eve, right under our noses, is pretty wild and disruptive. God is refusing to stay put where gods belong. God is moving in on us and invading our space--getting under our skin.

The 75-cent term for that is incarnation--a rough, jagged, scary word. Not the sort of thing we associate with God. We assume that gods are pure spirit-beings, but this God, our God, shows up in Bethlehem’s manger with meat on his bones, hair on his head, and blood coursing through his veins….and that is most un-god-like.

Incarnation is lowly, not lofty. It’s about flesh—meat, to be exact. That’s why we call it chili con carne—chili with meat in it. That’s why the big cats are called carnivores, meat-eaters. In Bethlehem we encounter the God who is con carne--fleshy, meaty, wearing our skin.

And that messes up everything.

Here we thought we had things figured out. We humans belong here on planet earth—that’s our place in the universe. And God’s place is up there somewhere, high above and beyond us, surely at a safe distance from us.

“God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world….”

….until God messes that all up by traipsing into our territory, squeezing himself down into a baby, making that treacherous journey down the birth canal, and then bursting into our space in the midnight squall of a newborn who’s covered in the very same gooey stuff that covered each of us when we popped out of our mamas and into the world.

No self-respecting God does this sort of thing!

If this is how God is going to act—we’ll have to reconsider everything—all the assumptions we were making, all our strategies for keeping God at arm’s length—all of it goes right out the window in Bethlehem’s stable.

Those to whom God came in the flesh of the baby Jesus, they were pretty put off by it all--this scandalous meat-on-bones business. They (and we) didn’t want God to get that close. As it says in John, chapter 1, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (John 1:11)

We earthlings couldn’t handle God under our skin, so we tried sending God back where he came from. We edged God out of our world, up onto a cross, said “thanks, but no thanks,” and imagined that that crucifixion would put a stop to God’s invasion of our space.

But what a miscalculation that turned out to be! For, you see, incarnation wasn’t a failed science experiment God thought he’d try out.

Incarnation was and is God’s permanent, God’s only way of being God for us and with us.

Incarnation is how this God, the only God that matters, does business with us. As author and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor (An Altar in the World:  A Geography of Faith) has wryly observed, “our bodies remain God’s best way of getting to us.” (p. 42)

Even after his dead body was tossed into a borrowed grave, Jesus returned—not as a spirit or a spook—but in the flesh. “He came back wearing skin” (p. 36) and he journeyed down another birth canal, expelled from the tomb, with new resurrection skin on—scarred still by the marks of the crucifixion.

So now, what in the world are we going to do with a God like this?

He just keeps coming back, moving in on us, getting under our skin—there’s no stopping him. He won’t take “no” for an answer.

Truly Christ the Incarnate One has come for us, and make no mistake about it: he will have his way with us…and his way is pure, unadulterated love—not a fleeting feeling-love, not a lighter-than-air love—but love deep in the flesh, love that goes to the bone, love that revels in earthy, bodily life, right here, right now.

That’s what Christmas is all about. More than stringing lights on a tree or getting lucky at West Acres or baking the figgy pudding perfectly for a change.

It’s about incarnation, God’s disruptive way with us, God getting under our skin—and staying there.

And that simply upsets all our apple carts!

It changes everything we thought we knew about God and how God works. For we have a God on our hands who refuses to keep his distance from us, a God whose divine genome contains human DNA!

But the incarnation of God in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth also changes how we view ourselves, how we look at our own bodily lives. We’re more than immortal souls temporarily imprisoned in lowly flesh and blood, longing to escape these shell-like bodies.

No—we are bodies and souls, intimately knit together. As BBT puts it, God “loves flesh and blood, no matter what kind of shape it is in” (p. 38). And what, my friends, could be better news than that?

I mean--have you taken a good look at your body lately? It can be pretty frightening, especially as we grow older. I ought to know: There’s an old geezer who steps out of the shower in my bathroom every morning—and the sight of him still shocks me when I gaze at him in the mirror—because this old geezer is ME!

If you know what I’m talking about…if you and your body aren’t always on the best of terms…I’m here to say that God loves your body, just the way it is. And if that makes you want to tend your body better, I say: go for it (though you may choose to start after the big Christmas dinner!)

God’s incarnation in the baby Jesus changes how we view our own bodies, even as it transforms how we regard all the other bodies Christ came to save.

Again, to borrow the words of Barbara Brown Taylor: “Wearing my skin is not a solitary practice but one that brings me into communion with all these other embodied souls. It is what we have most in common with one another. In Christian teaching, followers of Jesus are called to honor the bodies of our neighbors as we honor our own. In [Jesus’] expanded teaching by example, this includes leper bodies, possessed bodies, widow and orphan bodies, as well as foreign bodies and hostile bodies—none of which [Jesus] shied away from.” (p. 42)

The Christmas miracle of God getting down under our skin opens our eyes to see afresh all the bodies for whom Christ came: famished bodies, beautiful bodies, homeless bodies, pampered bodies, cancer-ridden bodies, just plain tired bodies…bodies that prefigure the resurrected bodies that will be ours some day, in the amazing grace of God our Savior.

The incarnation of God in the flesh of baby Jesus transforms everything—God, ourselves, our neighbors and all the ways we live out our days faithfully, through our bodily selves.

God’s incarnation launches us on a way of life that is always, somehow, embodied: in wheat and wine and water and word…embodied in cold water on parched tongues, feet lovingly washed, tears brushed away, hugs offered even to persons who’re as prickly as porcupines!

If God in Jesus Christ truly is making all things new, which means: making all bodies new—then we have plenty to do to keep us out of mischief, while we wait in trust for God to redeem our bodies—all our bodies—in and for the sake of the little Lord Jesus who was born for us in Bethlehem.

In fact, we might even find ourselves walking on the earth as if heaven were already coming our way….leaning forward as if God really does hold the future in his hands--a future that will completely embody the love that began in the manger and was poured out for us fully and finally on the cross.

God has gotten under our skin, my dear friends, and through us God’s going to keep getting under all sorts of people’s skins until, finally, God is truly all in all.

And it all began on Christmas Eve, in Bethlehem, when Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger…

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Life Overflowing: Incarnation

Life Overflowing: Incarnation


And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. John 1:15

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. I Corinthians 12:27

God’s work. Our hands. (Tagline of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)

Stir us up

Advent passes by way too quickly. Every December I want to linger longer in the season of Advent with its royal blue paraments, lush prophecies from the Old Testament, and those amazing “stir up” prayers of the day in Sunday worship.

Here we are, all tucked into the most nostalgia-laden time of the year, fuzzy slippers on our feet, hot chocolate poured up, It's a Wonderful Life plunked into the DVD player....and then on the Sundays in Advent we pray that God will STIR UP his power in our midst.

Yikes! We normally pray to God to calm things down or for things to return to normal. But in this season we ask God to stir us up . . . to agitate us so that we might become the ones God made us and calls us to become. When we implore God to “stir us up” in Advent, we ask for deep and dramatic change.

God with skin on

And exactly what sort of change does God work in our lives? It has to do with the Incarnation, God’s reckless decision to take on human flesh in Jesus. Incarnation is about an event, a person and an ongoing reality.

Here’s a tried-but-true illustration: A father was putting his 4-year-old son to bed. The entire bedtime checklist was completed: tucked in, story read, trip to the bathroom accomplished, night light on. Enough! Dad kissed his son and tried to escape. But as he exited the bedroom, the boy cried out that he was still scared to be alone. “Don’t worry, son,” his dad responded. “Jesus is with you.” “I know that Jesus is always with me, daddy,” his son replied. “But right now I need someone with skin on.”

When the Word became flesh and tented among us (John 1:15), God acted decisively to say: “I intend to be the God with skin on—for you, for all people, and forever.” The Incarnation (“carne” is a Latin word meaning “flesh” or “meat”) is the event we prepare for during Advent—the once-and-for-all occurrence of Jesus’ birth as Immanuel (“God with us”) “in the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4-5).

In one sense, this is an utterly unique, unrepeatable act of God intervening in human history. Advent prepares us to celebrate the Incarnation (event) of the only begotten Son (person) of the Father.

In another sense, the Incarnation is also an ongoing reality. The same Lord Jesus Christ who lived, suffered, died and rose again continues to be en-fleshed in the Word proclaimed, the Baptism poured out, the Supper served up, and the community that bears Christ’s name in the world.

We are not free-floating spirits. We are flesh-and-blood human beings, and to meet us where we are and as we are, God continues to seek out human flesh. God keeps “putting skin on” through the life and ministry of the church.

God’s skin on a new Body

Just the other day, at our local Anytime Fitness gym, I saw a fellow exerciser wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed: “DON’T GO TO CHURCH…” And then, in smaller letters, right underneath: “Be the church.” Bingo!

In the living, breathing church of today we see the Body of Christ—the way that God still has skin on, through the real gathered-scattered community that embodies the risen Lord Jesus in the world.

Here we behold another manifestation of the abundance of God—God’s life overflowing, that has been the subject of these monthly columns in Northern Lights this year. Jesus the risen and living One continues to be incarnated in all that the church is and does. In the Church we behold God’s skin on a new Body—the Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:27).

This means, among other things, that the Church embraces us through our lives of faith. The church precedes us—we are born into it. The church succeeds us—it outlives our earthly lives. The church, therefore, belongs to none of us. It’s not my church, your church or even our church, to do with what we please. The church is God’s Body, God’s business, God’s gift to us and to the world.

God’s skin on you

What happens corporately, in the church, is also enacted personally, in our individual lives as baptized Christians—disciples of our living Lord. When God claimed you in Baptism, God decided to take up residence within you—fancy that! “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (I Corinthians 6:19-20).

So you, right now, are a bearer of God’s Incarnation strategy—God’s risky way of getting close to us to make us new in Christ. The great Scottish missionary to India, Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), showed how God’s saving of us is intimately linked to God’s sending of us to bear Christ to others. He wrote: “The corporate nature of the salvation which God purposes is a necessary part of the divine purpose of salvation according to the biblical view that no one could receive it as a direct revelation from above but only through the neighbor, only as part of an action in which he opens his door and invites his neighbor to come in….There is no salvation except in a mutual relatedness which reflects that eternal relatedness-in-love which is the being of the triune God.”   Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret (1978, Eerdmans), p. 85.

“Be born in us today…”

As we conclude the year 2010 with the seasons of Advent and Christmas, I invite you to keep your eyes peeled for signs of how the Incarnation is simultaneously an event (the Nativity of our Lord), a person (Jesus, “God with us”) and an ongoing reality in our lives as Christian individuals and members of the Body of Christ. If you watch carefully, you will see hints of the Incarnation all around you—opportunities, invitations to live out the ELCA tagline: “God’s work. Our hands.”

And surely, you will hear this rich understanding of the Incarnation in the songs of the season. For example, notice God’s incarnation strategy in the 4th stanza of Phillips Brooks’s beloved carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem:

O holy child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us today…

Thank you for reading, reflecting on and discussing with others this series of monthly columns on our synod’s 2010 theme, Life Overflowing. A rich Advent and a joyous Christmas to you all!

Your brother in Christ

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

For reflection and discussion

1. What are some of the ways your congregation embodies Christ in your community?

2. The article includes this sentence: ”It’s not my church, your church or even our church, to do with what we please.” How might remembering that the church is God’s church change the ways you make decisions in your congregation?

3. The article quotes Lesslie Newbigin as saying, “There is no salvation except in a mutual relatedness…” What does this say about God and God’s way of engaging with us?

This is the eleventh and final in a series of articles on the theme Life Overflowing—an ongoing exercise in missional theology for the disciples and congregations of the Northwestern Minnesota Synod during the year 2010. These articles may be used for personal reflection; they may also serve as background study or a devotional resource for congregation councils and other parish leadership groups.