Ben's Random Rhetoric

Listen! And hear God's love...

2012-02-18T13:06:00.000-08:00

Mark 9.2-8

"This is my Son, the beloved; listen to him!"

If any of you out there are wondering what exactly is going on in our Gospel reading for today, hear that phrase spoken by more than any of the other words that you've heard this morning. This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him! That right there is what this strange story on a mountain, dazzling lights, famous forebears of the faith, and terrified disciples centers on more than anything else – that Jesus is God's beloved Son and that we should listen to him. This has importance because it has huge implications for what happens next. So listen up people! God is about to do something wonderful. The only problem is that we often have a terrible time with listening from time to time.

For example, my mother likes to tell this story about when she was in college. It was the end of her third year of college, and with the end of every semester comes all the final tests that one must take to pass the classes you enrolled in to eventually get your degree. In one of my mom's classes, the professor hated how no matter how much he emphasized reading all the directions before starting on the test, most of the students would rip right into the questions as fast as she or he could. Some would do it because taking a test is like a race where you feel better about yourself if you get done before others. Others would start answering questions as fast as possible because the logic goes "the sooner you get done with a test, the sooner you are done with class and can begin the year end parties that some (definitely not me...) looked forward to.

My mother got to this final, and she heard again the clear caution to read all the directions before you started to answer the questions. the only thing was there were four pages of solid text that were the directions. Most people got through maybe a half a page of these severely pedantic directions and decided to just get on with the very long test so that they could get done with the class. My mother and a few others decided to heed the professor's advice and read all four pages of directions which concluded with "Thank you for reading all of the directions. Write your name on the top, turn it in, and meet me at the bar downtown for a beer. You will receive an 'A.'" Not many that day read all the directions, and really that does not surprise me too much.

We all have times in our lives where we have trouble actually listening to what is being said to us, whether it be in a text or in a conversation. We would much rather hear what we want to hear rather than listen carefully to what's been said. In fact, I believe the greatest indicator of how healthy a relationship (friendship or marriage) is how well the two people actually engage in communication. That truly is one of the most important things two people can work on in their relationship, and at times it takes hard work to truly hear what the other is actually saying. Yet, we also see this in our news as well. How many of you have heard a report or a commentator misquote or misrepresent what a public figure had actually said?

Yes, it is true we sometimes have a hard time really listening to what is being told us, even when God personally tells people like us to listen to the Beloved Son. How do we truly hear what Jesus is telling us through his life? First of all, there are times when we need to get out of the way of God is up to. Peter, who often sticks his foot in his own mouth, would love to enshrine Jesus on the top of that mountain so that he and others could always come back to that place again and again and again. But this Good Thing that has come down to earth cannot be locked up on the top of a mountain. Jesus is a Good Thing that must be brought out to the whole world for it is Good for him fill to fill the whole of creation with God's light and love.

Second of all, there are times when we simply would rather that God would do things in a different way, a way which would perhaps not include the cross which Jesus has become resolved march towards in this Lenten journey. Again, it is Peter who begins to scold Jesus for saying that he must go and die on the cross. But the cross is the way. It is the only way. It is the way which shows each of us the incredible self-emptying love of the God who truly gives up what he deserves to give us what we need – to give us mercy. In fact, that phrase I quoted at the beginning of this sermon? There are two other places in Mark's Gospel where it occurs in much the same way: 1.) at Jesus' baptism where God declares "This is my Son, the Beloved. With Him I am well pleased." and 2.) When Jesus dies on the cross and the Roman centurion proclaims "Truly this was God's Son." In sense, we only truly believe, we only truly see, we only truly listen when we gaze upon the cross which is itself the revelation of God's love in the world.

So if we truly take the time to heed God's words "This is my Son, the Beloved; Listen to him!" we must see these words as words that take us away from ourselves and towards others in the world as we too bear that cross to the whole world in our words and deeds. If we heed these words, we need not bear how wonderful our lives are, but simply bear how wonderful God's love is. For that has been and always will be enough. Because on that cross, that cross that journey towards again as begin another season of Lent this Wednesday, God's love and mercy embraces the whole world, a Grace beyond any measure. And in that, we just might find that we too might begin to be able to better listen to the world around us and hopefully respond with grace-filled love that has been shown us.

A Beginning WITHOUT and Ending

2011-12-03T15:02:00.001-08:00

(Many thanks to Dr. David Lose of Luther Seminary, who was a germination point for this sermon.)

Mark 1.1-8

12/4/11

How many of you sitting out there today knew that the new year has already begun? Well, okay, maybe not the new calendar year, because I'm guessing that many of us are putting "2011" as a date on our checks. However, the church year always begins anew with the first Sunday in Advent. I'm not too surprised if you didn't notice. There's not much that marks the beginning of the new church year. Really the only thing that is much different from this beginning of the new year from the previous church year is that, starting last week and running throughout the coming church year, we will be hearing the vast majority of our gospel readings from the Gospel according to Mark. Not much is different, but there is something nice how the church marks each new year with the beginning prologue to the Gospel story that has brought us and our ancestors together in faith throughout the centuries.

Beginnings are terribly important to us in our lives, are they not? How much time and energy do we put into the start of something new? One of our favorite and biggest holidays of the year is New Year's Eve, as many people gather together to ring in the New Year as the clock strikes midnight on January 1^st. We mark the passage of time by celebrating the anniversaries of the beginnings of things. We measure the years of our life by celebrating the day we were born and our journey on earth began. Our marriages are marked by celebrating the day two people are united in the bonds of matrimony. And if you happen to be a Vikings fan, there's always the start of the new season, right? I believe that new beginnings are important to us because it shows us that life is not over. It shows that there is still something for us to live for. It shows us that there are new adventures for us to undertake – new stories to hear, new places that our friendships and relationships might go we live and grow together. Marking the beginning helps us to prepare for what just might be coming.

And really, this is where we find ourselves as we encounter these words from the Gospel of Mark on this day: We find ourselves at "the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Yet, even with all this talk of how things are beginning, we all know too well that so many things that everything that has a beginning also will have an ending. Sometimes that ending is tragic. Sometimes we just may feel that the ending has come all too soon. Sometimes the ending comes only a long journey filled with the ups and downs of life. That's one of the things we get to know to the core of beings, is it not? Friendships don't last. Whether through distance, disagreement, or death, all of our friendships come to an end sooner or later. The same goes with our work, our careers, and even the loving committed relationship we have with that special other person in our lives. This is all something we get glimpses of when we are young children, but become well-acquainted with as we get older.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Everything. Except that is for one thing: When we are baptized, we are baptized into something eternal, everlasting. We are baptized into the life love and Body of Christ that not even death and the grave can bring a ending to. This beginning is also a beginning steeped in the rich history of the past. John the baptizer is himself the very representation of the rich prophetic tradition of the Israelite people. He, very much like the prophets Jeremiah or Isaiah or Amos or Micah, calls the people back into the way of Lord away from the trappings of everyday life. Yet, comes bearing something new to the people who come to him to be baptized by him. He brings news. He brings Good News. He brings the news of the one who is coming after him who not even this pious man of God would be worthy enough to be a mere servant of. He brings news of the one who is coming after him who bears a gift to be given to the people: A new baptism that is itself the gift of God's Holy Spirit given to each so that he or she may be brought into A NEW BEGINNING WITHOUT AN ENDING.

That is really what all of our baptisms mean for each of us. Our baptism in an entering into a new life where no longer do we have to worry about what the ending is going to be. Instead we are given new life, right here and right now this day. It is simply a mistake to think that our baptisms only have to do with what happens to us when we die. No, on the whole they have a much greater importance the life we are able to live right here in this present moment. Each day we live out a response to the tremendous gift that is given to us as we receive the Holy Spirit on the day of our baptisms. We don't have to worry about the ending, so we can live everyday reveling in promise of that new beginning. We can live everyday still deeply amidst "the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" like it is a story that is still being played even 2000 years after it all began. We are not to give up on the life that we have right now. We are to live this day actively learning about what it means to be a people of The Good News. There is always something to learn or to discover or to engage in. What new thing would you like to learn anew this new year?

The intention of God's gifts

2011-11-11T08:50:00.000-08:00

Matthew 25:14-30

11/13/11

The Gospel according to Matthew is replete with parable after parable after parable that Jesus often sets up in this way: "The Kingdom of Heaven will be like..." this or that or another thing. In earlier parts of the gospel, Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like the little bit of yeast that is put into flour to make bread. In another place, he says the Kingdom of Heaven is like a king putting on a wedding banquet for his son. Yet in another place, Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a mustard seed growing from something very small to a large bush or like a tree. So if Jesus keeps on using parables to tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like, what is he trying to tell us?

Is the purpose of the parables to simply give one to one analogies of the specific ways that God acts? Is God a landowner who throws slaves out into then outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth all because the slave didn't invest the money that God gave him? Is the lesson to be learned that God wants us to invest with banks in our lives? No, I think that the parables seek to do one thing and one thing only: they seek to tell us a truth about the world, about us, and about what having a relationship with God is all about.

In other words, when Jesus begins the parables, he just might be saying that The kingdom of heaven will be like this....a place where truth is revealed.

The parables, and especially the parable Jesus tells us this week have to do more than give us a simple moralistic lesson like one of Aesop's Fables. They have to, because if they don't then why are we wasting our time gathering around the Word of God that really only works as an advice column rather than words of hope and life that are able to lift us up in our lives wherever we just might find ourselves and be words of love and of forgiveness and of redemption that call us into a new way of life where we seek to share all of that TRUTH with the rest of the world in our words and actions.

The Bible is not a place where you can get advice on single, separate issues like some kind of ancient "Dear Abbey" letter next to the comics of Garfield and Peanuts you would find in a newspaper. Can you even imagine what THAT would be like?

Dear Bible,

I'm a 29 year old man who has fallen in love with a gorgeous, intelligent woman, but there is a problem. She wants the financial luxury that a wealthy investment banker can give her, yet I'm only a teacher who makes $40k a year and I have student loan debt. What can I do to attract her?

Sincerely,

Not enough money for love

Of course the Bible doesn't work that way! Of course Jesus isn't some advice columnist who only seeks give a few words of wisdom about our minor, every day problems in life. Yes the Bible gives words of Wisdom, but words of Wisdom must eventually speak to the core of our being if they truly are going to be words that change and deeply affect our lives each and every single new day. They must speak to the truth about our lives. They must speak to the truth about who God is. They must speak to the truth about who we are in relationship with God. For if these words that gather us together as God's do not do that then, again, we are wasting our time here.

So what then is the truth in our parable for today? It is simply this (and this insight comes from Bishop Jim Arends of the La Crosse area synod): if we are indeed God's people, then we must let the gifts that God gives us be the gifts that God intends them to be. And God certainly does shower us with many gifts throughout the days of our lives. We owe our very life to God. There is no other place from whence it would be able to spring forth. We owe the people we call family and friends, those people love and support us in our lives, to God. For without God, we would not have them in our lives. We owe livelyhood that our skills and abilities earn for us to God. As many of us know, as much as we hard to develop the skills and education that lead to our vocations, our education whether in school or on the job refine the things we already have a raw innate ability to do. God is the source of these things, and that is where real stewardship begins, with the knowledge that all he have comes from God.

We are given those gifts not so that we can know that we ARE truly blessed by God. We are given those gifts so that we just might be able to share our gifts with in a loving community that seeks the welfare of others and not only ourselves. In some ways, God also gives us the gift of community through the ways we care for and share the gifts that we have been given.

And ultimately there is one precious gift that is given to us by God. We owe our forgiveness, our redemption, our new life in Christ to the God who comes to us in our lives where we are, where we have fallen short of the glory of God, where we should see that there has been no time and no place where we have earned the love and forgiveness of Lord for ourselves. This is a gift that is manifested in our lives as we are joined with Christ in our baptism. This is a gift that is manifested in our lives as we come to the Lord's supper as sinners indeed not worthy of the gift of Jesus' body and blood, yet still given FOR US. But here's the sticking point: we are not given these gifts so that we can isolate ourselves from the world in some kind of a mystical blanket that allows us to not have to worry about others in our lives. These gifts of our faith are indeed meant to bring us out into the world to engage our neighbor, to bring forth the love in Christ Jesus that we ourselves have already received. So in the end, the Kingdom of Heaven is truly the place where God gives us great gifts, gifts that are meant to burst forth and not be buried in a field because of some fear.

God or Taxes?

2011-10-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Matthew 22.15-22

10/16/11

So now here we’ve come – right to the intersection where politics and religion meet. And again, what are the two things you are not supposed to talk about in polite company? Politics and religion. Yet today the very center of our faith, the basis of our whole religion is encountered with a highly charged political question when Jesus is asked: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Well, this certainly is not just any political question, but a question about something that colored the political discourse of our country for years now. It is a question about taxes. Taxes seem to be the one political issue that causes some of the most heated political debate to occur as we have a shared national history that literally began over a question of taxation.

And it continues to this day. One of the things I’ve seen that drives our public policy the most at the moment is the simple question: Will you raise taxes? Much of what drives our lawmakers this day is the pledge “I will not raise taxes.” A pledge that many of our lawmakers have taken in recent years. And what’s funny is that that pledge is a like a sword hanging by a small string over their heads ready to snap and slay anyone who would ever dare to consider raising taxes. The Pharisees and the Herodians in our reading for today are themselves seeking to place a sword on a string above Jesus’ head ready to snap at a moments notice if Jesus says “YES” or “NO.” But a funny thing happens as these people try to embroil Jesus into a debate over political ideals – He decides not to play their little game.

You see, what’s at the heart of much political debate is a process in which people are thrown into a discussion where ideas and the defense of those ideas is paramount to anything else in the discussion. So, rather than have a conversation about how to engage an issue in government and how to come up with a solution; politicians, the media, and protesters engage in fierce defense as to how their ideas are right and other’s ideas are wrong. So in the end, the ideas become what is important and not the problem or the issue which needs to be solved. And is that not where we err the most often in our life? Is that not our biggest sin? Do we not hold to our ideas above everything else to the point where those ideas and our pursuit of those ideas becomes the God we seek and defend through our actions?

That’s why Jesus really doesn’t concern himself with getting enmeshed into the sticky political debate. That’s why isn’t concerned with the question the Pharisees and the Herodians want him to get entangled in. Because, the question that Jesus is concerned with is the question: how are we going to relate to God; and, through that, how are we going to relate to one another? This question goes beyond and breaks us out of our self-absorption and reorients us upon God. For Jesus is not so much concerned with what people give to the Emperor. He is greatly concerned, however, with how people relate to God, because that relationship, and only that relationship has the ability to give us life and show us exactly where our life, everything we have, and our hope comes from. Only God, and not our own powers or own ideas, only God has the power to give us life. And here’s the thing! God gives it to us abundantly!

Moreover, God gives this gift of life to everyone else around us as we are all created in the image of God and given the command to care for all of creation and the things that live upon it as well. You see, our political convictions never abdicate us from the reality that we are all God’s good creation and that we are all given grace upon grace to live and share the love of God with those who are around us. Jesus doesn’t get enmeshed in the political debate, because he points us towards that which we should truly care about in our lives.

You see it is very simple. Our love for God is shown in our love for our neighbor. That is made very clear when Jesus gathers the disciples for that last supper together and tells them “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) These are the things with which we are to consider if we are truly to live out our identity as followers of Christ. Being a follower of Christ does not mean forcing your ideas upon others in society, rather it means having what we say and do come forth from the setting of our eyes upon the Lord who truly does have the power to give us life.

It is very simple, yet as we know, it can be very hard for us because we are not always able to discern what is our own ambition and what has sprung forth from setting our hearts and minds upon the God who alone gives us life. But that is why grace abounds. That is why we are promised the Holy Spirit in our lives to inspire us to faith in the one God who gives us life. My prayer is always that the Holy Spirit may guide us from ourselves and to God and those around us.

Praise to you, O Christ? --> Praise to you, O Christ!

2011-10-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

Matthew 21:33-46

10/2/11

There are certainly times throughout the church year where we’ll get done reading the Gospel lesson for the day and it just feels weird to say the words “Praise to you, O Christ” in response. The thing is, those are usually the times when we’ve heard a reading from the gospel that is filled with condemnation against God’s people or a group of God’s people. It feels disjointed to proclaim thanks and praise to God when we hear words like, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” Somehow those words don’t make me feel terribly safe, don’t make me feel terribly forgiven, don’t make me feel terribly loved.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it gain: I have never stood here in this pulpit and lied to you all. So when I say that God loves us and embraces us each all, I believe that message to my absolute core with every fibre of my being. So what then are we to do with this odd feeling we get when we say “Praise to you, O Christ” in response to a text that could make us feel like we have been raked over the coals? Well, for one thing, maybe we simply don’t feel like the message proclaimed by Christ is a message for us, because, surely God would not speak like that to a people as righteous as we are, right!? Yet even as I say those words, how can I not remember that Jesus is speaking to the righteous and Godly people of his day? This parable is a parable told specifically to the priests and elders, the leaders of the Jewish society! So to think that our righteousness and godliness saves us from these words being directed as us is folly. Moreover, as we take a closer look at this parable Jesus tells this day, can we not begin ourselves to identify with these wicked tenants?

It may not happen all the time in our life, and it may not be the way we generally view the world; but I wonder if there has been any time in your life where you could have possibly said to yourself, “I worked so hard to get to the place where I am at this day. I’ve put in long hours of study. I’ve been dutiful and conscientious with my time and money and not been frivolous. This life that I have now is mine, and I’ll not let anyone take it from me!” That very well may be true, but it does lose sight of some other truths along the way. No one has gotten where he or she is today all on your own. Family, friends, teachers, mentors have all helped us along the way, and if you are a Christian who believes that God the Father is indeed the creator of heaven and earth, the maker of that is, seen and unseen then you at the very least owe some kind of debt or gratitude to the one who has given you your very life!

And this is exactly what we see going on in this parable today. This landowner is the one who planted the vineyard and did everything necessary for it to produce fruit. Yet the tenants want to claim all of the fruit as their own. So the great sin committed in this parable is not so much that these tenants have beaten and killed everyone whom the landowner has sent to collect the harvest, as it is the profound foolishness that they thought that they could keep the whole harvest and then the inheritance for themselves. And in seeing that, the elders and the priests proclaim themselves a harsh judgment upon those wicked tenants.

So if we are like the elders, the chief priests, and these wicked tenants from the tale, what is the hope for us especially after this Word have fallen on us and crushed us? The hope lies not in what we can do to change God’s mind about this judgment. It lies in how God comes to the earth and acts. Again, look at the parable. When the landowner first heard word that his servants were beaten, stoned and killed, how does he respond? He sends more servants! And when that doesn’t work, he sends his very own son alone. If this landowner is indeed a representation of how God acts within the world, then I think we can see clearly that God acts, not in a way that brings destruction against these wicked tenants, but in a way where God continually seeks us out and seeks to bring us back into community!

Furthermore, let’s not forget where in the Gospel of Matthew this parable comes. This comes near the end of the Gospel, as Jesus has begun teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, before he is betrayed, tried and executed at the hands of Pontius Pilate. This parable comes to us as Jesus is in the very midst of going to the cross for our sins to reveal to us that our God is a God who gives up everything so that we may indeed see that we are forgiven and freed from our sins and death. This parable comes in the midst of the very thing that makes all of what we proclaim here to be GOOD NEWS!! And that is where our hope lies: In Jesus Christ our Lord.

There’s a song you may or may not know very well, but it is a song that I have gotten to know well over the years. Its lyrics come from a very early document that strove to teach the earliest Christians the Christian life. “As the grains of wheat, once scattered on the hill, are gathered into one to become our bread. So may all your people, from all the ends of earth, be gathered into one in you.” There are definitely times when it just may feel like we have been dashed, broken and scattered upon God’s judgment, but God does not leave us there. God seeks to gather us up, to gather us in, so that we indeed can brought into that warm embrace which holds us all even as we are sinners deserving death. And that why in the end, as much as this gospel reading crushes me this day, I can boldly say, “Praise to you, O Christ.”

The church, definitely a motley crue

2011-08-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

Matthew 16.13-20

08/21/11

A cheater, a hot-head, an adulterer, a drunk, a deserter, a murderer, a nervous wreck, a gossiper, a harlot, a worrier, a doubter, the impatient, a moody person, a stutterer, the old, and even the dead. That is quite the collection of people, don’t you think? Let’s say you were given a project to get done. The only stipulation is that you have to get this project done with this motley group of people. And this isn’t like Burger King – You can’t get it your way. These are your people, and you either work with them or you don’t get the project done at all. By a showing of hands, how many of you here today would be excited to enter into this kind of a project? How many of you would even attempt to do something important if these were the people you had to work with? How many of you would rather have a good group of Norwegians or Germans from the old days instead?

Believe it or not, the church we gather in this day is standing here because of the lives of that group of people. That group of people that includes people who have done terrible things in their lives. Don’t believe me? Every single person from that group I just mentioned is a major character in the Bible. Jacob was a cheater, Peter had a temper, David had an affair, Noah got drunk, Jonah ran from God, Paul was a murderer, Gideon was insecure, Miriam was a gossiper, Rahab was a harlot, Martha was a worrier, Thomas was a doubter, Sarah was impatient, Elijah was moody, Moses stuttered, Zaccheus was short, Abraham was old, and Lazarus was dead. From that group of people, you can tell the story of just about every major event beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation.

When I think about the history of God’s people, a history that we are grafted into in our baptism, a part of me is strengthened and assured that God works within the world even amongst all of our failings. In knowing this, I gain a comfort that God’s will within the world has not been and will not be thwarted by the ways we separate ourselves from each other and from God. But even more than that, I know that no matter what happens to us here in this day, in this congregation, God will still be our God and we will still be God’s people. In fact, that’s really what the word “church” means: a people who are “of the Lord.” So, even if lightning strikes our steeple, we will be a people of the Lord. Even if a great flood washes our building off of its foundation, we will be a people of the Lord. Even if finances dictate that we do things in a different way from the ways we have done them in the past, we will be a people of the Lord. That will not change because it cannot change. No earthly force can ever remove us from the claim that God has placed upon each and every one of us – nothing!

But also, in reading our Gospel for this day, I also see that this history and this heritage that we have inherited from that motley bunch of people is something that we have confidence in, not because we are smart enough to walk through these doors on the weekend, but because God works this miracle of faith in us each and every day. What is it that Jesus says to Peter after Peter makes that bold proclamation that Jesus is, “the Messiah, the Son of the living God?” Jesus tells him, “Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.” Peter’s very own confession of who Jesus is comes not from within himself, but by the power of the Holy Spirit working in him, giving him the confidence, the trust to declare out loud who Jesus is. Now, Peter doesn’t exactly understand what all that means. In fact, he goes on from that place continuing to stick his foot in his mouth, denying that he even knows who this Christ is, and then arguing with Paul (the murderer remember?) about what it means to be a Christian.

And this is grace, because if it is left up to us, we will surely never become anything more than the things the mar others, ourselves, and our lives. We would never be any more than Murderers, adulterers, cheaters, deny-ers, doubters, and even the dead. For our trust lies within the one who is able to even pick us up out of our graves and gather us up into new life. We are God’s people, and God will never turn his back on us. Yet, God also continually calls us into a new way of life, a way of life defined not by the things we have done or not have done, but by what this Messiah, this Son of the living God has done for us. With that, this church has a foundation that cannot crumble no matter what the world may throw at us.

2011-06-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

Matthew 10:40-42

6/26/11

Here’s a question for you: Are we a welcoming church? Are we place where people come and are received warmly? What is it like to become a part of this community? Well, for one thing, there times when someone asks you a question that you must seek first to define the terms that are used in the question. What do I mean by saying “welcoming?” What do I mean by saying “church?” What do I mean when I use the term “community?” It’s important to define these terms because that will help us to really explore these questions with depth and honesty. First off, we must always knows in our minds and in our hearts that church always and forever means the Body of Christ that has died with him to sin and been raised to a new life faith with all the saints throughout the centuries that have gone by. Secondly, “community” always has a ever growing outward definition like the rings of a tree that start small but always increase in ever widening circles. We are individually a person who lives in the community of our family that then includes our friends that then includes our neighbors that then includes villages, then townships, then counties, then states, then nations, then the world, then the whole universe, but most importantly, even then those that we hate. And we all have an effect on those outer rings even if that effect gets infinitely smaller and smaller. But what about that term “welcoming?”

I think a simple definition that could suffice is that welcoming is the ways in which we react to a new person or situation. We can either choose to be gatekeepers making sure that the person coming to the door is acceptable, or we can be people that respond to those who come through the gate knowing that we ourselves are people who have come through that gate ourselves as strangers whether it was when we were little infants or as we have grown through the years. How we welcome others says a lot of things about who we are individually and collectively, about what truly is near and dear to our hearts. If we welcome only those who are near and dear to our hearts, then maybe that should show us that what is near and dear to our hearts is ourselves. And that is simply a vanity, self-love, and self-absorption. I don’t preach these words this day as words of accusation meant to expose something that should be changed. I preach these words this day as words of warning that we should indeed guard against that form of self love so that ourselves doesn’t become the most important thing in our lives and that we always seek to reorient our lives and our love on the one who loves us and gives us life each and every day.

In our baptisms we are welcomed into the church, the body as newly adopted beloved children of God. We receive a new identity where the question “Who are you?” is sometimes better asked, “Whose are you?” We belong to God and nothing can change that, but that reality also carries with it a responsibility that sometimes becomes easy to shirk. And really that’s what this teaching from Jesus is all about this day. It’s not so much a teaching about who and why we should welcome others. It’s a teaching about how we, the ones who have already been welcomed into Christ in baptism are to go out into the world and be a part of God’s mission to go out into the world to seek out the lost, the hurt, the reviled, the person who is on the outside, even if he or she lives within our local community.

We are called to do this, because we are called to be a people of God within the world, called to be followers of Christ in where he goes and what he does. Just two verses before our reading for today Jesus says plainly, “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” So the thing that should really make us uncomfortable about our reading for today is that it calls us and shakes us out of our ever present lives to go out into the world to engage the world with words and deeds of love and peace. We do this not so that we can receive fame, fortune or assuredness of our place in heaven, but because we have already been given the beauty of God’s unending grace.

What we bring out into the world is not something our own, a creation that we have come up with. We go out into the world bearing Christ and what he has. This means that bearing Christ to the world does not take special schooling. It does not take special talents. It does not take perfectly crafted and beautiful words. Because we simply bring the Word in all of its uncreated glory. For, whoever welcomes us, welcomes Christ, and whoever welcomes Christ welcomes the one who sent Christ. So in the end, we welcome the one who has already welcomed us with open arms that continually seek out the other with love, forgiveness and grace.

My synod asked me to share my story at Synod Assembly this year...

2011-06-01T10:04:00.001-07:00

Last October 10^th, I prayed this prayer of the day with my parish as many of you did on that Sunday:

Almighty and merciful God, your bountiful goodness fills all creation. Keep us safe from all that may hurt us, that, whole and well in body and spirit, we may with grateful hearts accomplish all that you would have us do, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. Amen

That prayer is lifted up in response to the readings we had for that day about Naaman being healed of his leprosy and Jesus having compassion for ten men who suffered from that same disease that openly ravaged the body for all to see. Now the part that has spoken to me the most as I’ve contemplated that prayer has been the phrase “that, whole and well in body and spirit, we may with grateful hearts accomplish all that you do.”

For those who know me, I have been struggling with my weight and the affect it has on my health and well-being for most of my whole life. Just two days after I led that prayer, a friend and colleague of mine asked if I would come and take a look at a program that he had been involved with, because he cared about me and was concerned with where I was and where I was heading in body and spirit.

That week beginning with worship on that Sunday and continuing with a friend asking and caring about me became a place where Christ met me at a crossroad in my life and spoke a word full of grace and healing that has sent me on a journey where, like the ten lepers in that gospel story from Luke, I am finding that I am being made well.

Since that week in October, I have lost a total of 164lbs. My blood pressure is down at least 20 points, and now I walk for at least 30 minutes everyday. But this is not something that I could have done alone. Without the care and support of my colleagues, without the care and support of all my family and friends, and most especially, without the care and support of the people of my parish, I would not have gotten to the point that I have gotten to this day. In whatever mission endeavor we undertake, that will always hold true. The call to serve God will always be a call that followed within a community that seeks to share the love that our Lord has shown to us on the cross – that ground, that intersection from which we are sent out into the world.

The Causality That Indicates the Reality

2011-05-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

John 14.15-21

5/29/11

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

How do you hear these words this day? What does it mean to you to hear “If…then you will?” There are a couple different ways we take these words from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, these words spoken to his disciples on that last night when Jesus was betrayed, handed over to those who sought to control and kill him. You could first hear these words as a conditional statement that probably sound a little more like “If you really do love me, then you will do what I ask of you.” There’s nothing wrong with complying with the command and request of our Lord, Savior, and Friend, yet it can come across as something akin to what a parent would say to a child who has a pile of broccoli sitting on his or her plate: “If you want dessert, then you have to eat your vegetables.” I think we can start to see why this would be problematic. Taken as a conditional statement, it turns loving Jesus into a chore that must be completed or, like that child who is sitting at that dinner table 20 minutes after everyone else has left, keeping his commandments can become something like closing your eyes tightly and holding your nose as you are forced to do something that you really would rather not do. And is that how we are supposed to approach Jesus’ command “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another?”

In case you don’t know the full context in which our reading from the Gospel according to John comes, “…love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love another.” has just been spoken mere minutes before we begin our reading for today. So is our love for another really to be something like eating our vegetables, where we see other people in our lives and begrudgingly hold our nose, close our eyes tightly and do just enough so that we can receive the reward of our dessert? Certainly not! So there must be another way to hear these words that come from our redeemer on this day.

Maybe we can possibly hear “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” as simply a statement of causality, where our love for Christ necessarily causes us to keep his commandments, where keeping his commandments is necessarily is an affect of our love for him. And this reading of our gospel for today simply states the reality that if we truly do put our faith in Christ, if we center our lives upon the love that he has for us, we can almost do nothing other than love all those who abide with us on this planet we have called Earth. When it does get difficult for us to truly and deeply trust who this Jesus is, we also see that we will never be left alone and abandoned to try and do this all on our own. In fact, we will fail on our own without the help of that Advocate, that Spirit of truth guiding us to know, love and trust the Son of the Father who was sent into the world not to condemn the world, but “in order that the world might be saved through him.” No, in fact this statement is a statement of causality that brings to light the reality of who we are in Christ Jesus our Lord, that who we are is simply a people who gather around the cross that saves us all from sin and death, not to only die, but to be raised up into eternal life with Christ in the resurrection.

No, our Lord will not leave us orphaned, abandoned to our own inability to fulfill the requirements of the law. Jesus knows that we will fail, just much as he knew that even his most steadfast disciple, that rock on which the church shall stand, Peter, will deny that he knows this man who he has called teacher, and who the teacher now calls him his friend. Every day of our lives we need the support and care of the Holy Spirit inspiring us to know and love God, so that we may see just how much God loves us this day and every day from here on out. This Spirit shapes us into being what God has created us to be – a good creation that God is pleased to invite into the life and love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This Spirit sets our eyes toward that hill where we see exactly what God has given up and done for us in our lives, right here, right now!

So if this is who we truly are, then let us truly be the people of God in the world for everybody to see, where they will know that we are Christians not because of how correct our doctrine is, not because of how morally righteous we are, but because we simply show the love Christ has for us by the love we have for all of those around us. This is not a chore to be completed to get to the really good stuff, the dessert, the paradise of heaven. This is something that, when our eyes are firmly affixed on the cross, we rejoice in the freedom that has been given to us to finally love and serve our neighbor, not because we have to, but because we simply do! This promise of the Holy Spirit for our lives is for today and everyday. This is the promise which gives us life, love, and direction.

Jesus meets us on the road, reveals himself in the meal

2011-05-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Luke 24.13-35

5/8/11

Imagine, if you will, a walk – a beautiful walk on the first day that feels like spring. You pass by trees which are just beginning to bud and flower. You pass by lawns that are lush with soft, cool, green grass. There is a slight breeze in the air which gently blows the fragrance of new flowers upon the air. It is a beautiful day, and it seems as if the sun itself is declaring this to be a beautiful day. After the long, cold, and wet winter that we’ve had, it may just perhaps be hard to imagine a day, a walk such as this. But, I’m told that they do exist. Those are the kinds of days that seem to gently, yet persistently whispering that life is good, that life is beautiful, that God has ordained that day to be a day of joy and peace.

Life being likened to a beautiful walk on a sunny Spring day is something that we could probably wish was like all the time. But I think we all know that life is not only a beautiful walk on a beautiful spring day. Rather it is a walk, a journey that we find ourselves in the midst of every single day. It is a walk where we recall what is behind us, perhaps even get glimpses of as we share memories and photos, but nevertheless the walk continues forward. We recall the beautiful times of love and joy, perhaps at the birth of child or at the close of another school year. We recall the cloudy, gray times, perhaps when violence and war have the whole world in its grasp or when we see our brothers and sisters who live on this pale blue dot succumb to the devastating effects of natural disasters that destroy homes and lives.

Yet we carry all those memories and those experiences forward with us, maybe not even realizing the impact that people and events have had us until later. It keeps on moving to a place off in the distance. We can try to imagine what that place will be, where it will be, and what that place will hold for us, but often as we get to that place we find that it is not what we expected and that the road seems to continue going forward. We cannot know what the future has in store for us, and when our journey through life takes to places we didn’t expect we can often feel confused and bewildered by what has just happened.

The disciples find themselves in this place in this journey of life. They thought that they were coming near that destination where their friend and teacher was going to become the fulfillment of all their dreams. They said, “He was going to be the one who would redeem Israel and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity!” Instead, their friend and teacher was handed over and crucified. This was not the destination they though their journey was taking them towards. To make matters even worse, they now begin to see that their journey has not even ended as they hear strange stories from the women of their group about an empty tomb. They find themselves in the midst of a walk, a journey where they don’t quite know what to make of any of these past events, and that is perhaps not too alien a feeling for us even in our present day lives. We too know of confusion we can feel as events swirl around us and cause us to wonder “what is going on!?”

This is where these two disciples find themselves on that day, a day that many of us could or will indentify with in our lives. But they also find themselves being joined by a stranger who unbeknownst to them is the very friend and teacher they mourn over on this walk, on this journey to Emmaus. They are joined by Christ on this journey. They are joined by their friend Jesus on this walk where they are in the midst of their own pain and confusion. That is truly on of the wonderful things about this story we are dwelling in this day – Jesus comes and meets them where they are in the midst of their journey. And then he brings to them the Word – the word that it was necessary for the Messiah to go through that pain and death and rise up to new life. A word that declared by Moses and the prophets that God’s work within the world goes far beyond the uplift of God’s people into a saving embrace for all creation. Where Jesus, this Word made Flesh, gives up everything for the creation that God has made, declaring “I will not let you go!”

At the risk of relating this all to myself, my godson did something just this past week that simply brought joy to my face. Last week, I got to go to chapel with my classmates that I graduated with three years ago. It was wonderful to be in that chapel to be surround by all those familiar faces and voices. When it was time for communion, the presiding minister got and started saying the Eucharistic prayer, giving thanks to God for all that god had done. When the presiding minister got to the words “In the night in which be was betrayed…” my godson turned to his father and said, “I love this part!” And so seeing that journey of these two disciples is not over, we come to the part of the story where I simply have to say, “I love this part!” This part where Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

For this meal that we gather around at least twice a month (and I wish we could do it more!) is a meal where Jesus himself is made known to us in a very real and very physical as we eat of the body that was broken FOR US and drink of the blood that was shed FOR US. You see this sacrament is in itself they very place where we come to meet our Lord in the breaking of the bread. The promise that this bread and this wine really truly is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ when we hear those words GIVEN FOR YOU and SHED FOR YOU is the place where we can say with all certainty of our faith that the Lord has come to meet us where we are, along the road that we travel this day as well the days past and the days ahead. And I love this part, because this part declares to me that no matter where I am what I may have possibly done, or how lost I feel in my life, Jesus is present with me this day in this bread and wine that becomes the body and blood through the word that God has declared. When you hear that, you hear all that our Lord has done and given up for us so that we might be forgiven, so that we might be raised from death into new life.

CHRIST IS RISEN!

HE IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELIUIA!!!!!

Good Friday 2011

2011-04-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

John 18-19

Good Friday 2011

I am stripped bare

there is finally nothing left to hide me.

I’ve fought and fought

trying desperately to cling to what has covered me.

You show me, me

and I cringe at the crusty corners that have cut and scraped.

My deeds, my sin

turning from life, turning toward what eats up my life.

I lash out

striking with the sword, returning to that vicious circle that has spiraled down throughout history.

Though in the End, I’ve forsaken you

running in shame, denying what you have tried so desperately to teach me, denying who I am, denying who you are because fear for my own life has consumed me.

Perhaps one of the hardest parts of this story which gathers us this day is witnessing to the actions and reactions of Peter and the rest of the disciples. Just the night before these are all the very same people that Jesus spent quite a bit of time and care telling these disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, but I have called you friends.” (John 15.15) these men and these women who Jesus has called and gathered around himself are more than just pupils to be taught lessons. These men and women are friends who share in a deep love that cares dearly for each and every one of them. So when disciples run away from the scene of Jesus’ arrest and then when Peter denies fully, whole-heartedly that he does not know this man who has just called him a friend, we begin to see the completeness of the disciples failure to trust and follow in the way of their Lord.

And when I hear about how these people who knew Jesus personally and loved him dearly abandons him to die, I cannot help but begin to see where I’ve failed, where I’ve run away from what I avowed to stay loyal to. Even the best of us fail in our lives to always do what is absolutely right. Even the best of us have our faults that are laid bare from time to time. And that simply is a part of what the cross reveals in stark detail. It reveals the sins we have committed, and it reveals all those times when we very possibly could have done some more. In the end our strength, our reasoning, and our intellect fail us. For sometimes the right thing to do is not clear, and other times it can be as clear as a bell ringing, and yet we fail to act.

But the cross also shows one amazingly foundational truth that undergirds all of creation throughout all time – Jesus dies for us so that we may see the depths to which our God goes for us people who have failed. Jesus does not make a pact before he is handed over to be killed. He does not say, “I will go do this for you if you promise to shower me with love and glory.” He does not say, “I will do this for you if you promise to be perfect from this day on out.” He says, “I do this for you, because I love you and I do not want to let you go.” So the cross finally shows the vastness of God’s love that as the Apostle Paul says in Roman, “nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8.39)

But…

Truth is stripped bare

everything that clouds my vision has vanished.

Light shines and shines

illuminating what is real and what is from everlasting to everlasting.

You show me love

and I smile at something so steadfast and serene.

My hope, my trust

reveling in wonder, reveling in the life you continually give me.

You’ve forgiven

And I am stripped bare

There is finally nothing left to hide me or your love.

The Strange, yet Holy Table

2011-04-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

Matthew 26.17-30

Maundy Thursday 2011

This is my body given FOR YOU.

This is my blood shed FOR YOU.

These are the words that grace us this night. These are the words that turn simple bread and simple and simple wine into something more and something greater than we could have ever possibly imagined. These are words FOR US, including those who are celebrating their place at the communion table that has always and always will be there for them. These words are the very words that Jesus imparts to his disciples, his friends on an evening where he very much knows that he must do what he must do, that he must be betrayed and abandoned by these very same people that he dearly calls friends. These words gather us all around a table set for a meal where there is a place for all of you.

It is a strange table, is it not? It certainly does not look like a big long table that a family would gather around for Christmas or Easter, and there certainly is not a sumptuous feast of turkey, roast beef, or ham with all the trimmings. We sometimes kneel. We sometimes stand. We even sometimes have it brought to us when cannot make the journey to it ourselves. It is a strange table that people the whole world over share a place at when they hear those words “given and shed FOR YOU.” This meal that we receive at this strange table is a sacrament – a gift given to us by God by God’s command FOR US for the forgiveness of our sins.

It used to be thought for a while that for a person to be able to come to this table that person had to prepare and purify his or herself – that he or she had to take care not to receive it in an unworthy manner. But this line of thinking simply misunderstands what Jesus declares to be true for us all as they gathered for that last meal together. What happens in this holy meal is something that God does and that God does alone. It is God’s word that turns this everyday bread and every day wine into the body and blood of our Lord Jesus. It is God’s word that commands us to this in remembrance of our Lord Jesus. It is God’s word that declares from that night in Jerusalem to this very day in a small country church in Wisconsin that, in Christ’s body and blood, we have the forgiveness of sins. All because it is FOR US.

So when we come to this visually strange, yet wholly wonderful meal, we come as people in need of God’s grace. Jesus knew this that night in which he instituted it. He knows that this night he is to be betrayed. He knows that these people who he has come to call friends are going to abandon them. Christ knows that they are very much a people who need grace and forgiveness even as he speaks those words of institution at that Passover meal and gives to us this daily food that has the power to refresh and strengthen us in our faith.

There are times when doubts and sorrows assail us for all sides. There are times when it seems like the devil “sneaks and skulks about at every turn, trying all kinds of tricks…[wearing] us out so that we either renounce our faith or lose heart and become indifferent or impatient. For times like these, when our heart feels too sorely pressed, this comfort of the Lord’s Supper is given to bring us new strength and refreshment.” (Luther’s Large Catechism, p. 469; Kolb-Wengert ed. of the Book of Concord.)

The power of this meal resides in the one who goes to do what he must do. Today and through the next two days we will see the depths and the heights our God goes to for us. For the next two days, we see that Jesus’ body and blood are broken and shed for us, for all of us, for the forgiveness of the sins we carry with us, even to this strangely shaped, but wholly holy table.

Thoughts from Places: Small Town America

2011-03-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

The Melodic, harmonic, symphonic Incarnation

2010-12-24T12:07:00.000-08:00

Luke 2.1-20

Christmas 2010

And so here we are, gathered together on cold winter night in a warm, beautifully lit and decorated church, again…for yet one more year…for yet one more time to hear the same story told yet again, to hear the beautiful hymns that extol the wonder and joy of the birth of child just like last year and the year before that. This story is the story that brings us together this night. This story is the story that causes the world to rush frantically about in the weeks and days trying cross every gift that needs to be purchased, every cookie that needs to be baked, and every decoration to be hung with the love and care that we seek to express as the snow falls to the ground and covers our lawns trees and houses in dazzling white blanket.

This is a time of year of giving, of sharing the love that we have for one another, yet it is the same story. It is the same act of giving birth to a child that causes us to do what we do. What is it about this story that it has the power to resound throughout the world for ages upon ages? What is it about that one singular night which has begotten so many nights of remembrance? Simply put, this story, this night that we hear about year after year in an unchanging manner is nothing less than the Lord our God who made us and gave us life come down to earth to live, laugh, love, cry, and die among us. This is God made flesh, born into the world.

Sadly this world that God is born into is not a world that rejoices in a symphony of music melodious and harmonious. Rather the world that Jesus was born into was filled with the cacophony of sorrow and unrest. War, sickness, poverty, and oppression afflict the people God so lovingly made, and perhaps saddest of all, the people God so lovingly made had so often visited these afflictions upon one another. Yet perhaps this is one of the reasons this story has resounded throughout the ages. For the same cacophony still rings out in our world. For Jesus comes yet again this year to redeem a world that still lives broken and afflicted to sing again the beautiful melody of love and forgiveness that mends the broken hearted and lifts up the lowly but not before bringing down the powers of discord that sin has placed high among us.

Now if you can’t tell, the musician in me has taken hold as I describe the birth of Christ as the beginning of a song that leads to the glorious resolution of God’s great symphony. Maybe I’m trying a little too hard to be poetic, yet I believe that this metaphor stands true. The world we live in is a world that is desperate need of the love, healing and forgiveness that God brings to us through the birth of that little child, “away in a manger, no crib for his bed.” Wars rage on as our brothers and sisters in Christ fight for their life and the lives of those around them. Diseases ravage places of disaster like nation of Haiti where 2,000 people have died as a result of an epidemic of cholera. The poor, the unemployed, and the underemployed still struggle with the fear and uncertainty in their lives as they figure out how to provide for themselves and their families. Some of us have lost people close and dear to us and grieve that they are not around to share their life and the love with us as they once did. But that’s why this old story, these old songs, and wonderful family traditions have lived from generation to generation to generation. This story is the beginning of a story that has the power to resound in 1^st century Palestine. This story has the power to resound in 16^th century Europe. This story has the power to resound in 21^st century Taylor, WI. Because this story breaks into our lives and welcomes us with love, compassion and forgiveness even when our lives have become full of dissonance.

This story of Jesus being born in a stable and laid in a manger is the story of God’s love for the world that God created, and God has not and will not abandon God’s creation. And this story is a story for the whole world to hear. Just take a look at the setting and players in this story! God comes to a lowly virgin who has little or no power within her society and says, “You will be the one who will bear my Son into the world.” God comes to a simple carpenter and asks him to care support this young family trusting that this all is indeed good. God comes to shepherds, people who live on the outskirts of society who are told to go spread the good news. God comes in this setting to these people so that we just might see that this story, this song is a gift of faith and love given to the whole world and not just the privileged few. When Christ is born a melody ensues that challenges the way we think about our world and our place within it. When Christ is born a melody ensues that ends with a big, full beautiful, resonant chord of redemption and wholeness. Yes this is an old story and an old song, but bursts forth year after year showing us exactly who God is and what God does and that is that our God is a God who is for us. This is what begins with Jesus’ birth and is fully revealed on the cross.

There are so many songs that lift up this very foundational notion, and Christmas seems to have given us some very beautiful songs over the years. From the depth of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear which tells of how this story is a comfort for out whole lives to the clear and simple Silent Night which so perfectly describes the mood of this holy night, our Christmas hymns have been treasure throughout the years. But just four years ago I heard a song come on the radio that captures the clarion call of this night. It’s by the Goo Goo Dolls. Now, kids if you don’t know who that band isyou might try asking your parents, and for some of you older folks out there you may need to ask your kids who that band is, but in 2006 they released the single “Better Days.” I want to share a portion of the words of that song:

And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Cuz I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
And desire and love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight's the night the world begins again

The Neighborhood of Make Believe and the Kingdom of God

2010-07-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Luke 11.1-13

7/25/10

“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, it’s a beautiful day for a neighbor…” How many of you sitting out there today know where that song is from? I certainly do. It’s the song that began every episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. I grew up that show. It fascinating and safe place to use my imagination, to see how so many of the things we use from day to day are made, and to learn a little bit of how kindness can and should be spread throughout the world. In some ways, it’s something of miracle that his show lasted for so long on public television, especially for the way it has been mocked throughout the years. I guess some people just couldn’t get past the idea that image he portrayed on screen could actually be his real personality and the way he really dealt with people on a regular basis.

Now, how many of you knew that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister? You wouldn’t know that by only watching his television show, but yes he was an ordained minister who was specially charged with serving children and families through his television show. So when I think back to “the Neighborhood,” I can recognize how he sought to imagine a world where God’s kingdom had indeed come and how people loved, laughed, cried, got angry, and even forgave one another in the rule of that kingdom. Mr. Roger’s “Neighborhood of Make Believe” sought to be an example of what it is like to live your life by faith, trusting in God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. He didn’t use specific Christian Language, but he still preached the gospel of a life lived by faith.

The prayer we pray every time we come together in worship and for many of our meetings is the Lord’s Prayer, is it not? That is prayer that doesn’t change from week to week. (Sure the words may be a little different from time to time, but is the meaning of that prayer ever truly changed by saying “sins” instead of “trespasses?”) This is the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples when they ask him to pray. This is the prayer that holds on so very dearly in people’s minds even when the ravages of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease work upon our loved ones. And what is at the heart of this prayer? It is nothing other than beseeching, asking, even begging God for God’s kingdom to come right here, right now. In this place, in this time.

In praying for God’s kingdom to come, we are praying for that kingdom that rule of love to rule our hearts as we deal the people all around us in our lives – those who have sinned against us and those we have sinned against. In praying for God’s kingdom we are praying for that kingdom to come where we receive our daily bread – not just the food and water we need to eat and drink every day, but all of those things that we need to live and flourish. But we ask for our daily bread, not for what we want or what we think we might need in the future. In praying for God’s kingdom to come, we are praying that, in God’s kingdom coming into the earth and into our lives, we are delivered from the evil that plagues us brought into the promise that will always hold us dearly and lovingly even though we die. It is a bold prayer that we pray mostly from memory every week or more often depending on our practice. Do we have the courage to pray this prayer? Do we have the persistence to pray this prayer? Do we even have the absolute shamelessness to ask our God something so astounding?

I had another pastor point out to me this past week that the persistence that Jesus talks of in the short parable in our reading is actually much better translated as “shamelessness.” There are times in our lives where we don’t always know what to pray and how to pray to pray it. And again scripture shows us just how much the disciples can be like us when they ask Jesus to teach them to pray. And Jesus teaches us how to pray. That may be one of the more important things to remember when you think about how we may even begin to be shameless enough to ask God of these astounding things. Jesus teaches us. In faith, we find that God enters into our lives and gives us the strength to pray our prayers especially in those when it may be hard to pray. And I tell you, it has been hard to pray this week. It gets to be that way in our lives from time to time, but those are the times in which Jesus holds us up and is as relentless and shameless as he asks us to be in our lives.

We had vacation bible school led by a team of counselors from Luther Park Bible Camp this past week, and they closed every day of bible camp with a shout prayer. Fred Rogers may not have gone for a prayer that was so loud and boisterous, but I suspect he would have agreed whole heartedly with the Spirit behind those prayers. Because, as Mr. Rogers himself said once to a young girl, “the thing God wants most of all is a relationship with you, yeah, even as a child – especially as a child.” The Kingdom of God that Fred Rogers imagined maybe have been a land of make believe, but when we make believe that God’s rule is how we are going to live our lives, it becomes real in our relationships with each other and with God. Be bold. Be persistent. Be shameless. And my God’s indeed come upon the earth.

Praise God!

2010-04-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Psalm 150

4/11/10

There’s a joke that bounces around the halls of seminaries about praise songs, praise bands, and praise worship. It’s usually told with an air of cynicism that all praise music can be boiled down to this – three chords, four words, five times. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this kind of worship, but it usually looks like a service in a big space where the congregation looks up something that looks much more like concert stage with pianos, bass, guitars, trumpets, saxophones, trombones 5-6 vocalists, and a drum set right in the middle. As disparaging as this joke about 3 chords, 4 words, 5 times is meant to be, it does speak to a truth that worshipping God singing “Jesus is my friend” five times with a simply melody and harmony, while entertaining can be a thin worship experience that is designed to be more about entertainment than the depth of God’s presence in our whole life, good time and bad.

Now let me take a moment right now to say that the contemporary service lead by our Sanctuary Singers does not fit the mold of that disparaging 3-4-5 joke. The old hymns that we love are most often old folk songs of the people who gathered in Christ’s name hundreds of years ago, and I’ve to see that the songs that the Sanctuary Singers leads for our contemporary services are the real, authentic folk songs of this parish, especially as many of them are written by the people who live and work in this area of Jackson County and Trempealeau County. Moreover, there is depth in those songs which speak to the profound presence and love of God in our whole lives. Praise songs too often come nowhere near that depth of meaning, yet in this Easter season, hearing Psalm 150 which our children helped tell this morning, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to discount simple praise of God.

We really don’t need to look much further than the Book of Psalms. The Psalmist regales us this day with in which the beginning of each line is Hallelujah! Praise! Praise! Praise! Praise! Praise! and ending with another triumphant Hallelujah! Clearly taking some time to simply praise God is an activity that we should engage in. As jaded about praise music as I and other learned people can be, there can be profound truth about God and what God has done expressed in praise music. But that truth is not something that can be left to the wayside in hopes of making church “fun.” You see songs lifted in praise of God and especially the hymns of praise we find in the Psalms have to carry with them the implication that the wondrous things that God does begin with the sorrow of God reaching down to all the suffering and sorrow of creation in the crucifixion of Jesus who died for our sins, who joined with us in our suffering and death so that we might be united with him in his death and rise up to new life with him in his resurrection.

I bet you didn’t know that a praise song could imply all of that. Yet that is exactly what Psalm 150 is doing in praising God. When the psalmist decries “Praise God in the holy temple; praise God in the mighty firmament,” the psalmist is in fact proclaiming our life, our whole life comes from God whose home is all of creation. When the psalmist decries “Praise God for might acts; praise God for exceeding greatness,” the psalmist is in fact proclaiming the greatness of God in restoring, redeeming, forgiving and most of all loving us, the creation God has made. You see, this praise arises from a God who weeps upon the death of one his friends. This praise arises from a God who proclaims that the poor will be blessed. This praise arises from a God who frees his people slavery in Egypt. This praise comes from a God who walks with us in our pain and suffering and gives us the promise that “[God’s] rod and [God’s] staff shall comfort me.” (Psalm 23.4b) And so we should respond with singing, dancing,

Our songs of praise should never deny or hide the fact that there is wrong, evil, sin and suffering in this world. Instead our songs of praise should be solid declarations that God sees our plights, hears our prayers, and bears our sins. So to simply declare “Jesus is my friend” five times over using only three chords, should always be sung with proclamation that Jesus’ friendship is that of a love in which he lays down his life for my life and for your life. To skip the hard stuff, to make this with all its pains and sorrows just a deviation from the glory the in which we were created until we enter back into the glory of heaven cheapens cross the suffering Jesus went through to bring us back from the dead through his blood. We must always begin at the cross, because in the cross unites us with Christ in our faith so that when he is raised that promise is raised for us as well. Our songs of praise are then statements of belief where we say with all assuredness that yes, Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and we do indeed have life Jesus’ name.

And so this morning, I want you all to join me in singing a simple song of praise. Don’t worry if you are singing it right enough of well enough, for whatever it is it will be a joyful sound to the Lord. It is an African American spiritual called “I’m So Glad, Jesus Lifted Me.” (ELW #860) Let us rejoice in that Jesus has indeed lifted us out of our despair and raised us to new life!

Happily after "Happily ever after..."

2010-02-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

Luke 9:28-43

2/14/10

“And they lived happily ever after…” This is probably a phrase that you all have heard at some point in your life. It literally is the fairy tale ending. It’s what is said after Cinderella is found to be the one who the glass slipper fits perfectly. It’s what’s said after Prince Charming finds Sleeping Beauty and gives her the kiss that wakes her from her slumber and banishes the curse put on her kingdom. It’s what happens after Beauty finally admits her love for the Beast. “Happily ever after…” The perfect ending to the perfect story of romance and danger, No?

Happily ever after carries with it some very nice imagery. It carries the image that the two star crossed lovers are finally able to be together. It states that their life from there on forward is mired not in sorrow or heartache, but rather in love and bliss and pleasantness. Happily ever after means that all their cares and needs are forever taken care of almost as a reward for the trials they had to endure to be together. It even often means a beautiful castle with the very finest furniture, coaches, and servants. We love our happy endings. In fact, movie directors are told quite often to make the ending their movies have a happy ending because that’s what people will pay money to see in the theaters. Yet, happily ever after rarely ever occurs in the reality of our lives. In reality, when we come to these watershed moments like those in our fairy tales, we instead find out all too quickly that the next day the sun rises and clock still runs forward and life still continues on presenting more that we must face. Maybe that’s why sequels are so popular at least the first and second times. We know that there’s a next, and we wonder what that next will be.

Certainly today, we are not faced with the end to our gospel story. We know that. In fact, it much more like the middle of the gospel story, yet here we come to this mountain top where disciples see a dazzling display of lights and the coming of two men from their ancestral past that had long been gone. What a sight it must have been! To see light shine forth from Jesus’ face. What a sight it must have been! To see two heroes from the past who had led their ancestors out of slavery and through strife. It may not have been the end of the story, but it is no wonder that Peter would rather erect dwellings and stay in this place from here on out than to do anything else. “Master, it is good for us to here, let us make three dwellings…”

At this point of the gospel story, this would be Peter’s happily ever after. Here, on this mountain, Peter and James and John would be able stay forever in the presence of the glory of their God. They would forever be able to bask in the light and glory of the God who had created them and has sustained them throughout the years. In Peter’s words, it is good for us to be here. Here on this mountain their cares and troubles melt away, and they only know the happiness in which they experience right now, at this place, at this time. But God declares that they should listen to Jesus, God’s Son, the Chosen. And Jesus’ words to his disciples from the very first day they met are still the same: Come and follow me. Maybe not that specific phrase, in phrases like “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people” and “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

The story of Jesus is not a story of happily ever after. The story of Jesus is a story that culminates in the cross in which he wins the forgiveness of sins and eternal life for us all on a cross upon which he dies for us and our sins and transgressions. And Jesus knows this. He knows what he must do. He knows who he must be. He knows he must be the story of redemption and salvation in the world that God has made. And so after that dazzling mountain top experience, there is a On the next day. Jesus knows that life continues forward. Jesus knows that our future contains not only happiness comfort, but also a sadness and sorrow that must be and will be salved.

So instead of Jesus letting Peter and James and John stay up there and erect dwellings for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Jesus leads them down the mountain and onto the path which Christ knows will lead to his crucifixion. And the disciples follow.

Our Lord is not only a Lord of the past, but a Lord of today and the next day as well. Jesus goes forth from that mountain top so that the good news that he brings will be brought to the whole of God’s creation. That is what the Christian life is about. It is about a life that is lived moving forward following Jesus and sharing the grace that God has shown us through the Son who gives up everything so that we might live.

This morning we will baptize a new person into the Body Christ. In Jeremy Rommel’s baptism, a mountain top experience in his life will occur. He will be forgiven of all his sins and claimed as a child of God forever. With those kind of promises, you could almost say, “and Jeremy lived happily ever after.” But he is child. He has so much to learn and experience and all of that is laid out in front of him. It is from this moment of joy and grace that Jeremy must go forth with our help and live a life following Christ, not because he must earn some measure of his salvation, but because the salvation he has been given is a grace and a story that lived a shared throughout the rest of his life.

Jesus turns happily ever after into life ever after lived in the love and grace of our God that has claimed us and will not let go. It’s not that we’re not promised a happily ever after in the life to come with the whole communion of saints, but Jesus comes to bring not only reward but real, actual life. Jesus comes to bring us the next day, and what a joyous next day it is.

Christmas is coming

2009-12-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

Luke 1.39-55

12/20/09

Read Psalm 80:1-7

Yes, Christmas is coming. It is less than a week away. Yes, Christmas is coming. We will gather together and rejoice and be glad and celebrate this festival with our family and friends. Yes, Christmas is coming. The fulfillment of all hope, the very fulfillment of our salvation will be born to a carpenter, his young wife, and the whole of creation in a stable for there was no room at the inn. Christmas is coming. Christmas is coming.

Christmas should be a time of hope and joy. Yet, I wonder if it also is a time where we cry out to God, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we might be saved.” We should be dancing and singing carols of the glorious things that God has done for us, yet we know the bread of tears as we confront this joyous holy day without a loved one yet again or for the first time. We should be laughing at one another’s jokes and stories, yet there are people who will be struggling to find food and water for a day which looks too much like any other day struggling for the bare necessities for life. There are many people who face this coming season with these fears and sorrows, and maybe it just might be true that we all face doubts, uncertainty, fear, anger, and sadness, at least maybe a little while we are rejoicing in the glad tidings of Christmas coming.

I read that psalm to you today in part because it was the alternate reading set before us this day. I read it because it stands in stark contrast to the beautiful and hopeful Song of Mary that we did read together. It is a song that speaks of the hard things that we all do go through in our lives, but it also a song that gives us permission to cry out to God in our sorrow and ask for the help that we truly do need. Mary’s song is a song extolling the goodness and righteousness that God has done in bringing the justice and love that we need. I read this other psalm to you today, our life comes with the reality that we experience great joy and great sadness in our days here on earth. I read this psalm today, because it gives voice to the tension that God brings us joy and life and love, yet the reality of sin and death is ever present within our world today.

We live in this tension between joy and sorrow, and it is okay to do so. It is okay to cry out to God, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!” If we deny the sorrow and suffering of our lives, then we deny the gracious gift and love and that the Father has shown us in sending his only Son so that we might be forgiven and live united in his death. If we deny the joy that has come and is coming to us from the fruit of Mary’s womb, then we deny the truth that God has power over the suffering and death that our sin causes in our lives. This tension between joy and sorrow is a part of the story that makes us to know that God is real and that God loves us more than we could ever possibly put into words.

Giving thanks to God

2009-11-25T15:41:00.001-08:00

Matthew 6:25-33

Thanksgiving Eve 2009

When it comes to God and what God says and what God promises, there are simply times when I just don’t understand what God is doing or what in the world God is saying to you and me. This text that we just heard, and this national holiday that have for tomorrow is just one such of those times. Jesus says, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.” And this confuses me because I keep hearing that, if I’m going to continue on living and not die, then I need food, water, air and shelter. Those are the very basic things that I need. They are the very basic things that everyone who lives upon this planet earth needs. So I’m not supposed to worry about what I will eat, what I will drink, or where I will sleep tonight?

Of course, when you take the whole world’s population into account, I am simply among the richest people on the planet. It doesn’t feel like it, but think about this. I never had to ask myself these questions: Will I have a place to sleep tonight? Will I have food to eat today, let alone this week? Will I have water to drink? Instead, I’ve asked myself these questions: Should I have a Diet Mountain Dew or Diet Pepsi? What will I have for supper tonight? When will I lay down in my warm bed after I get home tonight? Do you hear the difference in those questions? So the thing that has me completely befuddled with what Jesus is saying is how do I tell someone who’s physical well being depends on the very basic of needs to not worry about them?

The thing is Jesus telling us not to worry about we will eat, drink or wear is not a word of scolding for the person who is dealing with those basic needs in all actuality. It isn’t, because Jesus is simply stating the truth that worry will not put food on the table. It can’t. Only going out and finding food like a bird flying in the air will meet that need. Maybe I’m befuddled by what Jesus is saying, because I don’t know and I can’t understand what it truly is like to be that impoverished.

If you are aware of this or not, the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin, our synod, has a companion synod in Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malawi in Africa. The bishop from that synod said while he was visiting here in Wisconsin, “I don’t know how you people can believe in God. You have everything. What do you need God for?” Maybe this really gets to the core of what Jesus is saying tonight. Maybe Jesus is shaking us to look at the blessings that we have been given from God. Maybe Jesus is telling us what it is like to live a life where we truly pray to God “Give us this day our daily bread.” Maybe what we truly are called to be is a people who strive not for securing our future but instead striving for and seeking the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness. Maybe what Jesus is saying shows us our need for God and tells us that our trust, our faith should be in God alone, believing that God does provide.

I think that every year we enter into Thanksgiving day we have in our minds thoughts of what we have been blessed with in our lives. We give thanks for the people who have cared for us, who have made our life a little more joyous. We give thanks for the things that we do have even as we see the things that are slipping through our fingers. But perhaps we should give our greatest thanks to the one who has given us the life that we do have and who has freed us from the death our sins condemn us to. At times in our life it can be hard to see exactly what God is up to because we don’t see our need for God. But nevertheless, God is still faithful and God continues to provide for us even when gone as far as we possibly can go and taken our last breath. And God reaches down, scoops us up and hold us within those loving eternal arms. Let us give our thanks to God.

The insignificant made significant...

2009-11-07T21:54:00.001-08:00

Mark 12:38-44

11/8/09

Insignificant. That’s maybe a word you could describe how it feels to be just one person amongst a whole world of problems. Just one person. Just one life. Living in a world with six billion people, a nation with 350 million people, a state of five and a half million people. Who am I in the midst of all this immensity? The world is filled with problems ranging from wars to hunger to pandemics to looming environmental disasters to financial crises. To confront any of those problems by myself would be like a rain drop falling upon a slab of granite – barely felt and quickly forgotten as it evaporates into the heat of a day.

I could hold up a sign the declares that all sides should give up fighting and make way for peace, but myriad other voices would drown that out as each side would press on with their calls for fighting and defense for what is good. I could cook a meal for someone who needs food and nourishment, but that act of kindness would be statistically unimportant and thrown out of the gathered data as outlier insignificant to the overall picture of what is going on. Of course, I’m not exactly a faceless, nameless person without any voice to speak to a good number of people. I’m a pastor, and I have a place and time to speak at least weekly. I’m charged with inspiring people to action. I’ve been called to be a leader of people, to preach and to teach. As the world sees it, I am no faceless, nameless, homeless person without the power to influence people and situations. I have a position of authority. I have a position of importance….at least those are things I could say if I was delusional and completely concerned with who I am and what power I wield. Let me assure you. I am not completely delusional. Although, maybe there are times when I let that fantasy enter into my mind. Perhaps I will yet receive “the greater condemnation.”

What harsh words we are confronted with by Jesus in the beginning of our gospel reading. The scribes are just doing their jobs and fulfilling their calling as teachers and preachers of God’s word. We hear Jesus denounce them for wearing long robes (oops.). We hear that they are greeted with respect and like to sit in the places of honor (yeesh.). We hear that they like to say long prayers (*gulp*). Jesus is not kind to the thought that some people are better than others because of the trappings they surround themselves with. Yet, it is pretty clear that Jesus, while passing harsh judgment upon the scribes, is not passing judgment upon them for simply being scribes but for taking the fact that they are scribes as something to be especially honored. Then these scribes go further yet and take that position of authority as something that is even higher than the welfare and life of widows who in this society are relegated to total dependence on the care and generosity of others. Thankfully, we never get caught up in the “show” of who are, or do we?

It’s sad but you and I can get caught up in the image that other people see of us, and we can get caught up in the image that other people show to us as we encounter them in our lives. These scribes that Jesus is condemning have given up care for other people and care for the godly work that they perform for care of how they look and seem to other people. I bet that there are times when we can and should rightly indentify with these scribes and condemnation that Jesus proclaims for them. At least when we see that condemnation and hear it speaking to us in our lives, we can finally reassess who we are and who we should be. You see, that is part of the power of Christ. Part of the power of Christ is to shake us to the core so that we can see that we have turned away from the things that we should be concerned about and turned towards ourselves and how righteous and just we appear before the world. That is a power that names sin and names its hold upon us. That power can show us how we fight for our appearance. That power can show us how we devour widow’s houses, maybe not literally, but certainly figuratively as we are either implicit or complicit in the systems that keep people poor, that keep people hungry, and that keep people in conflict. It’s not even the money we spend in all the various places of our lives. It’s the way that we tend to put ourselves and our wants above the things we should really care about – our trust in God and our care for all the people and the rest of creation that God has made.

So today, where is grace to be found? Certainly we cannot find grace in our ability to always trust in God above all else and to always care for the needs of others. For as we know, a single person’s quest to do everything right will do nothing to change the reality of the situation. That is until one person was born showed us all that his IS the power to bring in a new reality. That is until Jesus is born and walks among us, teaches among us, and dies for us and our sin, that inability to trust in God above all else.

You see, grace is to be found in the way that Jesus declares and proclaims that even the seemingly insignificant contribution of a poor widow is deemed the worthiest gift of all. Normally, such a gift would go unnoticed and be considered meaningless the total sum of that is collected in to the treasury of the temple, but Jesus is seeing that poor widow give all that she had left took notice of someone and something and turns it into a proclamation of grace that, in God’s eyes, no goodness, act of kindness, sharing of love, or trusting in God is deemed insignificant. In the reality that Jesus ushers in, it is that trust in God, even as flawed as it is for us sometimes, and goodness that makes this immense world and universe a significant place. That is our hope in the face of the hopelessness of fulfilling the Law that God would have us fulfill. It’s not that we forget how to be sinners, we probably remember all too well how to be sinners, but has deemed each one of us as insignificant as we are individually as worthy of God’s love and forgiveness.

Today we will/we have baptize(d) a new child into the church. We will baptize a child that the world vastly on the whole has taken no notice. Yet, today God will take special notice of Evan and proclaim him to be as special and loved as anyone else in the history of the world, even the really great and really important ones. Today the Holy Spirit will enter into him and forever hold him in the eternal promises specially for him just as specially it was for all the rest of us here today. God has taken notice and God will not forget.

Mark 10

2009-10-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

Mark 10.2-16

10/4/09

In 1992, my family on my dad’s side gathered together to celebrate my grandma and grandpa Ahles’ 50^th wedding anniversary. In 1994, my family on my mother’s side gathered together to celebrate my grandma and grandpa Iverson gathered together to celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary. This year my parents will be celebrating their 32^nd wedding anniversary. As you can tell, my immediate family experience is not that of a personal experience of divorce. Yet, I know that is not the case for everyone in their lives. Divorce is an all too real experience for many people in their lives. The statistic that I keep hearing concerning the divorce rate in the U.S. is at least half if not more than half of all marriages end in divorce. Divorce is so common in our society today that I try not to assume that all families are like mine when I enter into conversation with the people I meet. Rather than get involved with the rightness or the wrongness of divorce, divorce is simply a reality. It is a reality that involves hurt and pain. It is a reality where relationships that were once thought to be so sure, fall into brokenness.

It is no one’s intention to get divorced. Nobody gets married thinking that somewhere down along the line “I’m going to divorce my spouse.” Even the divorced person who really believes that he or she made the right decision sill feels the pain of that decision and will forever carry the marks of that relationship as who that person is has been shaped by that relationship. One of the things that we all experience is that at one point or another in our life we have all experienced the hurt and the pain that the presence of brokenness in our lives causes. No one intends to experience this pain, yet we all the same experience it. This brokenness is sin, but not sin that be placed upon any one single person. It is a sin in which forces that seem to be beyond our control play upon us, and we seem to be powerless to do anything about it. This same sin which causes our relationships to break down is the same sin which allows people to go hungry. This same sin which causes us to fall out of love is the same sin which allows the suffering of people to go on unchecked. This same sin which breaks apart families and friends is the same sin which allows us to only look at our selves and our own needs and not the needs of others. This is a systemic sin in which all the actions and inactions of all our lives leads to the suffering of other people. This sin is simply reality – not necessity, but reality.

Jesus knows this. He sees the Pharisees coming to him with this question to try and get Jesus to take moral judgment upon people who they think are simply wrong. Yet, when the Pharisees ask him this question, Jesus does not point to what’s morally wrong. He points to what is good and right. They ask him to make a judgment upon divorce, and Jesus says that it is good for a man and a wife to live in committed relationship with one another. Jesus knows that God does not intend for our relationship to be broken, but Jesus knows just as much that our relationships will be broken. Jesus has for some time now been trying to tell the people that are following him what he must do. He keeps on trying to get people to know that he has come for us. He has come for this people who are enslaved to sin and death. He has come to die for us so that we may be redeemed in our sin and brokenness and be forgiven for the things that we know that we do and the things that we don’t know what we do. Two times Jesus has foretold this to the people around him, and a third time is just around the corner.

So when Jesus says, “Therefore what God has joined let no one separate,” he is saying that God’s intention for us is that we would live in relationship with one another. He is saying that it is God’s intention that we live in community respecting the bonds that tie us together. He is saying that God intentions are wholly good, and it is only when our sin enters the picture do those intentions get distorted. Jesus does not come to make excuses for our sin, but he does come to forgive us of our sins. Jesus sees that we are a broken people makes for us a lament that cries out on behalf of us to restore us to wholeness and to restore us to righteousness. This does not mean that are to live in unhealthy situations, but he has come to us who are broken.

And so then, little children are brought Jesus so that he might bless them. If you are saying to yourself at this time that this turn in the story seems to be coming in straight out of right field, then you could be right. Yet, having this story of Jesus welcoming the little children into his arms is a wonderful moment of reconciliation and grace. These little children, people who were very much “the least of these” in Jesus’ society, are the ones who Jesus has come to bring into his kingdom of reconciliation and grace. It is in turning to these children where Jesus makes the bold statement that he has come to be our Lord, a Lord of Life, a Lord of Love, a Lord of forgiveness. It is wonderful to see that what really makes Jesus indignant amongst all this talk of divorce and adultery are foolish disciples who try to bar the way for the children to come to Jesus and receive his blessing. Sin is a reality that Jesus has come to address, but denying grace and forgiveness to least, the weak, the forgotten, the hurting is what causes him to make a clear statement about what people shouldn’t do. Grace and Blessing is something that Jesus will not let be denied. Reconciliation and forgiveness is what he has come here to do.

Bishop Pederson at the synod ministry retreat painted a picture of just who are these children who come to Jesus. He said that this image is one of the more beloved images of Jesus’ ministry as we imagine this scene more often than not with serene, peaceful little children who are quiet, respectful, and nearly angelic in the presence of Christ. I don’t know about you, but children are rarely quiet, serene, peaceful, and nearly angelic. More often than not, they are giggling, yelling, running around to and fro, getting into things, getting dirty, demanding this or that, or crying. Children are getting into fights with their siblings telling each other not to touch them or even breathe their air. Children come with bumps scrapes and bruises that only a gentle kiss can cure. Does that sound like any children you know? Yet Bishop Pederson went on. He painted the picture of children who are living in destitution, hungry, sick, or made to grow up in a way that we could almost never imagine for our own children.

It is all these children who Jesus scoops up into his arms. All these children who are dirty, poor, sick, scared, laughing, screaming, and playing. These are the ones to whom the Kingdom of God belongs. And what’s more is that is us who are made children of God in our Baptism who come to Jesus broken, sinful, sick, tired, and hungry for forgiveness that Jesus wraps up in his arms blessing us and forgiving us for the things that we have done and the things that we have left undone.

Stochasticity

2009-06-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

Mark 4:35-41

6/19/09

(Inspired in part by WYNC's Radio Lab)

Stochasticity. Do any of you know what this word means? Could you even spell it? No? Stochasticity is something that we encounter every day of every year of our lives. Still doesn’t ring a bell does it? Well, don’t be too distressed. It is a big fancy science word and my spell check doesn’t even recognize it as a word. It just gives that red, squiggly line underneath it telling me that there’s something wrong with it. However, like I said earlier, it really is a word that describes something that happens to us in our everyday lives. Stochasticity is simply the concept of the ever pervasive presence of randomness in our world. It’s why making exact weather predictions is nearly impossible. It’s why baseball players and basketball players usually make only a certain number of shots in a game. It’s what is behind this sometimes chaotic world as lives and events don’t always go as orderly as we have them planned in our minds. We often like to think that our lives are going to go A, B, C, however that plan gets derailed as X disease ravages one’s body unexpectedly, Y layoffs put retirement plans on hold, or even Z the slippery spot on the road causes the car to spin out of control paralyzing the person from the waist down.

Sometimes life takes unexpected turns and even sometimes it can feel as if it is completely spinning out of control as life seems to get only more and more chaotic as what was supposed to happen is disrupted by random chaotic events. If he had come to the intersection just a second earlier… If she had stayed on her original flight… Basically, if the coin had come up “heads” instead of “tails.” Each moment in our lives has a number of different outcomes and choices and possibilities, and at times it feels like we have no control over how things are going to turn out in our lives. Sometimes it feels like we are caught in a storm at the mercy of the crashing waves and swirling wind crying out “Teacher! Do you not care that we are perishing?”

This cry from the disciples comes out of the ancient image of Chaos within the world – the sea and the storms that rage across it. All throughout the Bible this image for chaos gets played out in story after story. In the Exodus story, it get played out as the Red Sea blocking the escape of the Israelites from the Pharaoh’s army. In the book of Joshua it is used to mark the boundary demarcating the end of the 40 year wilderness journey and the beginning of their life in God’s Promised Land. In the book of Jonah, the seas crashed and raged around the boat Jonah was trying to use to get away from God. You see, water is an amazing, powerful image for the people of the Bible. It has the power to give life and the power to take it away. The sea was a place that claimed victims in the storms and winds crash about on them. One was never completely safe and secure and the stochasticity of life, the randomness of life was ever apparent. No wonder the disciples were afraid. Even though they were fisherman, that perhaps made them keenly aware of the seriousness of their situation as water began to swamp the boat they were on. Fear gripped the disciples, and what makes it worse is that there was nothing that they could do about it. In fact, they believed that they were going to die – Jesus! We are perishing!

So where does God fit into all this chaos of fear and death? How does God fit into this world where chaos rages from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth? How does God fit into a world where our lives seem to hinge on the outcome of a coin flip? How do we want God to act in a world where an infinite amount of causal relationships of the decisions we make and decisions thrust upon us are made? For the disciples, it seems as if they almost want Jesus to react as fearful and anxious as they are themselves. Water is swamping the boat! Wind is whipping around tossing the boat back and forth! Come on Jesus! Wake up! How can you be sleeping at a time like this?

We would rather that Jesus exhibit some of the same fear and anxiety that we are feeling. Instead, Jesus displays a calm indifference to our fear when we would rather he rush in and save us from our immediate fears. There are times when we’d rather have our God be a God who comes running like mother after her child wandering out into the street than have who stares calmly into the face of chaos and death. It’s not until the disciples wake him up that Jesus even has any care about what is happening. Upon being woken up, he simply turned to the sea and said “Peace. Be Still.” Jesus’ words calm the storm. Jesus’ words calm the sea. Jesus’ words then create astonishment in the disciples as his words bring order and peace to chaos and randomness within the world. Jesus stands up to the chaos creates calm with his very words. “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Who is that order and creates out of the chaos?

Before this, maybe they saw Jesus as a prophet relating the will of God to the people. Maybe they saw Jesus as a healer helping the sick. Maybe they only thought of him as a teacher like how they do on the boat. But, upon seeing Jesus do this, they are simply in awe, yet they still don’t get it. They don’t get that this man who sleeps on a boat in the stormy seas is God, the creator and sustainer of all life, and he has come to bring in the Reign of God where sin and death have no more power over our lives. Trusting in that, in other words, having FAITH means trusting that Jesus has come to put a calm and an order upon our lives that truly allow us to finally live free from our constant fears of whatever might happen to us in our lives. It doesn’t mean that we are unaffected by randomness, by this concept of “stochasticity” in our lives. It means that when go through the storms and chaos in our lives, God is right there with us, never abandoning us, and giving us the strength of God eternal steadfastness throughout all our lives.

For all the beauty even unseen...

2009-06-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

Mark 4:26-34

6/21/09

I did a big part of my growing up in western Kansas where my parents served as co-pastors of upwards of four congregations in a 60 mile radius. Now, one of the things that I still remember fondly was the literal amber waves of grain. We drove by them on the way to school in the school bus. We drove by them on the way to church. We drove by them on the way into the city to do our shopping. One of the things you should realize is that “amber waves of grain” isn’t just an image in a patriotic song. It is literally what happens as the strong southerly winds drive across the open fields of grain causing them to undulate and crest like the waves of the open sea. That take by itself is an absolute beauty and sight to admire.

I’ve often heard from people that the drive along the roads to get through the state of Kansas is one of the most boring things you could ever do. I’ve heard it said, “There’s nothing to see out there! It’s just flat and empty.” I lived out in western Kansas for seven years, and I’ve had multiple occasions to go back to visit and see the area in which I spent a significant portion of my childhood. Let me tell you all here, there is a depth and breadth of beauty that is almost unmatched. Sure there aren’t many trees, and the trees that do grow are stunted and twisted by the whipping winds. Sure there aren’t majestic hills, let alone enormous mountains that loom high in the sky. But, Kansas has a beauty that you wouldn’t expect. The beauty is in the grand scope you can get looking off into the horizon and be amazed at the vastness of God’s creation. The beauty is in those undulating fields that ripple and roil in the wind. The beauty is in the subtleties of the landscape that may not be apparent at the first glance. However, getting people to see that and realize such tremendous beauty often fails, because for some reason mountains are something to look at and the plains and prairies are not.

Let me assure you right now that I’m not bringing this up because I’m being paid on the side by the Kansas State tourism board. I’m not even implying that I don’t like or appreciate the beauty that I’m surrounded by right here right now living in Wisconsin. But I bring this up because, for some reason, we all tend to have trouble seeing the value and the beauty in the small, broken down, dilapidated, poor and seemingly insignificant. We love what is grand, extravagant, well kept, popular and successful. But, what makes the grand and glorious be something that we end up valuing so much? What gives things like mountains, canyons, and city skylines an inherent value and worth? Who decided that the mountain was something to look at while the open prairie is just empty and boring?

Jesus knows that when we think of what is good for us in our lives we think of what is grand and glorious. Take a moment. Close your eyes. Try to imagine what the Kingdom of God will look like. Focus on the images that pop into your mind’s eye. What do you see? Do you see a mustard seed growing into shrub? Do you see a farmer harvesting his or her crops? I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, we probably think of the Kingdom of God like we so often imagine heaven in our pictures and descriptions. We first see pearly gates. We see streets paved with gold. We see grand houses in which we will be reunited with all our friends and relatives. But do we see God? Would we even be open to how God makes the Kingdom of God a reality?

Jesus uses these parables so that he can confront what we would expect the Kingdom of God to look like. He uses these parables challenge and confuse what we are expecting from God. He uses these parables to tell us that God’s reign is an event, not a place, where people have trust in God’s love and care for them and where people then respond in showing that love to one another.

This first parable that we heard today is a parable telling us that the kingdom of God is going to grow and happen whether we are vigilant watching it grow or even know all the processes that need to take place for a seed to grow. The farmer doesn’t know and doesn’t need to know the second by second progress of the seeds life. The farmer simply plants the seed and gathers the fruit that the seed bears. In this, the Kingdom of God is simply being open and trusting that the seed will bear fruit in its due season. The process is ultimately out of the farmer’s hands.

The second parable we heard today is a parable telling us that the Kingdom of God is like the unlikeliest of seeds and plants. The mustard seed is small. In fact, if someone dropped it on the ground outside, we just might not be able to find it. Compared to the other things in life back then like having a labor animal or a heard of sheep, just one mustard seed would seem very insignificant. Yet God’s Kingdom comes even in the seemingly insignificant and proceeds to bear the fruit and love that provides shelter, food, and a nesting place for the birds of the air. God’s kingdom comes unexpectedly and directly challenges our normal ways of thinking and shows that that grace has come for the whole of creation and even the seemingly small and insignificant has the power to share God’s grace. God’s kingdom is a place where grace, forgiveness, and simple care for the other person happens as a response to what God has done for us. It doesn’t happen because we know and are making sure it happens. It happens because God has willed it to happen, and happen it does in many surprising and unexpected ways. Even the “flat and empty prairie” is a place where the beauty of God’s work can be seen, if you only have the patience to open your eyes and see its beauty.

The Spirit of Truth

2009-05-31T05:16:00.000-07:00

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

5/31/09

Synod assembly – what a wonderful, inspiring, yet perplexing event to be a part of every year. As most of you know, I along with your voting members sent to the assembly spent the weekend gathering together to not only do the business required of the larger church, but also be inspired by speakers opening our minds to new insights of the scriptures that we hold so near and dear to our hearts and be reminded of the mission that God calls to as the church. How fitting is it that we gathered together the very same weekend when we celebrate that day when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples and turned them into apostles who proclaim the good news to everyone they meet. I really did have wonderful time this past weekend even with the long hours of sitting and listening. I was inspired by our people who presented telling of their stories engaging the book that reveals to us who God is. Yet, like I mentioned earlier, I was perplexed at times wondering what and why people were bringing up the things that they did yesterday and the day before.

I say I was perplexed, and what I mean by that is actually in reference to one particular resolution that came before the assembly just yesterday. That resolution was this: “Be it resolved, that the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin affirm the witness of scripture that Jesus is the only savior.” It sounds pretty straight forward, doesn’t it? There wouldn’t be anything that you would object to in that would there? Saying Jesus is the only savior would be something that we would all be able to agree upon. So, why would this resolution cause me to be perplexed? First off, this statement is something that we already proclaim to be true AND gilds our constitutions in the very opening lines. To bring this up for a vote would be redundant and even imply that this hasn’t been the case in this synod or the wider ELCA. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could have made it through the arduous candidacy and seminary process without this being at the very center of his or her preaching and teaching. However, this is not what has me so perplexed concerning this resolution. What has me perplexed was the discussion that took place over this resolution. In particular, there was one comment that sticks out in my mind even on this the morning after. It was said, “What might be true for me may not be true for somebody else. What might be true for me may not be true for somebody else.”

This perplexes me, because I agree and I disagree with that statement at the very same time. It’s true. We don’t live within a world where everyone agrees upon what they believe. In fact, we have entered an age where no religion can claim that it speaks for everyone in their region let alone their country. There are multiple claims to truth in our world that all seem as true to those people who proclaim them to be true. We as the whole people of God can’t even agree upon which version of Christianity is the “right” one. The world is a messy muddled up place where universal truths that everyone, and I mean everyone, can agree upon are few and far between. You throw a ball up into the air, and it will come back down. The sun will rise every morning just as surely as it will set at evening. You give birth to a person, and that person will eventually die some day. Otherwise, what is truth?

The gospel of John revolves around this question of “what is truth?” Today, we hear Jesus tell the disciples of the Spirit of truth. This Spirit of truth is the very same Holy Spirit that descends upon the disciples on Pentecost after Jesus has risen and ascended to heaven. Sadly, by Jesus telling the disciples that the Spirit of truth is coming to bring them into all truth, he implies that the disciples, no matter how loyal to Jesus they profess to be, no matter how hard they will try to tell the story of who Jesus is, no matter how much they love one another, their neighbors or their enemies, the disciples will be unable to testify to the truth by themselves. They will abandon Jesus. They will lock themselves inside of rooms for fear of persecution. They will doubt the news of Jesus’ resurrection. They will not understand all that has happened if they are left to their own power of understanding to know and trust in who Jesus is. Jesus sees the disciples for who they are. He sees them as human beings. He sees them as people who will struggle with their faith. He sees them as human beings who are in desperate need of God’s help.

Yet, that is why Jesus tells them that the advocate, the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit will come to testify on their behalf. The Holy Spirit is God who is going to come to them to sustain them in the rest of their lives and call them to the mission and ministry that they are to do with their lives. The Holy Spirit will come to them to reveal to them the truth. Yet again, what is truth? The truth is Jesus Christ himself. He is the truth, the way and the life. The truth is not an idea or a rule for life. The truth is a person. The truth is a living, breathing person they can see, feel, hear and touch. The truth is God has come to earth to live as we do, to die as we do, and to raise us up to new life as HE DOES. However, as we know quite well and as the disciples are going to find out, Jesus returns to the father and will not be out walking around with us in the same way that we might walk and talk with our friends and our family every single.

We can say that Jesus is here present when we are gathered. We can say Jesus is present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. We can say that Jesus is in the people who are rejected, downtrodden, in pain, or hungry. But, we know that Jesus is not here in the same way that he walked and talked with the disciples in the Holy land so long ago. Jesus knows this, and that why he goes to send us this advocate who can bring us day after day back to faith in the truth, in who Jesus is. Luther said in his small catechism speaking of the Holy Spirit, “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.”

So, when I hear the statement “What may be true for me may not be true for somebody else,” I must disagree with it, because the truth that we are given by the Holy Spirit is a truth that makes a complete claim upon your whole life and raises you up to new life. This doesn’t mean, let me repeat, DOESN’T MEAN you can throw away someone else’s experience or expression of faith. What it does mean is that you engage that person in being honest to who you are and the truth that has been given to you. These are not truths that we decide for ourselves. They are truths given to us.

When you deal with the question of Jesus being our only Lord and savior, you are dealing with a truth that makes a demand upon your life to share that truth with everyone you meet in words and in action, because it the truth that gives you life in a world that says that there is only sin and death. The apostles, once disciples, know this when the Holy Spirit descends upon them like fire. They proclaim their message to about as diverse a grouping of people that you can get. They don’t say “this is our truth that we have discerned.” They say “this is truth. This is the truth that gives life.”

As for me, as I think about engaging a world that is as religiously diverse as it is, I try to remember that the Holy Spirit works in ways that I sometimes can’t imagine. I know Jesus to be the Lord and savior. But, I wonder how else God has reveled himself to all the diverse people he has made, and I hope and trust in the truth Jesus brings to us in our sin, in our confusion, in our hatred, in our sadness, in our death. That is a truth that comes to us and brings us life. I must proclaim that truth. I can only proclaim that truth. I hope that you too can proclaim that truth, even in a world of multiple experience and expressions of faith.

High School Baccalaureate 20090

2009-05-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

Joshua 4

5/17/09

Class of 2009 of the Blair- Taylor school district, now is set before you a threshold upon which you stand that marks the passage from one time in your life to the next time in your life. Upon this threshold, you can look back and see all that has happened in the past, and you can glimpse into what the future may hold for you in your life.

Psychologists call these places liminal places where, even though you have not quite become the women and men you hope to be, you most definitely not the children who you once were. These liminal places in your life can be joyous events where you celebrate with fond memory the people and events of the past, yet they can also be fearful places because questions such as “What are you going to do with your life?” and “Who am I going to spend my life with?” may not be completely answered. To tell you a little secret, that’s okay! You don’t have to have your life completely planned out to hour, minute, and second, because who knows what the future has in store for you? Just know this, you will take with you all the things that you have experienced, all the things you have learned (whether you will realize it or not), and all the people who have made an impression on you in your life.

When I read the scripture passages that you have selected today, I was struck by your decision to include the reading from Joshua. The majority of the book of Joshua is a book of triumph and conquest, often at the expense of other people’s lives, yet the beginning of that book paints a picture of one of those liminal places where God’s people are now finally living and moving into the promise that God gave them when God liberated them from their slavery in Egypt. It has been a long time and a long journey for the Israelite people. For forty years they had wandered in the wilderness living off of the daily bread, water, and meat that God had provided them day after day. Some people had passed away along that journey. Others had been born along the way. But now, they are here at the banks of the Jordan on the cusp of their new life in a new land. This most definitely was a celebratory, yet anxious time for the chosen people of God.

Still, while there is much unknown to the people of Israel, much future yet to be explored, they are given a command to remember. They are given a command to remember all that had happened to them in the past forty years. They are given a command to remember the people who have gone before them. Most importantly, they are given a command to remember what God has done for them. They are told to remember who God is. Who God is is the one who did not abandon them to slavery. Who God is is the one who sustained them day by day. Who God is is the one who brings them to land and time of new hope and dreams.

So as you embark on this new part of your life, cherish the friends you have made over the years, yet learn from the relationships that have broken. Stand firm in the values you have learned from your parents and teachers, yet be open to love and care for people who may not share your same exact values. Lean on the education you have received over the years, yet come to each new learning opportunity in your life with a renewed curiosity that seeks to know more about the world around you. Most importantly, remember what God has done for you in your life, and trust that God will be there with you wherever you might go and whatever you might do. That relationship will always last and will continue on even if you don’t see how it possibly could be so anymore. That is something that you should pay attention to however your life turns out.

Joshua is told by God to pick up the stones that were in the middle of the Jordan as the people of Israel passed through on dry land just as they once had at the Red Sea. Joshua tells the people of Israel to take these stones so that when their children ask them what they are, they can recount story of what God did for them in liberating them from the bonds of slavery. I invite all of our graduates to come forward and take a stone as a token for them to see, feel and remember the life that has shaped them into the future – whatever that future may hold for them.

Unexpected Grace

2009-05-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

Acts 10:44-48

5/17/09

Who are the people who we’ve left out? Who are the people that we consider to be too far gone to include into our community? Who are the people that we just think that wouldn’t be interested in being “church people,” because they obviously haven’t made the commitments to be here every Sunday or to help out with all the everyday church stuff that takes such hard and dedicated work from “faithful” people for the church to run as well as it does? We’ve all seen people who we would never think would really part of all this good stuff that goes on in church – people that we’ve counted out because they aren’t around and they’re obviously more interested in other things than having faith in God. Sometimes, it just seems like there are people who it would almost be a waste of time to invite or share the good news with. Sometimes, we just simply count people out.

When I was living out in western Kansas in the small town of La Crosse, KS, my family would get the nightly news that was broadcasted from Wichita, KS. There would be segments of news that dealt with the local area we lived in, but we also would hear reports every night about the goings on in Wichita. Wichita, like any other big city, had its part of town where bad things, shootings, thefts, vandalism, seemed to happen on a regular basis. There was even one particular intersection in Wichita that I remember being in the news on a consistent basis – 21^st and Grove. This was one of those proverbial parts of town a person that had concern about safety would want to avoid, just because there was a chance that something could be going down there.

We didn’t go to Wichita often, because it was over three hours away, but we would go to Wichita when my mom would have to go there for board meetings at the Lutheran Social Services office from time to time. This usually happened without any major happenings, and we usually thought of these as small family vacations during the busy church year. However, one time, as we came into town, something did happen – the engine stopped and wouldn’t turn over. Our was dead and wasn’t going to go anywhere by itself anytime soon. The thing was our car decided to break down right at the intersection of 21^st and Grove – the very same intersection that we would hear about on the nightly news. We were stranded at the very place where just didn’t want to be when in Wichita.

Obviously, by my presence here right now telling you this story, nothing terrible happened that night. In fact, something absolutely wonderful happened that night when we were stranded in what was supposed to be the “bad” part of town. Within just a couple of minutes of being stranded at that intersection, people came to help us roll our car into a parking lot while others directed traffic so that we might safely get into that parking lot. Right there, in that notorious intersection, God’s love and care was shown to us by people who, by the conventional wisdom of the day, should have otherwise taken advantage of our situation. God’s love and grace came to us unexpectedly in the help of strangers who didn’t know us or what we were in town for.

Peter too was surprised by the unexpected ways that God’s love works in all people. In fact, we hear a story today from the book of Acts that tells of Peter’s complete surprise. Peter is shown that even the idea that someone who he had thought was simply profane and unclean was someone who the Holy Spirit could inspire to the same faith that he himself has. The general idea had been in this very early church, DAYS and weeks early even, that Jesus had come to be the savior for the people of Israel, and only the people of Israel. The Gentiles were people who did not know God and certainly didn’t follow the Law that God had given as a gift to the people of Israel in the wilderness through Moses. They didn’t share the circumcision that was an outward physical sign of being of God’s elect people. They ate things that the Law considered to be profane and unclean. Certainly, the message of the good news of God of Israel sending the Son to save God’s people would not be for Gentiles. Peter didn’t expect them to be able to hear the good news. He counted them out – that is until God showed Peter and the rest of his followers starking differently.

God comes to Peter and tells him in a vision this simple message. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This was something that Peter had to hear THREE TIMES before he truly understood what it meant for him and his ministry. That is simply this: God’s love and redemption is something that is freely given to all creation. God’s chooses what to make clean, and God chooses to make even those things that were considered to be on the outside clean. So, while Peter is speaking to these Gentiles, these people on the outside of Jewish society the Holy Spirit falls upon them and inspires them to faith in who God is and what God has done. God chooses, and God gives, especially to those people who we think are on the outside of the people we would expect to hear and trust in God.

So, I ask you again. Who are the people we expect would never be a part showing God’s grace to the world? Is it the single mother who we think is scamming the government by living off of welfare while we do the hard work that pays for that? Is it the young couple who would rather be up all night on a Saturday drinking and carousing than coming to church on Sunday morning like a good Christian should? Is it the migrant worker or immigrant who has come here to work a job that pays a little money to help support his or her family? Is it the person who has left church because of a conflict that no one really knows what it was all about anymore?

The power of Holy Spirit works in ways and works in people who we might never think the Holy Spirit could bring faith in God’s steadfast love, laying down the life of the Son so that we might live! While this may condemn us in our short sightedness and our propensity to categorize people on the outside, this is grace for us in our lives as well. God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s saving grace knows no bounds, especially the bounds that we construct for ourselves. God breaks through our barriers. God crushes what we expect that we deserve. God comes to us as we are no matter what we are. If God embraces the outsider, then God just as surely embraces us in our own sinful ways as we place our trust in our reasoning, in our constructions, and in our good deeds and not in the God who gives us our life. We are all deserving of God’s grace because we are all in desperate need of God’s grace in our lives. These are the gifts that God has given us, that God has given us freely. No wonder that when Peter saw that these outsiders were extolling God he proclaims that baptism, that entry into the Body of Christ which is the church, is something that cannot be withheld. God’s free gift of grace is exactly what makes baptism and the Lord’s Supper sacraments. They are the places where we see, taste and touch God’s love for us. Come to table! Receive God’s goodness! Receive the forgiveness of your sins! And GO and share that good news even to the people who we may think are outside of God’s grace and forgiveness!

The wedding of my sister and my new brother...

2009-05-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

Col. 3:12-17 & John 15:9-17

Phoebe and Nathan’s Wedding 5/2/09

Here we are. Here it is. My sister is getting married. I remember how Phoebe and Nathan surprised us all on that Christmas morning when mom opened up that last present telling us that you had decided to get married. I remember the tears of joy and congratulatory handshakes that were passed around as you both surprised us with such wonderful news. And now, we’ve come to that day we’ve all been waiting for as you both embark on this new life together making vows that you will love, support, and care for each other as life with all its up and downs comes year after year. I had almost forgotten how long you’ve known each other, but life has gone by almost too quickly. But, as I’ve gotten to know you Nathan over the years, and as I’ve gotten to know my little sister more and more over the years, I love, perhaps more than anything else about your relationship, how you came to love and accept each other as you are and not as you would want one another to be. I appreciate that more than anything else, because it is that which is going to get you through your life together more than anything else as you should keep coming back to that point where you simply recognize that the other is worthy of your love and care.

This also has reflected greatly in your choice of scripture readings for today. First, we hear of Paul telling a fledgling Christian community to bear with one another in love. Then we hear Jesus again telling his disciples to love one another as he has loved them. Now, while both readings speak of the loved shared within a community of people, you don’t love the other person because they say the right things. You don’t love the other person because of the wonderful things that they do. You love the other person simply because they are loved by a God who gives up everything to be with the creation that God has made. The people that Paul is writing to in this letter to the Colossians are just beginning their life together as this new community of Christians. They are struggling with what it is they need to be doing in order to be good followers of Christ. They keep hearing about things that they are not to taste, touch or handle. They keep hearing that there is secret knowledge and teachings that they need to acquire if they are truly going to be able to have a part in God’s salvation for us. In essence, they hear that they need to act right enough, speak right enough, and even eat right enough to be able to be loved by God, as if what Jesus did on the cross was simply not enough.

But, that’s not the love that God shows us when Jesus is nailed to the cross. When we see Jesus, we see the full depths to which God goes for us AS WE ARE and not as God would have us be. God comes to us as sinners, as broken people, as a people in desperate need for compassion, forgiveness, humility, kindness, and in desperate need for something to truly be able to trust with our life and our love. God comes to us, claims us, and loves precisely for who are and not for who we should be. This is the love that Jesus is telling his disciples to have for one another. He’s telling them that this perfect self-giving love is what we should aspire to, because it allows us to see the inherent worth in the other person and not simply the outside and external qualities that we so often can become infatuated with. This is the basis for a community that is finally able to live for others and not only yourself. “No greater lover than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends?” That is truth and a whole life-giving truth! When you see the love the love that God has for another person, when you see CHRIST in that other person, you are finally able to forget yourself and live fully and freely for the other person.

Nathan and Phoebe, this is something that I already see in both of you as you have come to dedicate your lives to each other is this day. In your love for one another, I see an acceptance and respect for who the other person inherently is. There may be things that you might change if you had the power, but I’m not sure you would both really want to do that because you both love each other as you are.

This doesn’t mean it is always going to be easy. This doesn’t mean that you’ll never wish one or the other would change. There will be fights. There will be disagreements. But it does mean that, as long as you keep in mind the love that God has shown for both of you and everyone else here in and even outside the church, you will be able to come back to love that is freely won and given to us by Jesus – our friend who has given up his life for us. Keep that in mind and you will be able to bear with each other in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love.

Not Another Ghost Story

2009-04-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

Luke 24:36-48

4/26/09

About a week ago, I decided to stop in at Trempealeau Valley Lutheran Church when I had a little time on my hands just to take a look around and spend a little time quietly meditating in this beautiful country church. As I was about to head downstairs, I thought I heard someone moving around down there. This was odd, because as I pulled into the parking lot of church I noticed that there weren’t any other cars there. Wondering who it could be, I went downstairs to check and see who it could be. I didn’t see anybody down there, but I heard a sound again, this time coming from the furnace room. As it turns out, there seemed to be some kind of animal crawling around the duct work who I disturbed upon my entry. At least that’s the conclusion I came to when I heard more clearly the sounds of scurrying coming from the ducts in the furnace room. I have to admit, though, I let my mind wander into the more imaginative parts of my thinking.

You see, my imagination tends to run wild in those situations, coming up with any number of possibilities not least of which can be “supernatural” in my thoughts. When I was a child, I routinely let myself get caught up in ghost stories that I either heard on television or heard from my friends. They warn of self-disclosure in one’s sermons in seminary, but to tell a little secret, there was a time when my imagination ran so wild that I actually slept with a night light, much to the dismay of my older brother who shared a room with me for many years and liked sleeping in the dark. There was something about those stories that really just captured my imagination where I could turn any number of odd sounds or odd lights into any number of ghosts benevolent or otherwise. I don’t think that I’m alone in this either. We seem to have the ability to forge the odd into the supernatural. I think that most of us have a story like this, but I don’t think they are simply the products of us being gullible (although, gullibility, the ability to be taken in, may play a part in our susceptibility to ghost stories). I think that it really is more of a product of our mind trying to make sense of a situation that doesn’t logically add up. Yet, that even fails as I know of quite a few people who have had very real experiences, especially when it comes to loved ones who have passed away.

As it turns out, the disciples are no different. They too are confronted with a situation that just seems too odd to be natural. They too are trying to make sense of what’s been going on around them. So, when they see Jesus the man, friend and teacher that died standing before them, they immediately start thinking of the supernatural. As the Gospel of Luke says, “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” Nothing seems to be making sense to them. First, he died. He was supposed to be the Messiah! He was supposed to be the one who would lead them into a new age. He was the one who had done such amazing things right be fore their eyes, yet he died. To make matters worse, all in the same day, some of the disciples who were women told them that Jesus had risen – story that just seemed to be “an idle tale.” Peter, though, ran to the tomb only to find it empty, was simply “amazed.” Now, they hear this other story from two other disciples who walked with Jesus but didn’t know until they broke bread with him in the town of Emmaus. All of this seems too odd. All of this seems too strange. All of this doesn’t add up in their minds.

No wonder they thought that they were seeing a ghost. What other explanation could there be? People don’t rise from the dead. Usually when someone dies, they stay dead. But the Greeks, they talk of spirits and ghosts of people. Maybe, just maybe that is what they are experiencing. But, even that doesn’t make any sense to them, considering all the tales they’ve been hearing all day long. An empty tomb? The Greek idea of ghost was that it was a manifestation of the soul that separated from the body. Why would a ghost need the tomb opened? And, why is there no longer a body within the tomb? All of this doesn’t add up. Still the best guess that they can come up with is that Jesus standing here before them must be a ghost.

Thanks be to God that Jesus doesn’t leave the disciples in that place, nor does God leave us in that place to fumble around with that very same conclusion. Jesus sees their confusion right away and sees the doubts that are creeping into their minds even as he tells them, “Peace be with you.” They are to look at his hands and his feet and touch him to see that it really is him. Here he is! Not an ethereal ghost but a man of flesh and bone! You see, Jesus, the risen Christ is really risen! This is not simply a spiritual rising. This is not simply a ghost who has come back either to haunt them or even give them just one last piece of advice. This means everything to the disciples, with the help of Jesus opening up the scriptures, because they are finally able to understand, know, and trust who Jesus is. They now are able to understand that Jesus truly is the Messiah, even if he’s not the Messiah they were expecting. They now are able to know who Jesus is, because they finally see what God has come on earth to do. They see that God has come to die for us and our sins so that we may be united with him in a death like his and raised to new life in a resurrection like his. And, they are finally able to trust in God, because they see the depths to which God will go for us. “Everything written about Jesus in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled” And, it is only by the power God opening these scriptures that they are able to know what this means for them – God’s abundant love, care, and redemption for all of creation.

Even though we know this to be true, and we hear about it time and time again, I believe that we find ourselves living much like the disciples in those few days of confusion following Jesus’ crucifixion. Confusion, doubt, and uncertainty assail us from all angles of our life. Sin and evil are still present in the world. Atrocities are still being carried out for one reason or another, though it too often seems like there’s no reason at all behind it. Our loved ones still die no matter how much we try to keep them alive. Greed grips our society as the actions of few people affect the lives of so many people who depend on steady work and income. By all our reasoning, it seems as if nothing has changed and the world makes perhaps even less sense than it did even 50 years ago. But this is why it is all the more important that this story of Jesus appearing to the disciples is not just another ghost story. Jesus is not just kind of risen. Jesus is not just part way come back from the dead. Jesus, this person who is fully human and fully God has been fully raised into new life and brings us the hope of our own resurrection. This isn’t something that we know by the power of our own reasoning or the power of our own will. We know this to be true only by the Holy Spirit who shows us the truth, the way, and the life. That is why we come back to this story year after year. That is why we come back to the table that our Lord set for us. This is why we should constantly remind ourselves what God has done for us in the waters of baptism. This is why we come together as a community so that we can see, feel, smell, and hear the love of Christ in the people that we meet – especially the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the oppressed. We do it so we can receive yet again that promise of grace and love that is the presence of Christ in our lives. As much as it is wonderful to live yet again in this Easter time, it can be very hard to live in a world that still has pain. But again, Thanks be to God for not leaving us in that pain and sorrow!

Jesus' death and resurrection: The Good Joke

2009-04-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

John 20:19-31

4/19/09

There is much to be sad about in our lives. There is much to be angry about. There is much to be absolutely serious about in our lives. Yet, we don’t spend our whole life crying, screaming in anger, or calmly assessing and analyzing the things that we come across in our lives. There is a huge capacity for us to laugh, to be joyous, and not take everything seriously in our lives. Humor and comedy are definitely good for us and for our world which so often seems mired in the totally serious. Garrison Keillor has once said:

"Jokes are good for your health, they reduce stress, even ancient jokes like "She was only the stablemen's daughter, but all the horsemen knew her," even jokes as old as "Does this bus go to Duluth? No, this bus goes beep beep." Or the blind man who picked up a hammer and saw. They keep on pleasing us, year after year."

Keeping that in mind, here are a few jokes that I have recently heard:

Children Baptizing

After a hardy rainstorm filled all the potholes in the streets and alleys, a young mother watched her two little boys playing in the puddles through her kitchen window. The older of the two, a five year old lad, grabbed his sibling by the back of his head and shoved his face into the water hole.

As the boy recovered and stood laughing and dripping, the mother ran to the yard in a panic. 'Why on earth did you do that to your little brother?!' she asked as she shook the older boy in anger.

'We were just playing 'church' mommy,' he said. 'I was just baptizing him.....in the name of the Father, the Son and in...the hole-he-goes.'

Ole and Lena

Ole and Lena were so excited to get a new cellular phone. Ole was to call when he was on his way home from town. Ole called Lena when he entered the freeway.

"Lena put supper on, I'm on my way home."

Lena says, "Be careful because I hear some nut is driving the wrong way on the freeway."

"It's worse than that Lena, where I'm at there are a hundred cars going the wrong way!"

Jesus, Moses and The Old Man

Jesus and Moses and an old man were out playing golf on one beautiful Sunday afternoon. Both were doing pretty well, but were lamenting the water hazard that was coming up, as it was a particularly hard hole to hit par on.

Moses went first on this difficult hole. He set his ball, swung, and sent his little golf ball right into the center of the water hazard. As it was heading to the water, Moses quickly stuck his club in the air, the waters parted, and his balled rolled safely to the other side. Moses then chipped it on the green in two.

Jesus didn't do much better, however, hitting his ball to the water hazard as well. So, Jesus walked across the water to where his ball was and deftly pitched it on the green.

Finally, the old man that had been following them set his golf ball and swung. He absolutely shanked it off to the right. But just as the ball was heading out of bounds, a freak wind picked up and the ball hit a tree and rolled to the edge of the water. A frog that had been sitting on a lilly pad hopped over, and picked up the ball in his mouth. Then an eagle who had been watching the frog for quite some time, thinking Lunch, swooped down and picked up the frog and the golf ball. Momentarily startled, the frog hung onto the ball, but dropped the ball out of its mouth just as the eagle was flying over the green, and it rolled in for a hole in one.

Moses then turned to Jesus and said, "I hate it when your dad plays golf with us."

Seeing the sound of monks

A man is driving down the road and breaks down near a monastery.

He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door, and says, 'My car broke down.
Do you think I could stay the night'?

The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, and even fix his car. As
the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound; a sound like no other that he has ever heard. The next morning, he asks the monks what the
sound was, but they say, 'We can't tell you. You're not a monk'.

The man is disappointed but thanks them anyway and goes about his merry
way. Some years later, the same man breaks down in front of the same
monastery.

The monks again accept him, feed him, and even fix his car.

That night, he hears the same strange mesmerizing sound that he had heard
years earlier.

The next morning, he asks what the sound was, but the monks reply,

'We can't tell you. You're not a monk'.

The man says, 'All right, all right. I'm dying to know. If the only way I
can find out what that sound was, is to become a monk, how do I become a
monk'?

The monks reply, 'You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of
grass there are and the exact number of sand pebbles. When you find these
numbers, you will become a monk'.

The man sets about his task. Some forty-five years later, he returns and
knocks on the door of the monastery. He says, 'I have travelled the earth
and devoted my life to the task demanded and have found what you had asked
for. There are 371,145,236, 284,232 blades of grass and 231,281,219,
999,129,382 sand pebbles on the earth'.

The monks reply, 'Congratulations, you are correct and now you are a monk'.

'We shall now show you the way to the sound'.

The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, the
sound is behind that door.

The man reaches for the knob, but the door is locked. He asks, 'May I have
the key'?

The monks give him the key, and he opens the door.

Behind the wooden door is another door made of stone. The man requests the
key to the stone door.

The monks give him the key, and he opens it, only to find a door made of
ruby. He demands another key from the monks, who provide it. Behind that
door is another door, this one made of sapphire. And so it went until the
man had gone through doors of emerald,......silver, topaz, and amethyst.

Finally, the monks say, 'This is the key to the last door'.

The man is relieved to no end. He unlocks the door, turns the knob, and
behind that door he is astonished to find the source of that strange sound.
It is truly an amazing and unbelievable sight

But I can't tell you what it is because you're not a monk.

We spend so much of our lives trying to “see” what is happening. We tend to trust what we can see, what we can measure, what we can verify with corroborating testimony and evidence. We are a curious people. We are curious to find out what is going on around us.

Thomas, that disciple who has gotten somewhat of a bad reputation over the years as a doubter, searches for his own physical evidence – to “see” what is happening. You see, one can look at his reaction to the other disciples who tell him about Jesus coming to them like the reaction to a bad and cruel joke meant to hurt him and “fool” him into something he knows at the core of his being shouldn’t be true. Not that the other disciples were meaning to play a cruel joke on him, but in everything that Thomas knew to be true, dead stayed dead unless Jesus himself commanded them to arise like he did with his friend Lazarus. But, now this friend and teacher had been executed by the Romans. To think that someone who had been killed could be alive again went against everything that he knew to be possible. It must simply be a joke.

However, that is exactly what Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are – a joke, not a cruel joke, but a joke played on the natural order of things in the world, a joke played on evil, sin, and death in which they are not only fooled but have their power utterly stripped away from them. Laughter can be good medicine, and jokes can be good for your health. There is a comedy and a humor in what Jesus does in dying for us on the cross and raising us to new life. The world is turned on its head by Jesus’ actions, and that is the essence of a good joke.

"Good" Friday, Needed Friday, Beloved Friday

2009-04-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

John 18-19

Good Friday 2009

So now we come to it. We come to the day in year in which above all other days we call good. This day, our savior has died for us. This day God has shown us his love for us. This day we know who God is and what God has done. When I come to this day every year, my mind starts whirling around questions that I have to ponder every single year. I come with questions because simple reason seems to fail all too easily when it comes figuring out what Jesus is doing on this “good” day. It can seem silly to think of this day as “good.” What’s good about hearing a story of a man being beaten and executed by an instrument of death that was designed to be cruel and inhumane? What’s good about hearing a story of a man that was abandoned by all his friends and family? What’s good about hearing a story of a man who was betrayed by one of the very people who said he loved him and would follow him? Rather, it seems as if this day is more of a day filled with sorrow, grief, and pain. Surely, a “good” day would not be filled with this sadness.

We spend much of our lives thinking that good days are those days when everything seems to be going your way. In a good day, things have gone our way. Our work went by quickly without thought yet the quality of the results were high. In a good day, we’ve spent wonderful time with family and friends sharing stories and laughing at one another’s jokes. I remember growing up as a kid in elementary school thinking that good days were the days that I had fun and was able to do my school work well. Bad days were the days where it felt like everyone was picking on me and where I kept on getting into trouble with my teachers. However, “good” does not always equal happy or joyous. “Good” sometimes means much more than that to mean what is right or what is needed. But what is right or needed about Good Friday where death and suffering are the order for the day, where, at least for me, all seems darker and quieter? Yet, this day above all the other days and times in the year is alone called “good.”

When we hear this story about Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion, we are hearing the story of someone who was not just another man being beaten and killed for crimes he may or may not have committed. We hear the story of what God has come to do for us. We see the lengths and the depths to which God will go, because God chooses us and God will not abandon us. Forever, God will be our God, and we will be God’s people. The goodness of this story and the goodness of this day is the clear and shining revelation of what God does for us – the people who forsake God and just as much as the Romans and Jews beat Jesus and nailed him to cross every time we sin trying to build ourselves or other things up as our gods. Jesus’ death on the cross is a death for all sins of all times and places. If we could do better, he would not have to die. Instead, Jesus’ death is the proclamation that God will not abandon us to our sin and death. In this great act of love, Jesus redeems all of creation, turning it into something it could not be by itself.

This redemption is what Christ does on the cross. He turns that which causes death into that which gives us life. This is what makes this a “good” day. Jesus redeems creation and turns it into something new. This is why our glory is in the cross. Before Jesus’ death, it was only an instrument of cruel torture and death, but instead, Jesus’ turns it into an instrument of life, because through the cross we are united with God for all of eternity and raised into new life. Through the cross, Jesus comes to us and seeks us out even as we, like the disciples, flee and desert him leaving him alone to die. Through the cross, this day, which by all reason should simply be called “Bad Friday,” becomes THE good day of the year where Jesus, the Son of Father, who lives and reigns for all eternity as one in the Trinity, does for us what we desperately need and shows the never-ending abundance of God’s mercy and love. This is our glory, because this is what God has done for us – given us new life. This is Good Friday – not a happy day, but the day that is right and needed.

Jesus Christ, the new imperishable Temple

2009-03-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

John 2.13-22

3/15/09

His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

It can be a little hard to consider and see a Jesus who gets so worked up in an angry fit. Most of the time we like to think of Jesus in much different ways. We like to see Jesus as a kind and loving man who takes compassion on the people he meets. We like to remember Jesus as a man who gathers children in a loving and gentle way. We like to see Jesus as a man who weeps deeply for the people he cares about. But we don’t know exactly what to do with as Jesus who lashes out in anger. We don’t like to see Jesus upturning tables, whipping and driving livestock out, and yelling at people to STOP IT! At least, I don’t know exactly how to handle this scene where Jesus is running about creating chaos where some people have simply come to do their regular work and others have come to simply worship the Lord. I find myself to be much more like the disciples who gawk in amazement as it’s happening only to later realize what was going on. I suspect that if someone was to burst in here this morning and start over turning pews and throwing hymnals about, we would be flabbergasted at such behavior. Yet, this is the Jesus we are confronted with this morning – an angry Jesus consumed by zeal for his Father’s house upsetting what would have otherwise been a normal day.

Why is Jesus so angry? What have these people done that they hadn’t been doing for years upon years? You see, everything that Jesus was angry at was a vital part to how worship in the temple worked for people who were coming to worship their Lord God. Money changers were there so that people could use money that didn’t have graven images on it in the temple. The animals and the people selling them were there so that people would have the required sacrificial animals as told to them in the Torah by Moses himself. This wasn’t corruption plaguing God’s house. It was normal and necessary for worship in God’s house. So, when the temple leadership comes to Jesus asking him what’s going on, they want to know what the purpose of all this is, and simply asking Jesus, “Who do you think you are? Give us an explanation for all this mayhem!” All that Jesus has to say for himself is to point to himself and say, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

To say this to the temple leadership was to say something quite audacious. They were those in the society who studied the Torah and knew the history of the Jewish people. For one, to think that a large stone structure could built back up in three days was ludicrous to them. But, even deeper than ridiculousness of the surface of that statement, they also knew that their temple had been destroyed before. They knew that the destruction of the temple had happened before in terrible times when they were even forced to leave their homes and live as strangers in a strange land. Saying that the temple was going to be destroyed was bringing up a terrible history that shook the people of Israel to the core. No one in their right mind who was Jewish would have wished that upon them again. And yet, here this Jew named Jesus was giving the leaders of the temple and the Jewish faith that the temple was to be destroyed.

We too have built up temples for ourselves all throughout our life. We have created places, things, or even relationships that become the places in our lives where we believe we know where God is. Think about our homes. Our homes become temples quite easily when we let them represent a place where we are happy or at least where we try to secure our happiness. Home is refuge from the hectic world. Home is a warm place on a cold night. Home is sign of our hard work come or coming to fruition. Think about our church buildings. Our churches are places that hold our memories and all the memories of those who have gone before us. Our churches are places where we come to be with God on a weekly basis, or so. Think about our relationships – with our children, our spouses, or our brothers and sisters. These relationships are places we give and receive love and support. These relationships help to give us our sense of identity. These relationships are sources strength for us in hard times. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with our homes, churches, or relationships, just like there is nothing wrong with the Temple and temple worship. The thing is, these temples that we construct for ourselves whether they are our homes, churches, or friends and family are sadly all perishable either sooner or later. Each one of those examples will eventually fall down and crumble either tragically or in their due time. Yet, crumble they still do. Church buildings will eventually fall into disrepair or be torn down. Our homes will eventually do much the same. Our relationships will either sadly break apart in our lifetimes or they will end as the people eventually die. Even the temple in Jerusalem eventually fell into ruin where only a single wall still stands as evidence that it was there at all.

But Jesus knew that this must happen if the people are to truly know who God is. Jesus comes to show the people of Israel and all people that God is more than place on earth. Moreover, Jesus comes to show all the people that worship of God is more than a transaction to be made by buying the right sacrificial animal with the right kind of money. Jesus comes to show them all that he is the temple of God who comes to earth who not even death can destroy. In Jesus we are given a new temple that will never fail either in this lifetime or the lifetimes of the generations to come. In Jesus we are given the presence of God living, breathing, and walking with in our lives. This is the church that is given to us by the Holy Spirit – the church that is present wherever Jesus is proclaimed and the sacraments are rightly administered. This church is not dependant on our hopes and dreams. This church is not dependant upon our ability to make budgets or provide exciting programs to be interested in. This church is simply dependant upon presence of Christ within the people gathered to hear the Word and receive the sacraments.

This morning we will gather around the table to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. In this sacrament, we receive the very presence of Christ in the body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine. It is the gift given to us by God so that we might know and have Christ in our lives – so that we might know the presence of the one who forgives us deeply and abundantly. This special gift, given to us by the grace God, is given to show us and help us remember that Christ is eternal and present whenever we break bread together, laugh together, cry together, or even struggle together. This is a new temple that will be with us wherever we go, no matter where we go.

In this new temple only one thing is required – the life centering trust in God that flows forth from what God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has done for us, simply put faith. No longer does our relationship with God depend on the good that we try to do in our life. Rather, the good in our life and the good we do in our life flows from this gift of faith. What we do as Christians only matters in how we share this good news with everyone else around us. What we do only matters in how we continually come back to the Word and the sacraments to hear and receive yet again God’s love and zeal for us in our life. Christ is not in the things we do or the things we build. This is why Jesus was so zealous in his chaotic upsetting of temple life. His anger is show us that he is God who has come to be with us in our everyday life, in our death, and raise us up into new life.

Bearing your cross as standing up for what is right...

2009-03-08T15:54:00.001-07:00

Mark 8.31-38
3/8/09

What does it mean to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Jesus? This is a question that people have been struggling with for years upon years. It has been used as a foundation for great acts of kindness and courage, yet it has also been used too many times to cause great harm for people in their lives. Don’t even start to think that serious questions over what Jesus means by saying “take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus already has an idea that his words spoken here are mightily controversial. He already knows that there are and will be those who are ashamed of Jesus and his words here. So, how are we to take this call to action that Jesus proclaims after rebuking Peter, calling him and his ideas of what Jesus should be “Satan”?

In one sense, I am ashamed of these words. I know that’s very dangerous thing to say especially since Jesus warns that those who are ashamed of these words now, will be ashamed of Jesus when comes again in glory. It’s just that I simply can’t escape the fact that this phrase or paraphrase of it has been used too many times in the past to cause people to stay in bad situations that took away life from people – sometimes literally taking life. “Take up your cross” or “you cross to bear” has been used to keep women in abusive relationships, because a woman should bear that cross so as to bear witness to the abuser in love and charity. It has even been used in the past to keep people in slavery or other forms of oppression. Let me say right now that that is NOT an okay use of these words. That is why I am ashamed of these words. I am ashamed because these words have been used too much to get people to quietly endure pain and suffering that God never intends for people to have to go through in their lives.

Yet, despite God not wanting us to quietly endure pain and suffering, we all do endure pain and suffering in our lives. Pain and suffering is a reality. There is no escaping it, yet there is a huge difference between God wanting us to suffer AND the recognition that there is pain and suffering in our lives whether or not we want it in our lives. The idea that Jesus is looking to create a society of people who seek out pain and suffering is just plain ridiculous. Rather, Jesus is looking for people in the midst of their pain and suffering to get up and follow him even in the midst of their pain and suffering. Jesus recognizes that, all too often life plainly sucks, and he is calling them to trust and follow him in the midst of that suffering – calling them to a new life lived in the hope of God’s love.

Despite of all of that, there is another answer to that question of what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus. That answer is that you recognize the reality of the suffering and still stand up for what is right. Take farming for example. Here is a profession where you are at the complete mercy of not only nature, but also the local to global economies that dictate whether or not you’re going to make money off of the crops you planted or the cows that you milk. For many farmers, this means that there will be very lean years where you live right on the edge of losing the farm and everything that you’ve put so much love and work into. In one sense, it would be smarter to get out do something else that has a regular paycheck providing steady income and maybe even benefits. But, why do farmers still farm? Why do they still go out to their cows to milk them? Why do they plant new fields every year? But despite all those questions, there is something right about making a living intimately connected to the earth and providing people with food AND providing a diverse market when there are so many large corporate operations looking to pay the absolute minimum for the labor required to bring forth food from the earth.

I’m also reminded of the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960’s. In the civil rights movement, we had people who intentionally put themselves in harm’s way as a protest to “stand up” for what. Dr. King knew that bad things were going to happen to people, especially if they stood up against the injustices that had been oppressing them for so very long. The thing is, he wasn’t seeking out pain and suffering or even resigning himself to the pain and suffering of segregation and discrimination. No, he was standing up in the midst of his pain and suffering that he shared with everyone else who stood up with him.

You see denying yourself and taking up your cross and following Jesus means striving for what is right, good and healthy for you in your lives. Sometimes that means looking for ways to end downward spirals of pain and suffering. Sometimes that means striving for what’s right even if it may be a lost cause. But, this idea of bearing your cross is at its heart loving all the people who are around you. The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. The way of Jesus is looking to the needs of other people who are around you. The way of Jesus is putting to death selfish concerns and desires and living in the hope that Christ brings us through his death on the cross.

We must always remember that, when Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him, he goes before us to the cross to stand up for all of humanity, even in the midst of his pain and suffering. Jesus knows that his way must be a way that leads to his death, because it is only by his death that he might stand up for us even in our death and raise us to new life. Peter doesn’t want it to be this way. That’s why he pulls Jesus aside and tries to correct his idea that Jesus hasn’t come as military leader to defeat all opposition. But, Jesus will have absolutely none of this. Jesus says that there is a divine reason for he has come to earth – to be rejected and suffer, for what is right. What is right is the cross that Jesus bears is that Jesus loves us even when we reject him to suffering and death. In Jesus’ cross, in Christ’s death, we are shown the eternal depths of God’s love and forgiveness for us in the world. Jesus’ way, the way we are called to follow, is a way of incredible love, love even in the midst of pain and suffering, love that stands up for and cares for the others in our lives. We don’t do this to emulate Christ’s suffering. We don’t do this to even perfect our faith. We do this for the sake of the one who does all of that for us. We do this to emulate Christ’s infinite love for all of creation, not as we ought, but as we are able. Christ’s love is the hope for what is good, right, and healthy in the world.

Lent Sermon - The Faithfulness of Christ

2009-03-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

Galatians 3:23-29
Midweek Lent 2009

I recently had the pleasure of seeing all of my very good friends who I went to seminary with. We all had met together at the annual Rural Ministry Conference hosted by my seminary that I recently graduated from, Wartburg, and the Center for Theology and Land. And while it was great to see the people I forged such great relationships in the place that holds so many wonderful memories of those friendships, I also got see my Godson, Martin. I first got to know Martin when he just an infant totally dependant on his mom and dad. I even got to see him grow in his first year of life during my last year at seminary. But, since we all graduated last May and went to our respective first I’ve only gotten to see a grand total of three times. So, when I saw him for the first time in almost six months, I was surprised by how much he has become a little boy who runs around with great energy, exploring his entire world around him. No longer was he an infant who was totally dependant upon the people who took care of him.

Now, he’s a little boy who climbs up and down stairs. Now, he’s a little boy who plays racks of greeting cards on display in the bookstore at my old seminary. Now, he’s a little boy who wanders to and fro getting into things exploring every nook and cranny he can find. Now instead of trying to get him to do things like play with toys with me, I found myself telling to be careful as he went down the hard steps in chapel. I found myself telling him to stay in the bookstore while his mommy was away making a phone call, even running to get him as he started to wander off into the hall. In a way, I was holding him and guarding him from dangers in his life. I’m going to go ahead and guess on this, and I suspect that it is a pretty good guess even though I don’t have children of my own: every parent has had to do this for their children throughout their lives. Every parent has had to guide, protect, and hold their children from danger. Every parent has had to set boundaries for their children to help protect them and raise them in their lives. Every parent has had to discipline their children when those boundaries were tested and broken. And every parent has had to eventually let that go as their children grow up and lead their lives for themselves.

Paul in his letter to the Galatians says that that was much the same relationship that God had with humanity and the rest of creation. “Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law.” I think that when one hears the word “imprisoned,” one thinks that someone must have done something wrong to deserve the punishment of being thrown into prison; yet even though we have rebelled and crossed the boundaries that God has set before us, the imprisonment here is the rules and the bounds that God had set for us so that we might be safe. And, it’s not simply imprisonment that Paul is talking about. He’s also uses the language of guarded like a parent guards a child from dangers and cares for us. But, all of this was before faith came. We are no longer under a law that protects and guides us.

So, what is faith? Paul implies here that, now that faith has come, the old system of guidance and care under the law is no longer for us. How is faith then setting us free from imprisonment under the law? The key is to recognize from where faith comes. Faith comes to us when Christ comes to us. Faith is revealed in who Christ is and what Christ does. Rules we can follow. Laws we can obey. Or, at least laws and rules can in theory be followed and obeyed. Sadly, in all these laws and rules we all too often forsake them and turn away from how they want us to live our lives as we cross the boundaries that God has set before us in our lives. We hurt others. We grab for only ourselves. We worship upon other idols have no ability to give us life. We even let other things control whether or not we see the worth in ourselves.

But faith comes to us. Faith seeks us out in our inability to follow all the rules and laws set before us in our lives. And this faith comes to us through the faithfulness of Christ Jesus who comes to us in our sin and brokenness. This faith is the life centering trust in God who is the sole source of life for us. In this faith, we become the children of God. We are the children of a God who cares for and loves us with an unending faithfulness that follows us wherever we might stray. Our faith, our trust is in a God who never failing comes to us in every part of our lives. Our faith, our trust is in a God who comes to us even when break rules and laws and cross the boundaries that have been set up for us. Our faith, our trust is in a God who gives a new identity that changes the very core of who we are. Our faith, our trust is in a God who becomes our sin and death by going to the cross faithfully, loving us too much to abandon us in our sin and death.

No longer are we defined by our nationality as we are all Children of God who have put on Christ. No longer are we defined by our social status as we are all Children of God who have put on Christ. No longer are we defined by our gender differences as we are all Children of God who have put on Christ. No longer are we defined by our deaths, for in Jesus’ death on the cross, we are united with Christ raised into new life. All of this is because of God’s self-giving love who comes to us, not because we can ever give it back perfectly to God, but because God’s chooses us. All the other things that separate us from God and each other no longer should separate us, because Jesus loves us equally, dies for us equally, and raises us to new life equally.

Jesus’ faith is not a trust in that we can become something better ourselves. Jesus’ faith is not like a parent learning to trust a child to make decisions for him or herself. Jesus’ faith is the constant promise that he will always come to us even in our failings no matter what we might do or where we might go. I look at my relationship with my Godson, Martin, and I see that my perception of him will have to change as he grows older. I will have to trust him more and more. But, I will have to trust that God is there in his life just as much as God is in my life. Martin is a child of God. I’m a Child of God. You all are children of God. This is revelation of faith. This is what Christ brings to us in our lives. This is the never-ending faithful promise of God for all of creation.

God in the Wilderness with the Beasts

2009-02-28T20:37:00.000-08:00

Mark 1.9-15

3/1/09

To tell you a little secret, I must say that I’ve never in my life been farther east than Evanston, Indiana or farther west than Phoenix, Arizona. Now, I’ve traveled all the way up and down from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, but I still think from time to time about how I’m not very well traveled, especially not as well traveled as my cousin Tyler who just came back from Denmark. He remarked to me on Friday at lunch, “It’s no big deal. It’s just Europe.” It’s amazing how our perspective on other places change the more we visit places or even live in other places for extended periods of time. I know my perspective of Taylor has changed and keeps on changing even as I have only two months living here as your pastor. After having lived here for two months, I’m beginning to see more of what’s around me as the depth of this place keeps getting revealed piece by piece. Living in a place always changes your perception of that place and deepens your understanding of it and the people who inhabit it.

Just this past Thursday, the conference pastors from this part of the Northwest Synod all got together for our monthly worship and meeting. At the meeting portion of our time together, Mphatso Thole visiting pastor from our companion synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malawi, told us what ministry in the ELCM is like – its challenges, opportunities, joys and sorrows. He told us of how there are over 300 Lutheran churches in Malawi, and yet they have just over 50 ordained pastors to serve all those congregations. Each pastor serves upwards of nine churches and uses a motorcycle to get from place to place to be able to administer the sacraments to the people of the church. It’s a different context and a different situation, and I can only imagine what it is like even with Mphatso’s descriptions of what it is like.

One of the things we spent quite a bit of time talking about with Mphatso were the challenges that the ELCM faces. We had opened our time together in worship focused around Jesus being driven out into the wilderness to face temptation, Satan, and even wild beasts. For Mphatso, wild beasts are a very real thing to contend with in Africa, as either large animals like elephants or predators like lions are real dangers that people face in the land of Malawi. Yet, Mphatso also stated quite clearly that the most dangerous wild beasts that Malawi and most of Africa faces are the wild beasts of poverty, hunger, and HIV/AIDS. Each year, these wild beasts prey upon the people of Malawi to the point where the average life span of someone in Malawi is only 37 years. This got me really thinking about all the “wild” places in the world I have no personal experience with, because I’m not well traveled. I don’t mean wild as in terms of savannah, desert, or jungle, but those places in the world where grief and sorrow have a seeming stranglehold on the lives of people.

Yet, this also got me thinking about I push to the side the fact that there are “wild places” all around, even in the places I’ve gotten to know well, as people deal with the wild beasts in their lives. We too deal right here and now with wild beasts that cause grief, break relationships, and strain our ability to see the good in the world God made deemed to be “very good.” People right here, right in Wisconsin, right in this county deal with the wild beast of poverty and malnourishment. People right here deal with the wild beast of drug and alcohol abuse. People right here deal with the wild beast of domestic violence. People right here deal with failing health as disease take control over our bodies that once worked so well.

These wildernesses have existed all over the earth throughout the ages. This was especially true for Jesus, as he dwelled in the wilderness for forty days and contended with wild beasts himself. What’s strange is that Jesus is driven out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit AFTER the Father from heaven declares that he is the Son of God. It’s as if just as soon as Jesus is declared to be the Son, he has to go into the lonely place of wilderness to figure out what all this means for him. To make matters worse, Jesus has to contend with Satan tempting him. The thing is, the Gospel of Mark isn’t very clear as to how Satan was tempting Jesus. Maybe it was simply Satan trying to see if Jesus really was going to hold onto his proclaimed identity as the Son of God. To think that Jesus didn’t see all the wrong that was all around him in the world would be very naïve. Jesus knew that people struggled with pain and suffering. His temptation could very well have been whether or not he was going to confront that pain and suffering in the world. He saw the wild beasts of his world as clearly as he saw the wild beasts out there in the desert. The question he contended with: How is God going to respond to a creation that is groaning with sin and death?

Yet, Jesus’ presence in the desert should tell us something of how God is answering that question. God knows that there are wildernesses in our lives – real and imagined. God knows that there are wild beasts that we contend with in our daily lives. And God comes out into those wildernesses to be present with us in our pain and suffering, not leaving us in the grip of sin and death.

Jesus had options. He could have answered Satan’s temptation by becoming a tyrant and forcing us into obedience with God’s ways. He could have wiped the earth clean and started over. But Jesus, God, the Son of the Father, sees that he is as much a part of all this creation as every one of us and simply loves all of creation too much to be done with it all. God says in sending us the Son, “there is nothing you can do, no wilderness that you can go where I will not come to you bringing love and mercy.” Jesus’ faithfulness and unending love is the choice he makes in response to Satan coming to be with us in all that we are – even coming into our wilderness and death, facing our many and various wild beasts.

There was one other thing that Mphatso talked about last Thursday. He said that, even though there are many challenges, many wild beasts that the people of Malawi face and the Church needs to confront, the people have a vibrant and strong faith. Even mired in a society where life expectancy is less than half of what it is here in the U.S., the people in Malawi hold firmly onto the promises of God’s love and care for them, because it gives them hope that all the wild beasts around them aren’t the only truths for them in their life. In Jesus, they have a truth of eternal life and release from the Sin and death that is present all around them.

We would do well to recognize this truth that Jesus holds for us in our lives. Jesus comes to us in our lives and brings us hope, love, and forgiveness. We would do well to recognize that Jesus comes for everyone around us as well. We would do well to recognize that Jesus is in the faces of anyone who wanders in wilderness and contends with wild beasts. I keep finding out more about the wild beasts that this parish, this county, this town deal with, but I also keep finding out more and more about how Jesus is alive and loving the people in the lives of the people who live, work and love here. I know this to be true no matter how far I’ve gone or how far I haven’t gone in my life.

Sorry, I meant to post this earlier...

2009-02-25T10:12:00.000-08:00

Mark 1:40-45

2/15/09

It was Tuesday morning, and it was much like all the other Tuesday mornings throughout the year. Chad had woken up at 6:30 am so he could walk the few blocks to the elementary school so he could catch the bus ride to middle school. Chad lived in a small town where the county’s schools had consolidated, so middle school for him meant an eight mile bus ride to a town just northwest of the town he lived in. There wasn’t much about the way that this school day started that foreshadowed the coming event that was about to happen three hours from now. The school day started off normally enough – home room to listen to announcements, and then English class – but it was that switch from English to Algebra that started the ball rolling down the hill picking up speed before it crashed into the wall.

The switch meant that Chad had to stop by his locker and pick up his Algebra book. That seems innocuous enough, but his locker just happened to be set right next to Andy. You see, Andy was a kid that looked for ways to get under people’s skin. He searched for the buttons to press, and this morning he found exactly the right one for Chad. As Chad was getting his Algebra book, Andy started pushing Chad’s locker shut laughing because he knew it was going to rile Chad. It worked, more than Andy could have ever have imagined. As Andy slapped Chad’s door shut just one more time, Chad broke into something that was not quite rage – more like a calm cool resolve to finally put a stop to the incessant annoyance. Chad balled his hand into a tight fist, swinging and connecting with the side of Andy’s face with a satisfying thud.

Chad took no pleasure in how well he connected, although he did say later that was surprised that the single punch opened up a cut on Andy’s lip and brow. No, he simply knew that the job had been done and there was nothing else to say or do to anybody. Chad grabbed his book walked to his algebra class. Of course, there would be repercussions, as Chad was told not much later that he had been summoned to the principle’s office. Chad left that day with two days of in-school suspension. A day for each punch he threw.

Chad had never been well liked. He moved into the area when he was in first grade, but no matter how much he tried, the people in his class would inevitably cast him as the person they could pick, the person they could gang up on to make themselves feel better. The thing that Chad could never understand, though, was how they could be such nice people individually in one on one situations, yet when ganged up together, they could hurl the nastiest insults and dispersions upon, seemingly for only a few laughs. Chad didn’t know why, even after six years of living, working, playing and even praying with these kids, how he could still be such an outsider amongst everyone else.

The next day started off somewhat similar to the one before it. He walked to the same elementary school and boarded the same school bus, but when he got to the middle school, he was immediately ushered off down the hallway to the janitor’s workshop where there was a single desk and a single chair. In a lot of ways, Chad found the absolute depths of boredom. Though homework assignments were definitely given to him, there was no one else in there to talk to or to listen to. He was all alone. In fact, Chad got so bored that he stared at the clock on the wall watching hour hand make its trek from one number to the next. The next day wasn’t much better as the motivation to do or feel much of anything got sapped from him in his time of isolation.

Utter isolation might have been a better term for what he was put through during those two days. The only contact that Chad had throughout the day was the principle, teacher, or janitor popping in from time to time to check in on him. During these two days, Chad was even subjected to having to eat his lunch in that same room by himself apart from anyone else, apart from the normal life and community that he had been a part of. There’s something about being forced to eat alone – not choosing to eat alone – that to Chad felt like the biggest sign of separation and exclusion. At home, he ate almost every evening meal with his family. At school, he ate with his classmates. At church, he ate with everyone else who filled the basement fellowship hall for one of the various pot lucks that came around throughout the year. Now, here he was, forced to eat alone, separated from everyone else in his life, and he began to cry.

None of this was fair. None of this seemed like the correct punishment his standing up to a kid who was constantly pestering him. He was all alone, and in the loneliness and silence, he began to pray through his tears. He began to pray to God, “Take me out of this! I just want to get away from here. I don’t want to be in a place where I’m constantly reminded of how lonely I am. I don’t want to be left on the outside anymore. God, if you are listening, release me from this place, and release me from the constant reminder that I’m not one of ‘them.’”

The minutes passed by, and the tears eventually dried up as silence was the only response he heard. It was a deafening silence, as he could almost hear the air pressure pushing in on his ear drums. He didn’t even notice that the janitor, Bernie, had come to take his lunch tray away from him. Chad couldn’t remember what exactly he said, but looked into Bernie’s eyes and saw in them something saying, “I’m sorry you’re going through this. I’m sorry that you feel all alone.” And he laid a napkin with two chocolate chip cookies in it on Chad’s desk and spoke, “I thought you could use a little pick me up, so I grabbed a couple of cookies from the lunch room for you.”

As Chad ate those cookies, he felt a spirit welling inside of him. All of a sudden he wasn’t alone. Bernie had come to him, just simply by showing a kind face, speaking a kind word, and giving Chad those cookies, Bernie had brought the community to him. Bernie had told Chad, “You are not alone.” It was then that Chad understood that he had never been alone. It was then that Chad saw that something had been with throughout all this time. Chad had seen that he was not too far away, not too bad, and not too much of an outsider for Christ to be with him in his life. He saw that Jesus had been yearning to come to him in his hour of grief. He saw that Jesus had come to him even though felt so separated from everyone else in his life. Those kind words and that kind action had made him see that there was no place where God couldn’t go. Those kind words and that kind action showed him that Christ could break through any barriers that we try to construct for ourselves. Chad saw that God loved him dearly, and there was nothing that could separate him from that love.

Mark 1:21-28

2009-01-31T18:20:00.000-08:00

Mark 1:21-28

2/1/09

There’s a show that I really like to listen to on the radio from NPR as I’m driving or as I’m doing things about the house called This American Life. If you’re not familiar with it, it is a radio program that presents three or four stories all revolving around some central theme. There are a few episodes that really stick out in my mind and one of them was an episode called “The Devil Inside Me.” This episode revolved around stories about people struggling with inner demons or experiences that haunt the way they live their life. The show separates into “acts” or story segments, and the second act of this particular episode was a story entitled “Vox Diaboli.” This act was simply a series of confessionals that people gave about the “inner voice” that pushed or urged them to keep on living in a habit that they had become accustom to. One of the people interviewed had this to say:

I remember realizing just how finely calibrated the voice was to every nuance, every part of my feelings. Including the feeling that I didn’t want to smoke cigarettes. And it’s just like, “Might as well have another cigarette, cause this is it. Tomorrow you’re gonna quit..” Tomorrow something would happen, and there was a good reason to smoke that day. And then it was, “Oh you already smoked today, so today’s not the day you’re gonna quit. So, smoke another cigarette.”

Now let me say before I go any farther, I’m not bringing this up because of the particular vice this gentleman struggled with. It’s because of his struggle that I mention his story. This struggle with our inner demons can feel all too real, and it can be about a number of things that we wish or want to be different about ourselves. Another interviewee said:

Go back to bed for just five more minutes. In five more minutes, you’ll feel great. And then I’ll get up five minutes later, it will be like “Eh, I mean you don’t need to iron the skirt. If you don’t need to be ironing the skirt, do you need to be wearing the skirt? Maybe you could wear a different skirt, and then you could sleep for ten more minutes.” And that seems like a reasonable negotiation.

At the beginning of the story, each one of them described this inner demon as a real voice. They said it was something other, something that spoke in the back of their minds. This idea that you could even have a negotiation like this woman described is not something that is foreign to me, and I would guess that it isn’t something that is very foreign to you all, even if it is simply a little voice saying that you really can just have that one cookie when you know that you probably shouldn’t. But these demons are not so innocuous all the time as one pushing you towards that cookie. These, what I would call very real demons, whether or not one thinks of them as imps and fallen angels serving the devil, cause us to struggle. They cause us to lose our trust in who we are or who we could be. They cause us to lose trust in those people who are all around us making us think the worst rather than reality of the person or group of persons. They even cause us to turn from our faith in God who creates us and gives us the life that we hold so dearly. This doesn’t release from the responsibility to the things that we do, but it does describe the either real or perceived powerlessness as we turn away from the God who gives us life, loves us, and declares that we are good creation. That is sin, and that is what we struggle so mightily with.

As I read this short account from Mark’s gospel, I see Jesus encountering this very same thing – encountering a demon in the synagogue. I keep bringing back up what has just happened in Mark, because, even though it seems like a while since Jesus was baptized or called the disciples, we are still in the midst of the very first chapter of his gospel. As Mark tells this story, Jesus is not far removed from his baptism. So as Jesus encounters this demon in the synagogue, he is not far removed from his time in the wilderness where he himself was tempted by Satan. Jesus sees and lives in a world where these demons are a very real thing – where they are a very real power actively opposing God’s will for creation. That’s what this demon, this unclean spirit, is trying to in the midst of this synagogue – he’s trying to subvert the teaching and authority of Jesus’ teaching that was enthralling the people there.

This demon is trying to plant the idea that Jesus has come to destroy not only him, but the demon is trying to convince the people that Jesus has come to destroy the normal lives of everyone who was gathered in that synagogue. The thing is that the demon is exactly right, but not in the way that he was thinking he would be right. Jesus has come to destroy the current way of life, not in a way that a warring despot might kill people and destroy house and home. Rather, Jesus has come to destroy the old life that is in bondage to such demons, in bondage to such sin, and in bondage to our inevitable deaths. Jesus comes to bring truth and life, so that in hearing and knowing him we might have the faith that restores our trust in our life giving God. Jesus comes to throw away all that brokenness that separates us from God, from each other, and even with ourselves. This is the authority that is astounding the people, because it is the authority that restores life, that restores faith in God and who God is.

We will still struggle with our demons. We will still struggle with our sin. Yet, be rightly assured that Jesus has come to destroy these old powers by restoring us in our faith through his death on the cross uniting with us and giving us the promise of eternal life.

Answering the Call of Discipleship

2009-01-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

John 1:43-51

1/18/09

An ancient rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day was on its way back. “Could it be,” asked one student, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”

“No,” answered the Rabbi.

The past week it has been just about as cold as it will get here in Wisconsin. That actually warms my heart, because as someone who has just moved here, it is good to know that this usually doesn’t occur too often – cold, but not -25 degrees cold. The cold of the past week has made the nights seem a bit longer and a bit harsher as we more often than not were trying to stay indoors where it is warm rather than be out in the cold too much. It has been a few nights where it doesn’t seem like it ever will change and it will certainly be this cold and dark. As Garrison Keillor usually laments at some point during winter in one of his News from Lake Woebegone, “spring is a distant memory, and winter and cold dark nights dominate our consciousness.”

It can be said that Epiphany is a season of darkness where we are given little flashes of light. It is a season in the church when we are given glimpses of who this Jesus is and what he has come into the world to do. We saw a flash of light illuminating who Jesus last week as he emerges from the waters of the Jordan after being baptized by John the Baptist. The heavens split open and the Spirit descends like dove upon Jesus a voice says from above, “You are my Son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased.” This is a moment where we see Jesus as the Father’s only begotten Son – a moment where Jesus’ divinity is revealed. And now this week we have a story from John’s gospel where Jesus himself gives not only Nathaniel, but also gives us a flash of who Jesus is as that which brings creation back into relationship with God.

However, it is all too easy to be concerned and maybe even consumed with all the worries of our present situations as we face questions of maintaining our buildings as the reality of repairs still stare at us in our face or questions of whether or not there will be a next generation who will fill these walls with all the emotions that come along with living our lives here on earth. How can we know when night has ended and day is on its way back?

Going back to our little story about this ancient Rabbi, another student inquired, “Could it be when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?”

“No,” the Rabbi replied.

Nathaniel, in this story from John, is described as someone who almost smirkingly quips to Philip, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” The center of religious authority and power had long since been centered in and around Jerusalem as the northern kingdom of Israel had been lost in the Assyrian invasion leaving Judah to stand as the land and kingdom of God’s chosen people. If anyone was to be the one whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets spoke about, it surely was going to come from in or around the area where the temple was located. You might even say that Nathanael is described to be a good Israelite who would know something about this. Yet there is something that is very interesting in the exchange between Philip and Nathanael – despite his first reluctance to Philip’s invitation, he comes to see who this person that Philip is talking about is.

You may not recognize it, but Nathanael responding to Philip’s call is the very first step into a life of discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship describes it this way, “The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience.” This single act of obedience is what begins that life lived in faith. Whatever Nathanael’s motives might be in coming along with Philip to see Jesus, his obedience, you might say his willingness to do what Philip called him to do put him in the place where his confession of faith can occur. He comes to see who Jesus is. He comes to hear what he has to say. In that, his faith is created. In that, he is called to live a life of discipleship. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves and start to think that this is something that Nathanael did for himself, we must remember that the life of discipleship is something we are always called by God to – not something that we create for ourselves. This is very important for us to remember, because it is because of this fact that the light shines in the darkness and the well spring of eternal life is a reality that we all can hope for.

The rabbi’s students soon grew weary of trying to guess at what the rabbi was getting at as they often did when he posed questions to them. “Well, then, what is it?” his pupils demanded.

The wise old teacher responded with words of immense wisdom: “It is when you look on the face of any woman or man and see that she or he is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot do this, then no matter what time it is, it is still night.”

This hope that we have of the coming light, the well spring of eternal occurs when we answer Jesus’ call to follow. Bonhoeffer calls this life of discipleship “grace and a commandment.” The call of Jesus is a call into an uncertain future where we paradoxically live in the certainty of God’s eternal love for us. Bonhoeffer writes:

The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative sercurity into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus), from a life which is observable and calculable (it is, in fact, quite incalculable) into a life where everything is unobservable and fortuitous (that is, into one which is necessary and calculable), out of the realm of finite (which is in truth the infinite) into the realm of infinite possibilities (which is the one liberating reality).

The life lived in discipleship is a life lived where the possibilities to witness in word and deed to all those who are around us. We should look at all the men and women that we meet as brothers and sisters who deserve our love, care and invitation to come and see and be a part of the body of Christ. This is what we are called to do even in the midst of everything that seems to be distracting us in our lives. That is when the dark, cold of night gives way to the hope and warmth of the hope we have in Christ.

Struggle and Hope

2007-02-11T08:27:00.003-08:00

Luke 6:17-36; Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

2/11/2007

“Woe to you who are rich, Woe to you who are full now, Woe to you who are laughing now, and Woe to you when people speak well of you.” I have struggled with these words all week long. I’ve wondered how I’m going to preach these words to you. In some way, they should be very easy words to preach. They would fit very easily into a sermon where I could get into a fervor pounding my fists onto the pulpit, using a loud voice, and shaming all of you for what you are doing in your lives. But I struggle with these words. For me they are very hard to hear. They are hard to hear, because I see them pointing directly at me and all of the good things that I think I have going for myself in my life. I live very comfortably. I have never known hunger. And I think as you have gotten to know me, I believe that I’m a fairly jovial person. I’m quick to smile and quick to laugh. Surely these aren’t bad things, right? But still I hear those words ringing in my ears.

Is there only woe for me in my life? I have so much. I have good friends, family, and a job that I feel that I am called to do. Why do I deserve such hard words that seem to be pointing directly at me? What I have done to deserve such harshness? I come to these scriptures looking to receive God in to my life. I come looking to find God, and all God has to tell me is woe and woe and woe. Where is the hope for me? Where is God’s abundant grace for my life? But still I hear these words. But do you know what? Maybe this message isn’t for me. I have hope. I have an expectation that things will go well for me. I believe that I will laugh. I believe that I will continue into a life of ministry. I believe, nay know, that will not be hungry tomorrow. I know that I will not know the pain and anguish that comes with extreme hunger.

However, there are people in this world who have on reasonable expectation to laugh in their lives. There are people who have no reasonable expectation to have food to eat today. There are people who have no reasonable expectation to find work. In some ways, I look at their situation and wonder if they have any hope for anything in their lives. How then are they supposed to hear the promises that Jesus makes? History tells us that those promises all too often do not come true for them in their lives. In some ways you could stand up and tell Jesus that is all just a bunch of malarkey. These people come face to face with their most very basic needs everyday of their lives. I can almost see why the people of Nazareth would want to throw Jesus off that cliff after saying similar things in the synagogue their synagogue.

But what is amazing, is that these words to bring hope for the future for so many people. These people feel abandoned by almost everything in their lives, yet Jesus is saying to them that he will not abandon them and will be with them through their struggle. He is telling them that they are not to be discarded and given up on simply because their situation seems to be too hopeless. He is telling them that the crap of this world is not all that there is for them. He says, “You will not know only hunger. You will not know only poverty. You will not only know sorrow.”

It’s funny in that their faith in God is only thing that they can hold to. Their faith is the only thing that cannot be taken away. They see their need for God as plain as day. Maybe that’s why those woes cause me to struggle so much. I have so much that I am not always confronted with my need for God. I do desperately have a need for God in my life, but I don’t see it though, because I’m too wrapped up in all the things that I can do for my life. I’m too wrapped up the happiness I’ve acquired that I forget that it is all for but a fleeting moment in the fullness of time.

In some ways I am like that shrub in the desert we heard about in Jeremiah. My trust, my faith is in what I can do and what others do for me so much that I could very well not see when relief comes for me. In other words, not be able to see God at work in my life.

Consider that imagery of a tree that gets played out in these words from Jeremiah. A tree, in a lot of ways, is a 100% receptor of all the things it needs to survive. A tree must get planted in place. Once it is planted, the tree cannot move. It is dependant on good soil that is full of nutrients. It must receive water, or it will dry up. It must get sunlight to be able to make the sugars that make it possible to grow. It must take in air to complete that chemical process called “photosynthesis.” In short, the tree must receive all of these if it is going to bear any fruit, seeds, or nuts.

I believe that that’s kind of what faith is. Faith is trusting in God and receiving God’s abounding grace. Faith is what happens when we receive God’s gracious love for us in our lives. You know what? I find it to be amazing when we receive this grace we start to bear its fruit in response to the nourishment it gives us. What’s even more amazing is the fact that this grace, this love is there for us even when we put our trust into other things that don’t give us the nourishment that we need. We try to take this or take that and forget about just receiving the God who loves, creates, and gives us life. God is life giving. Life giving in abundance.

This is what we believe about Jesus and what he does for us. And Paul reminds us that this grace, love and mercy extend even beyond our present lives. He reminds us that the reason that we can trust that God gives us life, is because Jesus rose from the dead. His resurrection gives us the hope that we will too will be raised from the dead. As Paul states, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Christ is hope for the future. Jesus is hope that the hungry will be fed. He is the hope that there is more to this life than what we live. This is ultimate promise that is made to us.

I think those woes do apply to my life. They apply, because in some way, they separate me from seeing my absolute need for God in my life. I will die, and without God there would be no hope for any future. But I say, “Thanks be to God” that God’s grace and love and mercy extends even to me. I have been watered through those life giving waters of baptism in which I am given the nourishment I need to grow and have the faith that I have today.

Remember that you too have been nourished by those life giving waters, and come to this Holy Supper to receive the grace that God gives you to grow. For in the body and blood of Jesus Christ, we are nourished and strengthened to grow and bear fruit.

Hope for the present and future...

2006-11-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

1 Kings 17:8-16
11/12/06

What does the future mean to you? A very simple definition of “future” could be defined as a set of events that have not yet come to pass. Events shaped by the past and the present, but still events that will or may happen. Since we haven’t experienced the future yet, it is almost impossible for us to know what is going to happen in the future, but that doesn’t tell us really what the future means to us.
For some people, they talk about the future as something to have. We say, “That person over there has a bright future.” Meaning, that it seems like that person has worked hard and gotten opportunities in life. For that person, the future is something that seems fairly certain – sense that it will happen. Others talk about the future in terms of plans that are already made. I look at my calendar I know that I will be heading off to Colorado on Friday with a group of our youth for a weekend gathering. To yet other people, the future contains hope for better times. This view of the future usually comes from the reality of the past and present. We say things like, “Next year I’ll have a better paying job, and we’ll be able to do more of the things we would like to do.”

Just this past week has been filled with talk of what the future will be like, what that future will mean for us. I speak mainly of last Tuesday’s elections. The past year politicians have been telling us how they will make life better if elected as representative, senator, or governor. Many people base their votes on what they think that politician is going to do. We take into account the past and these promises and make a decision on who we think is best for us and our governments. And now, we find ourselves here at All Saints Lutheran Church doing some more thinking and pondering over what the future is going to be like at our annual meeting today. We will decide on a budget that, in a lot of ways, tells something about what the next year is going to be like. We will also decide how we want to affirm our belief that all people, including those of different sexual orientations and gender identities, are welcome in this community by becoming a rostered Reconciling In Christ congregation.

To tell you the truth, it sometimes seems to me like a lot of my time is spent worrying and planning for the future. I think that is true for many other people as well. That is a part of what it means to be human, because the future holds so many uncertainties that we cannot plan for. The bright future may not turn out so bright because of an unforeseen illness or hardship that befalls us. Our plans can change very easily because of the unknown. The better days may not come. The future is very uncertain. Uncertain to the point that we become afraid of what might happen. In this fear, we get locked up in trying to ward off what might happen so much that we forget about what is happening – right here, right now. We become jealous and guarded of our resources and spend time trying to stockpile money and resources. This usually comes to the detriment of those who could use our help and attention right here and right now. I’m a big guy, and that’s due in large part to the fact that I sometimes eat as if I don’t know where my next meal is going to come from. Truthfully though, I’ve never known a moment of real, sincere hunger in my life. But there are times when we come face to face with the reality of the present to where the future holds almost no meaning for us. The widow at Zarephath had come face to face with that very same reality when Elijah meets her.

Earlier in this account from 1 Kings, the prophet Elijah prophecies that a severe drought is going to overtake the region where not even a drop of rain will fall unless God wills it. Elijah survives for a while by living next to a watering hole of sorts, but the water eventually dries up for lack of rain. It is at this point that God tells Elijah to go to Zarephath where he will be fed by a widow.
Imagine what it must have been like for the widow during these times. With each consecutive day without rain, the closer that the reality of the present situation came. She had maybe thought that things were going to go like they had in the past. She couldn’t have foreseen that this drought could have been this severe or lasted this long. Each day the meal and oil in her jars became less and less. Each day the time of her death became more and more apparent. Pretty soon there wasn’t much future to look forward to. This becomes most evident after Elijah asks her to bring him some water and a morsel of bread. She responds flatly saying, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”

She has given up at this point. But Elijah hasn’t. He presses on and says the she should go make him something first and then make something for herself and her son. He tells her not to be afraid, but I can’t see how afraid she could have been if she had been so resigned to it. In fact, at this point, there is nothing more to be afraid of. In her sight, the future’s gone. I can hear her saying to herself, “Why not give this man what he wants? I’m going to die anyway.” Essentially she has resigned herself of any notion of control that she has over her life and begins to trust in Elijah and Elijah’s God.

It is in that stripping away of her illusions of control over death that she is able to fully give herself to God. You know what? In doing so, she finds out that God is a God that sustains life even in the midst of death. And when her son dies, she also finds out that God is a God that sustains life even beyond death when Elijah brings him back to life. Ironically, by trusting in God and not herself, the widow finds a sure hope for the future that God will always be present in her life.

That is such a hard thing for us to do – to be able to trust God through every part of our life. As much as we may not like it, we begin to take comfort in those things that give us an illusion of security of the future. When the reality is, that there will come a time when each one of us will die – no matter what securities we may have stored up for us. This seems very disheartening at first, but when I lose that notion of absolute control over my life and trust in God, I find that I’m then free to enjoy the journey that is life and help others to be able to enjoy that journey as well.

So what of the future? Are we to stop planning all together? Should we all turn in our insurance policies? Should we give up our dreams and visions? To steal a line from Paul, “By no means!!” It just means that they shouldn’t become so beholden to our future plans that forget what is important in our lives. If you go along in life measuring your security and success by these attained goals you will always be sorely disappointed, because of all the unknowns and uncertainties. Martin Luther tried very hard to attain absolute perfection, but he realized that God loves us and claims us as God’s own anyway. He called it a liberating experience. Indeed, it is liberating to come to this realization. Our dreams and vision then stop being a burden, and we can then adapt to those “curve balls” that life throws at us.

That is why we begin each service on Sunday morning at the baptismal font. To remind us of our need for God and also to remind us that God is present and has forgiven and claimed us as God’s own. In little bit, will go into that annual meeting and discuss our future financially and as a Reconciling In Christ congregation. As you discuss what this is going to mean for our future as a congregation, I encourage you to think about how God is present in your life right now. We are called to trust in the grace that God has shown us through the life and death of Jesus Christ and spread that good news to everyone in word and deed. I leave you with just one question. How will what we decide today spread that good news in the future?

On call at the Hospital...

2006-06-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

Well folks, 14 hours to go for first on call of the summer, and it already has been a pretty crazy day here at the hospital. I've visited with a family whose mother/grandmother was dying, and I've visited with a mother whose daughter has just been intubated. Oh well... I think I'm handling the situations I've seen pretty well, but I still don't know exactly what to say to people while this is all going on. Hopefully, I'll get better at it as time goes on.

Media Violence (Or Violence in the Media)

2006-05-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

For the past day or so, I have been thinking a lot about what someone presented to us about the ethics of Media violence. The place I'm stuck on in thinking about this issue is where the presenter made the comment that one of the ways we can take responsibility for our lives as people centered in Christ is to boycott films or TV shows that utilize violence as a part of their story. My reaction starts by thinking and asking myself is right to blind ourselves to images that, even if they are hyperbole, emanate from a violent world? To me, this in some ways is an attempt to insulate oneself from things that one does not like to see. Can we really just close our eyes and just say, "This isn't happening?" Then, the artist in me starts to speak up and say that violence can and is an artistic statement made by an "artist" or "artists," choosing not to see an (often) important aspect of the artistic message being delivered. For example, when director Quentin Tarantino uses gratuitous violence in his his movies, is he just painting with images of violence much the same way some of Monet's brush strokes are purple rather than red or green? Then the thought that comes into mind is that in my own personal experience, I have watched many violent images in TV, movies and video games, but doesn't the fictional aspect of media violence in effect just simply a way to explore violent feelings without actually committing real acts of violence? Can't I person who has a center that is Christ and still explore all of those feelings that are a part of my humanity?

Reflections on Ethics and Violence

2006-04-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

So, now I'm almost done with my journey through my study of violence through the lens of ethics, and I must say that I have learned a lot about the complexities that surround the use of violence and non-violence, especially in the light of my (our) faith in Jesus Christ. The weirdest thing about my study into this issue is that it's not my faith that has been challenged - it's my use (for lack of a better term) of that faith to take action in my life. I ahve come face to face with the reality that the cross of Christ was a very violent event, and, because of that fact, it is very hard to think of it as victorius triumph. I guess, in some ways, I'm still stuck in that Good Friday service that I attended almost two weeks ago. I'm still awestruck by how Good Friday exposes exactly how sinful a creature I am, and I will die, in part, because of that inate sinfulness. I know exactly why Jesus had to what he did, and it doesn't make me feel all that good. In fact, I'm so sorry that it had to come to that. But could there have been another way? I don't know. I only know that that is the way it happened. Dear Jesus, why did you have to let it come to this? I know that you are risen, but I cannot get out of my mind that our sin killed you on that day. The tomb is empty, but I don't know how worthy I am to carry out the proclamation of Jesus' love for the whole world. Come Holy Spirit and give me the strength to see that it doesn't matter how worthy I am to proclaim the Word made flesh - It only matters that I proclaim.

Violence in Music

2006-04-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been thinking about the use of violent images in music. For example, Ice T's "Cop Killer" is a song about frustration with police corruption in dealing with people (mainly Blacks and Hispanics)in the ghettos of America. On one level, the level that put everyone into such a flurry of protest in the mid-90's, it seems to be a mere indiscriminate advocation of violence brought against a whole group of people. On another level, though, it speaks to the raw emotional response to the opression and discrimination brought upon minorities by the very people who swear to "protect and serve."

In thinking about the tension that the two viewpoints espouse, it makes me wonder if there is space in our lives as Christians to express that very real emotion of anger that we all feel at one point or another in our lives. As people called to christain service in response to our justification, can we have time to express our anger in truth before we start to turn to our called christian response of love and care for neighbor? Is there any place for the emotion of anger in our response to "love your neighbor as yourself?" I think that if we are to enter into true recociliation after repentance and forgiveness, then we need express and think about all those emotions that might come up in those difficult situations in our life.

If that is the case, then I truly think that those expressions of violence in music need to be present within the music scene, because they are artistic expression of emotion just as much as any love song is an artistic expression of emotion. One has to be careful, though, to discern what is artistic expression and an outright call to violence and hatred of a person or people.

Vindictive Violence

2006-03-22T06:34:00.000-08:00

I just watched "V for Vendetta" last weekend, and it has brought up quite a few questions as to what, in pop culture, kind of violence is acceptable. The main thing that bugged me as I thought about that movie and other images it reminded me of was that there seems to be a notion in popular culture that not only can violence become the necessary route; but also, in some ways, vilence is the RIGHT thing to do in some circumstances. For example, the movie I watched basically hovered around the theme of vengence against a government that controls and kills people to an astonishing degree. The main character "V" knows exactly what the government is trying to do, and puts into action an elaborate plan to expose the government for what it is AND kill those who made him what he is. By the end of the movie, you feel as if the only course of action "V" could take was to kill those who made him what he is.

There is an interesting twist to the whole movie, however. Near the end, large numbers of people march on parliament where a large military force is stationed to stop them from going further, and instead of a violent clash, the people end up being able to walk through the soldiers ranks unharmed. It worked so beautifully that I wonder if the murderous vedetta that "V" carried out was truly necessary. Maybe that means that popular culture is subconsciously espousing an idea that non-violence is great and all, but you still need to have some violent actions take for it to be truly affective and effective.

A Tale of Two Strangers

2006-03-13T20:01:00.000-08:00

Today I heard two very different, very amazing stories from a couple of people who I consider to be friends.

"It was the best of times..."

I walked into chapel choir today, and walked right in on a story of the kindness of strangers being recounted to the choir. Our choir director told us how he ended sleeping on a cold steel bench for three hours in O'Hare airport, and afterwards, he noticed how much he and other people around him trusted each other with their possessions. Not only that, but he also noticed how because of the kindness of strangers, sleeping people were woken up to be able to catch their planes by strangers. Strange people looking out for other people.

"It was the worst of times..."

I walked into my classroom building today saw my good friend and noticed that his glasses were gone. When I asked him about it, he told me that he had been jumped and beaten by strangers while walking around town just last night. Unknown people, for whatever reason, stole from and beat up my friend for no apparent reason. How can somebody devalue another human being to the point where she or he can steal from and violently attack another human being? Do they just not care that the person they attacked was a person full of love and compassion for other people? I must admit that this is first time in a long time that someone close to me has been the victim of un-aggravated violence. Heck, it may be the first time ever. The whole event seems so raw and disconnected with the depictions of violence I've seen on TV and in the movies. The fake events in "entertainment" pale immensely to reality. It also makes stories like the one I heard in choir today seem unbelievable.

Cycles of Violence

2006-03-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am at a new weekend right before my school takes a small break to let students catch up on some reading, and I find myself immersed in a particularly difficult text from I Peter. The basic problem with this text is that one can easily read it as a text saying that one should just quietly endure in her or his suffering because the present life does not matter. Truthfully, that's not a reading I can in good conscience relate to other people. Besides, it seems so contrary to the life Jesus lead and strove for in his ministry, death, and resurrection. All throughout the gospels, we hear time after time stories about how Jesus was either challenging established conceptions of how to act, confronting social structures, healing the sick, or feeding hungry people. That is most certainly NOT a philosophy of inaction. So what are we to do with I Peter and it seeming language of silent suffering? Well, yes it is about suffering. It is about a very real reality that all of us face at one time or another within the world. But, it is not just pointing out an obvious fact of life. It says that the only way one can end suffering, violence, and abuse is to break the cycle of retribution with a radical love and care for other people and breaking down the situations that enable suffering, violence, and abuse to be carried out. So, wives shouldn't just sit quietly as their husbands physically and mentally abuse them, but neither should they return in kind the suffering, violence, and abuse directed at them. They should instead remove themselves from the situation and put into action a sequence of events that either leads to incarceration or treatment for the abuser - a kind of love heals both parties involved. But, as per Jesus' teachings, we should leave it up to the abused to be the sole one responsible for ending the cycle of violence. Indifference and inaction of people on the outside are just as culpable as people personally involved in the suffering, violence, and abuse. We need to be just as active if not more active in finding ways to end cycles of suffering, violence, and abuse we see all around us in the world.

Accidental Shooting

2006-02-18T19:01:00.000-08:00

Just last week, the Vice President of the United States of America shot a 78 year old man in face while hunting for farm raised quail at a Texas ranch. No big news here, as this happened about a week ago. But, as funny as this story has been for me and for a lot of people, I'm starting to wonder about the whole dynamics of the accidental shooting in terms of it being an instance of violence. I think that in a lot of ways it boils down to whether or not an accident is a violent act or not. When looking at violence defined as something that has an intentionality to it, it doesn't seem to be a violent act. In other words, what makes this accident any different than the inattentive driver who "t-bones" another car in a intersection? When a car slips on the ice and hits on-coming traffic, does one commit a violent act? That being said, intentionaliy can become a cop out for all those times in history where where a person or persons become un-intentional casualties to people's accidents. I don't mean to say though that intentionality doesn't have anything to with the value judgement pertaining to the accident.

This event in which Dick Cheney shot his friend in stead of a small bird has another little wrinkle to it than just being purely an accident. That wrinkle is the situation Cheney found himself in in the first place. That situation is one in which he felt that he needed to use vacation time to hunt farm raised birds almost literally from his car. I wonder why Cheney needs to commit a violent act in the first place. As the Vice President of the USA who has been gainfully employed for all of his life, his need to hunt that bird had nothing to do feeding himself. Moreover, any aspect of sport has to be ruled out since he had someone else find the bird for him before getting out of his car to "hunt" the bird. The only thing I am left with is considering why he or anyone else needed to kill something. Is this an innate need in all humans? And, if it is, what does that say about us as human beings, animals living in an ecosystem, as the children of God?

A Shift in Function...

2006-02-11T15:54:00.000-08:00

Hello. I know it's been a long time, dear blog, but I think I'm gonna change the functionality of how this blog has been working for me. This bascially stems from an assignment I recieved in my "Ethics in a Violent World" class this semester. The professor told me and my classmates that we would be writing a journal of reflection recounting our thoughts and ideas on the issue of violence in the world.

To start off then I suppose, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be aggressive and violent. The in-class definitions we came up with last week were a big help, but I still have one question about aggression and violence. That is, "Are aggression and violence necessarily fundamentally "bad" actions or are they integral parts in how this world works?" My first reaction is that no, they are not bad, because of the way aggression and violence not lonyl has preserved life, beauty, art, and freedom but also has progessed humankind to develop new ways of thought, new inventions, and (at least) a new standard of living. But then, another part of me asks whether or not that preservation and progression has to be accomplished in such a way that, ultimately, hurts another in one way or another. I come back with this because, all too often, another is hurt in the name of progress and preservation.

Take a look at Hebrew scripture. Once the Hebrew people are brought out of the land of Egypt and brought out of the wilderness to their promised land, they immediately begin a process of progression through invasion, exclusion, and violence that is mandated by God. They preserving and progressing their society, but they are doing it at the expense of peoples who had not harmed them at all in any way, and God seems to utilizing aggression and violence God's self to get done what God needs to get done.

Now take a look at our current situation in Iraq today. God didn't mandate or invasion, but we saw fit to invade that country because they might, just *might*, harm us in the future. And now when it turns out that Iraq really didn't have the capabilities to harm us, we start to justify our action by saying that we did it for the cause of spreading democracy in the Middle East. We want to prgress them further through our aggression and violence. This has now backfired on us and now we are stuck there trying to create some semblence of a stable society. There just has to be another way.

Maybe that's what the Kingdom of God will be like. Maybe it will be a time and place where aggression and violence are not needed anymore to survive and thrive. God I hope so. May the Kingdom of God come.

Random Rumblings

2005-03-11T07:17:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am as I stare at another weekend full of expectation that it will be as good as the last.

No, really. I had a good weekend last weekend. I rested, partied, studied, and even caught "Be Cool." (Not a fantastic movie, but pretty funny nonetheless.) Oh, yeah, I also did some karaoke as well. (I killed with my rendition of Sinatra's "My Way.")Alas though, I did not make it to the Gun Show.

Eventhough I'm a pretty liberal guy, I grown pretty used to the same old bullshit that comes from Washington and figure that there's not much anyone can do about it. But, the recent crap flowing down the open sewer of American policy just makes me sick. Bankrupcy has now become an option for the rich, and W's is demanding that social security invested and intrustred to the wealthiest people in America. I think that's just great. The only thing that keeps us from abject poverty should be given to the people whose goal it seems is to make sure the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Yay! Woo! Whippie!

Good news though. It's that time of year again. Can you say MARCH MADNESS? Okay, so it isn't tragically hip to absolutely love college basketball, but I don't give a hoot. It's amazing. Every year seems just about as exciting and full of potential as the last. Too bad my Jayhawks always seem to break my heart come tourney time. Oh well. I think that is why I like them so much.

And in other sports news, the Vikings actually look intent on winning next year. Hopefully, the defensive additions help. (Man, I haven't been able to celebrate a championship since 1991.)

In closing, I am getting tired of snow. I want spring. Now. Dammit.