Homily at my home church, Grace Lutheran in Winchester, WI

1 Peter 2:2-10
Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture: ‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’  To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner’,  and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’ They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Wednesday 5-14-14

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Christ our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

My husband and I were at Target the day after Mother's Day, and already the card section had been stripped clean of all vestiges that there had ever been a mother's day at all. Instead, all was being made ready for the next big “card holiday” - Father's Day! So you'd better get your cards now, before they're gone! And of course there are as many graduation cards still available as there are schools and programs to graduate from - high school, college, graduate school, pre school, med school. Cards for holding money, cards that are funny or slightly inappropriate, cards that are mushy and gushy, cards that make us cry with their wisdom.

Target and the Hallmark companies of the world seem to have all the festive and celebratory holidays and occasions covered. But if there were cards for “real life;” - cards that expressed what was really on our minds? What might THOSE cards say?

Alongside the "congrats on that new baby" cards might be the cards that say "Sorry for your loss... of sleep for the next 18 years." A graduation card from such an honesty line, like one I might get for my sister, graduating from college in just a few days, might say: “Congrats on entering the real world! Welcome to crippling debt for the next 15-20 years." or "I’m sorry that you are entering a crummy job market, my condolences."

But also, if such cards existed, next to the cards saying "congrats on your new job" should be cards for the condolences for the loss of job, or a pay cut or reduction in hours. Alongside the festive birthday cards should be cards in large bifocal friendly print that say something like "I hope that today at least is a good day for you, because getting older can be really, really difficult. Your body will betray you, and every year there will be more funerals and fewer faces of the ones you love.”

I suppose in such a world, we would have cards would tell our real life stories, not just the sugar-coated version of the lives that we wish we were leading. With such a honest line of Hallmark cards, it might be easier to share with one another how difficult life can really be.

Reading 1st Peter today is sort of like reading someone else’s real-life, honest Hallmark card. Well, really it’s more like reading a post on someone’s blog - this letter was written to a specific group of people, but read out loud in public, and passed down through the ages so that people like us, two thousand years later, can “eavesdrop.” Peter, writing to the dispersed and exiled communities around what is now Turkey, is not sugar-coating anything. Life did not suddenly become easy once the people in these communities began to follow Jesus. Believing and trusting in the resurrection of their Lord often actually made their lives more difficult. The early Christian church was growing like a weed, and was also being treated like one by the the Roman empire at the time.  To them, the growing Christian church was like a weed that must be pulled out and destroyed at all costs.

Fortunately for us, we no longer have to deal with the likes of the Roman Empire. But unfortunately for us, following Jesus does not seem to have gotten any easier. We may not have the Roman Empire to deal with any more, we do have other empires who oppress and seduce us. The empire of wealth will welcome us with open arms as it citizens, if only we have enough money to support the lifestyle of the successful. The empire of success will call us as one of its own if only we put in long hours and excel at everything we do, including the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect family. The empire of popularity beckons to us with its lure of instant friends and the acceptance we crave. The empire of stuff tells us that we will only truly find happiness with the next new thing, if only we fork over our credit cards for the next hot item at the mall or on Amazon.

And before long we are utterly used up, buried under this Empire of Death, our hearts slowing becoming deadened to love and kindness, slowly turning into stone. We become like walking dead people, trapped in a tomb of darkness.

Well, we know what Jesus does to tombs, don’t we? Tombs just don’t seem to stay shut around him. When Jesus shows up, people have a tendency not to stay dead.

Where the empires of our lives show us no mercy, Jesus has shown us mercy. When we were once a collection of individuals with hearts of stone, now Jesus has called us together to be a people, as Peter writes - to be living stones. As pastor, writer, and speaker Nadia Bolz-Weber has said, when looking out upon her congregation, “I am UNCLEAR about what all these people have in common.” Except, of course, we have our Lord Jesus in common, who gathers us together, and makes us into a new kind of people.

Jesus has called us out of the darkness of death into his marvelous light to be living stones that make up his church. You know that kids rhyme, “here is the church, here is the steeple, open the door and see all the people.” Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you that this rhyme is WRONG - dead WRONG. The church is NOT the building. It’s not the steeple. It’s not the pews or what color they are. The church is not the budget, or the pastors, (or who is preaching), or the banners, or the screen, or the altar rail. The church is not a building made of bricks and stone. “HERE is the church,” made of of living stones, made of flesh and blood, made of people who tried their darndest to follow Jesus every day. The church is wherever God is, and wherever God’s people happen to be, there is the church.

And if that is really true, that church can happen wherever God is (which is everywhere) and wherever God’s people find themselves, that means that church is not just what happens inside this building. It’s what happens OUT THERE, outside the safety of Jesus’ sheep pen we heard about last week.

I don’t have to tell you that the world can be a scary place. But we have built our lives on a movable cornerstone - our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. This cornerstone knows what it’s like to be rejected, to suffer pain in the extreme, both physical and emotional, and has gone into the tomb of the darkness of death. But as we know, tombs don’t stay shut for Jesus. The resurrected Lord is popping up all over the place, and sometimes NOT. EVEN. IN. CHURCH.

Jesus is on the move, a living stone that is rock-steady for us to build our lives on, and yet always ahead of us, leading us into a new kind of future. Now how is THAT for an awesome, real-life, greeting card? Amen.

Walking in a Winter Wisconsin Land!

It's catch-up time.! The week after Easter we flew back to Wisconsin to spend some time with my family. I had been back for four days last summer after being in a wedding in Chicago, but Beau could not go that time. So this is the first time in almost two years for both of us being back... so we had a lot of catching up to do!! One day we went to Katie's college (Marian in Fon du Lac WI at right), sat in on a class, saw her apartment, and the daycare she works at. We had a lunch and "open house" at one set of grandparents' and took the other Grandpa out to dinner at IHOP with the rest of the fam. We drove through all the new round-abouts in Neenah. I saw the cows and the cats at the farm, and spent some time helping Beau do research on my side of the family tree. We found some interesting things, like how the local paper reported in detail about the wedding dress that Grandma W wore, and details about how my great-grandpa died in a dynamite accident. Oh, yeah, it snowed one day, too! Then we brought back with us 7 pounds of cheese and I don't know how many pounds of steak, hamburger, and venison. And yes, we've shared the cheese curds. I suppose the fact that we brought my family Tasty Kakes makes it a fair trade... :)

May God Bless You With Discomfort

WHAT A WEEKEND! I can't remember the last time since I did so much and saw so many people and states in just four days! And, after visiting both my Alma Maters too, I now understand the term. It really felt, in so many ways, that in this trip we were (at least briefly) going back in time, back into the womb, to different formative places from our past.

First: Luther, both first to be visited and most recent Alma. After getting over our shock and jealousy of seeing the new coffee shop, we could not get over the feeling that this place (actually the entire Twin Cities) felt like home. They say that you can't go back, and you really can't, but this is the closest we'll ever come. We only caught a few profs, but it was enough (one even said "ok, give me your elevator speech!" like she knew that we were seeing tons of people for a short time and saying the same thing, basically! Gotta love Mary Sue!) And the bookstore was like a mini-Christmas. We even sat in on a Pentateuch class that one of our friends was taking, and it was like the exact lecture I needed to hear, about the "J" source of all things. Sometimes I miss being a student (but not the homework!)

Being back in the Twin Cities was such a bizarre and somewhat heart-wrenching experience. You never really know how much a place feels like home until you leave it for a while... and then come back. But the very reason that we may want to go back is the very reason that we can't, at least not for a while. More about that later (it was sort of a theme of the trip). The overall feeling I got from being back in Minneapolis was... calm. People there aren't in as big of a rush there. Frankly, I was surprised at how much I missed it.

We stayed with some friends who had gotten back from the peace corps literally WEEKS after we moved to NJ, so it had been at least 3 years since we had seen them. We stayed at their house, helped them with a last harvest of their lovely garden and put it do bed. Did I mention it was freaking freezing in the Midwest? 80 to 49 as the high in the space of a day. Anyway, then we road down to Waverly IA for the wedding with them, the whole time talking nonstop about their years in Burkina Faso, our year in NJ, the weirdness of life and seminary, and why the church frustrates us sometimes.

Waverly.... had grown up. And there is no one left we know as a student on campus, so Beau and I only spend about half an hour wandering around campus (we did find Dr. Mrs. Black!!!). We realized that the specialness of Wartburg, like that of Luther Sem, is that of its people and relationships we build there. Really it is nothing more than some nice buildings - but the memories are the important thing.

The wedding was lovely and the reception fantastic as we literally danced the night away. Again, it was seeing the people we had not seen in 3-4 years that made all the difference.

We had breakfast one morning and later lunch with some past beloved Wartburg profs, which were right there with us as we shared with them the frustration and joys of ministry, but most especially we felt their support as we struggled with the location that God has placed us - that the East Coast is such a different animal than anything we've ever experienced. Even after a year, it's still hard some days. But as we attended St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Waverly on Sunday morning and heard the sermon, you can't go right from wheat to bread. The kernel must be broken open, ground up a bit, stretched with discomfort, and more before it can truly become bread, bread that God can used to feed people.

It is because of this desire to go back to what feels safe and comfortable is the very reason we can't leave yet. And that is a very hard thing.

And there's even more from the weekend. (I never promised that this would be a short post). I was able to reconnect to a camp friend I hadn't seen in 4+ years, and we had one of those deep conversations about life and God and peace, justice, and urban ministry, dissatisfaction with the sometimes rigidity of established religion. I hadn't realized how age-lonely it can be in the church, but it is friends like these who give me hope for the future.

It has been a lot to process, and I'm still processing. But I will end with a benediction from that Sunday, St. Francis Sunday, which is attributed to him:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

AMEN. 

Midwest Weekend Madness!

I had to laugh - going through the Madison WI airport the TSA didn't say a word about my two things of venison sausage in my carry on. The reason I was pulled aside? Hairspray. Wisconsin for the win!


Remind me not to get up at 4:30 AM twice in one week again - though it was totally worth it. I blame it on Delta, not my dear friends Brett and Julie, who got married, nor my family. Thankfully all flights involved were uneventful, though for a little bit it looked like I might have gotten into Chicago a bit late. But I arrived on time and was greeted by the blushing bride herself and her lovely mom. Then it was off to the bachelorette party - lunch and mani-pedis in the afternoon, which is a brilliant idea. I had no idea that they give you a foot massage too! It was so relaxing I could have fallen asleep. Then we just hung out at the hotel before the rehearsal at Julie's home church. Seriously, this bride was as cool as a cucumber, and rightly so, since she had sent each of us a four-page itinerary of the weekend in advance! Doesn't she just look so lovely? I can't get over it. 

I got to see a whole bunch of my college friends, a few of whom were in the wedding too. It was such a beautiful service (no surprises there) and such a lovely day. Brett was on his (mostly) best behavior and Julie looked so radiant. The reception hall was gorgeous and the party processed in to the processional song from the end of Star Wars, and the groomsman I was partnered with and I had a mock "lightsaber" battle! The food was fantastic and the speeches epic - over all, a night to remember. This I think is one of the last weddings for my group of friends, so it may be a long time before I see many of them again. We also realized we must be getting "old" - we can't dance as much or stay up as late as we used to!!


The next day, my aunt who lives in the Chicago area had lunch with me and my mom and sister, who came all the way down to pick me up. Since I was in the area, I was able to spend the rest of the weekend with my family! Going back to Grace Lutheran was a treat - as much as I love St. Paul, I have to admit it IS nice to sit back and enjoy the service! I was a communion assistant, which was great to see all the familiar faces. I saw my Grandpa Posselt, and my Grandma and Grandpa Wittmann. I even took my dad and brother and sister out for supper one night at A&W (mmmm cheese curds!), and the whole family went for ice cream the next night! Whew! It was quite a whirlwind!


Now I am trying to get myself organized and figure out what to do with the rest of the summer - planning exciting things for the fall, mostly. I had been looking forward to these two events for such a long time, now I don't know what to do with myself! I'll find some way to keep busy, I'm sure. :)

Vacation and Post-Easter

Our first Holy Week and Easter in our churches were great,but after all that, a vacation was in order! First we joined up Beau's sister and family in DC and explored things like Arlington National Cemetery and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Arlington was just lovely, and way bigger than I had imagined. And we saw all kinds of cool spacey things at the Smithsonian. We also walked the National Mall and saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the outside of the Capitol building. There is just way too much there to see!


After that, we traveled to Virginia Beach. Our hotel room was right on the ocean, as  you can see, overlooking the boardwalk. It as a bit chilly, but the view was not to be beat. And we ate lots of yummy fresh fish. We also stopped at Norfolk Navy Base and Jamestown Settlement, and the Local Starbucks. :) It was especially nice because there were no crowds. 


Now we're back to our regularly scheduled programming, already preparing for things like first communion, Mother's Day, VBS, and other upcoming events. It just never stops, does it? :)