Today, We Are Not Afraid

Sermon 11-20-16 – Christ the King, Commitment Sunday

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, amen.

First of all, the snow… I was expecting to see it when I went to WI for Thanksgiving, not to see it this morning on a couple of cars on m y way in this morning.

And second of all… this worship arrangement. It feels strange to be worshiping in here, doesn’t it? For some of you, it might feel a little like a blast from the past, though we are positioned at a little different angle than when worship was here regularly. It’s certainly not the arrangement you were expecting to be sitting in this Sunday as you walked in, and like any sudden change, it throws you off-balance and effects your personal feng shui, and has probably been more than a little distracting.

All these things before us are familiar: we have seen this room, we know all the furniture - but everything seem to be in the wrong place! So we wonder - Where am I going to sit? Where’s “my pew?” How will it be to go up for communion? How many Sundays are we going to have to be in here? All these thoughts have been swirling around in our brains as we try to concentrate on singing the hymns, saying the prayers, offering our pledges, and hearing the word as we have done week to week, and year to year.  

Even change that we know is for the better can feel jarring and disorienting, at least for a while, even we know it’s for a positive result, like having the roof fixed. But when we experience changes in our lives that don’t seem like they are for the better, feeling this unsettled adds to our already existing fear and anxiety.

In our small-scale experiment and experience of change in our worship today, we hear again the words of Psalm 46, a pretty familiar psalm in the Lutheran tradition. It’s the basis of Martin Luther’s most famous hymn “A mighty fortress is our God” – an alternate translation of the Psalms first verse, “God is our refuge and strength.” We heard both Psalm 46 and “A Mighty Fortress” just a few weeks ago on Reformation Sunday.

Psalm 46 describes scenes of upheavals, change, and confusion – of cosmic chaos in mountains shaking and oceans raging, of political chaos in nations raging and kingdoms shaking - a great unraveling of everything around us that we thought was solid. Which for many of us sounds pretty close to home right about now. We may be experiencing our own personal examples of chaos: under- employment or struggling to make ends meet, going through a divorce, facing a terminal illness, mourning the death of a loved one, imprisoned by addiction. OR we are reading the newspaper or scanning our Facebook feeds seeing the disarray that’s happening in our country and around the world.  There is plenty out there to be afraid of.

And a lot of people ARE scared- if not for themselves, for the people that they love and care about. Change is happening, and we feel unmoored like a ship adrift on the raging sea described in Psalm 46. The rug has been pulled out from under us. So, where do we turn? When we are at the mercy of so many things beyond our control, where can we go to find a place of safety in the storm?

The first verse of Psalm 46 reminds us – “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” When the world around us rages and shakes to the foundations and changes at a pace we can’t keep up at, God is the unchanging stronghold in the storm when the world feels like it’s falling apart.

When nothing else around is still, we are anchored in God who gives us peace. God does not change when the furniture changes, and God is not going to be moving to Canada. Our God remains with us, and we will not be shaken.

At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, a poor young girl on the losing side of Roman occupation finds herself in very precarious place. Pregnant, unmarried, a woman with no power, Mary could have thrown in the towel or asked God to pick someone else. But instead, she said, “Here I am, a servant of the Lord.” Instead, she sang a song of praise as she greets her relative Elizabeth, as these two pregnant women marvel at how God is their refuge and their strength, a very present help in trouble.

One hymn translates a line from Mary’s song in this way: “Though nations rage from age to age, we remember who holds us fast.” To hold something fast is not about speed, holding fast is about strength. When God holds US fast, it means that God’s grip on us is so tight, that no power on earth to snatch us out of God’s hand.

You see, God wields a different kind of power than the world is used to. God’s kingdom is not brought into being by violence and conflict. God’s power brings desolations in the form of breaking the weapons of war. God’s power raises the lowly and takes the powerful down from their thrones.

God’s power is not found in the places we are expect – in the halls of government or in impressive skyscrapers. Instead, God’s power rearranges the cosmic furniture. Instead, we find God’s power in a manger- and animal feeding trough - and on a cross – an instrument of capital punishment.  

Speaking of things that feel out of place, this Gospel text seems like it doesn’t really belong here today. We are more used to hearing about Jesus’s death on the cross during Holy Week, like on Good Friday, or at least during the season of Lent. Not right before Thanksgiving, and not right before Advent, and certainly not on Commitment Sunday!

Instead, we find ourselves at the END of the church year, at the end of hearing from the Gospel of Luke, and at the end of Jesus’s life.

The different kinds of power at work here are thrown into stark opposition. The expectation of the religious leaders, the soldiers, and even one of the criminals crucified with Jesus is clear. THEIR expectation of true power revealed means at the very least saving your own skin when the going gets tough. “If you’re the king, save yourself!” “Save yourself!” “Save yourself!” Three times, much like the three temptations Jesus faced during his 40 days in the wilderness, three times he is commanded to prove himself and save himself. After all, in our human experience, no king actually gives himself into the power of others, much less into the power of his enemies. It’s not what we expect a king to DO.

Except that this Jesus DID. He gave his POWER away just as he gave him-SELF away and gave his LIFE away. This king came as a helpless infant and died as a criminal and a big loser in the eyes of the world. This king forgave his enemies. This king was abandoned by his followers in the end and only accompanied in death by some overlooked women. At the end, the sole defender of this king was a criminal condemned to die alongside of him.

This king has a kingdom that comes through a cross.

This kingdom and this king are not the kind the world tells us to be expecting, but this is the kingdom to which we belong when nothing seems familiar anymore. This is the king who holds us fast in a world that seems to be falling apart, even when we seem have every reason in the world to be afraid.

The criminal who defended Jesus knew that his world was falling apart in the worst way possible. For him, there wasn’t much hope for him that day, but he asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus came into his kingdom. But Jesus did him one better. Jesus told him that TODAY, on his very worst day, on the day of his death, he would be with Jesus. Today, right now, Jesus would be with him. Holding him fast.

All through Luke, Jesus gave salvation to his people TODAY, THIS day. The angels proclaimed to the shepherds, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”(Luke 2:1-20)

When Jesus preached his very first sermon, he read from Isaiah - how the blind could see and the captives were released and good news told to the poor – and he ended with “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”(Luke 4:16-21)

When Jesus invited himself over to the home of Zacchaeus, who pledged to give back half of his possessions and four times his dishonestly earned income, Jesus said “Today salvation has come to this house.” (Luke 19:1-10)

The criminal on the cross was given hope TODAY. Because today is when this kingdom comes. This is a promise we can trust in TODAY, even when TODAY is our very worst day.

So, if God is with us, how then are we going to live in God’s kingdom, today?

How will we spend our money, today?

How will we care for the earth, today?

How will we treat our family, today?

How will we interact with strangers, today?

How will we think about people who are different from us, today?

How will we live with Jesus in his kingdom, today?

Today, we are about to dive headfirst into yet another Advent season, having already been drowning in retail consumeristic Christmas for weeks, if not months. Today, we are about to dive headfirst into a week of too much turkey and complex and often dividing family dynamics. Today, and every day, nations rage and mountains shake. But today, no matter what, we are be held fast by God, following our king on the way of the cross…

And today - WE ARE NOT AFRAID. Amen. 

Lent is....

Lent is… letting God defragmenting your hard drive.

At the beginning of Lent, I usually have the best of intentions. I don’t normally give something up, but I try to add something to my devotional live. This year it was a nice resource put out by Augsburg Fortress, a little devotional on Romans that fits in your pocket. And, like most years, my use of it has been hit or miss.

But that’s ok. Because Lent is like letting God defragment your hard drive.

When my seminary Luther tweeted “Lent is….”, encouraging people to fill in the blank, I thought I was pretty clever at coming up with this one. I didn’t expect that God would actually listen to me and make me eat my words this Lent.

Defragmenting a hard drive, if you recall, is the process of getting rid of the unnecessary junk in your computer and rearranging the programs to fill in the gaps more neatly, kind of like arranging your bookshelves by height and size so that they fit better. Now when we defragment computers it takes an hour or two, maybe more if it’s been a while. Beau once told me that he defragmented his computer way back when, and it took it an entire week. AN ENTIRE WEEK. Seven days of defragmenting. Can you imagine? What would we do nowadays without a computer for an entire week??? Thank goodness the process is sooo much faster now!

But defragmenting life is still a much longer process. And letting God defragment your personal hard drive takes an entire Lent, if not longer. For the past few weeks, and really for the last five months since moving to Trenton, God has been trying to teach me what is really necessary and what things might fit better in my life if rearranged a bit. Sometimes I’m a good student, sometimes I’m not. But I’m still learning a lot. I’m learning that it is possible to be a one car family even with both of our crazy schedules. I’m learning that a few sewing skills and some creativity can go a long way when it comes to saving money. I’m learning that when God rips down the detailed map of where you thought your life would go, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole wide universe behind it.

But that’s pretty much Lent in a nutshell. God taking our fragments and putting them back together to make a whole that is much better than the cobbled-together mess we’ve come up with; God making something beautiful out of the mess. 

This liturgical art is made from sea glass and broken IKEA plates, reconstructed and used at "Baby Pastor School" 

"We're moving to Trenton!"

 “We’re moving to New Jersey!”

Almost 2 ½ years ago, Beau and I found out that we were being called to an awesome synod on the East Coast. But the reactions we got were… interesting. Our friends and family took the news ranging from “That’s nice” to flat out “Why would you go THERE?” To resident New Jerseyians, it would be reasonable to be affronted by such reactions. How dare they judge a place they’ve never lived, or probably have never visited? But to those who live elsewhere, there is only one image that New Jersey conjures up: gritty industrial sprawl populated by rude people (ala the show “Jersey Shore”). Of course now, I have had first-hand knowledge that this state is not (all) like that. New Jersey is unique, and beautiful, and diverse.

So...

“We’re moving to Trenton!”

Trenton? That place we read about in the paper with violence happening nearly every day? That place with the abandoned buildings and dangerous streets and drugs and gangs and corruption and problems and people who don’t look like us? “Make sure you are careful.” “Don’t go out at night.” “You might want to get some Mace.”*

(You see what I did there?)

Beau and I want to discover sides of Trenton that few people dig deep enough to see. Because in between those articles in the paper about drugs and violence, there are also stories about people trying to help, trying to make Trenton a better place. God’s up to something in this place that seems to have been abandoned by the leadership of this state. Beau will be devoting himself fully to this exploration and I will be accompanying him as much I am able, along with my normal pastoral ministries at my congregation. 

But it's going to be different. Some things are going to be challenging, and others will change. Like my commute. My commute has not just increased in time, but it has increased in socio-economic range: on my way to church I now pass multi-million dollar houses and homeless people on the street. Every day now I get cultural whip-lash, but I fervently pray that I will never not see the injustice in it. 

Pray for us. We're going to need all the help we can get!!




*Of course Beau and I are going to be careful. This kind of situation is not one to take lightly. We have been so thankful to all of those who live and work in Trenton who have given us some really good advice, which we gratefully accept. It is when general advice is offered, coming from a place of fear, from those who have had little to no contact with the city that I frankly find grating. I was completely unprepared for all the unsolicited advice. We may be crazy for doing what we're doing, but we're trying not to be stupid about it!! 

Grandpa's Last Gift

As an ordained minister, I have the blessed and humbling privilege to witness important and personal moments in the lives of families, some of whom I barely know (some of whom I get to know well). Some of these moments are so raw and so personal that no other person would ever be invited to see such a moment, not in a million years. And yet, here I am, invited to pray with families as their loved ones are dying, as people struggle with illness and recovery, and other times to join in celebrating the union of two people in matrimony (which I did for the first time last weekend!).

But is one thing to be the (mostly) calm, gentle minister in their midst and then go home to my own whole and unsuffering life, and it is quite another when trauma hits on a personal level. Last month my Grandpa had a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to speak or swallow. It should have taken him the moment it struck, but by some blessed design, my grandpa was able to spend twelve days saying goodbye to his very extensive family. I was able to fly back to Wisconsin and spend five precious days with him and with my family.

The greatest gifts that my grandpa gave to me were those days I was able to be at his bedside, holding his hand, reading to him from his devotional, laughing about favorite memories, reading to him some of my past sermons about the farm. Being with someone who is dying is both holy and disconcerting, and a gift I was able to share with my family is what I had learned over the course of my seminary education and eighteen months of ministry. But it was Grandpa who did the teaching this time, teaching us how to hold his hand and not let go, teaching us how to understand what he wanted to say to us with his eyes, teaching us what a life well lived looks like, teaching us how to die well.

Every grief is different and the same. Having experienced this grief of mine has made me a more compassionate and aware human being, though it is still painful. But that is also where we tend to find that God is most visible, leaning on our family and friends for support through the tough times. And that's what transforms them into something beautiful.

An M.A. in marriage. :)

Six years. That's like getting your B.A. then going on for  your M.A, right? :) Believe me, we are no masters, but I think that we've done pretty well for ourselves making it to 6. Maybe we should think of it more like our marriage can now go to kindergarten!

We celebrated early by spending the 4th holiday in Philly, which was pretty cool beyond cool for these two mid-westerners. We sat outside of Independence Hall and watched the the festivities and dignitaries, which was surprisingly sparsely attended.  My theory is that all the locals stayed home, and the audience was full of non-jaded people like us, tourists or people not from the East Coast. It was fun to be there and see the commemorations, speeches by Mayor Nutter and his wife, and a performance by a marching band from Wisconsin and also Ben Taylor. Then came a parade that was fun - full of performances by cultural and ethnic groups around the city - but it never seemed to end! We had lunch nearby, and when we went back outside, it was still going on!

Later that night we were going to be at the big concert in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art - with the Roots!! and other bands. But it was so hot, and so crowded, and kind of smelled, and it was loud but we couldn't hear anything, so we went back to our cool, quiet hotel room, and watched it on TV. Great sound. Best decision ever.

The next day we went to Love Park - of course.

Last night we watched our wedding video, I think for the third time ever. Though we figured out that the service itself was actually only 50 minutes or so, we still apologize to everyone who was there for not shortening the communion liturgy and prayers! What were we thinking, including ALL the parts of "Now the Feast" in an un-air conditioned church service in July! But we promise, that was the only time we'll ever get married, and we'll never do it again. ;)

We still agree that our reception was the most fun reception we've ever been at, before or since (yes, we are probably biased). My maid of honor's toast was still the best: "...and to top it all off, she's LUTHERAN"! (she was quoting Beau). And yes, he is still my Mr. Darcy.

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. 

A Sprinkle of This and That

So when I started this blog I mentally promised myself that it would NOT turn into just a platform to post my   sermons.... and that's what it's turned into lately. So here is me trying to fix that for the moment.

Once the dregs of Hurricane Isaac (with a week straight of 90% humidity) left us, the weather finally turned decent, and my respiratory system freaked out a little bit. I think my lungs had gotten used to not worrying about being, I don't know, moist enough and suddenly when the humidity is gone my body goes into mucus creating overdrive (not to be gross or anything). I was better by this morning, but it was touch and go for a bit.

Now that the weather is back to "normal" Beau and I have decided to be more intentional about drinking tea, especially in using (green) tea to help us wind down after a late night meeting. It might have helped had we decided to do this last week, between preparing a sermon, leading the youth group kick off event, doing a memorial service and burial for my vice pastor-ship, leading a book discussion, and other random pastor-y things.

But amid the busyness we are getting out and about. The other day we went to the Philly zoo (we watched the otters get fed, the tigers sleep, and listened to a talk on orangutans while contemplating Planet of the Apes) and last week we visited Terhune Orchard in Princeton.  After getting apples, apple butter, and apple cider, and eating apple donuts, we walked around and marveled that we were still in NJ. It was the perfect fall day. Doesn't it look lovely?

Today I learned that a "sprinkle" is what you call a baby shower when someone is having their second child. I attended a "sprinkle" today and realized how little time I get to spend with people (women) my own age. Occupational hazard, I guess. But it is nice when the opportunity comes around!

Can you hear me now? Good!

This past week was vacation week for us! On Tuesday we rode the train into NYC to go see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which took us nearly all day to see! We had no idea that when we got to Battery Park to get the tickets, there would be lines, lines, and more lines waiting for us: lines to get onto the ferry (and to go through a security check point) lines to get into the museum and pedestal of Lady Liberty, lines to get back on the ferry to get the Ellis Island...

But I think over all it was worth it. It was exciting to be in NYC for the very first time and it was cool to see Lady Liberty up close and personal (she's hollow on the inside). The exhibits at Ellis Island were very interesting, since some of our relatives might have passed through there. We even saw a brochure advertising Minnesota from that period! How lost and lonely people must have felt in the great hall, especially when they didn't speak the language.

Here we learned something interesting - only steerage passengers where subjected to the health check. But if you had the money to upgrade to second class, you wouldn't even have to mess with Ellis Island. It was also interesting to see that at the Statue of Liberty, if you had purchased the Crown Tickets (to go all the way up, which were rare and pricey) you got to skip the rest of the line waiting to go through security at the statue - you got to go right to the head of the line. The steerage class is very much alive in many ways.

We were pretty beat by the end of the day, so we decided to skip our other plans to see the 9/11 memorial and Times Square. There is plenty of opportunities to go back, since it is so close! One more thing about NYC - the NJ transit commuter trains were lovely, but the subway is hot and smelly and crowded. We had a much more pleasant experience riding public transit while in Hong Kong. And Penn Station is rather confusing for a couple of first timers (but we didn't get lost).

In other news, last week I had an initial interview with a call committee, and Saturday evening I preached my "trial sermon" at a church nearby, which is the home church of a good friend of ours. As it turns out, I had been there before, in college, when a bunch of us decided to spend a week in NJ. Only God knew then that I would be living here someday!

Birthday in Jersey

Whoa, it's September already! Where did the end of August go? Blown away by Irene, probably. :) Oh yeah, and I got older too. Does it feel strange to be nearing 30? Not really. In the line of work I am going into, older is better - older pastors are respected more than younger ones, right? And being female naturally brings its own problems, so for me, age will only help. At least now when I have interviews I can say that I am 27, which is slightly better than saying I'm 26. 

Today was fairly lazy. Overcast and rainy, thanks to Tropical Storm Lee. Beau brought be breakfast in bed and presented me with a dozen roses. Too bad we had to wait for my gift to arrive in the mail! But arrive it did, and I was not disappointed. One of Beau's parishoners from internship does amazing things with precious stones and wire - the pic does not do it justice. LOVE it! I'll have the classiest ears in all the pulpits in New Jersey! This evening, in between Beau's meetings, we stumbled upon a swanky Asian food place that is yummy, atmospheric, and affordable. MMMMmmmmmmm. Now more chillin till Beau gets home.

The process for me is... processing, I guess! Right now I can report that things will be happening. Beau will be getting ordained on September 18th with three others who have been recently called. It would have been nice to have been ordained together, but it was not meant to be. It's better for my process this way, anyway. No one benefits from rushing. I just feel better that there has been some movement. 

Tonight I will leave you with lyrics from one of my most favorite songs ever, to remember where I was a year ago and to imagine what the future will hold for us a year from now.

"Seasons of Love"

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?

How about love?
How about love?
How about love? Measure in love

Seasons of love. Seasons of love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes!
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Journeys to plan.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life
Of a woman or a man?

In truths that she learned,
Or in times that he cried.
In bridges he burned,
Or the way that she died.

It's time now to sing out,
Tho' the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends
Remember the love!
Remember the love!
Seasons of love!

Oh you got to got to
Remember the love!
You know that love is a gift from up above
Share love, give love spread love
Measure, measure your life in love.