What a pastor does.

A friend from seminary who is currently serving a congregation in North Dakota recently wrote a great post about what a pastor does. I'm still an intern, but from what I can tell his description of life for a solo pastor is spot on (he should know, he does it every day, right?). But I still encounter a lot of people who not only don't know that pastors do more than preach, but don't understand the function of a pastor in this day and age. We're seemingly irrelevant to a large section of the population. I mean, for somebody who doesn't go to church, a pastor is basically useless, right? Not quite. I think that at our best we truly have a vital role to play in modern society.

To start, let me sum up what pastors do within the church, in case you don't want to read Nathan's post. Basically, they do everything. They preside at worship, the most obvious thing, but that involves more than just standing up for an hour or two on Sundays: it involves worship planning with the musicians, researching and writing a sermon (can take 10-20 hours from start to finish depending on the preacher), and a bunch of other little detail work. That's a lot already, but they also teach Bible studies, confirmation, Sunday school, book groups, new member classes, etc etc. Some larger congregations might have staff or volunteers to do some of this, but even still there is a fair bit of education going on that the pastor is involved with. They also do visitation with shut-ins and the sick; they do pastoral care and counseling, and are available for emergencies such as sudden illness, accidents, death, domestic abuse crises, rape, etc. They attend council meetings and deal with administration tasks, which pretty much nobody likes. And there are funerals and weddings (which take up a whole weekend for a pretty small payout--and usually include several pre-marriage meetings). Suffice it to say, pastors keep pretty busy at church.

But all of that more or less seems like it is just keeping the church itself going. Why should somebody who isn't a Christian care about that? Well, for one, the church cares about justice issues. Although it is sometimes a slow starter, the church at its best can sometimes be just the force of social change that tips the balance in these issues. For example, although the Nazi party tried to use the church in order to justify the atrocities being committed, pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (and others) spoke out boldly against the party, calling Christians to see rescuing Jews and resisting the party as part of their Christian discipleship. In more recent years, certain church bodies have been involved heavily in the gay rights/marriage equality movement and their support of GLBT people is a direct result of their Christian belief in Christ as an equalizer. And let's not forget the long, long history of caring for the poor, especially within the Catholic tradition. Are there churches who are not helpful to justice issues? Absolutely. But that makes the churches who are helpful that much more important to counter those messages. Preachers like myself and those I know make it a point to preach that the gospel of Christ is the radical love of Christ--that ALL people are recipients of love and because all people are loved and called children of God, it is part of our mission to seek out injustice and be a voice for the vulnerable.

Furthermore, pastors help motivate people to give. Church people are extremely generous, and while some of that money goes to pay for staff and other expenses, church bodies like Lutheran World Relief, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army donate millions of dollars a year to help with disaster relief, world hunger, disease control (such as providing mosquito nets to fight malaria). The Missouri Synod Lutheran Church was one of the first people on the scene after the Sandy Hook shooting providing service animals to the traumatized victims and their families, and let's not forget the thousands of mission trips that churches fund annually to sponsor hospitals overseas, build houses, and buy livestock for needy families. The congregation I'm serving recently held a campaign for Operation Starfish, hoping to raise enough money to build a house and support a family for a year (about $3500 builds the house, provides rice and beans, clothing, education, and helps fund a startup business so the family can self-sustain). The church ended up raising enough to fund two families and buy several livestock animals to help sustain the family in the future. Religious people love to give, and they give more than non-religious people.

Some people take issue with motives for helping, as if Christians give because they are afraid that the big sky monster in heaven will smite them if they don't, but theologically speaking, this is not true. Christians believe, almost universally, in salvation by grace alone--meaning we are saved by faith, not by the things we do or don't do. While some people might operate out of a fear of hell, that's really a minority and represents a misunderstanding of Christian teaching. The job of the pastor is to teach discipleship and mobilize congregations by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ which is for everybody, and by declaring that gospel which is for the world, it puts us all on the same field. We are all brothers and sisters, from the lowliest to the greatest, and filled with the Holy Spirit, we are called and sent to live into our Christian identity by showing God's love, helping those in need, and bringing a little bit of the kingdom of God to this messed up, broken world. So do I think pastors, priests, deacons, diaconal ministers, youth ministers, and lay church leaders are important for the world? Hell yes! Until our world stops being messed up and until people stop starving to death, being affected by disasters, dying of diseases and struggling emotionally, our world needs the church, because we need God's healing. Communities of faith all over the world are in a prime position to reveal God's presence and love by acting as a force of justice and care for a world in great need.

What Christianity is not

I debated writing this up because I hesitate to put personal information out in a public blog like this one, or mention people that I interact with lest I accidentally piss them off. But I have been thinking about this for several weeks, and after reading an article this morning about evangelicals who are not really who you think they are, I decided that I could use this as what those of us in education would call a "teaching moment." I apologize for the longwindedness here, but I have a lot of thoughts on this topic.

I was having dinner with my fiance and some of his colleagues and their significant others. My fiance is a scientist and though he himself is a pretty spiritual person, a lot of the people in academia are not, and not only that, seem to hold some sort of innate hostility toward religion. My theory is that liberal academics perceive that there is some sort of correlation between religion and right-wing politics and since people in academia tend to be on the liberal side of things, religion turns out to be something that stands against everything they believe in. Either that or they just think religious people are rubes that believe in some invisible puppetmaster and question our sanity and/or intelligence. Okay, fine. So because of all that, I find that I'm a bit of an anomaly within that crowd. I'm not only religious and not shy about it, but I'm training to be a religious leader. While most people could get away without letting their religion slip (at least for a time), as soon as somebody asks me what I do, I'm faced with an awkward silence and either a sudden topic change or some really, uh, interesting questions that often reveal the asker's ignorance more than anything else. (I say that not as an insult, just as a statement of fact: people who don't grow up with religion don't really "get it" a lot of the time and ask questions that seem kind of silly and/or insulting to me.)

So back to dinner. Because I'm kind of an anomaly among this crowd, usually it doesn't take long before curious not religious people start asking me questions. Sometimes these are like "so what's it like to do a funeral?" but sometimes you get a question that's so bizarre it leaves you a little flabbergasted. One of P's colleagues at this dinner turned to me after it came out that I was born in Canada and asked me if Canadians believe in evolution. I was so stunned that I don't really remember what I said except something like 'well, I don't speak for all Canadians but I'm pretty sure they do.' One of P's other colleagues (also not religious) jumped in after that and started telling us about this offensive street preacher that showed up on campus and how several groups, including the Society for Free Thinkers (an atheist group), the GLBT campus group, and the Lutheran Campus Ministry came out to counter-protest him. Bless his heart for what he was trying to do, which was, I think, to let the first colleague know that, hey, not all Christians are like that street preacher.

I couldn't decide if I should be insulted or not. Maybe it was a coincidence that he happened to bring up evolution, but the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got. Anybody who has spoken to me for 30 seconds knows that I'm pretty damn liberal. I'm also a scientist. I have a friggin' master's in cognitive psychology--you don't get through 6 years of higher education in a science field without some understanding of evolutionary biology. So I thought at first he was just poking fun of religious people in general, but then I thought maybe he actually thought that I don't believe in evolution, which is ridiculous. As I was pissing and moaning to P after dinner, it occurred to me that while it was probably intended as a little poke at my religion/profession, it annoyed me not because he was making fun of my religion, because Lutherans are big fans of humor at our own expense (Lake Woebegone, anyone?), but because it was a poke that was so based in misunderstanding that it made me feel stupid for being friends with somebody who so fundamentally does not get what I believe.

So rather than being annoyed, I started thinking about writing this, and so here we are. I want to write about a few basic assumptions in order to promote some understanding. I make it a part of my profession to understand other people and where they are coming from, so I would hope that others would be interested in the same.

First of all, Christianity is not a monolith. There are three major branches of Christianity in the world: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. I'm not that familiar with Orthodox Christianity, but I can say that for Catholics and Protestants, there is no real consensus of belief. Talk to a room full of Catholics about theology and you're bound to get a lot of different answers. Talk to a room full of Protestants and you could get 3-5 answers from each person. The reason being Protestant Christianity is HUGELY splintered. It all started in around 1517 with the Protestant Reformation. After the Lutheran church split off from the Catholic church, the church had more splits than a gymnastics team. There are at least four different types of Lutherans (I'm ELCA, in case you were wondering), Calvinists, which turned into Reformed and Presbyterians, and the Methodists, Baptists (Southern and General Baptist Conference), free churches, non-denominational, Anglicans/Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, UCC, and Mennonites to name just a few. Every one of those denominations believes slightly different things, and within each of those denominations you will get the whole gamut among individuals. Some think that the Bible is literal and some think it is purely metaphorical. Some people believe in infant baptism and some think you need to be an adult who is submerged. Some people think gay people are going to hell and some ordain them (and/or don't believe in a literal hell). Although most denominations profess some sort of creed, people's interpretations vary quite a lot even within one particular parish. Asking if all of Canada believes in evolution is as ridiculous as asking if all black people like fried chicken. It's kind of insulting. How should I know? I don't know all black people and probably some of them do and some of them don't. I also don't know all Canadians, or all Christians.

Second, holding a particular religious belief does not mean that you ascribe to a particular scientific outlook or political ideology. I thought I had made this pretty clear to this person, but I do actually think evolution is a thing, and also am all for gay rights, access to safe abortion services and birth control, and entitlements. I'm not a Republican. More power to you if you are, but I'm not. The thing is, although some individual congregations may put a strong emphasis on promoting "Christian" values in politics, in general even if a congregation holds a particular official stance, that does not mean all the members hold that view. When I was in middle school I started to disagree with some of the things that my Missouri Synod Lutheran church stated as a public stance. If a stupid 15 year old can find it in herself to disagree with a church body based on her personal ethics, I'm pretty sure that an adult can do the same. The reason I could stay in that congregation despite my disagreement is that I believed then and still believe now that you don't have to all think the same thing in order to believe that Jesus loves the world. Jesus loving the world means for some people promoting really hateful things, like the Westboro Baptist Church. For most of us, it means something else, and that "something else" varies quite a lot from person to person.

Third, church isn't just a place where people go to have their beliefs reinforced and blindly swallow whatever the preacher says. Sometimes you go there in order to be challenged, or to question, or to get told a truth that might be kind of painful or frustrating. When I preach, I think a lot about the congregation and what types of people are sitting there. Right now I'm preaching to a predominately white congregation full of farmers and small towners who tend to be pretty comfortable with who they are and what the church is like. Often when I preach, I challenge people to think like a person who is not like them, to challenge their assumptions about who they are and why they come to church, and to push them to ask hard questions. Do I rub some people the wrong way? Probably so. But I also get to challenge people to think about their faith, and that's kind of my job. If people are coming and I'm just telling them what they want to hear I think I'm failing. But if I'm letting God work through me to tell them what they need instead, that's ministry. It's not about indoctrinating, but about challenge and growth and question and helping people figure out who they are supposed to be. And not too surprisingly, who they are meant to be varies greatly from person to person. We are all individuals making up the body of Christ: fingers and toes, eyes, ears, belly buttons, butts (we all know butts), livers, etc. As diverse as one part of your body is from the next is how diverse the church is.

Generalizations and assumptions are harmful. That's how wars are started and how two parties can be shouting so loudly at each other that they're not getting anything done. So why not set the tone by trying genuinely to understand? When you ask me "Do Christians believe X" you are asking the wrong questions. What you should be asking is "What do you believe?" "What do you teach?" "Who are you?" "What is your role as a minister?" That is going to be different for every minister, for every Christian, and for every person. In order to have constructive conversation, we need to understand each other, and that doesn't happen by making broad generalizations and assumptions. If you really want to know what I'm all about, I'm happy to tell you if you'll ask me sincerely. You don't have to agree with me, but at least try to put aside your presuppositions for a second to ask the question. I think this is generally good life advice, don't you?

Next time I think I'll write about what a pastor does for the people who think we only work one day a week...

Trinity Sunday and the God of Paradoxes

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the day in which theologians around the world struggle to express the utterly abstract, unexplainable concept of the Holy Trinity. I was talking to a pastor at text study this week, asking how he preaches on it. He said, well, there are some metaphors you can use... the three states of water, an apple, an egg. I've heard some different ones over the years, but none of them really manage to capture the ethereal, otherworldy triune God. The metaphors fail, not for lack of faithfulness, theological understanding, or trying, but because ultimately trying to apply a concrete metaphor to something that is, by its very nature, not concrete (at least 2/3 of it is not concrete, anyway), is impossible. God is too vast to be summed up as an apple seed or egg yolk, and too real to be summed up as water vapor. So what do we do with this (ha) unholy paradox?

I was talking about the conundrum with my fiance, P, who is a huge nerd. He's actually a math professor, if you want to know, and studies really abstract stuff that I usually end up looking at like Rorschach inkblots. ("Oh, this diagram has pretty colors... it reminds me of a rainbow. This one looks like a pony!") Because he is who he is, he also has a passing interest in string theory (yeah, I know, don't we all?). When I brought this up to him yesterday he said something that I will try to explain: God is like the cosmos. God is immeasurable and incomprehensible in scale. God is the force that created everything, that designed a universe so vast we can't understand it, down to the quarks and strings and dark matter and whatnot. And yet somehow, that same God that created all of that vastness also very concretely created us, and gives a care about us, so much of a care that God actually came down in the most concrete possible form to us: Jesus, fellow human being. In the exact same way that God is involved on a macro scale with all of life and creation, God is also involved in microcosm right there in the form of Jesus. But in order for us to comprehend, it has to be to a scale that we understand. Distinct, human, having a will and person of his own, but also fully a part of that same cosmos and Being that is God. Now, he didn't have an explanation for where the Holy Spirit comes in, and my idea is in dark matter. Scientists estimate that only about 4% of the matter in the universe can be accounted for, which leaves about 96% mysterious stuff that somehow holds it all together--some sort of weird gravity that keeps the out there stuff and the in here stuff all stuck together. It's present, and everywhere, and without it we would fall to pieces.

Okay, so I'm not a physicist. Although this metaphor is, like all of them, far from perfect, it encapsulates a truth about God that the even more concrete examples fail the grasp--and that's the scale of God. This is a God that IS in those massive planets and black holes and mysterious empty spaces and supernovas and everything else, but is also inextricably linked to us. God is of a scale that we can't comprehend, and so in order to meet us, God became concrete like us in the form of Christ, to love us, walk with us, suffer with us, and redeem us. And the Spirit acts going between the out there and the down here, drawing near to us so that we can experience God even though God is beyond our imaginings. I think this touches on a truth that both allows us to use our feeble metaphors, and poke holes in them: God is in all, and so is represented in all of our silly ways, cosmic, mystical, concrete, apple, egg, state of matter, in nature, in us, between us, around us.

There is no good way to explain the Trinity, because we live here in a world limited by the laws of physics like gravity, linear time, single dimensions, and entropy. But in the same way that we experience our world and the universe and relationships with loved ones, we experience God in many different ways. God is a God who wants to reveal him/herself to us, and I believe is not above doing that in any number of ways. Sometimes it feels like almighty omnipotence, and sometimes it feels like Jesus-in-the-face-of-a-stranger, and sometimes it feels like the Holy Spirit rushing into a room like we talked about last week at our first week of Pentecost. Fundamentally, God is a God who is both cosmicly huge and minutely present in all of the tiny little moments of our lives. When we think of this, it can make us wonder like the Psalmist: "What is man that you are mindful of him?" And then know that the answer is simple: we are beloved, cherished, precious. Important as a star and tiny as an ant all at once. But only a God who is as great and vast as the universe could do what Jesus did for us, and care as much as that, and hold all our tiny lives and problems while also holding Jupiter and Andromeda. And so we sit back and fathom the mystery of a God who is this and that, here and there, with and away, tiny and vast, and try to live in such a way to work out whatever unimaginable, incredible plan that kind of God is working in our universe.

Pentecost

Today's sermon:

I want you to humor me for a moment and breathe. I know you're already breathing, but I want you to close your eyes, relax your shoulders, and take a big breath in through your nose so that it fills your whole gut. If you don't feel your stomach expanding, you're not breathing deeply enough. Let it fill you and then exhale slowly. Now do it again while I talk to you a little bit... Chances are you are sitting near somebody. Do you realize that you are breathing the same air as them? In fact, you are breathing the same air as the person sitting farthest from you in the room, and if you want to be technical, since we don't live in a giant air-tight space ship, we're kind of all breathing the same air as people across the country, and across the world. Breathing suddenly seems a lot more intimate, doesn't it?

You can open your eyes, but you probably want to keep breathing now... A while back I had the opportunity to talk to a native American woman, who told me that in her tribe breath is considered divine. God breathes into us and we inhale, and when we exhale, God is breathing us in. We are sharing breath with God. The idea isn't so far removed from our tradition either. The same word that we read in Genesis for “spirit”--ruach--also means breath. The ruach of God moved over the water—and things started to come into being. We hear about the breath of life in the Psalms, and in Ezekial, where God commands the prophet to “prophecy to the breath” and the bones that had been dry and dessicated come to life. Breathing is more than just a physiological action—it is the force that animates us, and gives us the potential to move, to act, and to be alive. There's something cool about the way that we are tied together, all of us reliant on this primitive action of sucking in oxygen and converting it to CO2. We are incredibly, vastly interconnected with each other and with God.

Pentecost was originally a Jewish festival. It was called the Feast of Weeks and celebrated the giving of the law to the people of Israel. It seems a little counterintuitive to us Lutherans who so often put the law at odds with the gospel, but the giving of the law was (and still is) seen as a joyful occasion. It was a way for God to be present in human communities, by helping us to live. It's no coincidence that the birth of the Christian church would coincide with this celebration. It was a day when the words Jesus had spoken about the advocate—the Spirit—coming to be present in his stead came true. It was another day in which God radically invaded our world. And how did this happen? The sound like a rush of wind filled the room. This was a “pnoe”, the Greek version of ruach and the same word that is used for Spirit or breath of life. And God's presence was suddenly revealed in a new way, literally igniting a flame on the apostles and compelling them to speak languages they didn't know, preaching the Word, sharing, spreading, revealing the reality of who God is, who we are, and what God is doing for all of us. Imagine what your ministry would be like if you could suddenly speak Russian or Chinese or Spanish depending on who you met. The Spirit of God became known to us on Pentecost, showing us our interconnectedness by allowing the Word which is universal to be heard universally.

When you breathe like you did just now, you are sharing in something. When you live on this planet, you are sharing space and energy and purpose with millions of people that you've never even met. We are connected with people who are totally different from us because that same Spirit that moved over the water in the beginning is the Spirit that moves inside and among us, declaring that all of our different callings and lives and ways of being are ultimately sustained by the same creator, and that our sin, brokenness, and pain are ultimately conquered by the same Lord. It gives you a different perspective on Jesus' words in Matthew: “What you do to the least of these, you do to me,” doesn't it? It gives a different flavor to your service, or apathy. When you walk by a person paralyzed by grief or loneliness, you are walking by a part of the community of Christ, a part of Christ himself, and a part of yourself. But in acknowledging a person in need, you have named that person as a sibling to you, as a son or daughter to Christ, and an heir to the kingdom of heaven just as you are an heir. And that is what Pentecost is about—it's about God's presence being made known boldly, coming down and going out as God did in the very beginning.

Take another deep breath. You are still breathing. You have been breathing since your first cry, and you will be breathing until your Spirit returns to God. The same way that you don't just breathe on your birthday, Pentecost isn't just one day, because God isn't present just one day. Pentecost is every day, and it's up to us to recognize the Spirit as it is present and working among us, and to allow ourselves to be open to that activity. When was the last time you felt the Spirit really moving? I felt it this Monday at our Taize worship service, as the Spirit settled down over us as we sat silently in prayer. I felt it whispering to me 'these are your brothers and sisters, these are all God's people.' I have felt it moving in silence, and I have felt it moving like a strong wind—in the rush of tears during a moving hymn, like a loud voice calling for peace within fear and panic, and in the face of a stranger. It is in you and around you, and you are an instrument of it.

So how can you allow yourself to be moved by the Spirit? Sometimes it just gets up and sweeps you away, like, for example, when you find yourself suddenly moving to Minnesota to start seminary against all your better judgment and reason... But sometimes it nudges gently. I think that prayer and discernment within the community are vital, and because we are so connected we need to pray for each other, and help one another discern where we see God's activity. We have been given an awesome task to boldly declare God's love and promise to our sibling neighbors in the world, so breathe. Inhale the breath of God, and let it fill you up, so that you have the air to walk wherever you are meant to go, and to do whatever you have been strengthened to do.

Let us pray... God of wind and silence, of all people and all languages, reveal yourself to us daily as you did on Pentecost. Show us where to go, so that we can boldly go out into the world, declaring that all people are daughters and sons of you, heirs to your promise, and recipients of your grace. In the name of Jesus, who walks with us, and the Spirit who breathes life into us. Amen.

A reflection on Luke 24:13-35

I read today what seems to be to be about the saddest sentence in the Bible. It comes from Luke 24:21, on the walk to Emmaus where two disciples encounter a 'stranger' on the road and tell him about what had happened to Jesus. They explain how he was crucified and then say: "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."

Imagine the way they had said that. "But we had hoped..." The same way that somebody might say: "But we had hoped the chemo would work." "But we had hoped the accident wasn't so bad." "But we had hoped she would lead a full life..." The sense of loss is staggering. Hope and faith are kind of friends that walk hand in hand, and if you lose one, the other tends to fade away. For these disciples who had probably walked with Jesus and seen his miracles and hoped that things would change, this was an expression of the deepest despair. "We had hoped things would change. We had hoped things could be fixed. We had hoped... but now we don't."

The thing that catches me again and again about this passage is God's response to this hopelessness. He doesn't leave them because they lacked faith, but instead he gently scolds them for still seeing the world how they had always seen it when the point of Jesus was that things would be different. Their hope had been lost and their faith was dying--or perhaps their faith was in something more real to them, more easily verifiable: death. So what was his answer? It was to walk with them. It was to reveal himself by teaching them, by being present with them and enduring their faithlessness and calling them back to belief. It was to make himself known in a new way--in the breaking of the bread.

Jesus didn't suddenly appear and they didn't immediately recognize him. Instead, he appeared to them but they didn't get it so Jesus stuck around, and it was only in looking back that they realized their hearts had been burning the whole time. Where has Jesus been in your hopelessness? Where might God be injecting hope in your life? The Lord is risen indeed, and he has appeared... to Simon, to the disciples on the road, to the eleven, to Mary Magdelene, and to you. He is risen, and he is with you. Amen.

Week Six

 The worst thing is never the last thing.

Monday, March 25^th

Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

Reflection: Paul speaks of being in every kind of suffering, and yet still carrying on. How is it possible that we can be afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair when it feels like these things have the last word? Think about all that Christ went through—people conspiring against him, being rejected and chased out of town, being arrested, mocked, crucified, and dying the death of a prisoner. We don't often face these things in our lives, but we certainly face endings. What can come after the terminal diagnosis? What can come after the death of a child, parent, or spouse? Are we not part of Christ's journey because of our baptism? Perhaps the key to understanding what comes after devastation for us is remembering what came after Christ's suffering and death...

Take time to reflect, meditate, or pray in silence.

Prayer: God, your power is greater than my understanding, and your imagination is unlimited. Open my eyes to see that even death is not final for you. Give me faith to understanding what comes next for me. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Tuesday, March 26^th

Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

Reflection: What are the properties of a clay jar? It is usually something carefully crafted by a potter, beautiful, but also functional. It is used to carry water or keep grain. If it is no longer water-fast, it can be used to store cloth, skeins of yarn, or it can simply be used to brighten up a room with its artistry. You are a clay jar. Reflect on your properties. What has defined you up until now? Maybe career, family, or something you're not proud of. What is your purpose today? What might your purpose be tomorrow, next week, or in a year? What has God crafted you to do and be, and what kinds of things are you holding inside you? We all bear the death of Christ inside us, but do you recognize the ways in which you are also bearing his resurrection?

Take time to reflect, meditate, or pray in silence.

Prayer: God who crafted the mountains, the sky, and me, you have told me that your purpose for me is life, but I often only feel tragedy, loss, and grief. The bad things so often overwhelm the joy you give me. Teach me that I am a vessel designed to carry life rather than death, and abundant joy rather than pain. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Wednesday, March 27^th

Reading: 1 Peter 2:9-12

Reflection: When you think of your membership in a club, family, or workplace what does it entail? Usually it's not just a plaque or something to put on your resume; it doesn't simply mean you belong somewhere—it means that you are part of an organization which stands for something and does something. Out of all the planets and solar systems and stars and universes that exist, you have been elected as part of a chosen people. What does it mean to be a part of God's people? What do we know about the character of God? We know that God is creative, powerful, loving, and beyond our ability to fully comprehend. What does membership in God's family call and empower you to do and be which is contrary to what the powers of death would have us do and be?

Take time to reflect, meditate, or pray in silence.

Prayer: Heavenly Lord, I know that I'm not called to death, but to life, and to sow life in the midst of all the decay that this world has to offer. The best defense against the darkness is light. Guide me to know how to light up the world with you, so that even the darkest nights reflect your brightness. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Thursday, March 28^th

Reading: 1 Peter 2:9-12

Reflection: Have you ever been given a surprising gift totally out of the blue? Maybe your child drew you a picture, or your spouse got you a little token of their love. Even if you were having an absolutely rotten day, a simple expression of someone's love for you can be enough to make it feel much better. God's love is like a totally unexpected, wonderful gift that brightens your day, but unlike these small gifts from our loved ones, God's gift is one which continuously speaks love in the midst of disengagement or alienation, and speaks joy in the midst of sorrow and sadness. It is a transformative gift, that actively changes what was to what will be. What does it mean to have this gift which continually gives? What changes have you seen, and what kinds of transformations can you expect as you constantly receive God's free gift of grace?

Take time to reflect, meditate, or pray in silence.

Prayer: God, you give me grace upon grace upon grace so that even when I'm in big trouble you are constantly overflowing with a word of truth that tells me that the bad things won't last, and I am and will be new. Show me what to do with my new life so I can live in gratitude to this gift!

Friday, March 29^th

Reading: Revelation 22:1-5

Reflection: Time isn't confined to a linear realm with God the way it is for us. The beautiful imagery described in the book of Revelation demonstrates for us one possible vision of what future exists because of Christ, but this grand vision of a new heaven and a new earth begins with our lives today. Where has God's shining river of life cleansed you of pain or sinfulness? What kind of fruit do you now bear that in your younger days you couldn't bear? What kind of love have you given that you didn't know you were capable of giving? What kind of daylight has replaced a dark night? God is the river flowing through your past and cleansing and forgiving all your failures. God is the nourishment which causes your barrenness to become fruit of the spirit—peace, patience, kindness, love, joy, and gentleness. God is the lamp which shines through you when you serve others, and which shines through others to illuminate your darkness. God offers a promise for a new future, but for God whose time has no meaning, the future is present, and you are alive each day because of it.

Take time to reflect, meditate, or pray in silence.

Prayer: Dear God, you are my light and my all. You are the gentle river which washed me in baptism. You are a word of promise spoken in the face of uncertainty. And most importantly, you are present with me now. Reveal the ways that you are working in me, and give me a spirit of gratitude to live as a new creation in the joy that is possible because you loved me in all times, past, present, and future. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Saturday, March 30^th

Reading: Revelation 22:1-5

Reflection: Faith and trust can never entirely banish fear. There will always be worries about life and fear of pain and loss and death, but what we can trust is that the worst thing is never the last thing with Jesus. Who we are as a resurrection people is a people who believes that love is stronger than death, God is for us, and ultimately, God gets what God wants—and that is for you to be a new creature, leaving behind your old self and the old world of death and decay for the new world of joy and life. The best solution to driving out fear is living out love! How will you live in love today? On what will you dwell? Perfect love drives out fear—who is the source of such perfect love? In whom will you place your trust?

Take time to reflect, meditate, or pray in silence.

Prayer: Risen Lord, I love you so much and I know you love me so much more. Help me to put my trust in your promises, to dwell on what you have done for me so that the whispers of fear will be drowned out by the chorus of faith which you give me. Show me how to contribute to that chorus, so that through loving others, I may reveal your kingdom to them the same way that you have been revealed to me. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always on you and what you have done for me. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Passion Sunday

Here is the sermon I preached this morning.

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Baresheet bara elohim et hashimayim vaet ha-aretz... thus begins the book of Genesis. In a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth... and we know how it continues: the earth was formless and void. The story of creation began with a formless universe, one in which all the components of life swirled and moved without discernable order; it was chaos. Then God spoke. And the Word of God was unlike anything else that had ever happened—it was a force which turned the proteins and carbons into organized elements, which caused cells to come together and then divide, which caused life to begin. The Word of God was action and it made a world that existed in a state of shalom—not just peace, but wholeness. Very briefly, we thrived in this world of wholeness; of shalom.

And then came un-creation. Humans, actively rebelling against God's beautiful, ordered universe peaked outside of that order, opening the metaphorical door just a crack, and chaos flooded back into the world. Suddenly things that were made became unmade: order, relationships, lives. Since the moment of uncreation, or what we call the fall, the violence of chaos entered the world, and we became active participants. It wasn't long before the first murder took place. Cain met his brother's giving heart and generosity with violence, and soon the world degenerated into such violence and brutality that God was sorry that humans had ever been created, and he destroyed everyone except for one righteous family. But even Noah fell into drunken disorder, and from there came Sarah's violence toward her handmaiden Hagar, who she gave to her husband, and Jacob's wrestling match with God and Joseph's brothers violently throwing him into a pit and selling him into slavery. Where once there was a harmonious picture of creation, only a jumble remained, and it just got worse from there. Slavery, idols and human sacrifice, war, captivity... What was God to do in the face of this ever degenerating world?

God had tried to start clean by the flood, but loved us too much to put an end to humankind. God wanted instead to redeem us, so God gave us the law to try to guide us, but we rebelled against that too. The law gave some kind of order, but it wasn't the same kind of order as God had first made. It wasn't shalom. So God spoke again. This time, the Word that God spoke became embodied in human form and walked on earth. Jesus began to undo the violence and uncreation that we enacted. Jesus preached, speaking a Word like the Word that God had spoken, which rejected violence for relationships. Jesus healed, taking the destruction of decay, disease, congenital illness, psychological damage, and even death, and restored things nobody thought could be fixed. Jesus even turned the social order upside down by rejecting the type of rigid order that the law enacted and replacing it with the kind of order that promoted wellness and relationships. For a while it seemed like it was making a difference and people were going to be swept up in this radical movement.

But God knew that the human propensity for uncreation would overwhelm, so Jesus had prepared to do something even more radical than fight against uncreation one illness, one person at a time. Jesus went to Jerusalem and was welcomed with expectation and happiness, with the people waving palms and laying down their coats. He entered into chaos and the pharisees tried to quiet the chaos. They wanted order, a kind of worldly, shallow peace that we laugh at when a Miss America contestant declares her desire for “world peace”--what they wanted was an absence of conflict. Jesus wasn't bringing the order that we wanted or expected, and so again we acted violently. A crowd of welcome turned into a mob shouting crucify him, crucify him! And so they led him to a brutal death; the death of a prisoner, a death like a gay man attacked in the South; a death like a family murdered in Sudan; a death like the long, drawn out illness of a family member. The solution to violence became violence, and so the cycle continued. And so the story ended.

But Jesus wasn't just a man. Remember who we said he is? He is the embodiment of the divine Word that was spoken in creation, where chaos and not-creation turned into life flowing from the force of all order. Jesus was the one the prophets spoke of, who was supposed to turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; implements of death into tools used to nurture and sustain life. And so how could he be defeated by our human brutality? For God the story can't end there. The story continues in the transformation of human violence into something more than peace—into a wholeness that calls us beyond our childish understanding of peace into a new creation where all the things that were once used to destroy become things which engender life. It is only God, whose very words are a force of creation, that can transmute even violence itself into peace. And so we walk with Christ to the cross, understanding our brutal, broken nature which led him there, waiting for Easter... Amen.