We were using 2×4’s from a lumber yard where you can always save big money. Some were true, while others looked as if they’d escaped an archery range. The foreman said we had to use them. One of the 2×4’s we forced into alignment by pulling from the other side of the foundation with a chain and come-along. When we got it lined up, we drilled holes through it into the foundation and drove in big bolts. The foreman ran the chain through a tire so that if the chain snapped it would catch in the tire and not swing about wildly and fatally.

Prayer is like that come-along. It brings us into alignment, trues us up, with God and God’s will for us. It is drastically short-sighted to perceive prayer as only a wish list delivered to God.  There is far more. And as the come-along analogy implies there is always a tension.

If we stop talking and instead listen we then here – from God – from the still small voice, from the Holy Spirit what we should be doing and where we should be and where we should be going. That’s how we get into alignment. We are the ones who move – not God. Yes, God answers prayer. God never doesn’t answer; God always hears.

But after presenting our list of petitions, wishes, _{(note the Oxford comma)} and worries we must then wait, watch,_{(again the OC)} and listen. For as long as it takes.

God does not do immediate, that would be Amazon. God asks for faith; Amazon asks for your credit card. There is a difference: one has grace, one doesn’t.

During what remains of this season of Lent try listening to yourself to hear any groaning and creaking as you are drawn into alignment. There may be some pain involved, some psychic discomfort, some emotional work. But that’s part of being a child of God. It’s in our Affirmation of Baptism vows somewhere. The Kingdom of God isn’t always Disney Land or being four and falling asleep in your Grandfather’s lap on Christmas morning.

But we always, always loved and heard and never, never forgotten unanswered.

That’s the tension. That’s the tug.

 Bridge builders build their bridges to stay in one place, especially the pier anchorages at either end, the Golden Gate Bridge used more than a million tons of cement in its pier anchorages.  Piers are the structures that carry the weight of the bridge. They can’t be moving.  Roads aren’t supposed to move, buildings are supposed to stay in one place. It’s just a good thing, a fact of life we count on: immovable objects.

What about a church building?  Obviously, it has to be immovable. What about the congregation? Does it move? if so, where? Does it grow? Does it change over time? Sure, it does.  Or it perishes.

A congregation is people – people of faith. People of faith change. We oxidize, get old, move, fail at some enterprises, succeed at others. We change jobs, calcify, have epiphanies, we get cranky, we get peaceful, wander off or wander in; we experience great crippling grief and also great shouting joy. By definition, congregations are dynamic, constantly changing, constantly active. The change and activity may be subtle or obvious or anything in between.

A congregation cannot spiritually stay in one place. It has to be flexible, it has to be movable. At high tide the Golden Gate Bridge withstands a flow of 2.3 billion ft.³ of water per second (Is Google fun or what?! How did pastors write before the internet? Thanks, Al Gore!) it cannot be movable. A congregation, on the other hand, does have to change with the ebb and flow of cultural tides.

But we also remember, in the midst of our human and cultural dynamism, that we belong to the divine God. We gather in the immovable building to worship a living God, offer our sacrifices, offer our praises, hear our call in God’s word and be reminded, in Holy Communion, that we are forgiven.

Psalm 77

I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he may hear me.  In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;  in the night

my hand is stretched out without wearying;

my soul refuses to be comforted.
I think of God, and I moan;

I meditate, and my spirit faints.   

You keep my eyelids from closing;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
I consider the days of old,
and remember the years of long ago.

I commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my spirit: ‘Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?
Has his steadfast love ceased for ever? Are his promises at an end for all time?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his compassion?’
  And I say, ‘It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.’

I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
I will remember your wonders of old.
I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds.
Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is so great as our God?
You are the God who works wonders; 

I will remember who built this church. I will remember the people who first gathered in faith to find space and money and contractors and more faith and more money to build Saron. I will meditate on what they thought and prayed around someone’s kitchen table. Did they really have in mind that the Saron congregation would become a fixed quantity?

We don’t know. The rhetorical question above is manipulative; I want to inspire guilt.  OK, kidding.

On the other hand, what did the Holy Spirit have in mind when it both prompted and answered those Saron-start-up kitchen table prayers all those years ago?  A solid building? Sure. And a movable congregation?  Yeah, probably.  Probably.

Certainly our eyelids have been kept from closing by all the conflict these days. We cry aloud to God, we stretch out our hands, our souls could use some comfort, our spirits faint.

Remember who built this building, remember who started this congregation. We are part of their history, they are part of ours. Together we are all part of God’s history; we are all part of God’s present. We are all part of God’s future.

We belong to a God who works wonders.

Gonna Lay Down My Sword and Shield

Dear Saron Sisters and Brothers in Christ:  June 16^th of 2024 will be my last Sunday serving as your pastor. I will be retiring from active ELCA Ministry of Word and Sacrament. 

I will be 71 years old.  Although I still feel young at heart, I am relatively certain my Spring Chicken days are over; I haven’t been bullet proof for quite some time now.  Unlike some members of Congress, I realize it is time to step down.  It is time for The New, time for the Young.  I started here New Years Day of 2009: 14 years in one call is plenty, retiring or not.  Martin Luther’s First Law of Ecclesiology states:  Pastors come and go; congregations remain.  His Second Law of Ecclesiology states: Rotate your pastors before they and their congregations become too comfortable with each other.  The Third Law states: Fire up the coffee pot.  These are Ecclesial – churchly – laws.

However, it cannot go unspoken or unwritten that, Luther’s main Law of Faith was the Gospel Paradox: God loves you – regardless.  This is delineated in John 3: 16, 17 and Romans 5: 8-10 and again in Ephesians 2: 8-10; and many, many other Biblical locations.

I have not kept this retirement a secret, but neither I have a made a formal declaration until now.   Sunday, August 27^th, at the beginning of worship, I announced before the congregation that I would be retiring June 16, 2024.  I now do the same here in the Saron Newsletter for all to see everywhere.

I make this announcement this far in advance in hopes and prayer that there will be sufficient time for the Holy Spirit to work in meetings and conversations and negotiations, formal and otherwise, so that Saron and Good Shepherd can work their way into sharing a pastor.  This is not a done deal but ground work is being laid.  Pastor Sieja and I have been talking to each other; council presidents Cheryl Klobucher and Nancy Brede have also been talking. Over the coming months, the executive councils and councils of the whole, of both congregations, will be meeting in attempt to hammer out finance and logistics.  I hasten to add this is not in any way a merger.  Good Shepherd and Saron will remain separate entities but share a pastor.

Congregations sharing pastors is now far more common and no longer the exception; and not just in the ELCA.  It makes little sense that small congregations try to manage the salary burden of a full-time pastor.  Good Shepherd and Saron are small congregations.

By ourselves, our witness is fragmented.  The two congregations partnered (yoked is another term) together can develop a stronger, more energetic, more vital witness and ministry for our children and for our communities. 

Survival on our own is not necessarily an achievement. 

Flourishing together is.

In Christ,

Pastor Paul Simmons

Rhythm: a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound. Rhythm can be detected or sensed in many situations in life.  Music certainly, but over the course of the day there is a rhythm.  Sports commentators talk about a quarterback and his offense or a pitcher getting into a rhythm and gaining momentum in completions and strikeouts.  Kneading bread, vacuuming, sewing, rowing, mowing (lawn), correcting papers, preaching (when a good ol’ fashioned revivalist gets rolling – “Can I HUH get an Amen HUH!  The word God, just three little letters, can have many syllables and lotsa rhythm.) Running, cycling all occur with less effort and more efficiency when there is a rhythm. 

With rising and getting ready for the day there is a rhythm not just that morning but through the week.  At work there is a rhythm to the day’s events and requirements over a single day and over a week.  It’s called a schedule – but isn’t a schedule just a slow rhythm? 

There is something in us that simply responds to a beat.  Because we are beating: it’s our heart.  Our lungs also have to be in a rhythm.  Soldiers have gone to war and into battle marching to a drum, parade bands need a drum section.  I catch myself tapping my foot to the grocery store music.  There are hymns that cry out for a polka step!  Rhythm drives us.  It cannot not drive us. 

Does God have a rhythm in your life?  Does God drive your life with a beat no matter how fast or slow, no matter how loud or how soft?

As you go through your day, how many things are you sensing, feeling, hearing, seeing?  Do they have a rhythm?  Does your life have a beat?  If so, is it God?  And certainly you can say yes, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  My heart and lungs have a rhythm.  The heart at between 60 – 80 bpm; the lungs in the 12 – 20 respirations per minute.  I may not always be fully aware of them – but I will know when they stop.

Are there other rhythms driving you?  Is God at work in them?  Can God be at work in them?  Should God be at work in them?  Is your life mechanical or musical?  Are you dancing, marching – or just . . . shambling . . . da doot da doo da doo . . . along?

The Kingdom of God and experiences in church during worship are meant, among other zillions of things, to be sensual.  The incense, the music, wine, bread, flowers, anointing oil, ashes, chanting, even silence are all there to have an impact so that God is more than just in our head and heart.  The sensation of God can be in our nostrils, on our tongue, in our gullet, on our skin, in our throats when we sing.

Take in all there is to take in of Jesus, of God’s word, of the Holy Spirit right when and where you are.  Do you perceive a beat?  Do you perceive a rhythm?

Granted there is the constant beat of disaster and doom in the media – a bass drum and a rattling snare.  Ignore it. Don’t let it drive you.

Instead, listen for, feel for, the rhythm of the Spirit in your body, in the day, the week, the month, the year. In your life.  Move your spiritual hips.

Read the Bible down by the lake shore, listen to the rhythm of the waves.  Read the Bible outside as the sun sets – rhythm slows.  Read the Bible outside as the sun rises, especially the Easter texts – rhythm picks up.  Read the Bible, Genesis 1, in the trees on a windy day.  Read the Bible in a thunderstorm.  Read the Bible as a baby is crying; or asleep on your chest.  Read the Bible in absolute silence; or in the stands during the chaos of a football game.  Read the Bible in a hospital lobby; read the Nativity story in a barn.  Try to pick up the beat.

It is God.  Let yourself be driven. 

You may have to let go of some things.  You may have to dance.

OBLIGATORY YET NECESSARY STEWARDSHIP PARAGRAPH

If there is a rhythm to your giving it goes better than when it is sporadic.  

$50 at Christmas and $50 at Easter feels big.  

But $20 every Sunday is more and easier – it’s $1,040 – easy like ringin’ a bell. 

It adds another steady beat to your relationship with God. 

This rhythm is the beat of a life lived in worship and trust. Not a bad thing.

This rhythm does not go unnoticed by God. 

Again, be ready to be taken out on the dance floor.

And remember:  It is never to late to start.  It is never too late to start over.

The snow began ever so lightly on the afternoon of the 21^st, a Monday.  Then came the wind and more wind; along with more snow.  And more snow.  Tuesday the 22^nd of February was a snow day for the upper third of Wisconsin and Minnesota. In the early morning of Wednesday, the 23^rd, the snow ended and the stars came out.  When daylight came, we all started shoveling, blowing, blading and plowing out.  Get the snow out of the way and let’s get moving again.

   The snow was in the way!  We couldn’t drive, we couldn’t walk and we had appointments and things to buy at stores and breakfast and lunch dates.  At the very least we had to get out of the house.  Netflix can only do so much.

  The beautiful white, silencing, purifying, peaceful, muffling, wind-sculpted, softening snow was nice.  And beautiful.  And poetic.  But not now.  Get it out of the way.

  It is Lent.  A season of contemplation and repention repenting, of self-examination and renewing spiritual disciplines.  A season of getting stuff out of the way so you can move around in your life and get where you (and your family and those you love – and God) need to be emotionally and spiritually.

  Getting stuff out of your way, just like snow removal, takes time and energy.  The stuff in question is not so much sin, as it is plain and simple you.  It is what you do without thinking (usually) that keeps you away from God.  It is what you don’t do that stretches the distance between you and God. 

  The time and energy involved is the time it takes to sit and be silent; the time it takes to read and contemplate (chew on) a Biblical passage – say Psalm 51 or Psalm 139.  The energy involved is spent in frank and honest self-examination.  Did I really ___?  Is that what happens when I ___?  What was I thinking when ___?  Why do I keep doing ___?  Y’know a little self -control wouldn’t kill me.  I could’ve asked God here___ and here ___ and should’ve really asked God here ___.  Yikes!   O God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

  Lent is not about what you give up.  It is about the subtle turns you make to change direction away from bad things – repentance; and towards good things – righteousness.  It’s not what you give up – it’s what you leave behind because it is dead weight – because it is in your way, like 28” of snow which is no longer quaint and pretty.

  For the next five or six Sundays you are invited to take the shovel of repentance and move the drifts and piles of sin out of your way so you can make a path and walk to (access) God and God’s free forgiveness, righteousness, call and vision and purpose, and joy. 

  Joy.  And Peace

  Wouldn’t some joy be nice?  With a side of Peace? 

  Do the Lenty thing.

 See you in worship!  Bring the kids!

 The lights and sirens on an ambulance are to warn and theoretically clear the road ahead for a safe and efficient trip to the emergency and then to the hospital.

     But I believe they have an other purpose.  They tell the people at the emergency that help is on the way.  As someone waits for an ambulance – or fire truck or police car – the minutes until arrival of emergency personnel seem like hours.  Fear and desperation lay thick at the site. I am reminded of the lyrics in Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, “…does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours? …”  

     If those awaiting rescue and relief can hear the siren they know, they hear, that help is on the way.  “Help is on the way” is in itself a life-saving phrase.  It offers hope.  It offers hope to those in pain, fearing for their lives; they cling to it desperately – as if their very lives depend on it.  Because they do.

     People without hope wear out, quit, give up, can’t stay up; death becomes inevitable.  They say, “OK.”   On the other hand, people  with hope can last a long time.  People with hope can go a long way.  People with hope cling to life when there is no earthly reason to do so.  People with hope say to themselves and anyone who will listen, maybe they even speak to death, and say, “Not yet.  Not now.  Not today.  I am going to live.  I hear the siren.  It’s getting closer.”

     Advent is God’s siren to us.  John the Baptist is that wailing, whooping, undulating, locust-eating, wild honey-eating, River-baptizing, honking, beeping sound in both his wilderness then and our wilderness now that tells us God is near, God is on the way.  We hear it.  We have hope.  Creation has hope.  We can go on.  And instead of giving in to fatalism, cynicism and despair, we can relax, loosen our jaws, breathe, look up.

    Instead of looking for the flashing read and blue lights.  Light an Advent Candle.  Read those first chapters of Matthew and Luke.  They were written to be read this day in this time in this pandemicized, divided country and world.  Those words are your siren.  Salvation is on the way.  Salvation has been here.  Salvation is here now.  

     You don’t have to type Amen.  You don’t have to be brave enough to repost.  You don’t have to re-Tweet.

      Believe.  Listen.  Watch.  Wait.  Breathe.  It is Advent.  It’s always Advent.  It has never not been Advent.

      God’s Peace be upon you.

  Do you remember when you were younger and didn’t get to run anything – operate anything? The riding lawnmower, the car, boats, sewing machines, power tools, snowblowers, chain saws, big fire crackers (M80’s, Cherry Bombs no longer available legally), vacuum cleaners, power trowels, F-15’s, rocket launchers and cement mixers were off limits because you were too young.  You were presented with the twin specters of bodily injury and property damage totaling anywhere between $113 to $275,000.  You were also told the device, vehicle, explosive device or implement in question was for Mommy or Daddy to operate.  You were relegated to your Hot Wheels, Gameboy, Lady Fingers, Matchbox or the Easy-Bake Oven.

  Now we are adults, give or take, and the thrill of “running things” comes from larger more expensive objects.  We have motorcycles, snowmobiles, motorhomes, antique tractors, mortars, bass boats, home theaters, M-14 deer rifles, sergers, and ATV’s to name a few.

  But, do you remember swelling with pride and anticipation; being transfixed by the challenge of finally “running” something for which you were once deemed too young?  Do you remember the excitement and anticipation of “running” it the next day?  Do you remember not wanting to get off the lawnmower, out of the F-15 or beyond arm’s reach of the mixer because someone else, especially an undeserving younger sibling, would take over your duty?

  Has it ever been like that between you and God—swelling with pride (in this case swelling with humility) and being transfixed by the challenge of mission and or service for which you once considered yourself unworthy or too young?  Have you ever shot out of bed powered by the Holy Spirit and raring for action?  For service (servanthood)?  For worship?  For Bible study?  For a day full of sunshine (sonshine) and joy and overwhelming mountain-moving-into-the-sea hope?

  Some people can answer in the affirmative.  Whether referring to a day, a month, a trip or maybe even a lifetime.

  Maybe that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said (in the 18^th Chapter of Luke):

“Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.  Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

  Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God swelling with humility, transfixed by the challenge and a wearing a big, dumb, grateful grin will never enter it.

  There is another story about kids in the Bible:

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.  At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.  Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.”  Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.  The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.  Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.  Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

That might be something to try, a phrase to remember, a prayer to pray.  In your next devotions alone or with the family just say, “Speak, for your servants are listening.” 

  In about a month Advent will be here.    

                              “… said the night wind to the little lamb  . . .

September 2021

  In her later years my mother broke her hip.  She deeply resented this event not because of the pain or hospitalization, but because it was a threat to her mobility.  She refused to be bound by a walker or cane; and do not even try to take her car keys.  With a little bit of pride – and relief – she related how her orthopedist told her he’d found purchase in her femur for the screw he inserted to hold the two broken segments together.  Purchase.  The threads of the screw bit and held – found purchase – in her femur.  Mom healed up rapidly and was quite mobile up until the last few months of her life.  She was indeed blessed with determination and healing.  And a solid femur.  So the screw could find purchase.  If screws, nails even, don’t find purchase hips – and everything else in the world – fall apart. 

   When the screw finds purchase it holds solid and secure.  No doubt, many a DIYer has had to work with screws and holes and trying to fasten something to something else and not being able to gain purchase. 

  But in terms of people, in terms of relationships, how many people have found purchase in you?  How solid are you?  And with how many people have you found purchase?  Are they solid enough for you?  Sure – spouses, children; parents, grandparents, close friends.

     Has God found purchase in you?  Has the Holy Spirit screwed itself into you fastening you to God, tying you into God’s will?  Have you found purchase in God?  In your relationship with God, in your Christian fellowship, your conversations of faith, have you found purchase for your soul?  Are there people and ideas, church groups, let alone a congregation, where you can get yourself screwed in?  Are there places where you feel solid and secure – and safe – in widening and deepening your faith?  Have you and your pastor found purchase with each other? Have you tried drilling a pilot hole or two?  A pilot hole (this sentence is not a rhetorical question – what a relief!) is a hole smaller than the screw into which the screw is then driven to avoid splintering the wood.  Avoiding getting the screw forever stuck, spraining your wrist and melting your drill.

   More rhetorical questions designed NOT TO INSTILL GUILT but examination of the situation.  Within the church are there people who don’t find purchase because they don’t fit the usual male female model?  Are there people who don’t find purchase because they are indeed people of color?  Are there people who bounce off instead of being welcomed – not finding purchase, not getting screwed in – because they just don’t look like us northern European types?  Yeah; maybe; sure; I s’pose; probably; I dunno; what was the question?

  Same questions again, in case you actually bought the not instilling guilt caps:  are there people who just don’t find purchase in our country?  Because they refuse to let us fit them into categories and stereotypes that keep us comfortable?

  Is there a place?  A calling?  A holy duty for the church – for Christians – to be drilling pilot holes all over, anywhere and at random?  From Deuteronomy 10:

¹⁷For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, … ¹⁸who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. ¹⁹You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

 It’s time for us to go get some drills and look for purchase.  Or just be: a pilot hole.  

    After all, we were purchased when the nails found purchase.  

     The stone over the tomb, however, did not.  Find purchase.

I never realized….

There is always the part in a movie, usually near the denouement, when one or both of the stars says, ”I never realized….” And it continues,  “… never realized you were my daughter, loved me, were a man, were a woman (a favorite device of Shakespeare), never realized you were rich, dirt poor, a Vikings fan….” going on ad nauseam.  The drama is centered around one or more people not knowing – realizing – some huge almost obvious fact central to the plot.

Something was unknown that should have been made known.  Something was unknown, which if known or exposed or declared, would have made lives much better and freer.  The end of the scene beginning with, ”I never realized,” usually ends with and incredulous, “Why didn’t you tell me?” or the excruciating, “If only I’d known!”  Fade to black.  Roll credits.  Insert gag reel.

The word realize is not limited to simply knowing.  It can have tangible dimensions to its definition.  As in

an older use or definition “ . . . the investors realized a profit of nearly 30% on the their lint farm.”  The actual definition is: give actual or physical form to.  As in “the stage designs have been beautifully realized.” Almost as if realizing means fulfilling.   Yet another definition (don’t failed English majors just give you a royal pain!?) is to cause something desired or anticipated to happen.   e.g. “his worst fears have been realized.”

Or you can try it like this.  Make a substitution:     John 1: 1-5   1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with realized God, and the Word was a realized God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being were realized through him, and without him not one thing came into being was realized. What has come into being been realized ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.   Farther on down John 1 is verse 14:   And the Word became flesh was realized and lived among us, and we have seen realized his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son realized full of grace and truth.

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, dear Gentle Reader, it is our calling to realize Christ so Christ can be realized by the world.  We, through Baptism, are called to do the realizing.  We are called to make Christ realizable.  Visible.  Perceptible.  In lives of servanthood, a generous spirit, and words.  We are called to give actual physical form to Christ – as we are called, gathered and enlightened by the Holy Spirit.  It’s fairly simple.  All you have to do is submit.  Piece of cake.  Or communion bread.

So maybe that is the question or two for July.  Has Jesus been realized for you at any time?  Have you realized Jesus for anyone at some time?  I’d bet maybe you have.  Don’t feel guilty with these July questions.  They are to make you wonder.  To make you watch and listen.  To yourselves and others.  Don’t underestimate where God is and how God chooses to act and how subtle or obvious the act may be.  Be ready to realize.  Be ready to be realized – as part of the body of Christ – or as we church pros say, The BoC.

Realize: To see, to perceive; and then to give form to. 

A life.  A body.  You.  All of us. 

Jesus.

June 2021

  In the morning, when the light was rich, he would drive around and look at his fields full of …. weeds.  He was transfixed by the sea of yellow that was mustard blossoms.  He was enchanted by islands of white lamb’s quarters waving in the breeze; acres of foxtails reminded him of the ocean.

    One day another farmer came by and offered him money to rent or buy the land with which he was so infatuated.  The one who came to the country to farm was hurt by the offer – what was he doing already if not farming?  The farmer making the offer said, “You’re not farming, you’re wasting the land.  There is no market for mustard, foxtails or lamb’s quarters.  And certainly not for kosia.”  

  The one who came out to farm, whose name was Earl, said, “But I love the land, I want it to grow as it sees fit, it should be free to determine for itself what it wants to be.  I don’t want to limit it to monocultures” 

  The other farmer, whose name was Loren, snorted an apt and descriptive though unacceptable word and said, “It wants to be weeds, Earl” he said.

  “Right.  Prairie,” said Earl. 

  “Prairie?”  Loren shook his head almost imperceptibly and looked down, “This land deserves—needs—to be farmed”, he said.  “People, the world, needs to eat, you need to make your payments, you need to feed your family, you need to be growing things.  You’ve come out to the country, you’ve got land, a pickup and a cap and  you’re calling yourself a farmer.  You need to be growing things.  You can’t be infatuated with the dirt and the plants and the wonder of it all—or it will all go to hell on roller skates.  You have to tell it what to do.  You have to cultivate it.  You have to plant it.  And then cultivate some more and then harvest it.”  Loren paused to fill and fire up his pipe. 

  It was dawning on Earl, that he was in the early traumatic stages of Agonizing Re-appraisal.  It further dawned on him that like Audrey Hepburn in “Daddy Longlegs,” he was in love with love.  To have a real and true farm and a real and true relationship with that farm he would have to do more than simply be in love with loving it.  Loren had filled the still air with pipe smoke and his word came out of the smoke into Earl’s thought “…can’t just take it off the shelf and play with it in the store, have to take it to the counter. pay for it and take it home—make it part of your life …people these days … during the depression we knew the value … electricity … never the same .. she left me …”

  Earl agreed with Loren but told him no sale and went off to hitch up a plow.  Later that week he hitched up the mower and the disc and he bought a spraying rig at an auction.

  Permission can become indulgence which then is taken as license.  And a farm or a life or a business or marriage or the life of a child, let alone our relationship with God and all his blessings is put in serious jeopardy of being wasted.

  The phrase “tough love” was once in style or vogue, maybe now it is coming back with Dr. Phil on TV—the brevity and convenience of 43 minutes of commercial television programming aside. 

  Tough love: is there some other kind?  Tender love, certainly; tough and tender love are by no means mutually exclusive.  God loves us and God always answers prayer, but sometimes the answer is No.  Martin Luther says we cling to that No.

  Think also of redemptive love, love that redeems, love that brings back, love that prevents.  How many times have you been brought back from the brink of   insert your scariest memory here ?  How many times have you brought someone back from insert the near or actual disaster   ?  Heavens, that can’t be easy – it must be … tough.  Tough – just like a nail through a hand or a foot.  Tough like listening to a child scream or cry in rage because of the word, “No.”  Tough like weeping.

 

Proverbs 5:22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them, and they are caught in the toils of their sin.

 23 They die for lack of discipline, and because of their great folly they are lost.

 

Proverbs 10:18 Discipline your children while there is hope; do not set your heart on their destruction.

 

 Hebrews 12:5 And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children–“My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him;

 6 for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.”

 

John 15:2  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

6 Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands;

 7 for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.

May 2021

 

As of this writing, the National Football League will be holding their annual Draft Day tomorrow, the 29^th of April.  To say the speculation as to who will choose whom is psychotic, feverish and ludicrous is understatement; second guessing, third guessing and fourth guessing abound.  And that is just on a daily basis.  Since Christmas. 

  These folks doing the speculating are fans and coaches and scouts and “experts” who devote their lives (not exaggerating!) to evaluating and identifying these saviors and getting them drafted into the franchise.  The intensity is radioactive.  It is a matter of life or death, but not really; but yes, it is.  Abject despair looms but a heartbeat away.

  For those of you who have not given your lives over to sports in general and football specifically and the Packers explicitly; this is the day when the professional football franchises choose from among 259 extremely gifted and competitive college athletes Thursday and Friday ending Saturday May 1^st.  Whom they choose are players to play on their team – and save them.  Sometimes it is a specific player, a receiver or running back, but usually a quarterback.  This player will be their savior.       

  In college these star athletes are treated as demi-gods.  When they get to their pro team (assuming they sign a contract worth millions of dollars – not exaggerating) they go from demi-god to actual football god to be worshipped by coach and fan alike. 

  As long as they produce.  Yards per throw, yards per carry, yards per catch, touchdowns per game and Super Bowls per season.  There is tremendous talent (probably, maybe), tremendous money and tremendous pressure involved.  This is where many players learn NFL stand for Not For Long.

  The first picks, this year probably 4 or 5 quarterbacks, will be chosen to resurrect a floundering franchise.  Resurrect is exactly the word.  These players, quarterbacks, will win games in the last three seconds, will dominate as their team wins 35 to -3, will charm and lead all the other players on their team to a Super Bowl victory and the beginnings of an era (named after the drafted savior QB) of win after win after win at the Super Bowl.  Everyone is looking for a dynasty; a kingdom – of god, the football type.  It is a matter of salvation and glory.  It is salvation for the franchise and glory for the city and the head coach. 

  If all goes according to plan.  And blind luck.  They save everyone.  Joy and Shalom abound.

 

  Why do people get so crazy about this?  It happens on a lesser scale in other sports, and it gets a little or a lot nuts.  The counter argument “but it’s only a game” holds no weight whatsoever; it is scornfully laughed off.  Adult beverage container thrown at it.

  We want saviors.  Deep down in our core – home of core values – we want someone or something that will tell us everything is going to be OK.  We want someone who can offer us peace and righteousness.  We want the exhausted peace of Triumph.  We want to go to heaven.  But we don’t want to die.  We want a savior our own choosing.

  St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  There is a part of us that wants Jesus, wants a Savior, longs for peace, bleats and baaahs for a shepherd to make us lie down in green pastures, lead us beside still waters and restore our soul.  But we rarely know it is Jesus.  We want to go to heaven.  But we don’t want to die.  There is part of us that says, “I should be over there, in that green pasture where it is righteous and fulfilling and good and true.”  But there is another part of us that says, “But I like it here; in the wilderness, in the choking heat” without having a glimmer of a notion why.

  So we die with our false, fallible saviors, with our draft choices that just didn’t work out.  We languish in despair for a fallen idol who does not know our name and never felt the need to.  It may even be a president.  It may even be a political party.  It could be anything or anyone who tells you what you want to hear; who caters to your fears.  This person or institution can be from any party, anywhere on the political cultural social spectrum (and probably not the middle).

 

From Matthew 11:  Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

 

From Psalm 23:  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord    my whole life long.^*

 

  Forget your draft choices and saviors and demi-gods and athletic idols and glittering franchises.  Forget your lust for victory to feed your self-esteem.  Forget bragging rights and batting people around with a triumph you only watched.

  Rest.  Meet a gentle savior – who does indeed know your name and loves you and died for you.  Stop beating your head against the wall.  Stop worshipping also-rans.  Take up an easy yoke and a light burden.

  Walk in the dark places of the heart and soul and be unafraid.  Sit down to a table prepared for you in the midst of terror and unrest, pandemics and extremists, the fascist right and the psychotic left, racial injustice, and carnivorous, unforgiving capitalism.

  Dwell – not hide – dwell in the house of the Lord your whole life long.

  You didn’t draft him.  He drafted you.

April 2021

  In the musical West Side Story, Tony (Richard Beymer), realizes he is head over heels stupid in love with Maria (Natalie Wood).  He is so in love even her name sends him into paroxysms of singing.  “The most beautiful word I’ll ever hear . . . Maria, Maria etc. etc.,” he sings his solo.  Richard’s career didn’t quite take off; Natalie’s did.  Irrelevant.

   What are the most beautiful words in the Bible?  In the Old Testament?  New Testament?  Certainly there is John 3: 16, 17 or Ephesians 2: 8 – 10.  Maybe the beginning of Luke’s nativity story, ”In those days a decree went out . . .”

  But when life starts coming at you fast and thick, whether it be personal or family tragedies or watching rioting on the news, what verses offer you strength and promise?  On what passage can you hook your little finger and hang on?

   How about the most beautiful words we’ll ever hear in Luke 24:5?  “They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, he is risen.’” 

  Why do you look for the living among the dead?  Do we take it for granted that our savior rose from the dead?  Do we just assume that it’s the usual Happy Ending, the dénouement, that comes after scary and fatal Rising Action on the Cross? 

  Back up a little, do we take for granted the love of God?  God reveals himself to us and we say, “Well, sure!  That’s Christmas!  The reason for the season.  D’you like eggnog?”  We forget that Jesus was born to die on the Cross.  It was God coming into our midst in human form. To be sacrificed for our sin.  To reconcile the cosmic conflict between Creator and Created; between human and Divine; between pure and impure.

  We take too lightly that Jesus was stone cold dead when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took him off the cross, then hauled him to the tomb.  Think, for a moment, on getting a dead person down from a cross to which they have been nailed.  Feet first; or arms first, then flop forward, still hanging by the feet?  How difficult was it to get the nails – spikes probably – out?  Using what tool?  Maybe they took the cross down first; big, bulky and heavy.  Entirely droppable.  Maybe the guards helped – yeah, right.  We read the words too easily.  We consider the finality too lightly.

The man, Jesus, God incarnate, present at Creation, had no heartbeat, no brain activity, no warmth when he was laid to rest with seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes.  Rigor mortis probably hadn’t set in yet.

  For Joseph and Nicodemus it must have been utter and complete heartbreak and despair.  For Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of Joses, the weeping was uncontrollable; no doubt, Joseph and Nicodemus wept also.  Jesus was silent and still and cold.  Hope was absent.  Their world had come to an end.  Dreaming a happy ending would be foolishness; an insult. 

  However.  The story takes a 90ᵒ turn. 

  In Mark’s gospel, Mary Magdalene, Mary Mother of Joses, and Salome go to the tomb to anoint Jesus.  They know he’s dead.  They know they won’t be able to roll the stone away.  But they can’t not go.  Jesus was dead, they loved him, they can’t just sit.  It’s been three days.

  They arrive.  In Mark, there’s an angel sitting there telling them Jesus is raised and gone.

   In Luke, are the most beautiful words, the question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

  Again, the words are too simple.  Jesus has been raised. He’s not here.  You are looking in the wrong place.

  His heart started pumping again.  Blood began carrying oxygen to his brain, muscles and organs. Jesus had been in hell, with the dead.  The sights, sounds and smells: unimaginable.  This visualization or imagining doesn’t even begin to do justice, to accurately portray what actually happened.

  However.

  God is what happened.  Power over death, biochemical or otherwise.  Probably the otherwise, probably the same breath of God that brought Adam and Eve to life brought Jesus back to life; called him back from death.

  It wasn’t resuscitation.  It was resurrection.  Death rendered powerless – real but powerless.

  This whole story in Mark or Luke or Matthew or John is about two things: Jesus dying – our forgiveness.  And Jesus rising again – our promise of eternal life with our Creator who does indeed have power over death.       

  And by the grace of God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, pause for emphasis, it is our story too. 

  Yours.  Mine.  The World’s.  It is our Story to live out; it is our Story to tell again and again.

  It is Easter.  We are Easter people.  Resurrection people.  Die and rise again people.  Feast and dance people.    

  We do not have to look for the living among the dead.  

  We listen for the rhythm of Joy, the rhythm of God, and we dance.

  And There were no Easter Bunnies present.  They are unclean. 

           Deuteronomy 14.7:

Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cloven you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock-badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you.

  And they don’t lay eggs; they’re mammals.  Stop chasing bunnies.  Come to the Feast.

March 2021

       Once upon a time there was a man going on a cross-country trip.  It had been a long trip so far with no end in sight; with the man were his wife and three daughters.  And it was February.  Why he had undertaken this journey with family was pretty much a mystery; it was part of a larger plan, a vision.  His wife and daughters had serious doubts, but he was the Man of the House and he had Decided.  So there they were.  In Montana.  In the Winter. 

  In Montana in the winter one must have a fully functional vehicle; especially if going from one end of the state to the other.  Their vehicle was an AMC Pacer; 100,000 miles ago it was a fully functional vehicle; 75,000 miles ago the tires weren’t bald; 80,000 miles ago it started leaving a trail of blue oily smoke.

  In the middle of nowhere the Pacer did indeed become fully non-functional.  Steam was coming out in front, black smoke from underneath.  They evacuated the vehicle, standing on the opposite side of the two-lane road.  It was a bright, cold, windy day.  Mother and daughters huddled together in coats that were too light under a blanket that was too old, too small.  They were shivering with cold and desperation; any hope for anything good had long since disappeared.  It was cold.  It was looking more and more hopeless.  It was so cold.  

  The Man was tinkering under the hood with he knew not what.  They had not seen another vehicle for three hours; they hadn’t seen another anything for three hours.  The smoke was getting blacker and starting to fill the interior.

  Along came salvation.  A big pickup towing a horse trailer pulled up, out dashed the driver, grabbing a fire extinguisher from the trailer.  She sprayed with authority, the smoke stopped; the steam fizzled out on its own accord.  The driver set down the extinguisher, put her arm around the four huddled females and ushered them into her pickup – a Ford F-350 crew cab, Diesel, 6.7 liters, duals, chrome, lots.  The rattle of its idle mocked the silent Pacer.  Inside, mother and daughters were overcome with warmth and rescue.  They wept in relief, their noses ran; feeling began to return to their fingers and toes.

       The pickup driver began transferring what little luggage there was from the Pacer to the horse trailer.  The man continued to work under the hood because he didn’t know what else to do; he was studiously avoiding the driver’s activities.  Finally he stood up and attempted eye contact, “Well, thank you so much, but I think we can handle it from here.  I’ll get the car running here in a bit and my wife and daughters and I can get on to the next town.  So, ah … thank you very much.”  He walked to the trailer to retrieve the luggage. 

  The driver was incredulous, “You’ve got nothing to fix.  It was on fire, for heaven’s sake.  You’ll need parts and water and anti-freeze.  Do you even have tools?  Duct tape and a screw driver aren’t going to cut it. It’s getting colder and darker and you look frozen too.  Don’t be a such a donkey!  Let’s go.  C’mon!”

Struck by the donkey epithet, he stepped back.  “No, no.  Really.  You can go.  Again, thank you.  So much.  We’ll get it into town …”

  She cut him off, “The nearest town in 110 miles away, and it’s not open.  You and your family will die.  Because you’re proud or stupid or both.  Now, let’s go.”

  The Man hesitated; then went to the pickup to get his wife and daughters back with him.  He beckoned to them. 

    The driver, a ranchwoman, stood between the man and his family thinking she could at least save them.  His stubbornness was utterly, blindingly senseless.  

She was going to give it one last try, “Come with me,” she pleaded, “I’ve got a great big movie-money ranch.  I will put you up in my guesthouse – it has many rooms.  You can stay there for as long as you need, as long as you want. No charge. I’ll give you one of the ranch vehicles.  You can come and go as you please.  You can eat at the main lodge or by yourselves.  Groceries and gas on me.  And you’ll owe me nothing.  You don’t have any money and I’ve got more than I know what do with.  I’m between movies now.  I fly to Hollywood and get paid obscene amounts of money because they make me beautiful and witty.  Let me do this for you!  Let me … save … you.”  She didn’t want to beg, didn’t want to preach, was almost in tears, almost ready to kick him in the backside. 

  Silence, a lame conciliatory smile and a head shake.  “No.  I can’t let you do that.  We’ll be OK; we’ll get by.  Again, I want to thank you.”  Over her shoulder he beckoned again to his family.  They did not move; the daughters were asleep on each others’ shoulders. 

  His wife got out and came to him.  She wiped her nose and hissed, “What is wrong with you?  Get in the pickup with us and leave this stupid dead car behind.  You can’t fix it and you know it.  You’re too proud to accept help?  This woman is offering us everything.  Everything!  And you can’t let someone save you?  Rescue us?”  She paused, biting her lip.  “We’re leaving with her.  Whether you come along is up to you.  And, if you stay here,” her nostrils flared, her eye’s hardened, “that’s fine with me.  Just fine.  We’ve had enough.”  She didn’t blink.

  He said nothing.  He knew somehow he could make the car go and he didn’t want to be beholden to someone.  She tried to take his hand, he didn’t respond. She turned on her heel and got back in the pickup in front.  The ranchwoman was waiting behind the wheel; the man’s wife closed the door and said go.  The driver did not hesitate.  They departed.

  The man, whose name was Tom, stood there, then walked around to the other side of the car.  The windshield was all sooty on the inside.  Tom’s wife watched him shrink and disappear in the Ford’s big passenger side mirror.  Her eyes grew heavy and her sight grew dim.  She slept.

   There was man stuck in sin; afraid to repent.  His sin was all he knew.  Even as grace stared him in the face and called out with salvation he couldn’t move; couldn’t leave his wreck behind.  He could not repent.  Could not change his mind.  He died figuratively and maybe even literally.

Lent is underway.  It is forty days of hearing, learning and digesting the fact that repentance is possible and necessary.  We all sense, in some way, that it is necessary, and we keep that thought comfortably at arm’s length. 

  But do we think it’s possible?  Can we think of it as a possibility?  Do we see it as a desirable measurable goal to be achieved with cogent strategies employing simple steps? 

  It takes a bit of meditation.  Serious meditation.   A life or two may well hang in the balance.  For real.  You may not die.  But part of you might.  And what about those you love?

The prophet Joel wrote: 

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love;

       Return to the Lord. 

You can’t fix it.  Leave it.

       He is gracious and merciful. 

Get in and thaw out.

       Slow to anger. 

You stay outside, you freeze to death.

       And abounding in steadfast love. 

Everything she has is yours. 

     Pride never saved anyone.

Let God do that. 

Get in.

2021

Some people love to sing.  Some actually can sing.  Even people who think they can’t sing or don’t like to sing, sooner or later, in an event of great joy or great sorrow, make some kind of sustained utterance that sounds like singing.  Singing is natural.  We hear the birds and at least try to whistle along, attempting to mimic their melody of merriment or mischief. 

  My Grandmother Dagny Simmons hummed while she peeled potatoes; my Grandfather Elvin Olson hummed while he milked cows.  How many millions of us sing along to the radio in the car?  It is natural to want to make music somehow; even if we can’t sing we at least beat a rhythm, tap a toe, nod our head.  Using a Bible app(lication) got 141 hits on the word song.  “Sing to the Lord” is found all over the place.  “All over the place” is a copyrighted designator phrase for Bible scholars.

  Here’s the problem:  the Pandemic.  We have to wear masks and we cannot sing in church.  And rightly so, we spew virus-laden aerosol … um … all over the place©.  It is maddening.  What good is a hymn if we can’t sing along?  What’s the point of worship if we can’t sing our praises?

  I do not have a solution for this temporary ongoing disaster.  I am NOT advocating that we return to worship without masks and just let it rip; singing hymns full-throated, robustly and lustily.  But I know that when we open our churches up again, hymn singing among all congregations everywhere will be bigger and louder and more cherished than pre-pandemic times.  And tears will be shed – because it will feel so right and so good to praise God belting out a hymn we love.  On that day, which is closer to happening than it was a year ago, singing may be more important than preaching.

Augustine of Hippo said,

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

   Hippo is actually Hippo Regius, present-day Annaba, Algeria; located in the northeast corner of Algeria on the Mediterranean coast not that far from Tunis.  Augustine knew that we’re born missing a piece; which makes for an anxious soul.  Our anxious soul can find peace only in God, only in the arms of Jesus.  Martin Luther was a big fan of Augustine.  Luther said our missing piece is God; our missing peace is in God.

  Augustine’s restless heart theology has a corollary.  If we are restless until we find ourselves in God, it follows that we are then restless, again or still, until we can also sing our praises to God.  We can’t be aware of Jesus and not feel anything.  We cannot be aware of Jesus and not be driven to shout or sing or at least wave our arms around.  Here insert cheap jab at Lutherans for smiling as loudly as possible.

  Robert Lowry, the Baptist minister who wrote “Shall We Gather at the River?” also wrote “My Life Flows on in Endless Song.”  It is # 783 in our ELW.

 What tho’ my joys and comforts die?

   The Lord my Savior liveth;

  What tho’ the darkness gather round?

   Songs in the night he giveth.

  No storm can shake my inmost calm

   While to that cross I’m clinging;

  Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

   How can I keep from singing?

   How can I keep from singing?  We can’t.  We’re not supposed to.  It’s Lowry’s refrain to this hymn.  It could just as well, should just as well, be the refrain to our lives.

  Even though we cannot currently sing in worship, let alone meet in worship, we have to sing.  Even though it is soon Lent we must sing before, during and after Lent.  I’d bet a carton of disposable communion cups that singing loudly, robustly and lustily would be a good way to lift depression.  As they say at the rodeo, “Open the chute and turn it loose.”  Sing in the car, sing in the shower, sing in the house and impress your family, sing at work, sing with your dog.  Sing praises to God anytime, anywhere. 

  Try to remember a hymn, one of your favorites; Beautiful Savior, This Is My Father’s World, How Great Thou Art, Silent Night, I Know That My Redeemer Lives, I Love to Tell; the list goes on.   Come in and borrow a hymnal.

   Sing and be free.  Sing and find some peace.  Sing because God hears and God loves you.  Sing!  Sing all over the place©!!!  When you sing – the angels dance and God grins.

That’s right: God grins.  Sing out!  Let your soul rise in praise!  You can grin too.

December 2020

On a mission trip in Minneapolis my group of kids and I ended up playing with a large  group of children.  Their parents were out looking for jobs or working – or missing.  We were the activity crew for a large day-care.  It was great fun; demanding; rewarding.  At one point a young girl came up to me and told me I had to sit down.  She took me by the hand – firmly – led me to a chair.  With a bit of a shove sat me down.  “OK, I’ll play along,” I thought.  She then crawled up in my lap and sat down, got herself situated and said, “You have to hold me.”  I put my arms around her as questions of appropriateness danced in my head like fevered sugar plums.  Several times early on I tried, “OK, now.  Gotta go.”  She wouldn’t have it, ”No.  Stay;” she held my arms tight around her.  It finally dawned on me that holding her outweighed my anxieties about how proper this was and the perception of it all. We sat like that, oblivious to all the others, for probably two hours or so.  Hardly a word was spoken between us.  At lunch time she crawled down and went with the other kids to the cafeteria.  She just needed to be held.

  In this time of Pandemic and Quarantine and safe distancing and hand sanitizing and surface sanitizing and being locked up and locked down and being scared to death of COVID or dismissing it as a hoax and just the flu and wearing a mask and fogging up your glasses (LASIK surgery is up 30% during pandemic) and ZOOM meetings and daily doses of drama and heightened hysteria . . . we are desperately missing human contact.  We have relatives and friends, people we love and enjoy being with, who need to be held.  And we long to hold them. 

  We all need to be held; taken by the arm and pushed into a chair. We need to crawl into a lap.  We need to have our lap crawled into.  It is as natural and necessary as breathing and eating.  Intimate physical touch is a need.  Without touch brains and hearts grow stunted and crooked; they dry up and crack, pieces fall off.

  So now, as 2020 draws to a merciful, well-deserved, long-overdue close; it is painfully obvious and we understand now more than ever why Jesus came to us.  To touch and be touched.  To hold and be held.  To be intimate.

  God revealed God’s self – herself, himself, itself – as an act of intimacy, in an act of intimacy.  When you truly love someone one and want to love them well and fully you make yourself available.  You give your self, because it somehow feels natural, because you don’t know what else to do; because anything else would not be enough.  In so doing you make yourself vulnerable; vulnerable to heartbreak and joy; vulnerable to sorrow and ecstacy – and everything in between

  This is what God did.  This is what God does.  This is what God is.  Love.  Intimately.

  Letting Moses see his backside wasn’t enough.  Administering the Law wasn’t enough.  A much more intimate relationship was desired – is desired.  He was born of a human woman – that’s intimate – her name was Mary.  She carried him in her body for nine months, nursed him – that’s intimate.  Presumably, at some point, Joseph got to hold him – intimate; all kinds of touching and holding those first years of his life.  Jesus loved, like any human child, to be held, needed to be held.  Jesus, like any infinitely and only marginally comprehendible loving savior of Creation, has to hold, loves to hold, longs to hold us.  You.

  Find a chair.  Sit down.  Let the arms of Jesus enfold you.  You need it.  So does God.

  From the start of John’s Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning    with God . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth . . . .¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.    

  Jesus, in the flesh and living among us, was and still is an act of love.  He is grace.  He is truth.  He is ours. 

We are his.  We are in each other’s arms.  Hold on tight.  A blessed New Year to you all!!

Thanksgiving 2020

    We come into this world naked and that is pretty much  also how we leave.  In between is our life – all the people, all the places, all the possessions, the emotions, the dreams, promises kept or forgotten, wounds inflicted, wounds received, the list goes on indefinitely.

  In our Lutheran liturgical worship, we confess sins and hear our forgiveness.  We confess them generically from the order of worship in the hymnal after a few seconds of contemplating specifics.  We then hear our forgiveness proclaimed.  All good and wonderful – as it should be.

  But there isn’t really a place where we give thanks for all the blessings – people, things, events, successes – we receive over the course of a day, a week or a life.  Which is … unfortunate.  As we confess our sins, the temptation, borne of guilt, is to try remember Every. Little. (or BIG) Thing.  With varying degrees of success and truth.

  How often do we try to remember Every. Little. (or BIG) Thing for which we can give thanks?  Sharp intellect?  Straight teeth?  Good home?  Nice in-Laws?  Good job?  Wonderful spouse?  Good car in a nice garage?  Happy healthy children/grandchildren? Good health?  Nice retirement nest egg?  Full refrigerator?  Nice nostrils? 

Make a list.  Check it twice.  For the mental and spiritual exercise of it all make a list of every single solitary person, place or thing – past, present, future – that makes your life better, bearable or possible.  Can you think of at least …. fifty … one hundred?  200?  No blessing too small or insignificant.  Make a list.

Make a list.  Don’t assume anything.  Don’t take anything for granted.  Make it a daylong event.  Save it.

Now, all of those things – where do they come from?  From whom do they come? It is a mistake, a trap, to think we have manufactured any of the blessings in our lives.  It is a mistake to think that we are self-sustaining.  A moralist, or a good Lutheran (take your pick), would say it is a sin to think thusly.  Everything comes from God.  It is in Luther’s Explanations. Think back . . . baaaack “. . . he has given me and still . . .”

The answer is God.  Directly or indirectly all we have and all we are is from God.  It is good to arrive at this recognition.  Daily.  This is where it comes to us that God loves us and wants to bless us.  Daily.  This exercise in thanksgiving – blessing recognition – is not to instill guilt.  It is so we can recognize how blessed we are, and in the process, find some joy, recognize some joy.  Daily.  Maybe even find cause for some celebration.  Hey!  WOW! JOY!  Daily.

A thankful person, a thankful life, a thankful heart lives a life of joy, a life in The Light.  A thankful person should have a feast.  In November.  A thankful person should thank God.  Should sing a hymn.

Now thank we all our God, with hearts and voices

Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices

Who, from our mothers’ arms has blest us on our way

With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today

Martin Rinkhart, 1586-1649, who was once a deacon in Eisleben, Germany, Luther’s home town, wrote this hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God.”  In these current times, it is worth noting that Rinkhart served during The Thirty Years War.  Close to 60% of the population of German died of starvation or disease during the Thirty Years War.  And then he survived a plague in 1637.  How did he manage to write this hymn?  Here’s verse two:

Oh, may this bounteous God through all our life be near us

With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us,

and keep us all in grace and guide us when perplexed

and free us from all harm in this world and the next

Feast in thanksgiving.  Feast in faith.  Feast in joy. Feast in God.  Pass the potatoes.

God is good and knows all of our names.  Save room for pie.

“…chart and compass come from thee…”

“… chart and compass come from thee …”

   Once upon a time there was a bunch of people who hauled around bags of dirt.  They used shoulder bags, dirt bags, public radio tote bags, back packs, front packs, side packs, knap sacks and re-enforced shopping bags; they also filled the pockets of all their garments.  They did this, made it their lives, because well, that’s just what they did.  They did it because someone told them it made them less guilty.  Guilty of what?  Not really sure.  They were, at the very least, guilty of being guilty; guilty of not carrying enough dirt.

  Under the constant and ever-increasing load in their sacks and bags the people walked bent over, bent double, even crawling.  As much as all that lugging made them strong, but more than anything, it also wore them down.

      Then one day, it was a Tuesday, many others remember it was a Saturday, a woman came into their midst and suggested that they empty all the dirt from all the bags and make gardens.  Your burdens only weigh you down, they don’t make you any less guilty, and it’s well, it’s just dumb.  They looked at her and blinked.  Soon enough an older woman emptied her sacks, she had a nice pile of dirt at her feet.  She stood up straight, gave shout of relief and began dancing.  Others did the same.  Then they all did it.  They cast off their burdens, emptied their sacks, began dancing and started gardening.

  They were transformed into well-nourished upright joyful dancing gardeners.  And everything, although not quite good, was definitely better.

     Once upon a time there was a bunch of people who hauled around bags of broken glass.  They used shoulder bags, bags, public radio tote bags, back packs, front packs, side packs, knap sacks and re-enforced shopping bags; they also filled the pockets of all their garments.  They did this, made it their lives, because well, that’s just what they did.  They did it because they were afraid not to.  They had to carry the burden of all the broken that jagged, screeching, cutting broken glass because if they didn’t, bad things would happen.  Situations or people they didn’t know or recognize would leave them alone. 

   One day their leader figured they could take all the glass and make barriers to keep people out.  Making the barriers was difficult, the shards of glass were hard to connect, they had sharp edges and there was even glass dust irritating the eyes.  But it was comforting, the builders knew they would be safe and comfortable.

  But one day, probably a Tuesday, a young man asked why don’t we take all this glass and make bottles.  Melt it all down, use it for windows and bottles.  The bottles could be used for … water!  And we wouldn’t be so unbelievably, constantly thirsty.  And they’re recyclable! Moreover, the bottles could be used to … um … bottle, well … beer.  Or wine.  There is a bunch of people over there with gardens.  And I saw a barley field, trellises full of hops.  And a vineyard.  I think they may also have kale. 

  If we get together, cast off our burdens or even transform our burdens, we could experience not so much brittle happiness and fragile, spikey comfort, but actual as opposed to literal joy and peace.  He paused to inhale.  And the people, the bunch, said sure.  The party began.

  And they all lived happily ever after, singing Kumbaya every morning.

  Guilt and fear, natural as they may be, serve no useful purpose in God’s Kingdom.  They plug up and corrode the workings of Life in Christ.  Healthy loving relationships do not flourish.  God is not glorified.

  The Kingdom of God runs on trust and forgiveness.  And justice.  And righteousness.  For all.

  What do you run on?  What does this nation run on? 

  Shouldn’t you, shouldn’t we, be at the Dance?  At the Feast?  God has one ready.  Always.

Cleanings

There are two types of cleaning.  There is General Maintenance cleaning, the everyday stuff – picking up, dishes, laundry, cleaning the scrap out of the car, sweeping and vacuuming; known in the military as “policing the area.”

  Then there is Big Time cleaning, the in-laws are coming cleaning.  Or Spring cleaning when everything is hauled out, bagged up, hosed down, scraped off and gone over; all kinds of banned but effective chemicals are used and someone fires up the power washer.

  But then there is a third kind of cleaning, Cataclysmic Cleaning.  It’s the cleaning event that comes up every five to ten years; the storage shed way out back at your deceased bachelor uncle’s or the cleaning after an acute natural disaster—a tornado or one of your toddlers having eaten 1/3 their weight in grapes.  It is the kind of cleaning requiring a triple axle vehicle and a Tyvek suit (white moon suit with hysterical news commentator in foreground).  It’s the kind of cleaning after which you want to shower about every two hours and still can’t get the smell out of your hair or nostrils.  It is the cleaning you finish at midnight, because you know you won’t have the stomach for it tomorrow.

  But in these Cataclysmic Cleanings righteousness is achieved.  Maybe even treasures found.  How many freezer defrosting’s have led to a really good steak-ham-turkey-cod-venison stew or fond reminiscing over a chunk of frozen 14 year old wedding cake? 

   In a previous job in a previous life we had a crew cleaning a huge duct fan for a major metropolitan facility.  The duct and fan housing were so encrusted with dust and grime it just couldn’t do it’s job.  Ultimately it was discovered that there was no fan there at all – it had never been installed.  How many times has something of value turned up—when you had pretty much given it up as absorbed by a parallel universe?

  It is no different with people.  We all have sheds way out back where we store all kinds of emotional stuff, both good and bad.  Our souls all have basements and rafters and attics and freezers where we store un-confessed sins.  The thing of it is (the realized dynamic manifested is that) beneath the un-confessed sins are the un-realized sins.

  Unrealized sins come from the unexamined life.  May I recommend that the examining of the unexamined life be done in the form of confessing to God, the all-knowing and all-forgiving God.  The “unexamined life” concept belongs to Socrates, who could have been one of the earliest Lutherans – we don’t know for sure.  Socrates claims the unexamined is not worth living – Jesus would’ve agreed. 

  Without God, self-examination, soul examination, is nothing more than chest-deep self-absorption.  Examining the self without God, omitting confession to and with God and avoiding meditation with God, is like doing surgery by candle light – romantic but profoundly ineffective; and, yes, very likely harmful and certainly frowned upon by the AMA.

  Sins—known and unknown, done and left undone—accumulate.  They have bulk and weight.  They have to be cleared away or we can’t live well and free like the children of God we are.  There has to be a cleaning, whether it is daily in devotions or a General Cleaning at weekly worship or going-in-for-heart-surgery-better-call-the-pastor Big Time Cleaning or a Cataclysmic Cleaning of long silences, long nights, long walks, tears, cries, and whispers to God.  Or riots and demonstrations.

     Cleaning—confessing—requires time.  Sins don’t fall like overripe apples from trees as much as they are pried loose layer by layer in confession and picked up and hauled away in forgiveness.  The prying up is a tedious process—if you’re undisciplined and comfortable as almost all of us are.

But do it.  It is doable.  It is learnable.  Take the time.  Say, a season out of the church year – Lent, maybe.   Maybe we’ll all be back in church by then.  Pray for strength to do some heavy emotional and spiritual lifting.

  Examining, confessing is work – no question.  But experiencing forgiveness is freeing and renewing.  It is a creative process done in and on you by God – with your cooperation, your submission.        

  God’s creation is three things:  1. You 2. And everybody else  3. Ongoing. 

  Be ready—when you were confirmed you said you would be.

August 2020

 It was a beautiful afternoon sliding into evening.  The washed-out brightness of the day was slowly being replaced by the richer pastels of approaching sunset.  Nearby was a stream flowing slow and clear.  Gathering breezes kept the mosquitoes at bay.

     These were all good things – because Buddy’s pickup was going nowhere.  He was at the side of the road watching cars, SUV’s, vans, minivans, motorcycles and cars and semi’s scream by; some within inches.  

     All he needed was a fan belt, specifically a V-17R202 FoMoCo.  The radiator had boiled over and he’d lost most of his water.  But with an empty five gallon Lasso jug, which refused to blow out of the back, he was able to dip from the stream and refill the radiator – after waiting for everything to cool down.  Circumstances and optimism led him to assume Lasso and propylene glycol would have many of the same properties.  And the cooling off period was a nice little nap.

     But now it was time to be moving on.  His tentative plan was to walk/hitch hike to the nearest town and find a         V-17R202  FoMoCo belt; he had tools to get it back on.  He’d no sooner squared his hat around to begin his journey, than another pickup pulled over.  It was an olive drab 1970 International with bungee straps holding the endgate in place.  Red plastic had been taped over the tail lights while duct tape was holding a rear side panel on.  And not at all to Buddy’s surprise, the tail pipe was suspended by wire.  He sensed no great change in his luck.

     The driver got out and strode up to Buddy in a cloud of beer breath and cigarette smoke.  “Need some hep?”

     “Well, yeah,” replied Buddy, “I need a fan belt and then I can be on my way.  I got water, hoses are OK and I don’t think I scorched anything.”

     “What is this?” he pointed his chin at Buddy’s pickup, “look lak ‘bout a ’90 Ford – a One-Fi’tty?  F-O-R-D: found on road dead.”  Buddy knew that was coming, although he preferred fix or repair daily.

     “Say k’now, I betcha, I just betcha I got one of them belts in the back behind the seat.  My Daddy used to drive one of these.  I helped him keep it running on account he had hisself stoke and couldn’t work on it hisself.”

     By reflex Buddy tried to connect with his would-be rescuer, “How’s your Dad now?”

     “Oh, he’s dead and buried.  I never got around to putting that belt in before they had the auction sale.”  He loped  back to his International with a glint of purpose in his eye.  Buddy thought to himself that whoever this man was, maybe he liked to make things work.  He was standing in the door wedged between the seat and the back of the cab.  Empty Schmidt cans rolled out, some rope dangled to the ground, “Need a beer?”  he shouted over his shoulder as he kept on digging.

     “Ah … no … nope, gonna pass on that.”  The man didn’t hear, he was on a mission.

     “Well, hey, looka that!”  he yelped, “Paint my toenails pink and call me Carmen!”  He held up a belt still in its cardboard holder, amalgamated with three bungee cords, a cheeseburger wrapper and a jumper cable.  It was indeed a V-17R FoMoCo.

     Buddy had the belt on in about 13 minutes.  The whole time his rescuer kept him company under the hood, slurping beer, smoking Chesterfields and freely shared his opinions on Fords, Internationals, Republicans, Democrats, the pretty evening, the effect of global warming on mosquitoes and the career of Johnny Cash.  At just the right time he held tension on the pump so the belt stayed tight while Buddy tightened.  His Craftsman 5/8 socket on the 3/8 drive ratchet handle had never looked more beautiful and the snug of a nut on a bolt had never felt more wonderful.  As Buddy tightened he wondered about offering to pay for the belt and how could he say thank you for such a desperately needed gift; especially one so joyfully given. 

     As he cleaned up and put things away, before Buddy could actually say anything, the man, suddenly serious and even a little teary said, “I want to thank ya for lettin’ me hep ya.  S’the first time inalongtime I fel’ useful.  A person needs a feel useful ever so often …”

     Buddy didn’t know what to say, and then blurted out an obligatory oh, no, thank you!  And the man in the International, Adam’s apple bobbing, said one more time – hoarsely, “Thank you for letting me help,” he covered alternate nostrils and cleared his nose into the ditch, “You beena life saver.  I gotta go.”

     Again Buddy didn’t know what to say, he hadn’t been in control of the conversations or situation for some time.  

     The sun was gone but the orange remained, to blend into the steel blue of twilight and be lost until dawn.  The first stars were coming out; Venus and Jupiter were visible over in the southwest, the passing vehicles all had their lights on.  Buddy looked up and around at the sky and horizon, “Nice night.”

     The man also looked up: “His wonders to behold.”   He smiled a smile of release and bent himself into his pickup, fired up the six-cylinder, draped an elbow out the window, crunked it into gear, perfunctorily looked back for oncoming traffic and departed in a spray of gravel.

    Buddy thought for a minute he heard him singing.  And then he was alone except for the screaming highway.   Buddy laughed and said, “Paint my toenails pink and call me Carmen.”

     There was a boy who had come to see the man they called Jesus, he was supposed to be the one who was sent from God, and the boy wanted to find out for himself.  Actually, it had been his mother who had sent him, because she had wanted to know.  And feeling a little guilty she sent a lunch along with him, five loaves and two fish.

     The boy didn’t want to lug the bread and fish as he chased Jesus from one side of the lake to the other.  Nobody else was carrying anything; he truly hated schlepping things around.

     He was about to toss them over the side of a hill when one of the followers of Jesus, Andrew, came up to him.  “You wouldn’t happen to have food in your bag would you?”

     And then Jesus went to work.  And many were fed.

      We all have fish and loaves and fanbelts, but if we don’t take the time and risk to pull over, if we don’t rouse ourselves to show up, if we don’t dare to offer, if we’re too busy (or anxious) to see those off on the side of their road the kingdom of God doesn’t happen.  

     Notice the word “all” in the preceding sentence: (it’s a long sentence, sorry, second word in)  If you have been baptized, you are one of the “all.”  Period.

     Age, experience, education, skills, gender, physical abilities, financial setting, too much and not enough and anything else you can think of are not excuse.  We all have loaves, we all have fishes.  And even the occasional FoMoCo V-17R202.

     What do you have?  Bring it.  Let Jesus go to work.  

     Feed.  

     And be fed.

July 2020

We thought this would be over by now.  This being the distancing and masking and isolation – and frustration! all flowing out of the corona virus and COVID-19 pandemic.  And now the occurrences of positive corona virus tests and COVID-19 are increasing.  Some states are returning to their prior tighter restrictions

Then another This came along.  The murder of George Floyd and the rioting and violence in Minneapolis which spread like wild fire across the country and then to other nations.  There were fires and looting and destruction as protests almost instantly went out of control and descended to mindless, collective rage cut loose after years of tolerance and months of quarantine.  I use the adjective mindless because rioting is by definition mindless.  

Currently, the national, state and local situations have calmed down to relatively peaceful protests, rancorous city council meetings and contentious legislative sessions.  Some accomplishing what they want and some not.  Not much happiness, not much smiling.  Some are standing on the accelerator, some are standing on the brakes and all are fighting for the steering wheel.  Lots of smoke, lots of careening back and forth between fascism and anarchy, 1950 and 2020

But all is not lost.  Slowly but surely the destruction of the riots is being rebuilt.  Slowly but surely laboratories and as rapidly as possible pharmaceutical companies around the world are working on COVID-19 vaccines.  God is present, God takes notice, God grieves the injustices and the destruction.  God sees his creation in turmoil and chaos; God will neither be overpowered by the evil that took root long ago nor by the evil that rose up on May 25^th.  God creating in the midst of chaos, bringing light into absolute darkness, bringing love to life in the face of hate is what God does.

It is what God calls us to do. 

Bring creation out of chaos, bring light into darkness and bring love into hatred.  God calls us to roll stones away from tombs.  This is the hard, frightening, frustrating, deeply personal, uncomfortable, emotionally and spiritually demanding work of being a child of God.  You may remember you signed on for this when you were confirmed.  It went like this:

“You have made public profession of your faith.  Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy baptism: …. to serve all people, following the example of Jesus and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?”  You responded with, “I do and I ask God to help and guide me.”

          The pandemic, the restrictions, the masks, the protests, the perturbation of Black Lives Matter vs. White Power vs. All Lives Matter vs. wallowing in guilt vs. stony denial vs. claiming Constitutional rights will not go away any time soon.  This is not an episode of some TV drama which will end neatly after sixty minutes.  Are we as a nation, are we as Christians strong enough, faithful enough to see that Justice – God’s Justice – wins the day?  

          Quick fun fact if you’re still reading:  God’s justice is “mishpat” – punishing wrongdoers and caring for victims of unjust treatment.  Justice that makes things right.  

          God’s justice is also “tzadeqah” –  a life of right relationships, all of which are conducted with fairness, equity and generosity.  Justice which keeps thing right. This is a bit counter cultural.  But then so was Jesus.

           So in the meantime?  

          Pray.  Act.  Do.  Believe.  Trust.  Pray again.  Take a step.  Go with God.  Embrace the fear.  Embrace the awkward.  

Roll someone’s stone away.  Don’t rule out finding glimmers of Peace and Joy.

May 2020

 Remember when you were much younger?  There was time and space to play; play anything anywhere, just be home for supper.  After supper the rule was home by sunset.  The world was allegedly simpler, sweeter and safer then. 

       One of the games was How Long Can You Hold Your Breath; Harland Severson was always the winner, too.  When playing, we all knew when we gave up, exhaling a huge lungful and regaining consciousness, that breathing would return to normal.   Return to normal, like after Lent and Holy Week, church life returns to normal.  After any pause, Things, should return to Normal.

     The game today, the 2020 Pandemic Play at Home Version, is How Long Can You Hold Your Distance.  Or your Job.  Or your business.  Or your house, your family.  It’s been tough.  It still is.  

     So we are tempted by that concept of returning to normal.  The same way we are tempted to think achieving Closure will free us of processing emotional trauma. Returning to normal is calling to us these days too.  After the pandemic sheltering and distancing ends we will just return to Normal, to Life As We Knew It.  Schools and jobs and businesses will just start right up again after a long week end.

    Not quite. Not really.  For some who were able to maintain their jobs, who were able to maintain their businesses it may be that simple – give or take.   Others will have to start all over again, starting from Square One; or Square Negative one; or Negative Two.   The Normal to which they or we want to return is long gone.           

     In the midst of ruin, the midst of unplanned course changes, in the midst of forced adaptations God sees, God hears, God feels, God knows, God acts.  

From Psalm 90:  ¹⁰ The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span^* is only toil and trouble;  they are soon gone, and we fly away.  ¹¹ Who considers the power of your anger?  Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you. ¹² So teach us to count our days  that we may gain a wise heart.

                     The RSV says in that last verse, “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” which seems a bit more poetic.  Don’t waste your days hypnotized and anesthetized with NetFlix and HBO and TCM.  What can you do, what can you plan, what can you resolve to do or not do, what can you create, what can you wonder, what can you learn?  Make your minutes count.  If ever there was an excuse and enough time to memorize the Bible, this is it (a chance to seriously annoy any pastor your ever meet.  “Hey, Pastor.  What’s Joshua 3:17?  Huh?  Y’know that one?  Don’t know that one?  I know it.  Yeah.”).             

     But even more importantly, memory work aside, what will you do after restrictions are lifted, to number your days and gain a heart of wisdom?  How will you make your freedom count?  

      Our God, the one who has chosen to love us whether we like it or not, is the – THE – God of Resurrections.  There is no other.  Accept no substitutes.  Resurrection on the last day, certainly.  But Resurrections every morning.  Resurrections when they are least expected.  Do not look for the living among the dead.

     Undoubtedly there will be suffering and loss with the Pandemic, there already is.  In the midst of that, God calls forth life from death, God calls forth what shall be from that which is deemed nothing.  God calls forth hope from despair.  God calls forth streams in the desert, flowers from stones.  God does miracles

Psalm 18.2:

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,

   my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,

   my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Revelation 21:5

Behold, I make all things new

February 2020

There was a woman who had a large brick wall in her living room.  It was not part of the house, not load-bearing, served no purpose and was unsightly.  It was beginning to block the front window.  She wasn’t sure how it got there.  She had vague memories of rows of bricks appearing now and then and rows adding on now and then.  It was eight feet high, immovable and hard to explain to visitors let alone her parents.

     One day she figured it was time to have it removed.  She called demolition contractors, the ones who took her seriously were too expensive.  One told her to buy a sledge hammer and a shop-vac and go the DIY (do it yourself) route.  She Googled and You-Tubed (these are verbs now) possible solutions. Eventually it dawned on her that she should just attack one brick at a time.  Start at the top and hit a brick.  From her step ladder she swung her new sledge hammer.  

And missed.  And fell.  After a month of healing she was ready to try again.  Her bruises and scrapes strengthened her resolve.   Moreover, while healing she watched more demolition videos.  Which was a good thing.

                 Her new approach, while not iconic, was intentional and binary.  It consisted of “I don’t have to kill the wall in huge sections;” and “One brick at a time.”  She had a secondary binary which was “I don’t have to start at the top;” and “I should try to protect the floor.”  Her tertiary binary was a protective eyewear and cold beverages at hand.

     Indeed, her plan worked.  It was not always easy but she was persistent , diligent.  A weeknight or two and weekends were her work times.  Set up, execution, clean up and haul away were quick and efficient.   Soon enough it was gone.  Her living room was once again an actual, as opposed to literal, living room.  There was light and room to move.  The whole house was brighter.  Her plants were again receiving sun light.  She found a bookcase she had entirely forgotten.  She caught herself dancing in the space and light.  Discovered she liked dancing.  Go figure.

     Repentance works the same way.  There is something in your life which has just kind of appeared and it is doing you no good at all.  It is sin.  This probably doesn’t make you a horrible person but it’s putting distance between you and God and quite possibly loved ones. Tick through the 10 Commandment and their explanations (ELW pp. 1160, 1161) comparing them openly, honestly and daringly to your behavior.  If you pray during this exercise God will increase your perception and your strength – something to consider.  This is where you identify or finally notice the bricks in the wall, Pink Floyd notwithstanding.  This is also where you take them down one or two at a time.  With the Sledge  edge edge edge  Hammer mer mer mer of Repentance entance entance.  Peter Gabriel notwithstanding

      You change your life by repenting.  We are transformed in repentance. You change the world by repenting.  The world is transformed by repentance.  It is not a natural act.  It comes with prayer and the Holy Spirit and repeated swings.   It is a process.  And it is never really done.  Until Jesus comes again and takes us unto himself.

     And as much as people’s rooms are occupied with brick walls so are institutions.  An institution is a society or organization founded for a religious, educational, social, or similar purpose.  This includes the ELCA, Floyd’s Curling league, Congress,  the NFL and any of the 50 United States and the Guys in Deer Shack and any women’s softball league; or, as in the Bible: “where two or more are gathered.”  We are all members, knowingly or unknowingly, active or passive, member of at least probably a dozen institutions or so.  (Data not yet fully compiled)

     We – Lutherans, People, the World – need to widen the scope of our repentances to beyond just our little ol’ narrow self.  What about the institutions in which we claim membership or to whom we pledge allegiance?  Brick walls anywhere?  Unnecessary partitions?  Unsightly and pointless barriers?  God does indeed bless, work through and suffer with The Secular.

     Take down the walls.  Any walls.  A brick at a time.  A brick at a time.  A brick at a time.  Yours or an institution’s.  Or both.  

     It could become a hobby.  It could become a life.  It could become a way to die and rise again.  And learn to dance.

                   Micah 6.8:      He has told you, O mortal, what is good;  and what does the Lord require of you

                                                 but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

 Is this you?  Is this us?   Anything in the way?  Like a brick or two?  

 It’s Lent.   Go get your hammer.  

(Peter, Paul and Mary notwithstanding)

January 2020

It all started with Adam and Eve; and fire and rocks and some favorite sticks.  Then a wheel or two came along, drawing on cave walls, light bulbs, then electricity, then IBM Selectrics, then Al Gore’s Internet, Atari and Pong and phones that virtually run your life.  Life seems to be one big acceleration; we go bigger, better, faster, shinier because.  Because we can and we convince ourselves it is better.  Who can argue with self-driving cars?  With AI?  Faster medical care, faster news, faster learning are all better.  Better than?  Better because?  Ask Alexa or Siri.  Large segments of our culture are being influenced by people who live large segments of their life in front of a screen and keyboard.  They speak and think in blips and contractions and neologisms.  And, yes, they make our lives better and easier with stuff that we take for granted.

     Now, I am not a Luddite: I’m writing this on a PC, looked up the origin of Luddite on the InterWeb (a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16)) and will publish this electronically on two or three platforms.  I have both the Old and New Testament on my smart phone, including the Hebrew and Greek texts.  Technology is not bad.  But technology is not life.  

    Despite every bit of evidence to the contrary, technology is not life.  God is life.  Jesus is life.  The first words of the Gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

     Jesus is not an app.  Jesus is not the result of human coding.  Jesus is God made flesh, made human.  This is not news.  It is not an earth-shattering revelation.  But it gets forgotten.  It goes by the wayside.  It gets ignored.  It gets avoided.

     Maybe because believing seems too easy.  Maybe because we have to stop or slow down to take it in.  Maybe because in this faster and faster results-oriented world it seems quaint or antique.  Or in an era of self-absorption, Jesus seems just, simply irrelevant.

      I have no argument to convince you to believe in Jesus.  Stories work better than arguments.  Arguments are for app users.  Stories are for people who have stopped to listen.

      So let this be your New Year’s Resolution:  Stop to listen.  

     Every so often turn off all your devices, let Alexa and Siri rest, stop streaming whatever.  And just listen.  Listen for God talking to you.  Listen to someone’s story.  Listen to the breeze in the trees, listen for susurrations.  Listen to absolute silence, to the snow settling, the snow plow going by.  Listen to a snowflake land on your nose or tongue.  A heavy snowfall is audible.  Listen for people on the other side of the world.  

     Listen and rest.  Take your foot off the gas.  Take your thumb off the phone.  Remove your earbuds.  Read a Psalm.  

     Listen and rest.  Read Psalm 90

⁹ For all our days pass away under your wrath;   our years come to an end like a sigh.

¹⁰ The days of our life are seventy years,  or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble;  they are soon gone, and we fly away. ¹¹ Who considers the power of your anger?   Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you.

¹² So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

The wrath has been taken care of.   Jesus.

The numbering of your days? Wisdom?  That’s you.

Christmas 2019

  Do you remember when you were a little child, sleeping in your own room, maybe you had a brother or sister or two or three with you?  Do you remember that feeling when your parents turned out the light and closed the door?  It was black.  It was dark.  You couldn’t tell if your eyes were open or shut.  Did your siblings not see what was lurking?  How could they sleep so well when you knew you were all about to be eaten?  Maybe you were teased for your fear of the dark.  Maybe you negotiated a deal with Mom or Dad to leave the hall light on and the door open a crack.  You finally fell asleep – concentrating on that crack of light.  The light coming in that bit of an opening saved your life every night.

     Eventually, theoretically, we overcome our fear of the dark.  Turn out the lights and we are asleep in seconds.

    But maybe we never really lose our fear of the dark.  One way or another in one form or another we have a fear of, not the dark, but darkness.  We fill the darkness with anything that will distract or delude us – noise, things, toys, bright moving images, sports, drugs and alcohol, political parties, celebrity worship, physical perfection.  We hide from the harsh realities of the world lurking in the closet or under the bed.  We hide from differing opinions, skin color and religions.  We hide from people starving as we feast.  We hide from compassion because it makes us feel guilty and powerless.  We delude ourselves with certainty, we clutch it tight, in a death-grip, deep under the covers.

     On Christmas day, or at least what we mark as Christmas day, over 2000 years ago, a child was born to a young Jewish couple in a manger in Bethlehem.  The child, named Jesus, was born not just to the couple, Mary and Joseph, but to the world.  The World.  To you.  To the person in front of you at the checkout line.  To the folks who sneak in the back of church after worship starts.  To the folks who summer at the Shore and winter in Vail.  To the people who just cannot catch a break.  Jesus was born to the people of Ireland, Burundi, Macao, and Fargo and Mellen and North Korea.  He was born to all of us who are torn between fear of darkness – where we will be eaten; and fear of the light – where we are doing the eating.  From the Gospel of John, chapter 1:  

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. … ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. … 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 

     The God of Creation became flesh, became real – human, eating, breathing – with that nice young Jewish couple.  There is supposed to be Light in the world.  Not Darkness.  Not Victims and Victimizers.  Not sin.  Not guilt.

     There is supposed to be Hope in the world – Light.   Not survival of the fittest, not the scramble to be King of the Hill of the American Dream.

     On that first Christmas Day in Bethlehem (whenever it actually was) God opened the World’s bedroom door all the way.  Light flooded in and still burns bright today.  It is there for refuge, for promise, for call, for direction.  For Salvation.  For you.  For your spouse.  For the neighbor and in-laws who drive you crazy.  For gazillions of people you’ll never know in places you’ve never heard of.  For your children.

     It is not merely light either.  

     It is actually Love.  Transforming, Redeeming, Resurrecting, Relentless Love.

          We are loved.

           We are lit.

          We are joyful.

          We are merry.

     We will not be overcome.

December 2019

 Once upon a time there was a doctor, a very good doctor.  She could diagnose accurately, quickly; treat correctly.  She was a technical expert, an intuitive genius.  The doctor had at her disposal the latest diagnostic technology and dedicated, well-trained nurses and technicians.  Moreover, she was gentle and caring, patient and warm.  Always with a smile, never forgetting a name or a family member, she cured as much with bedside manner as he did with medication and surgery.

     The problem was she never left her hospital.  There were many people in her country who could not make it to her clinic.  The only people the good doctor treated were in the immediate vicinity of the clinic – a day’s walk or shorter – those folks who could walk in.  In the far regions of the country people were dying too soon simply because no one came to their aid.  The doctor conducted all her healing within the confines of a well-equipped, well-staffed building.

     One day someone, later identified as a health care delivery fairy, asked what if she left the building.  What if the doctor and all the equipment and all the technicians and all the nurses went out into the country?  What if? is a question that is the birth of creativity.

     Soon enough the good doctor went out into the outer regions of the country.  All the diagnostic equipment and staff would have to come later.  She made do with who and what she could fit into an ATV.  Sometimes facilities and working conditions were less than optimal, perhaps even dangerous.  And it certainly was nothing like what she had at her disposal in the hospital.  But it all worked, one way or the other – miraculously.  It all held together, one way or another– miraculously.  

     Many, many lives were saved; many, many lives were turned around.  The brilliant doctor not only saved lives but inspired others to become doctors and health care professionals, thus saving even more lives.  All because the health care delivery fairy was heard and good gifted people dared to leave the building and go out.

     What if we good and gifted Christians dared to leave behind our comfortable buildings and expectations, our optimal conditions and venture forth?  We’d be listening not for the health care delivery fairy, but the Holy Spirit.  What would happen?  Obviously, we would not be practicing medicine as the doctor was (medical missionaries notwithstanding), we would instead be listening to peoples’ life stories, seeing life situations and telling/showing/living out how God is present and fits into those stories and folks’ lives to strengthen, turn around, sustain and heal.

     People have died and do die for lack of medical attention – the presence of someone with medical expertise.  People have died and do die for lack of Christian attention – someone who can be God’s presence, not with expertise but with faith and a loving, persistent heart. 

     All of us, whether we know it or not, have saved a life.  We have been the Christian attention. We have been God’s presence whether for a minute or two or a lifetime or anything in between.  

     It is time to take our expertise, our faith, our fears, our daring, our mistakes, our discomfort, our defeats, our victories, our miracles, our hopes and promises of resurrections out into places where they are so desperately needed.  These places won’t be far away.  They will be sooner and closer than we think.     

     In a Sunday or two, the four Sundays of Advent begin.  They are to recognize, remind and celebrate God coming to the world once upon a time AND God coming again.  To the World.

     What if the season of Advent was about our coming, our imminent arrival?  What if the season of Advent was about someone waiting for and anticipating not only Christ, but us, the body of Christ?  

     Here’s the deal with our baptisms:  we are called to be on the way – on the way to someone somewhere to be Christian attention.  You could be someone’s salvation. 

     Are we on the way?  

     We have to be.  

November 2019

Why do we come to church on, for the most part, Sunday mornings?  Why are we there sitting on a pew in the nave on a Sunday morning having cleaned up and put on reasonably nice clean clothes?  

We are there to . . . find peace, find inspiration, confess the week’s sins, receive forgiveness, sing a favorite hymn of two, hear or perform a great anthem, hear the magnificent organ, hear the sermon, receive Holy Communion, make social contacts, have fellowship after worship, find respite from our chaos, sense God’s presence.  Any one of these or any combination would be an answer; including because someone makes me.  And they are all about what we receive, what we get out of worship.

However.  However, in the oremus Bible Browser (oremus is Latin for “let us pray.”  www.oremus.org is a pretty nifty website btw) there are 294 matches when “worship” is the search criterion.  They begin with Genesis 22.5: Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.’  and end with Revelation 22.8, 9:   I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me;Top of Form

 but he said to me, ‘You must not do that! I am a fellow-servant with you and your comrades the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!’  Depending on who is doing the counting, there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible and 31,173 verses; some are very short, some are very long.  Out of all those, 294 passages tell of worshiping God.  

Now, think of all the blessings we receive from God over the course of a week.  Let’s pause and reflect  . . . . . . . . .doo be . .  . . .doo be doo . . . . exchanging glances. . . .wondering if at all . . . .   da da dum  . . . .  son of God  . . . .  Son of .  . . . . . .man . . . . . . .. . .I’d serve . . . . . . . truly . . . . .. . .. .. .      now and forever . . . .   OK, Times up.

Blessings.  Be real about it, now.  Are there any that are not from God?    Of course not.

So then, since everything is from God, what do we do in return?  How do we repay the favor?  Is it possible for us to even begin to repay the blessings that God showers upon us?  Do you catch yourself in the pew as the plate approaches, “God, I know your Son died for us, but right now all I’ve got is a fifty . . and . .oh  jeepers . . . .  aww, mannn . . .  well, there it goes.  Maybe I can get a receipt.  Maybe the pastor saw it.” ? We can’t repay.  We CAN worship.

We go to church, we assemble, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit or Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier on Sunday morning, Saturday night or Wednesdays in the summer to worship God.  The boat, golf course, deer stand, deck, bleachers or recliner do not count.  Do not count.  At all.  Key word:  assemble.

We go to church to worship God.  

It is God’s command.  It is our duty.  For an hour, an hour and a quarter if the sermon gets out of hand, it is our duty and command and joy to come before God and worship with thanksgiving and praise.  One hour, two if you want to include prep and travel time, out of 168 hours in the week is what God wants – at least that’s the current theological wisdom and ecclesial practice.  Technically, Biblically, our entire life should be an act of worship, a lifetime of glorifying God.  Currently it is 1 out of 168; 0.00595^th of the week.

God wanting to be worshiped and glorified – doesn’t that seem a bit needy?  According to pop psychology of the day?  Well …. we worship the Packers, Vikings, Bears, Brewers, Twins, Badgers, Oredockers, our children’s achievements, our careers, our national leaders, our political parties all at the drop of a hat.  We live and die, curse and cry, boast and hide with their glorious victories and ignominious defeats.  Why not worship a living God who actually knows our name, created us, recreates us, gives us purpose, provides for us, sustains us, grants us courage, loves us and – promises us eternal life – if we but believe in God’s Son?  

We can meet this God – at the very least, the very least – every Sunday morning in worship.  It’s God’s will and it is our duty.  We can meet God. Because God loves us and wants to keep in touch. 

What a deal!?! – when the Creator of the Universe and All That Is and All That Will Ever Be just wants us to stop in and tell him “You are wonderful and great! Glory Hallelujah! Praises to you!”    

Just like we do for a walk-off homer or a winning field goal as time expires.  Only with God it’s holy.

Worship God.  On a Sunday morning find a building with a bunch of people, look for the cross up front, can you smell coffee? do you hear music? are you welcomed?  

That’s the place.  Worship God. 

October 2019

  Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim.  Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some men for us and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”  So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.  Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.  But Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the sun set.  And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the sword.      Exodus 17: 8 – 13

    As long as Moses held his arms up Israel was winning the battle against Amalek.  The presence of Moses tells you that this is taking place as Israel is wandering in the Wilderness after escaping the Pharaoh and his soldiers at the Red Sea.  They are headed for the Promised Land but here in the way is Amalek, a grandson of Esau, and his band of not-so-merry Amalekites.  Amalekites and Israelites didn’t get along, obviously.  But that is not the point.

     The point is not really Moses at all.  The point is Aaron and Hur.  They were in the background of Israel’s history and survival while Moses was in the foreground.  Yet they were just as necessary to Israel’s survival and history as was Moses.  Had they not been there to hold up Moses’ arms the battle would’ve been lost to the Amalekites.

     It seems that great things need something small somewhere in their natural history.  A  massive oak starts with an acorn.  A 16 ton piece of machinery stands idle for lack of a roll pin or cotter key.  A superduper computerized $4,000 sewing machine waits for a $3.59 needle.  A $75 a seat rock concert can’t go on for lack of a 30 amp fuse.

     Why should it be any less so in the Kingdom of God?  Why should it be any less so, now  in 2019, with us, than it was with Aaron and Hur having to hold up Moses’ arms 5 or 10 thousand years ago?

     The hanger for a garage door is two or three 2×12’s, nice big pieces of lumber, but to get them trued up – to get them level – requires a shim, a piece of “lumber” no larger than half a playing card.  If the 2×12’s aren’t true the garage door won’t be true and there will be no seal – rain, snow and bugs come in.  Which is a bad thing.

     Never underestimate (or overestimate) what you are to the kingdom of God.  Ministry – God working through us to serve God’s Creation human and otherwise – comes in infinite shapes and sizes.  You are one of those shapes and sizes.  Don’t think for a minute that God doesn’t want you, can’t use you, won’t use you in ministry.  Be still for a bit and act.

     Don’t think for a minute that God doesn’t call you, can’t call you, won’t call you to ministry.  Be still for a bit and listen.

     Don’t think for a minute that God doesn’t love you, can’t love you, won’t love you.  Be still for a bit and enjoy it.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a life filled with delight?  God’s delight and yours – all rolled into one.

July 2019

     In the first week of July I had an arthroscopic procedure on my right knee.   It’s 5:50 a. m., IV needles go in, I’m wheeled off to somewhere, the anesthesia person says, “Hi there,” I repeat my name, date of birth and procedure for the 30^th time that morning, wake up two minutes later, it’s about noon, my whole leg is wrapped up, I’m told there are two holes in my knee, keep it dry, don’t pick at it  and home we go. 

     Ice packs and pain medication. Crutches for a day or so.  “Ambulate as tolerated.”

    And then.  Find a comfortable position.  Ain’t that just the story of life – marriage, faith, church, job, friends, golfing, back-up quarterback, retirement, politics? Find a comfortable position.

     And Leg up.  Leg down.  Sitting.  Reclining or semi-reclining.  For a night or two I slept on the couch simply because I was too comfortable to move.  Faced with the discomfort of moving and then re-establishing a position of comfort, I took the lazy way out and stayed on the couch.  I finally had to move to go to the bathroom . . . to take more medication.

     I am drawing from my inconvenience and discomfort and theoretically making a point.  On the other hand, there are people with serious chronic pain from any number of ongoing disease processes.  I cannot begin to hold a candle to them (and their spouses) for how they gracefully endure and bear their constant pain, fight to get through their day and try to understand why them and why no end in sight.  I don’t want to trivialize their experience.  At all.  In eight weeks or so I’ll be pretty good; for the others it’s another eight weeks of the same old thing.  Followed by – for the rest of their lives – the same old thing.

     “Position of comfort” doesn’t apply only to physical pain.  It applies to psychic pain, spiritual pain and simply the daily effort to understand a crazy threatening world as it floods over us from the media.  Where do we go for comfort?  Where do we go for refuge?  What are we using for pain medication?  Is there somewhere we can go where it doesn’t hurt?  Can we find a position of comfort (POC) for our heads, hearts and souls?

     A POC isn’t a bad thing.  Healing can take place, needs to take place, tissues need time to knit and recover from the trauma of the procedure.  But only up to a point.  If we stay with the POC too long it becomes a trap.  We become too comfortable and can’t move at all – we don’t dare or simply can’t.  Joints and tissues heal and knit, scar tissue forms and we tighten up.  We lose range of motion (ROM), we become crippled.  Because we fell in love with our POC.

     The next step in post-op recovery is physical therapy.  Stretching and rebuilding muscles that stabilize the joint and make the whole limb actually work.  The goal is a full ROM for the joint in question and as normal a gait as possible.  

     Physical therapy is work, there will be perspiration.  Physical therapy brings discomfort, there will be utterances.  It is absolutely necessary to regain full use of the limb and ultimately the whole body.  When a good session of PT is finished there is relief, there are ice packs and here are OTC (over the counter) pain relievers.  The discomfort is temporary, the strength grows, the joint becomes trustworthy, we move towards wholeness.

      So then, Dear Reader, do you come to the worship experience, sermon, hymns, communion, confession, silence, etc. to be comforted?  To find (in a pew?!) your POC ?  Or do you come to worship to be stretched and limbered up theologically, to be challenged and then go out into the world and kick some financial and missional butt?  Maybe a bit of both?

   From Matthew 11:28-30   ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’   

Come to Jesus and find a POC – rest for your soul, rest for your back.  Absolutely.  Be saved from your agitation and your pain.  Rest.  Heal.  Come and find the POC – Peace of Christ.

     But, by the same token, be ready.  Be ready to be called and sent to places and people out of your comfort zone, out of your POC.  Be ready to be called and sent to places and people out of your comfort zone, out of your POC again.  And again.  None of the disciples every really found a POC.  For Jesus, the  POC was positioned on cross.   

     As disciples of Christ, we are called to stretching exercises, leaps of faith.  We must maintain our ROM – range of motion.  We must maintain our ROM – range of mission.

     As John Wayne once intoned to Paul Brinegar, “Don’t get too comfortable, Pilgrim.  We got miles to go and people to feed.”

     In these days, in this world, in these times we have to get over being comfortable all the time.  We are called to stretch.  The Kingdom of God cannot be a static institution, it must be dynamic.  That means we have to be ready to move.  

     Have a nimble and flexible heart, soul and mind – these are what you need to love the Lord your God.  Be ready to ambulate.

June 2019

 In theory, Summer is upon us, if for no other reason than it is June.  Technically, the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere occurs when the Sun reaches both its highest and northernmost points in the sky. 

So during this period of long days and warm temperatures it is incumbent on us who have survived the short, dark, cold, bitter, leaden, glum, disheartening, gray, miserable days of winter to do Summer things.  We owe it to ourselves and the universe to get as much out of every Summer day as possible.  Using pallet boards, duct tape and sheet rock screws, board up your TV’s and Gaming Screens until the first snowfall.  Then …. 

Sleep under the stars every night.  Go swimming every day; right after your hike.  Go to all the parades within a 120 mile radius.  Go to all the summer festivals within a 240 mile radius.  Go to the Rutabaga festival in Cumberland, National Mustard Day in Middleton, Burger Fest in Seymour, the Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw in Prairie du Sac, the Cheese festival in Little Chute, the Butter festival in Reedsburg or the Sputnik Fest in Manitowoc.  Bring back T-Shirts and mugs.  

Go to softball games in the evenings, baseball games on Sundays.  Go down and see the Brewers or the Twins.  Eat as much fresh fruit and as many fresh vegetables as you can stand.  Eat those carrots, peas and tomatoes while you’re standing right there in the garden; onions and carrots too.  That little bit of dirt is good for you.  Get every last juicy, sticky drop of juice across your palate as possible.  Eat sweet, sweet watermelon and spit out the seeds.  Go to the ABC Raceway and any other stock car races in the area.  Don’t prepare any meals indoors.  Grill everything.

Drink out of the garden hose – water so cold it makes your throat ache –  after mowing the lawn.  Have an ice-cold (so cold it makes your throat ache) barley-based hop-flavored beverage after weeding the garden.  Have a bonfire every night.  Go boating.  Go fishing.  Drive all over the Upper United States visiting friends and family.  Catch every sunrise and sunset.  Go golfing and bike riding – at the same time if they let you.  Have a water balloon fight.  Plant trees and flowers.  Drift from Sand Island over to Two Harbors on an air mattress (have someone in a boat follow just in case.  Alert the Coast Guard probably also.  Some flares too).

Catch all the fireworks displays; especially, obviously, the ones on the 4^th of July.  Lay on your back and let all the exploding colors and noise wash over you.  Get every last bit of juice and pulp, stars and light, enjoyment, entertainment, life, goodness, fellowship, enrichment, joy and peace you can out of being alive this Summer.  Go to State and County fairs; eat anything deep fried.  Wash it down with Cotton Candy.

Now …

Do you ever think of approaching your relationship with God in the same way?  Do you ever find yourself wanting more from God.  Not more stuff but a deeper more – visions, realizations, understandings, and again with stars and light, enjoyment, entertainment, life, goodness, fellowship, enrichment, joy and peace”.  Maybe even power.  Maybe even purpose.  Maybe even a life changed for the better, by a little or by a lot.  Which you can then share with spouse and children, friends.  Or even the world.  There are no festivals but every Sunday morning somewhere there is worship.  Go.

Juice and pulp.  Bread and wine.  Life and Death.  Resurrection and Transformation.  Gift and Call.  

Not a nanosecond is impossible.  In Christ all things are possible.  I think that’s in the Bible.

Pastor’s Report, 2018

Greetings in the name of the Father who created us, the Son who forgives us and the Holy Spirit who recreates and calls us every day.

As of this reading I am entering the 27^th day of my eleventh year here at Saron; my 23^rd year of ordained ministry.  It is a privilege and honor to be your pastor.  It is my prayer that I live up to the challenge and call of ministering to this congregation and to the larger community of Ashland and its surrounding communities.

1.  Saron is not merging with Good Shepherd as Pastor Chesley retires.  Period.  It is just not realistic at this time, if ever.  I may end up serving as pastor to both congregations, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.  Good Shepherd has only just begun their discernment process to deal with Pastor Chesley’s absence and how they will go forward.  He’s been their pastor for 25 years plus – their transition will undoubtedly be adventurous.  Whatever happens between our two congregations, if anything, won’t become clear for quite some time.  Do not hold your  breath.  We are Saron, I am the pastor, you are the ministers, we will go about our usual business while keeping an eye out for the work of the Holy Spirit.  Whatever happens will happen.

2.  Our future awaits us.  We are not a dying church; we’re not flourishing either.  But we are, give or take, holding our own and doing it well.  I feel more positivity in the air these days, a better energy.  This sounds like so much pastoral malarkey or HappyTalk or New Age weirdness but God is at work here, Saron and her call have not been forsaken by God.  The Holy Spirit is at work.  It is indeed perceptible.

3.  However …..

a. Our debt and the servicing thereof is holding us back like an anchor dragging along the bottom and we cannot cut the chain.  We must be aggressive in paying it off (it is waay, forecloseable past due) and should consider a capital fund drive.  This would involve sacrificial giving, pledging over and above your usual giving plan.

b. Maintenance costs are only going to increase as our beautiful 50+ year old building and grounds age.  Brace yourself and be ready to open both heart and checkbook.  Maintenance deferred is disaster expedited.  No one comes to something falling apart.  No one gives to something falling apart.  Falling apart is not God’s will for us.

c.  We need more members to participate in something, anything, a new thing.  The age-old ecclesial rule of thumb is: 10% of a congregation give 90% of the budget; 10% know and care what’s going on, 90% are along for the ride.  Saron needs to bring those numbers closer together.  We’re not big enough to survive on the 10:90 rule.  We need much higher participation in anything, something, everything.  Yes, including your Giving Plan.  (a Giving Plan is giving X% of your income – off the top – on a weekly or monthly basis without stopping for the summer.  A Giving Plan involves not trusting just your penny pinching but trusting God’s Providence as well. 

d.  This is doable.  When we pray.  When we dare.  When we act.  That’s how Saron got started; it’s how many churches got started.  And continue.  And flourish.

4.  Thank you.  Thank you to Emma Meyer, Tim Gruper and Mary Gruper, President Mary Maderich, Treasurer Sherri Mettler and the rest of the Church Council.  Sue Kolek and Don Kolek.  Thank you.

In Christ,    

Pastor Paul Simmons

Christmas 2018

  KAPOW!  Kathunka kathunka kathunka.  Edgar stepped on the brakes.  The car pulled a little to the passenger side.  It was Christmas Eve, he’d finally gotten out of the office, Lurlette had the kids ready and the car packed.  A quick change of clothes and they were on their way to her folks for The Holidays.

But now in the dark and cold; it’s-Christmas-Eve-and-who-will-be-open-at-this-hour-of-the-night? o’clock.  He sat for a minute, not even thinking, just sitting.  Collecting himself.  The trunk was expertly packed by Lurlette with presents and suitcases.  Presumably at the bottom was a spare tire.  The socket that held the trunk light was two bare wires.  Fine.  He walked lopsided on the shoulder to check the glove compartment.  Lurlette woke with a start as he reached in.  He calmed her down and found no flashlight.  

Fine.  He could work with moonlight and touch.  Probably.  Any other options were …. Missing.  Fine.  He set to work digging out the jack and spare and the lug wrench.  He made an orderly pile of presents and suitcases by the light of the flashers.  Getting the scissors jack situated and operating was problematic.  It was a hoax as was its crank.  About this time, he noticed his hand and toes had progressed from stinging to numb.  Additionally, not a single vehicle had passed; not even a snowmobile on a Christmas Eve Poker Run.  And the moon was gone.

As he struggled to get the lug wrench on the lug nuts he wondered if his hands could get any more number than they already were. He wondered why he wasn’t wearing his nice Sorel’s from Christmas last year?  Moreover, someone had apparently crept into his garage one night and welded the lug nuts on.  Fine.  

Eventually they all came off.  The last two stuck to his hands. He had unknowingly bashed or pinched a finger somewhere and blood from the wound he couldn’t see froze them on.  He couldn’t find his wound, but he got the nuts collected in the hub cap.

He got the limited mileage spare on the hub, lined up the holes with the studs and stepped on the hub cap – a  three step process nowhere in the instructions.  Nuts went thither and yon, mostly yon.  Only by pawing numbly through the gravel and snow did he manage to find four.  They would have to do.  With no feeling in his hand he was guessing at threading the nuts onto the studs, guessing at getting the wrench on the nut.  They went on as hard as they came off.  He tried to spin the lug wrench but hit himself in the shin.  Fine.  We’ll limp in with four nuts.  

His relief and triumph were crushed as he lowered the car.  The spare was flat.  Fine.  He could hear his brother-in-law, “Only on the bottom, Eddy.  Only flat on the bottom.”  He could no longer think.  Despair began to set in. It was dark and late and cold.  And Christmas.  Trunk open with presents and luggage stacked ever so neatly to protect them if rear-ended.

In the car he warmed up.  Finger tips and toes began to sting again.  Nose ran like a faucet.  “Whatcha gonna do, Dad?”  The kids were awake and worried.  “Honey?  Can I help?  Should we call AAA.?”  He didn’t know.  He looked at Lurlette, but didn’t dare answer for fear of filling the car with horrible words and hopelessness.  And tears of rage. And his hands and feet were throbbing.  It hurt.  Meanwhile, the stars twinkled in a black, black sky.   The road was silent, empty; void of promise.  Fine.  What next?

After a minute or, for all he knew, maybe an hour, coming out of the woods and up the ditch he thought he saw a light; a small one bobbing along.  Ed got out of the car.  Hit by the cold, his nose, feet and fingers began to sting again.  His eyes watered. It was a light; a small flash light held by a small boy.

In the middle of black, black night, in the middle of the nowhere, hip-deep in bone-deep cold despair, no cell service and industrial quantities of potential profanity here comes this … kid.  With a light.  Fine.  Where was he two hours ago?

“C’mon.  Follow me.  I got the light.”  Sure, why not?  “Yer wife and kids will be fine, the exhaust pipe is clear and you got lots of gas.”  How did he know this?  What the …. ?  “Coming or not?  Can’t stay here.  I’m real.  Come on.  Let’s go.”  For a small boy he was insistent.  Weird, thought Edgar.

He followed the small boy and the small light because there was no light anywhere else.  Back down the ditch and into the woods they went.  Sometimes it seemed as if the boy was the light himself,  glowing.  Other times, when needed, a beam of light was right there to show the way.  He followed for what seemed like hours; it was mostly uphill and all cold.  The walking warmed him up, except for this feet –his shoes were filled with snow.  The tassels provided no warmth.

Edgar awoke on an old bus seat with duct tape on the arms.  There was light, there was heat.  Someone had taken his shoes and socks off, they were drying in front of  a roaring space heater.  His fingers felt fat and warm and tingly; his nose was running down over his lips and onto his chin.  His bare toes, now deliciously warm, were just not that attractive.

He was in a gas station.  Boughs of plastic holly festooned the office.  Over on the window sill next to parts catalogs was a white fiber optic Christmas tree rotating at its base while changing colors with each revolution.  It was playing Silent Night.  Above the cash register was a 1958 pin-up calendar.  Miss December was Mrs. Claus artfully, fairly tastefully hidden behind Santa’s sleigh and some mistletoe 

“I spoke with my Dad.  He’s on the way to get your car and family.  We’ve got a tire in your size.  You can be on your way in pro’lly a coupla three hours.”

Ed asked, “How did I get here?  How did you get me here?  Yer just a little guy, a boy.  No offense.”  He was remembering the whole footprints in the sand thing, two sets of prints becoming one set of prints and Jesus tells the guy that’s where I carried you.

The boy said, “No offense taken.  I dragged you.  You were too weak and frozen to walk and too heavy to lift so I hauled you in by the collar.”

Ed said, “Thank you.  Do you have a name?  Thank you ….”

“Here’s my Dad. “  Into the lot swung the tow truck with Edgar’s car and wife and family.  They got out looking mildly stunned and lost.  They all headed for the bathroom then feasted on hot cocoa and Oreos from the vending machines while a new tire was put on.  Both of the kids fell asleep again to the warm roar of the heater; Lurlette’s lap was as good a pillow as ever.  She smiled and dozed also.  As did Edgar.  For what felt like an eternity.  It was a wonderful bus seat, duct tape and all.

“Tire’s on.  Yer good to go.”  They woke up and re-oriented themselves.  Lurlette and the kids trudged back out to the car, crawling in and promptly going back to sleep.  The boy’s father was speaking.  He was an average looking man made strong by hefting tires and hauling on wrenches.  He smiled, “You can get to where you were going in time for Christmas breakfast. A turkey omelet or something like that.”  Edgar was nodding, trying to avoid one last look at Mrs. Claus.  “Safe travel and blessings on you.” the father said.

Ed said, “Thank you so much.  You are a life saver!  On Christmas Eve no less!”  He brought out his MasterCard, “What do I owe you?”

“No charge.  No charge on Christmas,”  the father said. “Yup.  Christmas Day now.  And here, Merry Christmas to you.  A little Christmas gift.”  He handed Edgar a flashlight.

Just like the one the boy had used.

Edgar went back out to the car.  He listened to his family sleeping in peace then drove off

The sun was coming up and he had a new flashlight.  Merry Christmas.

¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

It is Christmas.  A time of Light.

Rejoice in the Light!   Again I say, rejoice!

Follow the Light.  Take the light.

Be the Light.

Show someone the way.  Find a good bus seat and space heater.  Thaw them out.  

Feast on hot cocoa and Oreos.

Get them back on their journey.

Continue with yours.

Go in Peace.

Go in the Light.