Monday Morning Quarterback

Excess is Not Enough ...

2010-05-12T00:11:00.000-07:00

This is a blog from a sermon the notes on which I found quite by accident whiel penning a trifle on simplicity of European life. As the sermon, Pastor Mick's, was one he gave back somewhere beteween December 2009 and February 2010, I'll only leave here the gist of what I heard. I think the thoughts are timeless.

In America, we do not or no longer know the word moderation. We do not know the meaning of moderation in our work, We consistently bring it home. Ask my wife if I'm guilty here ...
We buy clothes when the closets are full; toys when the kids already had too many; groceries when the refridgerator is full (only to see too much end up as refuse). We have an interesting phenomena in the US that is patently absent in Europe: storage locker facilities! ... full of more of what we arguably could go without. We "need" or act thus ... th elatest iPod, cellphone gadget, GPS and Blackberry, the newest model car or toy.

At Christmas, we are shopped to our limit and we shop to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Don't stop 'til you get enough." A former co-worker of mine one described his life as a youth spent honoring his personal bumper sticker/credo/mantra:

Excess is not enough.

But moderation is truly more Christian than excess ... ref: Psalm 63

Do we hunger for righteousness, do our stomach's growl (if not from physical hunger) for helping the marginalized in our society. We fedd our pangs for travel, Packers tickets and NASCAR. But where is our "gusto for God"?

Faith, in one sense, is not the restraint from ALL things, but restraint from "the right things". The things that do not satisfy ... the soul. As Psalm 63 sings, joy is not the absence of suffering; it is a delight in God's presence, it is hearing the songs of His creation in the birds each morning as I now walk kilometers over dirt paths to catch a bus to catch a train to walk 15 more minutes to a simple, but adequate desk ...

Europeans seem to have still retained some more measure of a handle on "enough". At least more than Americans seem to remember froma time seemingly past. There is still palpable here "the exhiliration of the wide-eyed" as the Psalm says. As Pastor Mick shared:

God gives each of us "a little faith" (we need only the size of a mustard seed) to stir our own brand of restlessness. We are human. We want good things, but often in bad ways. We want a house, not for the true ability it offers to keep us dry and safe and warm, but "for its own sake" and what it can "say about us". This seems, if not patently aabsent in Europe, at least a concept that they often have to struggle to relate to. Life is simpler, houses are simpler (but homes are just as warm), possessions are fewer, but seemingly more meaningful in and of themselves and are not measured in number or quantity. Or so it seems to a sojourner passing through, but one who stayed long enough to observe.

We are searching for a new Pastor. May they be someone of moral charcter with the vision to ask us to possess "a gusto for God", may they "have loving life down through their fingertips", may they task us and challenge us to "extend our reach beyond our grasp".

From a small nation in Israel rose the tide that rolled far beyond its borders.

From a small discontent, we can change the world (read Three Cups of Tea!!)

God works with what we give Him, with what He sees in us ...

Let's trive to do one meaning ful thign each day. As Mother Teresa is known to have said and lived: You need not do great things, but strive to do small things with great love.

If you want to hazard a look at the extent to which we have segregated our society between the haves and have nots, go to the library and borrow Nickeled and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. It's an eye-opener and, if its not a heart-opener, then we've become Tin Men, Dorothy.

Git Busy Livin'

2010-05-05T02:15:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday April 4, 2010
Preacher: Pastor Anika Neindorf

It is said when you first visit the Lincoln Memorial in an otherwise quiet moment, away from the clicking of tourists’ camera shutters, when it is only you and ol’ Abe, when you’re first told his hands hung over the mighty marble chair on which he’s perched form the American sign language for the letters A.L., his initials ... it is then that you talk to Abe and maybe you thank him for being the visionary rebel that he was, one that stands little chance of ever being elected in today’s America. I’ve heard it said people talk to him. I know Carmen placed her hands in the crevices of the etched marble walls towering above her head to “feel” the words he orated at Gettysburg or his famous 2nd inaugural address.

Although held in perhaps different esteem, I eflt something akin to this aura when I entered The Castle Church, the very place on the planet where Luther, the rebel, posted his 95 theses.

Thinking Ostern Sontag (Easter Sunday) would be “a madhouse” packed Church, I took a walk with Carmen on the evening before and we visited the Church and Luther’s grave within and The Door:

The original door was unfortunately lost in the fire of 1760. King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia had the door replaced with a bronze door with all 95 theses are inscribed. The painting above the door depicts Luther with the German Bible on the right and Melanchthon with the Augsburg Confession on the left. You can see the city of Wittenberg in the background.

We rubbed our prayer shawl knitted at Mt. Zion on the bronze door across the engraved words of the rebel and his cause. I rubbed my Bible into the bronze as well.

It simply felt otherworldly. I recall it felt too simple and quiet to be “the place” where it all “began” or, if not began, “reformed” and changed. I recall visiting India over 25 years ago with a graduate school classmate. He took me to the very site where Gandhi began his Salt March to the Sea. There wasn’t even a sign, I said. My friend, Suresh, laughed. He said, “You Americans don’t think anything could have happened unless there’s a sign, a tour bus and little trinkets you can buy!” I think he may be right, or at least I’m guilty as charged. Anyway, what I was getting at is that there’s something surreal about feeling the dirt on the road where the Salt March took place, just as there’s something surreal in being alone with Abe Lincoln or Martin Luther.

It’s actually surreal to me as I write this that these three moments in my travels all came to mind as I wrote this in stream of consciousness, and yet, Martin Luther King, named for the rebel, read and followed through on the writings of the Mahatma and the promise of Abraham nearly 150 years past. These are the signposts and markings of history whether there is a wooden sign proclaiming it or not.

Sunday morning was also surreal. Jesus rises from the dead and The Resurrection conquers all. But what stuck with me was that there were empty pews, empty pews on Ostern Sontag Morgen!! Wow! I was told by a German student that “there are only the people here who normally go to Church every Sontag”. Well, it made for a beautiful service. Punctuated, as it were, by the most beautiful hymns! The Easter hymns, some penned in German over 500 years ago were moving ...

And as the preacher climbed the stairs to the preaching loft, her hands extended along its lanky wooden frame as old as the ages, I heard her voice, but perhaps not her words. In a stream of consciousness, as in a movie, where the character mouths words and her voice drops to only a backdrop audio, my thoughts or “what I was hearing” drawn into the louder foreground for “the viewer” to hear. And this is what I heard:

Get busy livin’ …… or get busy dyin’

It’s a GREAT line from the movie The Shawshank Redemption, delivered stream of consciousness by Morgan Freeman (as only he can do), reading from a letter from his inmate chum who escaped “the death” and “hoplessness and futility” of “life” at Shawshank prison.

“Get busy livin’ …”, he says, for the alternative is to “git busy dyin’ …”

Never say never, as the ol’ James Bond movie (and Pastor Gary Johnson) used to say. “Never” is the proclamation of “git busy dyin’ …”

We’re in the throes of real change at Mt. Zion and, in boldly choosing new leadership and accepting and, yes, even embracing, the ultimate and necessary changes that will ensue, we have been tasked to “git busy livin’ …”

Change is life’s blood. As Jesus said himself. Look I make a new thing. Sometimes change is thrust upon us in the guise of tragedy … with many unanswered questions as Good Friday reminds us. He even told His disciples, “I must leave you now …” This change is necessary for the seeds of new growth to take root, as in the passing of the seasons.

This entire trip has reminded me daily, even hourly, that change and pruning are good even when they’re naturally seen as disruptive. Routine can be good, in ways, but also stifling.
The preacher’s mouth continued moving, in German, of course, and I continued to hear something different than what she was saying …

Git busy livin’ … or git busy dyin’

Jesus died on a cross … presumably at the age of 33, a 3 followed by a Biblical 3, the number of days a butterfly, after rising from the apparent death of the cocoon lives furiously and fully before expiring.

Given my documented recent propensity for loose translations, I accepted that God might be re-issuing his understanding that “they preached each in their own tongue and others heard in theirs”. Upon returning to the stone floor above Luther’s grave, I told the pastor, “Dank, fur das gute predigt” .. Thank you for that good sermon.

I’m not sure what she said, but I am sure what I heard …

Git busy livin’ …

Checkpoint John the Baptist

2009-12-08T23:31:00.000-08:00

Sunday December 6, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Mick Roschke

Readings:
Malachi 3:1-4
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/C4E400EA-405D-3B4A-2C30-D23C57582841.mp3

To be a Christian, by definition, is to be open to change your way of thinking. In our Earthly lives, we too often allow change to be driven by necessity; we change in response to external circumstances; we change only after having received ultimatums.

ADVENT comes from the roots “ad” meaning “toward” and “vent” meaning “within us”. In this season, we want to look into ourselves so we may look more clearly outward. Pastor Mick’s wife teaches 5th grade. One day in class, someone was misbehaving. When asked, 20 of the 31 students claimed it was one particular student. Even when confronted with the evidence, he student denied it was them. We choose, too often, to contest our behavior rather than being open to our struggles.

The truth is we don’t ever “get to Christmas” without

(a) Being honest
(b) Hearing John the Baptist, “the eyes of change” and
(c) Concentrating on the “NOW” and not just “the later on”

There are many dangerous trappings along the journey. Rivers have always symbolized boundaries & crossings. Pastor Mick storied that this brought up conjurings of Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, complete with mirrors, rude & mean border guards, dogs, the whole nine yards. You never knew if you would be permitted to leave (or re-enter), get through to “the other side”.

The key is there are ominous checkpoints for us along our way. And you can’t get to Christmas without passing through Checkpoint John the Baptist. At this advent border, something happens … a new beginning, a new start … where, if you repent, you cross over to the land of the vulnerable who can be transparent to their transgressions.

On “the other side”, it’s those who have the least who teach us in Advent.

Steal away to Jesus – across Checkpoint John the Baptist – and you’ll cross the border to be with those who are the true spirit of Christmas.

The Cold Within

2009-12-08T23:16:00.000-08:00

Sunday November 15, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Mick Roschke

Readings:
1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/32412560-C6F9-D6ED-5C5D-97491FA7BA9A.mp3

We give Thee but Thine own,
Whate'er the gift may be;
All that we have is Thine alone,
A trust, O Lord, from Thee.

May we Thy bounties thus
As stewards true receive
And gladly, as Thou blessest us,
To Thee our first-fruits give!
William W. How, 1823-1897

A 1936 relic, Craig’s Wife, is a golden oldie in which a wife is so possessive and perfectionist about her possessions, that she alienates those around her, even (& especially) her real friends.

http://www.filmwalrus.com/2008/02/review-of-craigs-wife-1936.html

Pastor Mick reminded us that this movie brought back the old adage that …

Those who live to themselves often are usually left to themselves …

Today, we contrast that image with hat of the widow … who had nothing, but, in so, had everything. Jesus cautions us to look inward at the Pharisee and scribe in each of us. Hey had the best seats in the synagogue, they were learned in the law, they took advantage of their status, power and prestige. Like Craig’s wife, the scribes and Pharisees manipulated resources and those around them. Whenever you use your authority against your fellow man, something’s out of whack.

They did not see the widow. She was invisible to them.

In C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, The Devil warns his apprentice of the utility of “moderation” …

http://www.stpaulserin.org/uploads/Beyond_Prudence_and_Moderation_11-08-09.pdf

Author C. S. Lewis wrote a delightful book, from the fictional point of view of an evil tempter.The Screwtape Letters is a classic. Screwtape is the mentor of Wormwood, a devil apprentice. Wormwood is a tempter in training. The demonic mission is to win souls for Satan. In one letter, Uncle Screwtape advises Wormwood that moderation is a key to keeping his patient away from devotion to the Christian faith. Screwtape writes, “Talk to him about ‘moderation in all things.’ If you can get him to the point of thinking that ‘religion is all very well up to a point,’ you can feel happy about his soul. Through moderation we grow immune to the real thing, which is lifechanging.

Our gospel lesson today frames two snapshots of opposing ways to be religious. One is a show. The other is genuine. One is about pride. The other is about humility. One is superficial and conventional. The other is profound and extraordinary.

The scribes, Jesus says, make a show of their religion, put their money into the temple treasury and help keep the established program going. Jesus sits opposite the treasury
and observes the traditional stewardship campaign from the
sidelines. Many people put in large sums, but a poor
widow comes along and drops in her penny.
Apparently, the large sums don’t add up to as much in the eyes of the Lord as the two copper coins that added together amount only to a penny. The smallest possible gift is the greatest because it is extravagant!

The widow’s mite was all she had. That gift, though a
drop in the bucket to the temple treasury, was everything to the poor widow. The large sums of the more wealthy represented a token, a portion of their surplus, money they could live without, funds that they wouldn’t miss because their pockets were deep. But the copper mite of the poor widow represented the life-changing devotion of a big heart.

Today, Jesus tasks us to be extravagant in our generosity. He wants us to give up “calculating before sharing”. At the Ecumenical Institute in Chicago, Pastor Mick shared, there was a service with “two collections”. Into the first, you were asked to give. When the plate was passed a second time, people were told to “take from the basket what they needed”. This so reminded me of a great story told by Pastor Gary Johnson. He was walking in Detroit with his good friend, Dick Martzoff, when a beggar asked for money. Dick reached for all the change in his pocket and told the man, “Take what you need”. He took it all.

Then, realizing he really need enough change to make a phone call, Dick ran after the man and asked for enough to make the call. The man reached into his pocket and took out all the money and said “Take what you need.”

Pastor Mick capped off this powerful sermon with a great poem, The Cold Within … warning of our innate ability to be Scribe-like …

http://www.jannah.org/articles/poems.html#8

THE COLD WITHIN

Six humans trapped by circumstances,
in bleak and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
or so the story told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
the first man held his back,
for,of the faces around the fire,
he noticed one man black.
The next man looking across the way,
saw one not of his church,
and couldn't bring himself
to give the fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes
he gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use,
to warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back
and thought of the wealth he had in store,
and how to keep what he had earned
from the lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge
as the fire passed from his sight,
for all he saw in his stick of wood,
was a chance to spite the white.
The last man of this forlorn group
did naught except for gain,
giving only to those who gave,
was how he played the game.
Their logs held tight in death's still hand,
was proof of human sin.
They didn't die from the cold without,
they died from the cold within.

We can be like the rich man, cold within, who just sat back, thinking how to keep what he had earned from others … or we can glow within like the humble widow who gave extravagantly from her first fruits.

That’s Enough

2009-11-10T22:00:00.000-08:00

Sunday November 8, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

“I’d rather poke a hot stick in my eye!” Gary Johnson
“Grace, gratitude, and generosity” Mick Roschke
“That’s Enough!” Kendra Mohn

A place is consumed by the vocabulary and language that comprise it. Mt. Zion is no exception. These are both memorable quotes for their oft-repeatedness and how they help plant and root many a good idea and feeling in our congregation.

Today we focus on the gratitude shown by the widow and the generosity that poured forth from it, all prompted by the grace she admitted was bestowed upon her. Today, Pastor Mohn confessed her compassion for these women who have NEVER known the feeling of having enough.

Many of us have never known or really tasted the insecure feeling that comes from feeling there is truly nothing between us and the end.

Our lives are more fragile than we like to admit.

It would be all too fine if we could just say, “All will be fine and God will take care fo everything as we would like.” This can be every bit the lie. People really do lose their jobs, lose their homes. It would be, yes, disingenuous to stand in front of these people and say, “all will be fine”.

The truth is “You’re never going to have enough”.

The security you seek is elusive.

We all have “that list of things we’re going to buy when we have enough” … the next replacement appliance around the corner, another “shiny thing” that rears its head. Requests, from Church or therwise, put a knot in our stomachs … what if my family needs it, what if we don’t have enough. Truth is …

You never have enough to stave off death. Never.

Someone may say, “Keep your pennies, dear widow … you’re going to need them” to which the widow replies “Why? So I can die Wednesday instead of Tuesday?”

Why does the widow give?

Because she knows the freedom that comes with having lived so close to death. The rest of us seek the security and happiness that will keep death away. To have enough to do that is our elusive quest. And, the truth is, there is never enough .

If, rather, what you want is to breathe freely, live life to the fullest , live in the sun, live a life for God, you already have more than enough!

That’s enough … I’m ready to retire.
That’s enough … it’s time to make a decision.
That’s enough … it’s time to run the marathon.
That’s enough … I’m leaving
That’s enough … it’s time to eat, dinner’s ready.

God is ALWAYS present in that precious moment of recognition when “that’s enough”. And that moment is now.

Now is the moment to say that’s enough. I have identified my calling as a child of God. I have recognized my part of a living community. I have enough.

The thing about the widow is she’s so fragile. She had nothing left to fear. She had the true freedom to intimately know grace, gratitude and generosity.

When will we have enough? There will NEVER be a better, more perfect moment than now.

The Gift of Truth

2009-11-10T20:20:00.000-08:00

Sunday October 25, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/58C601D0-DCE7-3A92-D3CC-F0C2A1474183.mp3

Pastor Mohn started off today by remembering somewhat vividly the actual day she was confirmed by saying …

“We’re not supposed to be old enough to remember anything that happened 18 years ago!!”

Welcome to thirty-something!

She remembered there was “no film in the camera” and she has only memories of that day. She remembers the feeling of the Pastor’s hand on her head. It prompted her to add that it’s really a pity we don’t stop to recall this moment or other significant moments in our lives much more often.

In the life of a believer, affirming one’s Baptism is very profound. The Gospel made Pastor Mohn mildly (?) upset as it conjured images of a culture that thrives on competition and designating fault. We like to think we have some handle on “THE Truth”, some license on it, so to speak.

But the REAL truth is not a dogma or ideology. We spend a ton of capital trying to convince others that we have some ownership of the one truth, that we have the best, most compelling argument. As a culture, we stress competition over cooperation, education and tolerance.

Luther was tormented by the notion that he could not be righteous enough … because, as h realized, righteousness is a gift.

TRUTH is a lot like righteousness. Truth is also a gift … given freely. It comes in the name and form of aJesus, bestowed in the waters of Baptism, a promise that frees us to live better … no matter what the truth us.

We should ask God more often to guide us through unchartered territory rather than seeking the truth we can not find. Like some of the qualities like humility and character and goodness of heart spoken of in this blog back in September, these gifts come from what C.S. Lewis calls the great principle of inattention – they come when, rather than seeking them in futile vain, we focus on something more eternal. God will then provide the gift.

Maurice Boyd described a friend who said “I wonder if I’m licking the right boots?” He thought, “How terrible to be licking anybody’s boots!!” He then said something I’ll never forget …

The greatest quality of friendship is its disinterestedness!

It, like the truth, comes not when you’re willing to over reach to find it or attain it (when that will never work). It comes when you’re just being yourself. THAT unlocks the door behind which you eventually taste true friendship.

And truth, humility, righteousness, character, all live on the other side of that door .

I Fought The Law and … the Law Won

2009-11-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

Sunday October 4, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Genesis 2:18-24
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/3A4B34FD-DC40-3F81-58B9-C324151FAF33.mp3

Divorce is very often very emotional, fraught with despair, pain, but sometimes also relief. When the Pharisees question Jesus about divorce, though, it is ALL about testing Him.

They’re not thinking about people in pain when they pose the question. They are not saying, “ How can we honor unity in the midst of a broken relationship?” They’re not saying, “How can we minister to the broken-hearted?”

What they are asking is “What does the letter of the law say?” This is actually an insult to Jesus who, in fact, created the law.

Today’s text is not so much about divorce as it is about “loopholes around the law”. The Pharisees are acting more like bookish lawyers paid high retainers to “find an out” than to serve some higher good or honor the intent of the law rather than exploit “the letter“of it.

We’ve heard the speak before:

“How little can I give to the Church and still be faithful?”
“How many times do I HAVE to forgive someone some offense?”

If you question the law, one thing you can certain of is the conversation will be a short one.

You want the law?
YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE LAW!!!

We often think the law (if we can find the loophole, will be on our side. Good luck with that one. It reminded Pastor Mohn of the song ...

“I fought the law … and the law won!”

But … if you can talk your way out of the law, you really don’t need Jesus. But understanding the letter of the law will help us. We need Jesus … and the Pharisees don’t get that!

You know who gets it? Children get it. Pastor Mohn told a wonderful story about Annika … that while feedng her goldfish crackers while singing, Annika gave the sign language for “more”. Upon giving her “more” crackers, she continued to sign. What she wanted was more singing!!

What we need is not more crackers, but more of Mom’s lovely voice caressing our eardrums and our hearts, more of Mom’s love for us. We need more of God’s love for us. You want the law? OK, but it won’t help you.

LOVE … is why we come together every Sunday … for “more”.

It’s ALL Happenin’ Here!!

2009-09-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday September 27, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Mick Roschke

Readings:
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/F79E6EA8-8543-AAA2-DCBA-FE4FEAB44CFA.mp3

Are we open-minded enough to those of different gender, sexual preference, age, color, race? Do we ever proclaim that “others are not following US”? … and thus try to fashion God in OUR image?

Pastor Mick shared a very interesting notion today – that maybe we want to be open, but we’re still too insecure in ourselves …

“If you knew me, would you (still) like me?”

Maybe it’s the old Woody Allen delivery of the old Groucho Marx line:

“I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have someone like me for a member.”

Our insecurities can lead us to get defensive about not being gifted as others are – “they’re not following US”. Pastor Mick shared a great story about someone at a Church once handing out brochures exclaiming:

“It’s ALL Happenin’ Here!!”

His response was “Don’t Believe It!”

Sometimes, “it’s happening somewhere else”

... and we must be big enough and inclusive enough to recognize that and accept it and even proclaim it. Women, children, the deprived, the lonely, the poor are in our midst and it’s no good hiding from that fact. We have to dive in and get used to it.

We are often judgmental, in viewing the world Top down. In the Delcaration of Independence, women were seen as 75% human, African Americans a scant 60%! In Mark, today, we are reminded that God does not play favorites.

There are no insiders!

The outcast, the marginalized are held up by Jesus through US, through true fellowship.

And here’s the Good News. THEY, those very outcast and marginalized, those held at bay by US, have something gifted by The Spirit to GIVE US. It is reciprocity at work. Not only are these 100% human beings to whom we give time, money, treasure, food, clothing, BUT there is something to receive FROM them, something of The Spirit.

Today, EVERYONE has something to bring AND something to receive.

People are waiting, in Pastor Mick’s words, for the Church to not just be a sleeping giant! God is ready to “get prayed up” and get excited again. We want to be a church where everybody’s revved up to learn from everyone else, EVERYONE …

… because The Spirit is present in some form in each and every person – for the goodness of all!

The Cost of Ambition

2009-09-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

Sunday September 20, 2009
Lay Preacher: Vince Prantil

Readings:
Jeremiah 11:18-20
James 3:13-4:3(a), 7-8(a)
Mark 9:30-37

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/786C9C59-967D-0367-BC70-1B6CCF7383CF.mp3

I read the New Testament texts for today … laced with stories of ambition … and I heard a voice. It was a voice of Maurice Boyd, Senior Minister of 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church in NYC ….

And he said if you’re going to talk about ambition, you need to recognize its ambiguity. It can be a very healthy and pretty destructive. We need to say Yes to it and No. We blame people for having it and not having it:

We say of her “Oh, she’s sooooo ambitious!”

And we say “The problem with him, ya see, is he has no ambition.”

No matter what you think about it, ambition has an energy about it … it makes our wheels go ‘round. It can bring out the best in us: ingenuity, discipline, determination. But, in excess, it can become immoral and demonic.
In James, we are asked what pursuits are worthy of children of God.

“If there were dreams for sale, what would you buy?”

We all have dreams, don’t we? We’re all striving for something … buying something? What is it we’re striving for? What are you buying?
… ‘cause everything you’re after’s got a cost. Every day they cost us 24 hours and, in the end, they cost us our life.

The Masoud, the Israeli Secret Service, says it can get anything from anybody with one or a combination of three things: sex, power & money. What does this say about what we really want??

What really drives us?

Is it the promotion? the new car? the new boat? the title of “greatest”? And are we willing to kill for it? To covet out of bitter envy and selfish ambition?
God knows that if we ask for these things, we ask with wrong motives”… God’s not in the wish-granting business … and God knows that these greedy motivations deceive us.
If you want something so bad we’ll do anything to get it, they’ve really got you and we will find our ambition becoming demonic. What drives us is our basic principle and we can’t expect more from our basic principle than it can deliver …

Is that really so difficult? Well, Boyd says, then let’s make it very simple …

If you put self at the center, you’d better prepared to be find your outer limits … and that can be very lonely.

If what you’re after is power … then you’d better forget about affection. It’s difficult to be after both.

If you’re interested in justice and not in mercy … you’d better not make any mistakes

If what you’re after is security … forget about ecstasy

If you seek comfort, you might have to relinquish meaning

If you’re consumed by your work … you’d better keep one eye on your relationships

If you’re ruthless on the way up … don’t root for kindness on the way down

It’s hard to be after the things we think will satisfy our earthly desires and the ones God created us for …. What dreams are we buying? … and if we manage to succeed, will what we get be worth what’s it’s costing us?

There’s a great little picture book – Hope for the Flowers … self-described as ‘a tale – partly about life and lots about hope – for adults and others’ … in which two caterpillars, Sprite and Yellow come upon a pile of caterpillars rising into the sky as far as the eye can see. “Do you know what’s happening?” one says to another. “I just arrived myself. No one has time to explain. They’re so busy trying to get where they’re going – up there,” came the reply. “But what’s at the top?” Stripe asked. Again, the reply:”No one knows that either, but it must be awfully good because everyone’s rushing there.” There’s only one thing to do reasons Stripe and he jumps right in. Caterpillars climb atop one another, pushing, shoving, and knocking each other indiscriminately off the pile in an all-out effort to “get to the top”. Eventually Stripe pushes through the clouds only to find there’s nothing “up there”. “High up there”, he concludes, “only looked good from the bottom”. And he climbs back down.Pastor Mohn said it very similarly back in March:“If that’s all there is, we wind up right where we started.”It’s a zero-sum game, you only climb the pile if you’re willing to knock your neighbor off. Our neighbor becomes our obstacle, our enemy rather than our brother, only someone in the way of our ambition for “what’s up there”.So Stripe heads down the pile telling everyone he sees that “there is nothing up there” and that they would be so much the better for building cocoons; that they could fly if only they become butterflies. “I saw a butterfly – there CAN be more to life,” Stripe realizes.The pile of caterpillars climbs on, ignorant of the beauty contained within each of them. There is in each of us a butterfly … and Pastor Mick said it best when he said “You need not be perfect, you need only to be the ‘perfect you’. God has had a plan for you since you were in the womb. You just have to find out ‘what that is’ because it doesn’t come with blueprints”. And we won’t find it by knocking our neighbors “off the pile” only “to wind up where we started”.

What does it take to satisfy us? Often when we reach the end of the rainbow, the top of the pile, the pot of gold doesn’t quite have the luster we had imagined. And if what dreams you’ve bought don’t satisfy, more of the same won’t either.

“I learned this from my friends who have sailboats,” Boyd whispers, “No matter how big your sailboat is, somebody’s always got a bigger one!” If I only had a bigger house, a wealthier husband, the boss’ office … and it doesn’t work. Arguing “which among you is greatest” is moot.

Sometimes we know how to spend, but not how to buy. … we tend to spend on the trivial and we’re often willing to pay a lot for it. If we equate “the pursuit of happiness” with sex, power & money, we grant ourselves the God-given right to exploit our neighbor or “do whatever we have to” to get what we want.

There's two morals to the story and they're what Maurice Boyd calls God’s Great Joke. I think it's a two-parter ...

Part I is that, in the end, these things don’t satisfy. There’s less on top of the pile than we imagine. Material rewards won’t satisfy immortal longings. Worldly possessions are not enough for other-worldly creatures.

So then there’s things James says are worth our going after them … character, humility, good-heartedness, sincerity. Pursuits worthy of children of God. How do you attain these things?

God’s Great Joke Part II: … is that …

These things you can’t get by going after them! … and the harder you try, the farther you are from getting them … Imagine trying to be humble and finally saying “Wow, I’m the greatest at humility!” It doesn’t ring true.

There are some people that are desperately trying to be happy and they’re some of the most miserable people on Earth. Out there, there are some people desperately trying to be original and they’re not even interesting. Because they’re after something you can’t get for the reaching.

These things come only by what C. S. Lewis calls “the principle of inattention” – they can be yours ONLY when you’re not looking for them.

… you only get these heavenly things, when you’re after something else, something ULTIMATE and ETERNAL.

Well … that doesn’t sound very concrete, does it?

Perhaps, the good news is that God has endowed all of us … you and I with what Boyd called A Lovely Ambition?

… something you don’t have to try hard at all to do or to be or to chase
… something you are so gifted at that when you find it, it’s as if you’re remembering it more than ever having learned it

… and when you’re “doing this thing” … telling a story, singing in the choir, playing in the band, helping others find their calling, dancing, nurturing K5er’s, loving your children, … well that produces a certain kind of person, the kind that says, well …

… it doesn’t matter if I ever sing at the Met as long as I sing with dignity and purpose
… it doesn’t matter if I paint a masterpiece so long as I paint with creativity, the best way I know how

… because when you’re doing these ULTIMATE and ETERNAL things, those other things … humility, sincerity, the good heart … fly up and land on your shoulder …you get all that thrown in!!

Unsought … it’s God’s good gift … given when least expected.

What do we really value? True worship someone once said is to put the right value on the right thing … rather than chasing after trivial things God did not create us for …

… if you do what you’re gifted to do, if you’re after ‘the perfect YOU’ and you do it with discipline and integrity, God says… THAT is ambition enough

Amen

There’s a Crack in Everything

2009-05-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

6th Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Acts 10: 44-48
1 John 5: 1-6
John 15: 9-17

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/B360F0E2-1D02-B2DA-323C-441252BCF9A8.mp3

There was a WAY COOL moment that came at the start of today’s service, when the Sunday school kids came out and sang:

David Brooks in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times described the Grant Study http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12brooks.html) in which a cadre of young men from Harvard are followed and studied for the better part of their adult lives. The researchers were looking for, in part, indicators of happiness in the subjects’ lives. When did they attain it? Why and under what circumstances. What were the major factors that played into obtaining it and maintaining it. And these clues to what proffers happiness?

There was barely a correlation with any of the indicators we have most bought into believing are the main determinants. These were people who were given nearly every opportunity, had doors opened for them and full access to factors deemed necessary for success in life. And the most interesting conclusion was that there seems no way to indicate what will make one person happy and another falter at the brink: not your emotional state in your thirties, not money, not good relationships, not plenty of supportive family and friends, not a faith community.

People who have every reason to be happy are not.
People who have no reason to be … are content.

Interestingly, in the Bible, Jesus NEVER talks about being happy!!!!!

If we lead a Jesus-life, we lead a life abiding in God and God’s love, serving one’s neighbor. In love and service, there is joy. If, in the end, you end up happy about it, well that’s a by-product of a well-lived life, not an end to seek in itself.

The advice Jesus gives is to love. Even in the Grant Study as described by David Brooks, one subject finally says …

“Happiness is love. Full Stop.”

Jesus invites us to look at life differently … to view it as service to others. A month or so back, I blogged about an interesting half-fact/half-fiction book and movie entitled the Peaceful Warrior. It’s still worth a look-see if for no other reason than one interplay of dialogue between a young athlete and his mindful mentor:

“Hey, Socrates, if you know so much, why are you working at a gas station?”
“It’s a service station. We offer service. There is no higher purpose.”
“ …Than pumping gas?”
“Service to others.”

There's even a poignant scene at the very end of the movie about what it is we think will "make us happy", but never will. And, if you want a harkening back to last week's sermon ... a great scene where Dan tries to visit his mentor one last time .... only to find the gas station "manned" by someone new, Socrates nowhere to be found. Like Philip in today's scripture reading, like Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, now-you-see-Him - now-you-don't .... off with the wind.

In today’s scripture reading is Jesus’ Farewell Discourse … (John 13:31 – 17:26). It says a lot. It’s meat on the bones, but it’s so counter-intuitive. Jesus’ topsy-turvy world. And precisely because it’s so counter-intuitive, it bears a lot of repeating.

Abide in God’s love for you.
Love your neighbor.

It’s a new model, a new system, and we’re not always trusting of it. We like for life to be transactual. We like to know for what goes into the box, what comes out. We like to know the price and value of things in which we invest our money and time and effort. We like to know the rules of engagement up front and we like to understand them. In another NY Times O-Ed piece entitled "What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous" (http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/what-you-dont-know-makes-you-nervous/), Dan Gilbert points out that "money doesn't makes us happy - certainty does". There's beaucoup research to indicate that uncertainty raises hormine levels indicative of stroke and heart attack; rats that were always shocked or never shocked exhibited lower stress levels than rats who "never knew" when they woukd be shocked. Those who were uncertain when they would be shocked sweated more profusely, their heart beat faster.

We are frustrated when we either don’t understand the rules or when we’re not allowed to play into them as we think we should, i.e. when they don’t seem transactual. Point in case, asking to bring something when we’re going to someone’s house for dinner. God and others tell us, no, we can’t. But we buck it. We don’t get not putting in for what we know we’ll get out.

And if the system breaks, we don’t understand. We like a very predictable world where everything makes sense. And the transactual model works well for driving and banking and maybe even dating. But there are at least two entities where it breaks down miserably: evil and God.

If you’ve ever lost your job, suffered a loss of a loved one, been hurt terribly by someone, had your trust betrayed, then you know the rules don’t apply. The good news is it’s the same way with God. You can’t earn your way into dinner or offer anything He can’t already, hasn’t already provided.

You can not pay God back. He asks you to Pay it Forward (another good movie, by the way …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_It_Forward_(film) ). It’s not transactual and it’s not fair by our normal definition(s). If we pay out and don’t receive in return, we feel cheated. The fault in our reasoning is that we forget we were blessed with something to pay with in the first place. We suffer from a lack of understanding of our own initial conditions in the game.

Pastor Mohn shared a great story that Dan Magnuson shared with her. In Leonard Cohen’s poem The Anthem (http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Leonard_Cohen/215 ):

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

There is the notion that it is in life’s imperfections that God shines through. In the cracks, in the places we lose, where we struggle, that where God shines through. That’s where flowers grow in the sidewalk … in the cracks. In the cracks God sees opportunities to shine His grace through for those open enough to look for it.

The world sees unrequited love as foolish. Jesus sees it as a calling. Jesus takes the crack called servanthood and sees it as a privilege, much like Socrates, the service station attendant in A Peaceful Warrior. Jesus sees death as a means to salvation.

The command today to love one another affords us the opportunity to get close enough to things the world calls folly. And if we get close enough, we will see the light of God’s grace shining through.

As the fledgling professor in Good Will Hunting, the one deemed less successful for his having loved his wife through years of cancer instead of seeking out the awards of academia, tells his lost patient …

Oh, Will, those little things they call the imperfections. They’re the best part. They’re the part you’ll laugh about. They’re the part you most love about one another.

And, as The Anthem says, … forget your PERFECT offering …

You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march, there is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

I Don’t Know Why I’m Doing This …

2009-05-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

5th Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/0E84B48B-6191-A778-54B1-BFC8FDD1DACC.mp3

There was a WAY COOL moment that came at the start of today’s service, when the Sunday school kids came out and sang:

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
Where?
Down in my heart!
Where?
Down in my heart!
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart,
down in my heart
down in my heart to stay

.… and for a few magical, marvelous moments, it lifted and charged the room. For those wonderful couple of moments, everyone had a smile on their face and we were filled with … joy.

How does this happen?

Sometimes it takes The Spirit … riding on the wind; a voice, a suggestion, an inkling that you’re supposed to do something, go somewhere, say something. On the winds of the Holy Spirit, we are often nudged to be a part of something that, at the time, we seem not to understand.

“I don’t know what made me go there. Something in me called me, made me stop by,” we say. And, invariably, there’s the feeling of “I’m so glad I did!”

And that something would not have occurred to you had you not allowed that something to “blow you into the life of another”. On some level, it’s a conscious decision. Philip is called by the Spirit and nudged to “go … to a dangerous road”. And the wonder of it all is “He got up and went”. He probably doesn’t understand why as reason would have it that he shouldn’t want to go, it was not prudent to go, it was a swarthy stretch of road. Philip probably had a day planner and a to-do list, a day full of appointments. But he forewent that.

He is “called” to approach the Queen’s “right hand man” – the guy who guards the money, has the power, influences authority, has the Queen’s implicit trust. He’s dark-skinned, obviously a foreigner, not from Israel. He has personal drivers, a limo … he’s obviously “got it goin’ on”. And, for all that, he’s got “something missing in his life”. He has the great job, the cool robes and it’s still “not enough”. He’s struggling with a passage in Isaiah and …

And something tells Philip … “Hey, go talk to that guy …”

That something is the gift of the Spirit through Baptism … to serve.

Philip “knows this guy”. Philip knows this guy is rich and he knows he’s NOT in this guy’s class. And this Ethiopian eunuch asks what the meaning of the scripture is and Philip fills him in … he tells the story of how Jesus conquered death and sin NOT by way of money or power or leverage, NOT with generals and an army, but by humility.

The eunuch’s response: when he next sees water, he says “What’s t stop me from being baptized, right here, right now?” What a great response!!

So what’s with Philip and the Spirit? Tell your story, write your song, say your piece when you hear a calling. Your witness is all God asks. God’ll take care of the rest. Lead the horse to water. God’ll take over from there.

The cool part? The eunuch goes dancing away after dipping himself in the waters of baptism. He was singing like the little kids this morning:

I’ve got the peace that passes understanding,
Down in my heart,
Where?
Down in my heart!
Where?
Down in my heart!
I’ve got the peace that passes understanding,down in my heart
down in my heart to stay.

I’ve the got love of Jesus, love of Jesus
Down in my heart,
Where?
Down in my heart!
Where?
Down in my heart!
I’ve the got love of Jesus, love of Jesus
down in my heart,
down in my heart to stay.

As the Voices of Zion also sang today … “Now all the vault of heaven resounds …”
The vault of heaven opens when we walk away from our own lives into the life of another.

Through your witness, God can lead them to a place where they will realize that it wasn’t ever the money or the Queen’s trust that matters. It’s in the waters of baptism that the light’s turned on. The eunuch in all of us is going to have to keep reading (and wrestling) with scripture, keep working on his baptism, but, and here’s the onderful thing, he’s going to “pass it on”, “pay it forward”.

Soon, on some given day, he’s going to say “I don’t know why I’m doing this, but …”

Someone out there, maybe today, maybe tomorrow is longing. They’ll cross your path. And, if you heed the call and brave the dangerous road, something glorious will happen. And in that moment, like Philip, you will be swept away, like Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, you’ll “be gone in an instant” to leave that someone pondering what just happened. And their eyes will be opened to a new light. They will go on joyfully singing, a changed person, with a new smile and a new outlook on life, riding on that wind that brought you to them, spreading that joy that’s filling their heart.

WebKinz Jesus??

2009-05-18T18:14:00.000-07:00

4th Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24
Psalm 23
John 10:11-18

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/28F5BE7B-F100-1240-2A9F-99895836F6A0.mp3

Perhaps too often, Pastor Mohn offers, we tend to picture Jesus (or see artistic renditions of Him) as blonde with flowing hair, like the cute, stuffed animal sheep we buy our kids in the store, aka WebKinz (www.webkinz.com). They’re soft, cuddly, romantic and, in the end, unlike “the real thing”. As in the Psalm today, the green pastures Jesus will lie beside us in goes hand-in-hand with the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Along with Blonde Barbie Jesus is another Jesus we meet in today’s scripture texts. And, yes, there’s a dirty (and real) side of what goes along with “I am the Good Shepherd”. The reality is Jesus is moving around the world saving His sheep from the wolves, but THAT Jesus doesn’t always look like the one in the frame at the top of the stairs.

The reality is often so very different from “the idea”.

Much like parenting or the proverbial oil change, the job can often be dirty (and painful) in the details.

The Good Shepherd knows His sheep and they know Him. Pastor Mohn shared a story about a “shepherd” in Minnesota who’d had his sheep stolen while at the County Fair. While visiting the County Fair one county over, he found that a farmer there had stolen them. When he approached them, the sheep received him and they KNEW HIM. But Pastor Mohn cautioned us to “wait a minute”. Here’s the Hollywood, Hallmark moment when we tend to romanticize, when the music changes to a “happy ending crescendo” and the Webkinz sheep “comes to be”. But that’s “the idea” that we tend to romanticize. The reality is often different, if we can be truthful with ourselves long enough to resist Hollywood, Hallmark and Webkinz.

It’s not altogether only a sweet story.

WHY do the sheep know their shepherd? When it’s snowy, rainy, storming, he opens the barn door to let them seek warmth; when they’re hungry, he fills the troughs and feeds them; when they’re scared, he’s there to calm them and comfort them. They know the source of their life. When Jesus says He knows his sheep and they know Him, this is NOT a warm and fuzzy story. This is a stark reality.

Pastor Mohn remembers a dirty story of a calf birthed by her father in the mud room of their home. It was a difficult, dirty, messy birth IN THEIR HOME! The calf came too early, too cold, too afraid, but their shepherd, her father, was there to “make it OK”. He would bring the mud and gunk and filth into his own home to save that calf. The mud and blood and dirt and afterbirth, the fear, the mess, the disgusting mess – this is not the stuff of Webkinz.

It is the stuff of Baptism!!

Through all the mess and gunk of your life, God brings you into the warm waters, he gets right in with you and brings you out clean and safe and OK on the other side. There’s no barrier between Jesus and the mess in your life.

When we say that Jesus lies down before us in green pastures, it is because we know He’s there in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When we say He’s the Good Shepherd, it’s because we know there are wolves out there.

What you won’t see in any Hallmark card or Hollywood movie or cute Kinz website, is that, in the Easter season, Jesus is out there between us and the wolves, to bring us through the mud and the gunk and out the other side.

We’re Never Ready

2009-05-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

3rd Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Acts 3:12-19
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24: 36b-48

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/98E11702-3847-ED9E-C464-E6BC7F531D74.mp3

Just previous to today’s text, Pastor Johnson points out, Paul has just cured a crippled man. The crippled man starts jumping and hopping around, singing. You know this guy. He walks funny. He stands out. He has two heads, he’s different …

But this ends up one happy guy. He knows his cure is a blessing.

Often we either don’t know or have forgotten what our true blessings are. We think we know what we need. And Paul gets this. He says “I know what you ‘think you need’, but you are children of God and here … THIS is enough”. He asks “Why do you wonder at this?” and then proceeds to remind them they “killed the Author of Life”. We think we know, but we have to constantly be reminded that we really don’t.

In Luke, today, it’s as if the apostles have all seen a ghost. Again, the greeting “Why are you frightened?”. While in their joy that Jesus was alive, they were still disbelieving.

We are very much like the Israelites and the apostles. We can wrap our heads around “dead”. We get hopelessness and uncertainty. We know about shaking our heads and giving up. We can sink our teeth into that. But “he’s raised from the dead” or “he’s cured … and he’s singing and dancing”? Much less so ….

Today’s story is NOT about death. It’s about a birth.

Much as in Luke’s Christmas story … it’s the BEST … full of the mysterious, the weird, other-worldly, the aura of disbelief … as there, here we are reminded that no matter how ready you are “to have a baby”, you’re NEVER ready!!

You know what’s coming – BUT when it’s upon you, as ready as you thought you were, you’re not ready. Your reaction is to count fingers and toes, to stare almost dumb-faced.

Yoday we witness a grown-up version of “fondling the new birth”. Resurrection? No matter how often it was prophesied, we seek the wound in which to place our unbelieving hands.

And Jesus says “Touch me”

The irony is … we’re more ready for death than birth. We are given 6 weeks in Lent, like 9 months of pregnancy … to wrap ourselves around what we’re not ready for. So what? So here’s the “so what” …

God will get us out of our tight places, believe it.

And where’s the tightest place you’ll ever get?

It’s shoulder-wide and 6 feet deep.

Whatever tight spot you’re in right now, today, God has already made the sacrifice to get you out of it … while it’s easier to say “so what?”, don’t let anybody else ever tell you otherwise.

You may be tempted to not believe this. You may have trouble wrapping yourself around this. But God has made the sacrifice to “raise you up out of this tight place”.

And He will ……

The Default Scenario

2009-04-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

2nd Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Acts 4:32-35
1 John 1:1-2:2
John 20:19-31

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/2A62828C-3EDB-9FDF-1876-102DE4792F9A.mp3

Pastor Mohn began with the notion that she and Thomas “are good friends”. Often the Sunday after Easter is left to seminarians and associate pastors to preach on Thomas on what’s often a lightly attended 2nd Sunday of Easter service. Pastor Mohn was admitting it was getting tough to come up with new slants on Thomas and she was, ultimately, “saved” by a 47 year old British woman named Susan Boyle.

Susan appeared on the British “American Idol” Britain’s Got Talent. The newest YouTube video to break records was written up in yesterday’s NY Times. Perhaps in response to Susan answering that she wished to be as successful as Elaine Paige, an actress and singer in British musical theater, the audience (and the judges) were somewhat sneering and laughing at her "dream" ... apparently not expecting much from the woman who, until recently, had been taking care of her ill mother. And all this before they heard her even open her mouth to sing. Everyone in the room, in a moment of anticipation of what would follow, bit lips and hid their faces or stared through slits in their upheld hands. And then she sang. Jaws dropped, eyes popped, and the audience was carried away to a standing ovation throughout her rendition of the ballad “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg ).

There’s a deeper connection of faith, Susan Boyle and the doubting Thomas as Pastor Mohn points out. Something connecting the faces that doubted they would hear anything they’d ever care to remember. We all struggle to have faith, to believe. Susan Boyle doesn’t have the outward appearance we are taught from an early age to associate with “stardom”. We accentuate the young and the physical and allow it to take our attention from the substantive. Sometimes we are led to "believe" that dreams are only for the young, only achievable by the svelt even with all the examples around us that speak quite to the contrary. We become so "certain" that you have to look like Elaine Paige to sing like Elaine Paige. We search and yearn for certainty so much that we bottle it with a prescriptive recipe: in the absence of the voice, we judge "what will occur" on false pretenses, on appearance of what it ought to look like. And barring evidence to the contrary, we simply choose to doubt rather than believe.

When we can’t absolutely have certainty, we settle for doubt instead of faith.

Doubt, not faith, is the default scenario.

We want certainty. And if we can’t have it … because we weren’t there when the tomb was opened … or because someone doesn’t “look the part”, we choose NOT to believe.

When we have certainty, there’s no need for faith. The challenge is when there is no proof. Pastor Mohn astutely points out that faith … the choice to believe in the absence of proof is always a progression. It must be actively constructed (through effort). One does not call it out of thin air. It is difficult!

What is also sooo fascinating about Susan Boyle’s singing “I Dreamed a Dream” is that the song is about a woman dying, a woman convinced that the end is, for her, imminent. The lyrics, almost ironically, point to the young as being those who fall prey to the tigers that come out in the night. Hear the words she sings:

There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting

There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living

I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

And Susan Boyle turns this ballad of lost and broken dreams torn asunder by soft thunder into “a bright beginning”. She imbibes the lyrics with a breath of hope as if to announce that …

…between certainty and doubt … THERE … lies a thing called faith

Faith in things unseen, faith that an unemployed woman of 47 can call from within herself the voice that would stir countless to rise from their seats. In his all-too-human stance, Thomas, like all the Britain's Got Talent judges, has made up his mind, to forgo faith for doubt. From where, then, comes faith in the unsung hero, the unemployed older woman with The Voice, faith in The One who came to conquer death for all?

If ever there was a metaphor for the Resurrection in full view, here it is … what our humanity sees so much as an ending was the most glorious of beginnings. Susan Boyle helped show us all again. One chapter's close gives rise to the opening of all that's to come after. "I will make a new thing", Jesus says.

Please forgive one last venture into Britain’s Got Talent. In that same NY Times article was a link to another Britain, a cellphone salesman, Paul Potts, who early on in the history of the show dreamed of singing opera. He chose to sing Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s famous opera, Turandot ... the aria made most famous as the chosen encore for tenor Lucianno Pavarotti. Paul Potts delivers the aria exquisitely
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA), a piece I still associate with Easter and Jesus rising from the dead only because of the building to the crescendo ending of the aria in which the character sings of desperation that he must rise above … he sings “I will conquer, conquer, conquer (Vincero, vincero, vincero)” These words belted out in song for me bring visions of the rising that only comes through real pain and suffering ... and I see Jesus rising and finally conquering death for all.

Paul Potts breaths into Nessun Dorma perhaps in a way different from Susan Boyle, but just as convincing, a reason to believe that, while we tend to doubt that Jesus will arrive in a older, more worn out package shy the perfect body or luxurious teeth, a package dressed up as Susan Boyle or Paul Potts ... although we tend to doubt that good things will come so packaged, Jesus is full of surprises.

Yes ... between certainty and doubt, there IS faith. Just ask Susan Boyle and Paul Potts.

In a moment after Susan Boyle is finished singing the judge Simon Cowell says (jokingly) "he knew all along she was going to do something extraordinary". But the truth is almost no one did. We are, most of us, Thomas-like at least in this regard. We actually choose to doubt. Maybe it's the safe choice. As Jesus says today, though ... blessed are those who risk "safe", who are bold enough to believe EVEN before Susan sings - blessed are those who choose not to give entirely into the stereotypes of glitz and bodily beauty. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed ... in One who rose from the dead to conquer sin and death, once and for all

Vincero!

Vincero!

Vincero!

When You Recognize Him

2009-04-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Acts 10:34-43
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/E81B8D00-6FC5-42AA-5911-D7C3E043033E.mp3

Pastor Johnson started interestingly by pointing out that today is NOT a day to convince you, but rather a day to testify to you: Jesus is raised from the dead. It’s more than a myth, more than a mystery, more than a fable, more than a tale.

God is not in the business of losing.

God is not in the business of coming in second.

Death loses. Death comes in 2nd to life. Oh, death, where is thy sting?

God shows NO partiality in the crucifixion:

ALL are now included.

And we all needed saving. For we all have tombs … places where we crawl, where “nothing will get better”, that cell where all hope goes to die. We roll the stone in front of our dark cells where we continue to live with our grief, our fear, our confusion about whether “it’s going to get any better”.

The Good News today is that if you ask God to push that stone away from your tomb of loneliness, brokenness, anxiety and fearfulness, God can’t wait to roll it away and lead you out into the light and the garden.

The story now ends differently because God’s in charge.

Just as He calls Mary by name at the tomb, He knows your name. He tells Mary “not to hang on to Him”. And He tells us we cannot hang on either. He comes in and out of our lives. And we, just like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, often don’t recognize Him. He could be the gardener, a service station attendant, or a child.

What Pastor Johnson did was then tell a story about when he was involved with Project Head Start helping a young boy, Tyrone, raised by a single mom. I seriously recommend you click on the audio sermon link at the top of this blog post because I cannot recount his story with ample emotion or passion. Each inflection and pause are a part of the experience so please allow yourselves that luxury.

What happens briefly is that Pastor Johnson was with Tyrone when he was called to attend to an old woman far out in the country on a very rainy night. He had Tyrone in the car and muscled his way most of the way until he hit a road not traversable by auto on 4 wheels. He locked Tyrone in the car and carried on by foot. Upon returning, his body froze … through the torrential downpour, in the dim of the remaining light, he saw what looked like someone in the car with Tyrone. Upon rushing the car and opening the door, he found out it was the biggest, muddiest, dirtiest, HAPPIEST dog imaginable. Tyrone looked Pastor Johnson in the eye and, figuring he was expected to give some explanation, simply said, “I couldn’t just leave him outside.” Upon returning home with Tyrone, what Pastor Johnson remembers resolutely was the look on Tyrone’s mom’s face. He said:

“It must have been what Mary’s face looked like when she realized Jesus wasn’t dead."

Jesus slips into and out of our lives. He’s where he’s least expected and at the least expected times. And when you recognize Him, you’ll see life, not death; hope, not despair.

I Smell What You’re Steppin’ In

2009-04-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 29, 2009
5th Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/87919B9F-7560-28C7-4A7D-431C8E878FE5.mp3

Pastor Johnson focused on the New Testament text from Hebrews today, particularly two key verses:

Verse 7: In the days of his flesh ….
Verse 9: … and having been made perfect

Verse 7 refers specifically to Jesus having become human while divine. In coming into this world, He experiences humanity as we know it. He gets hungry, he feels pain, he gets tired and short-tempered. He has cried loudly and shed tears … much like us in our moments of despair. He gets brokenness, temptation; he knows what it’s like to “not fit in”, to be betrayed, to feel abandoned by his closest friends, to be tortured and crucified. It’s hard to believe there’s anything we’ve fretted over that he did not experience or could not understand.

Pastor Johnson shared that in our congregation just this week … collectively experienced death, grieving, unemployment, surgery, incarceration, homelessness. It’s easy to believe our collective hurt is not felt, that our prayers are to no avail. “Have you ever been in that place where you wondered if God heard your prayers?” Pastor Johnson asked.

But Jesus today tells us this is not the case. He asked that the cup of his crucifixion pass by him, but it was not in the plan. Sometimes Jesus does not intervene to make the sorrow go away, but he is there to go through it with us. Just this past week, Pastor Mohn wrote a telling Lenten devotional about wanting to have a friend travel along side us and “Go first …” when there’s something unexpected or a rocky road just ahead. She makes a convincing case that Jesus is that friend when no friend, even our best friends, don’t or can’t tow that line with us. In “the days of His flesh”, Jesus knew what we go through when times are rough and He says he’s right alongside of us and willing to “go first” and then along with us … every step of the way.

I have a former student I consider a very good friend … probably the best student I ever had the privilege to teach – NOT because he’s smart .. he is … ,but because he has a keen sense of what matters in this world and is mature beyond his years. I dearly love a favorite expression of his. He is apt to use it when you share a bad experience with him. There comes the moment you need a pat on the back and he says

“I smell what you’re steppin’ in …”

Translation: he’s been there and he knows it’s no fun. Sometimes you just want to know you’re not all alone. And Jesus knows this too. He “smells what we’re stepping in every day”. He smells what the culture of his time made the children “step in”. He knew they were the misbegotten and they were not valued. And he told those who would “keep them away” to allow the children to approach him.

The moral of the story is … there’s nothing you’ve felt that He doesn’t know.

And verse 9 tells of his “having been made perfect”. Pastor Johnson shared that the translation does not mean he’s “got 100 on the test”, he’s error-free. The translation more accurately means “he’s come to the fullness of his life” … having come to the point of fulfilling his purpose in a bigger plan.

Along the way to “having been made perfect”, everyone of us will move toward fulfilling our purpose in God’s plan … but that road will be strewn with “stuff we’ll step in” and, boy, some days it will surely smell. In the grit and grime of your life, Jesus smells what you’re steppin’ in. In the old Gospel song “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” , the lyrics go:

Have we trials and temptations
Is there trouble anywhere
We should never be discouraged
Take it to the Lord in prayer

Can we find a friend so faithful
Who will all our sorrows share
Jesus knows our every weakness
Take it to the Lord in prayer

Are we weak and heavy laden
Encumbered with a load of care
Precious Savior still our refuge
Take it to the Lord in prayer

Do your friends in spite forsake you
Take it to the Lord in prayer
In his arms he’ll take and shield you
And you will find your solace there
And you will find your solace there

Jesus says “You’re not alone. Keep on trucking. I’ll ‘go first’ and ‘step in it’ with you” … because The Plan needs all its participants, the tapestry needs every thread; there’s true meaning in your journey …

He knows exactly how you feel.

He “smells what you’re stepping in”.

The Meaning of Life

2009-03-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 22, 2009
4th Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/A4C2B7BE-EF9F-9AAD-3179-51A15EC99BC3.mp3

Pastor Mohn confessed another of her moments when Erik asked “What are you preaching this week?” to which she replied “The meaning of life”. In what she called a weekly soup of personal conversations, on-line blogging and sermon preparation surrounding the weekly scripture readings, she found a voice of people hungering for an answer to “Why we’re here?” Is it for a comfortable retirement, a sense of self defined by our roles at work or in our family relationships …

Having been intrigued by the new Target ad campaign of redefining people’s sense of a vacation (spray-on sun tan skin colorant), Pastor Mohn elaborated on the sense of redefining ourselves. In the Old Testament and throughout today’s scripture readings there is the overriding specter that “things are not OK”. As we hear in Ephesians, we’re not OK., we’re dead through our trespasses, mired in sin, disobedient, living in the passions of our flesh, children of wrath.

People end up asking “How did we get this far away? How did we get this lost? It’s a huge question. And maybe part of the answer lies in having confused the meaning of life with the American dream. Pastor Mohn muses that she’s not against having dreams, but offer s this querie: As we chase ‘the proverbial American dream’, what answer do we find as we look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “If that’s all there is, where is the meaning in life?”

The dream that arguably posts the desirables as a two-person heterosexual relationship, a big house, 2 cars, a boat, the lake house, 2.3 healthy children who go to good colleges on full scholarship. When we’re honest with ourselves, we can hear echoes of it, desires for it in our own hearts and in our own actions.

The truth is not everyone has or even wants this dream. There are as many ways of living life as there are people living it. Truth is … if that’s all there is, we wind up right where we started.

There’s a great little picture book – Hope for the Flowers … self-described as ‘a tale – partly about life and lots about hope – for adults and others’ … in which two caterpillars, Sprite and Yellow come upon a pile of caterpillars rising into the sky as far as the eye can see. “Do you know what’s happening?” one says to another. “I just arrived myself. No one has time to explain. They’re so busy trying to get where they’re going – up there,” came the reply. “But what’s at the top?” Stripe asked. Again, the reply:”No one knows that either, but it must be awfully good because everyone’s rushing there.” There’s only one thing to do reasons Stripe and he jumps right in. Caterpillars climb atop one another, pushing, shoving, and knocking each other indiscriminately off the pile in an all-out effort to “get to the top”. Eventually Stripe pushes through the clouds only to find there’s nothing “up there”. “High up there”, he concludes, “only looked good from the bottom”. And he climbs back down.

Pastor Mohn said it very similarly:

“If that’s all there is, we wind up right where we started.”

It’s a zero-sum game, you only climb the pile if you’re willing to knock your neighbor off. Our neighbor becomes our obstacle, our enemy rather than our brother, only someone in the way of our realization of “what’s up there”.

So Stripe heads down the pile telling everyone he sees that “there is nothing up there” and that they would be so much the better for building cocoons; that they could fly if only they become butterflies. “I saw a butterfly – there CAN be more to life,” Stripe realizes.

The pile of caterpillars climbs on, ignorant of the beauty contained within each of them. The Israelites carried to freedom by God, find themselves complaining about the food on the road. Invariably, when we are distracted from what God says is the true meaning of life by the little things along the way – that is when the snakes come.

But we have a collection of at least a pair of the Bible’s most powerful and most quoted verses that say we are saved nonetheless.

Ephesians 2:8 … What God has already done … “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your doing; it is a gift of God – not the results of works, so that no one may boast.”

Ephesians 2:10 … Who we are and what our purpose is … “For we are what He has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God created beforehand to be our way of life.”

Caterpillars were born to be butterflies – not climb piles of pillars.

There’s no mention in Ephesians about the boat, the college scholarships, our partner, our security, vacation or what’s presumably “up there”. Our cocoon, the beauty of the butterfly within lies in God’s purpose for us all – to serve our neighbor.

There is a wonderful movie called The Peaceful Warrior (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OchAhzYrQNw&feature=related )in which a young, talented college athlete seeking a spot on the coveted Olympic team can “only see gold”. He is befriended by an older and wiser man named Socrates running “a gas station”. Frustrated that the man does not ascribe to his passion for “possessions and material things”, the student spouts off:

“If you’re so smart, why are you working in a gas station?” to which Socrates replies:

“It’s a service station. We provide service. There is no higher purpose”

“Than pumping gas?”

“Than service to others”

In a story that so reminded me of that exchange, Pastor Mohn recalled a vivid memory of raking leaves with her Dad when she asked him “What’s the meaning of life?” to which he replied, “Well, you’re not going to find it standing around thinking about it. You’re not going to figure it out worrying about it or wondering about it.”

We find it only when we are Christ present in our neighbors’ lives, when we give so someone else can live, when we stop striving for “the gold” long enough to slow down and find out what’s going on all around us, when we live our lives for the sake of our neighbors, our siblings, our family.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.”

Just as God did not take the snakes away from the Israelites, but rather offered another route around the obstacle, God did not take away sin from the world, but offered His only Son to give us “a go around”. He offered this supreme example of how to live in service to one another.

THIS is the gift from God – the meaning of life – to give freely and fully, to become the butterflies he intended us to be, not caterpillars in search of “something up there” worth climbing over our brothers to attain … to become the peaceful warriors we were ordained to be, those who see the beauty of a body in flight on the gymnastic rings, a human butterfly, not a competitor to vanquish and conquer, to take from.

This is the meaning of life – but you have to “exit the pile”, and “leave the gym” to travel to the service station or the tree where lies the open cocoons … where, like a small caterpillar named Stripe or a young man named Dan, with counsel from a companion named Yellow or Socrates … we finally ... “slowly seemed to understand and somehow knew what to do”.

The Big Kahuna

2009-03-15T23:15:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 15, 2009
3rd Sunday in Lent
Lay Preacher: Vince Prantil

Readings:
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/90FE6A86-39A3-757E-826E-583E191C282A.mp3

There’s an old Peanuts comic strip where
Lucy, Linus and Charlie Brown are lying on a hilltop looking at the sky on a summer afternoon.

Lucy: If you use your imagination you can see lots of things in the cloud formations. . . What do you think you see, Linus?"
Linus: "Well, those cloud up there look to me like the map of British Honduras on the Caribbean. . . that cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. . . and that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen. . . I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side. . . .
Lucy: Uh huh . . . . that's very good. . . . What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?"
Charlie Brown: "Well. I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind."

You can muck around in Paul’s letter and you can see the struggle. The Jews demand miracles, the Greeks look for wisdom. Some of them are Linus, some of them Lucy. Then along comes Charlie Brown. Who’s smart and who’s stupid here? The Jews, the Greeks … they’re not stupid. They know a lot. But they’re not God!!

Larry Ellison is the CEO of the software giant, Oracle.There’s an old joke “Do you know the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison.” There’s lots of people who are really smart … but they’re NOT God!

I think we all like to think we’re smart. At MSOE, we polled the students last year and 80% believed they were “above average”. Wow, I thought, I actually teach at Lake Wobegon where “all the children are above average”. We all like to think we’re right about a lot of stuff. What it comes down to is:

We’re uncomfortable being uncertain.

So we demand miracles or wisdom. We carve The Law into stone, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” as the law of economic incentives, Einstein’s speed of light. In economics & science, like religion, we carve out our 10 Commandments, the limits of our uncertainty.

And then … one day … along comes a character … someone who sees something else in the clouds …a different view, someone willing to think outside the box, say “Yeah, but … “ and “What if …”.

John Nash, the mathematician in the movie a Beautiful Mind, said that Adam Smith hadn’t quite gotten it right. And it took a 27 year old Swiss patent clerk named Einstein to turn the world of physics on its head!

And when they do, you can almost always count on one of two things taking place:

(a) Characters are often misunderstood. In the Gospel, Jesus offers an interpretation of the temple so outrageous and so incomprehensible that it’s not until after His resurrection that his disciples finally get it. They’re not able to grasp what Jesus is saying & Jesus is not understood by his audience. Einstein said “Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.” Now I don’t think we’re the mediocre minds. Mediocre minds are the ones who poke fun at you for seeing a duck or a horse in the clouds. There's an old Korean proverb:

He that knows he does not know is wise; He that does not know that he does not know is foolish.

I think Einstein meant that "mediocre minds" were the fools that did not realize they "did not know", but might have been apt to let others know they did not know.

Research shows that diverse groups of people outperform smarter groups of people, diverse cities are more productive, diverse governments make better decisions … not where everyone sees great things in the clouds, but a greater variety of things in the clouds. No matter who you are or how smart you are, like Garrison Keillor said

“High IQ is like 4 wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places”.

We all get stuck. Getting stuck in different places is what makes diverse groups outmaneuver smart groups.

(b) What these characters said was not that we’ve been wrong or ignorant, but only that our knowledge is only ever incomplete. Nash only revised Adam Smith, Einstein only revised Isaac Newton. They all said “This is great! … But it’s not all there is!” I mean isn’t it refreshing to know that there’s something bigger out there? Einstein told us “to just imagine” … “Imagination,” he said, “is more important than knowledge”. Gerald Schroeder, in his book "The Science of God" took to heart what Einstein "revised" and imagined this ...

When you move close to the speed of light, time shrinks. If creation began at The Big Bang at the speed of light, then the 16 billion years “it’s all been here”, all of creation shrinks into 6 – 24 hour days (give or take a few hours) … and on the 7th day, God rested. How’s that for a duck or a horse? I mean, WOW!!! The Genesis story is great, but Schroeder and Einstein "together" saw something different in the clouds.

Human knowledge and wisdom are always “in revision”. In the text immediately following today’s Gospel, Jesus "did not entrust himself to man because he knew how a man thought". He had to get beyond that. He came to round things out. Jesus was the ultimate revisionist.

In the movie Dead Poet’s Society, John Keating tells his students

“Just when you think you ‘know a thing’, you must look at it from a different perspective.”

He has each one of his students climb on top of his desk and look at the room from “up there”.

Today’s Old Testament text reminded me that … I was preparing for my Confirmation youth group. The topic was the 6th commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill. I thought, “Wow, we’re gonna be going home early tonight.” I mean, really, who’s killed anybody. Is this going to be rocket science?

And then Pastor Johnson climbed on a desk.

He asked if any one of us had ever said anything to someone that just crushed their spirit? … made them give up on an otherwise good idea? … ridiculed someone for being optimistic? Had any one of us seen innocence in another human being and quash it? Had we ever “killed” anyone’s spirit? Well, there went ‘going home early’. It was humbling … I’d never climbed around the three-dimensional 6th Commandment that way before.

So what’s the Good News?

Well, maybe it's just when you think you understand the laws of supply and demand, energy and motion, when you think you’ve got “Thou Shalt Not Kill” pegged, that the temple is quite obviously the building and not the body, maybe what we need to know is that God understands that we struggle with our uncertainty.

Maybe what God wants is for us to lay back and look up at the clouds and tell each other what we see … Some of us’ll see ducks, some horses, some (yes) will even see the Honduras …

... maybe the Good News is that God wants more great spirits and fewer mediocre minds, more imagination and less accumulation of knowledge.

... maybe the Good News is it’s OK not to “stress out” trying to see it all or know it all. That together, we’ll see more, go farther than we could ever go alone. That James Taylor was right in what some arguably call his most spiritual song and one I've asked Laurna to make sure they play at my funeral called The Secret of Life when he sings “Einstein said that he could never understand it all ” Maybe it’s OK to admit “I don’t know enough. I don’t know everything”. God’s the Big Kahuna. Let’s let God know everything. That’s God's thing so let's leave knowing it all to God.

Secret of Life mp3 file: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TlAD-b7yew&feature=related

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. And the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

God chose the lowly and foolish to teach the supposedly wise. He chose a lowly Swiss patent clerk to straighten out the professors

… and he’s spoken through many a Charlie Brown …

As Pastor Johnson pointed out after watching the movie capturing the peopel of Mt. Zion ... we are all just little pieces of glass in a stain glass window. All alone, just pieces of glass. But together, when we stand back, together we all compose the bigger picture ... and God's in the middle.

Maybe what God wants us to know is that we're to sit on that hill and share what we see in the clouds ... that we need ALL those little pieces of glass, every one … we need every Linus, every Lucy and all the Charlie Browns we can get.

The Lesson of the Skin Horse

2009-03-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 8, 2009
2nd Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Genesis 17:1-7,15-16
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/D1022BC1-DAEE-5A0F-4D2A-D06A155149DD.mp3

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples how the Son of Man must undergo great suffering. Peter rebukes Jesus who then calls him “the devil”. Ouch! Peter knows Jesus as a mentor and very good friend. He doesn’t want to ehar what Jesus has to say. Die, be buried, raise from the dead. Peter never gets past the “Die” part. And you can’t blame him. Jesus I one of his best friends and Paeter doesn’t want to hear what Jesus is telling him.

This is a text about arguing as friends.

It’s not easy to get in a fight with someone we love. But it’s a sign of real caring. We care enough to disagree. We care enough to rebuke. We care enough to try to work it out.

With family, too, we can disagree, sometimes passionately. We argue, but it doesn’t have to rupture the relationship. Sometimes in martial counseling, Pastor Johnson shared he meets couples who “confess” they never fight. If it’s nottrue, they’re lying. They wouldn’t lie to a pastor, would they? And the lying’s got no place in a healthy relationship. If it’s not true, it’s also not healthy because there’s a problem with “never arguing”.

You have to argue and be willing to disagree. You have to be willing to test a relationship. You have to be able to withstand having different points of view. You have to forge a partnership that can withstand disagreeing. In engineering design, you constantly fortify a design to withstand the expected loads. A component or a system like a bridge that’s never loaded is not deemed a success simply because no car’s ever driven over it.

In the children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit, the Skin Horse says that he has weathered the love that has made his tail thin of hair and his eye rubbed over and over. At the prospect of becomign "real", the Skin Horse shares:

"You become (real). It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

You need to weather the weathering, he claims, to “become real”. And with freinds, you are never ugly. A friend understands. But "it doesn't happen often to those who have to be carefully kept".

You have to find ways to disagree … even passionately.

Pastor Johnson adds here that some folks mention they have friends who are good sounding boards, who listen to their whole story and do not judge them … and he comes to the conclusion …

You can get rid of those friends.

You NEED a friend who’ll tell you sometimes you sin.

You NEED a friend who’ll tell you sometimes you’re wrong.

… and that relationship needs to be able to withstand that.

Lots of times people will say that “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.”

But Pastor Johnson offered the notion that it might be more the case that the opposite is true. One author he read has the theory that our friends are picked for us, ordained gifts from God, lampposts sent our way to guide in some sense. Sometimes they are the unlikeliest od characters, so different from us. It’s odd how they come into our lives at opportune moments, by happenstance, by God’s grace.

We do, however, pick our family. We LOVE Aunt Josie, but Uncle Harry – he’s not getting near that punch bowl. We pick out and shape our family.

Our friends are unlikely, beautiful “grace notes” in our lives. And you can be that only if you’re willing to fight and only if you’re willing to make up.

Gary Johnson admitted he liked this lesson because he thought of it differently now than he did or would have earlier in his life. He knows now that your best friend is someone who can’t bear to see you in pain. Peter can’t watch or hear what Jesus has to say anymore. Then … a few days later, it’s Peter who recognizes Jesus and runs out to embrace him. And Jesus says, “Peter, do you love me? … Peter, do you love me? … I’d like for you to be the one to feed my lambs.” Their friendship survives Peter rebuking Jesus, Jesus calling Peter “the devil”; it survives the name-calling, the arguing, the betrayal … because they always have forgiveness and the deep love from which these arguments were born.

If you find yourself in these disagreements with a best friend, with someone you consider your pal for a long, long time, this is a gift. It’s a gift of your friendship that you can withstand these moments.

By God’s grace, you will mend these relationships because that’s what you wanted to do all along. By God’s grace and with Peter as our example, the mending will take place.

When You Realize ...

2009-03-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 1, 2009
1st Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn
Readings:
Genesis 9:8-17
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/611B843A-9CD9-C29C-FF9E-2840D30477C4.mp3

I heard Pastor Mohn had a really good sermon to preach today. I heard it from Pastor Mohn – right before she said she wasn’t going to preach it!

A long cold took the wind out of the larynx and she pocketed that sermon. I sat disappointed in my pew. She confessed she was disappointed (too) but she figured on a pretty cool substitute. She pointed out tha the Gospel from Mark was not long-winded. The verses today are short, compact, but chock-full – Pure Hemingway.
Mark did not need many words to tell the story he had to tell … and there was a reason.

So Pastor Mohn mused …

Think about when you passed on The Best News You Ever Heard

“I’ve been accepted”
“I’m pregnant!”
“I’m NOT pregnant!!!!”
“We’re staying …”
“We’re going …”
“It’s FINALLY over!”
“It’s only just begun.”
“EUREKA!! I found it!”

These moments of realizing your best news are the in-between places Pastor Johnson referred to just last week. The bookmarks of life.

This news, by the way? How long did it take you to share it? Was it anti-climactic? Did you script it in a long arc? How long did it take to get it out … in words? Was it something you blurted out, not neat and structured, but just couldn’t contain?
Something so good “it fell out of you”? Did you rush to find somebody particular to tell? Or did you just tell a complete stranger?

If you think this last notion is a tad unbelievable, I have to interject with this short, but true tale of the weekend I asked Laurna to marry me. I asked her atop of the Pinnacles National Monument in California. En route back to our bed and breakfast, she was plotting who to tell and in what order and when. She asked me to PLEASE NOT tell anyone before we told our parents. I dutifully agreed. At breakfast the next morning, someone asked if what all we had done the day before. Laurna blurted out “He asked me to marry him!” I choked on my raspberry fru-fru tart and yogurt marmalade. So much for the best laid plans of sharing this news with family first. Not just not family, but complete strangers.

The reality of sharing really good news is it changes what comes next.

In an irrevocable way. The next becomes now – before you know it. What comes after is so interesting it changes everything. In the movie When Harry Met Sally, Harry picks the oddball moment at New Year’s Eve to let Sally know what he finally realizes he’s felt … and it changes EVERYTHING:

Sally: You can’t just walk in here and expect it to change everything. It doesn’t work that way.
Harry: Well, how does it work?
Sally: I don't know, but not this way.
Harry: How about this way? I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
Sally: You see? That is just like you, Harry. You say things like that, and you make it impossible for me to hate you, and I hate you, Harry. I really hate you. I hate you.

But, of course, we all know … she doesn’t. And what we also know is it’s quite the opposite. Sally says he can’t just say something and expect it to change everything. But then he does … and it does. As much as this is not how she dreamed of “getting the news”, she realizes also that it’s really the transformational moment for Harry. It just fell out of him. And what comes after is a beautiful, wonderful thing.

It happens to us every morning. The Good News spills over and the Kingdom of heaven comes to you, an unforgettable moment that changes everything afterward forever … for those who truly hear it. And it makes it impossible to reject it … for personal, petty or selfish reasons. It’s a “Eureka” moment.

And then … a smile … because we know it’s true.

Wow … and that was “the substitute sermon”!?

I hope I get to hear “the really good sermon” someday. I trust it IS really good. For now, I felt privileged to have heard this one ‘cause I LOVE that scene when it just falls out of Harry .. and then, through a tear strewn face, Sally smiles … ear to ear.

That’s Good News worth sharing any day!

The Prophet Hotel

2009-02-24T23:02:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 22, 2009
Transfiguration of Our Lord
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
2 Kings 2:1-12
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/17619852-4B77-5210-E9EB-255332CFA86A.mp3

Today Pastor Johnson shares the story of Elijah The Prophet and mentor and Elisha, the acolyte and protégé. Elisha is scared to death at the prospect of Elijah “movin’ on” and Elisha having to take over the mantle of his mentor.

You’ve been there. After the loss of a job or a mentor, a parent, a loved one. We can’t imagine ourselves without our parents, our jobs. A part of our self-definition is so intimately intertwined with these elements we hold so close to ourselves.

We are tired of dealing with our parents … until the moment their health is threatened or they’re taken from us.

We’ll complain about our jobs … until we think we might not have one.

We’ll make light of our health … until it’s truly threatened.

We’re sick of high school … until “the day after”.

It’s that awful “in-between” place where we’re scared to death. You can hear the voice, Pastor Johnson does it better … “Na Na A Boo Boo!” Welcome to ‘The Clock Starts Tickin’. SHUT UP! The world of Total Denial. We all can relate to wanting to hold on to high school, childhood, singlehood and a lack of responsibility and commitment, a place where we don’t have to grow up.

We can all relate to those in the Gospel who climb to the mountaintop and want to check in to the Prophet Hotel and not ‘come back down’. Who wouldn’t want to hang onto what you’ve got up there.

But … you need, we need to come down from the mountaintop and walk the crooked roads. As Pastor Johnson said the last time he preached on this text:

We have to come down “and face Monday morning”.

We’ve got work to do and it needs doing in the real world.

When Pastor Johnson’s pastor and mentor announced he was leaving their Church, he admits he was petrified, a 14 year old boy holding back the tears a 14 year old dare not show. He ran from the Church sobbing, another Elisha dreading the loss of his beloved Elijah. And when Elisha is asked what Elijah may do for him before he is taken, he asks "for a double share of Elijah’s spirit.”

Elijah replies that what Elisha asks is “a hard thing”, but it will be granted if Elisha “sees Elijahas he is taken from him”, i.e. if he “looks up”! This condition forces Elisha to LOOK UP … in order to have him see where the real power comes from. Jesus knows REAL power is hanging on the cross. Real power is in service and forgiveness. Dubbed “weakness” by this world, these are the real strength, the real power of a disciple.

Whoever you are, something in your life is changing this very morning … your relationships, your work, something. But we are not powerless in the face of change because we are not bound by this world. We do not belong to this world, but to God.

The thing that makes you want to cling to today, to not come down from the mountaintop and face Monday morning will make its way full circle. On October 7, 1973, Pastor Johnson’s old pastor flew from Boston to attend his ordination. In a powerful testimony Pastor Johnson shared that:

"It wasn't about my pastor. It was about my pastor leading me down the path I needed to travel".

You have to let go.

And, IF you let go … you and I, we get the same guarantee Elisha got …

… it’s going to be OK.

God is there to lift you up … on eagle’s wings … and carry you down the path you need to travel.

It Starts at the Bottom

2009-02-23T01:04:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 15, 2009
Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany
Lay Preacher: Lori George

Readings:
2 Kings 5:1-14
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/5D166218-6727-4D1C-8EF2-26878294B67E.mp3

Naaman, Big Man on Campus, is seeking a cure for his leprosy. The messages of where and how come from a slave, a woman … and, later, his servants, the lowly and displaced. The message is to bathe in the Jordan seven times, the ritual of the antibiotic protocol for 10 days. Naaman had yet to learn that there are no shortcuts even for a BMOC. In the end, what we see is that Naaman is truly humbled as he is cured, free of charge. He has to learn the lesson that the lepers in the Gospel seem to know. They make their way through the crowd to reach Jesus. They know that IF it is His will, they WILL be cured.

In her first job interview at 16 years old, Lori looked up on the wall to see a metal plaque proclaiming, “Roll your works upon the Lord. Commit and trust them wholly. He will cause your thoughts to be agreeable with His will.” She got the job.

Well, a recession followed and with it the job. One year later and a new job, a new layoff, and a divorce. And that’s where Lori began to pray … and pray. That’s where, she says, her relationship with God began anew … at the bottom.

Whatever leprosy brings the Army General in you to its feet … in this encounter, you will be humbled. Humbled to face the circumstances that seem to convince us we are not, in the end, in control. These moments, Lori shares, so often come in moments of brokenness, in our depths, when we’re down and out.

And her experiences taught her to really feel what Pastor Johnson calls

“The hardest line in The Lord’s Prayer” … Thy will be done.

Lori ended beautifully with a line-by-line joining of the Lord’s Prayer with her walk through “the bottom” and out the other side. Summarizing it here would not be nearly as good as to listen to the end of this sermon. Click on the audio link and listen to the humbled traveler tell you her story.

What it did for me was remind me to go home and look at a framed photograph I keep on my desk during Lent. It is a photograph of two paper plates on which my daughter wrote her version of the Lord’s Prayer one Sunday in the pew at Mt. Zion when she was about 6 years old.

And that 6 year old still speaks to me through the glass ...
to remind me

“They will be don”

Zelig’s Letter to the Corinthians

2009-02-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 8, 2009
Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Isaiah 40:21-31
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/34800BED-283C-77F5-5580-F762D094644A.mp3

In Isaiah, we run into the feeling of desperation, destinies & futures no longer in our control. Today, in a frantic world, you can also feel the desperation. You can taste it becaue it’s touched most doorsteps in one way or another. The message in Isaiah is still this:

No matter your current condition, God is SO beyond human understanding and He will deliver us … in His time.

Our relationship with God is not quid pro quo. It ALWAYS requires waiting. And not like the sign I saw two years ago in NY’s Penn Station “EXPRESS WAITING”. This waiting may actually “take some time”.

When you feel (and we all do at some point, usually “a low point”) like “Nothing ever changes!” …

In the waiting comes the strength. And in the strength comes the deliverance.

IF we don’t allow ourselves to be defined by the economic turndown, the diagnosis, the illness, we can wait for the that strength and deliverance. But when we “go it alone”, it’s too hard! When we’re surrounded by cynics, it’s almost impossible.

Paul even says, “There’s 2 kinds of people … and I’m going to ‘hang with both’ “. He’ll be whatever he needs to be to get this message across. Scientific research indicates that abbies of many species are often born resembling the father somewhat enough in order to keep him around the nest longer. We may be vain, but we “like to hang with our own”. Paul, like the Leonard Zelig character played by Woody Allen, “has the ability to transform his appearance to that of the people who surround him.”

Paul will become lie the hungry if he has to in order to deliver the message. It’s too important. It’s time to win over those “on the other side”. The Good News is we ALL have the power to do that! The message is so big the whole town shows up for Jesus … and the message is too big for one town, so Jesus takes the show on the road.

The message is BIG … bigger than the squabbling we make over race, sexual orientation, sacrificial meats, religion, gender … WAY BIGGER … and the News today is you have the power to be the courier .

The Knee Bone’s Attached to the Hip Bone

2009-02-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 1, 2009
Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/27A4D042-92BA-8480-A9EA-6D96EEDF8348.mp3

“I don’t know anybody who’s picked this text for their wedding text. I don’t know anybody who’s picked this text for their funeral text.” So Pastor Mohn points out about today’s 2nd reading from Corinthians. It’s a text on which much preaching is apparently undertaken. It’s interesting. But Pastor Mohn takes it on with a unique perspective. We start, once again, by asking “Where’s the Good News here?”

We have people taking serious stances on “the eating of sacrificial meats” from other religions. Paul nearly becomes a Vegan for the Gospel as he sorts through the differing rationalizations run amok: it doesn’t matter because those “other Gods” don’t exist, it doesn’t matter at all, it’s only food, you name it. The disagreement is born over struggling “What’s the right thing to do?”

Paul says “It doesn’t matter. It’s not as big as we’re all making it out to be.”

“Did you ever have an argument whereby winning you ruined your relationship?”

When the need to prove one’s point overrides, we may pull out the stops. The argument can turn numerical, authoritative. Pastor Mohn points out that we’ve all walked in on conversations wed don’t feel qualified to be part of. Our reaction is to become “silent”. This is a text about living in community, about how we live together in the Body of Christ. What if the sp”qualified”. What we need to remember is without the spleen, there’s no one to recycle old blood cells without which the heart’s function is moot. We ALL play a role. And while we go about the futile enterprise of trying to measure the size of our roll, it’s the uniqueness that matters! There’s no room in a Church or any real community for the silence that accompanies someone trying to “make the argument numerical”. There’s no one who gets to walk in and say “I know more than you.” When we, collectively, have the gifts of all God’s people, there’s no room for exclusion. And our individual and unique gifts act in wonderous concert, or can, for the good of all. He knee bones connected to the hip bone.

The Good News is “We’re ALL chosen. We are ALL called.”

Even if you’ve felt “I should have been farther along. I took a wrong turn & I’m lost & way off course.” Where you are at THAT moment … God is THERE.

If you know a lot, come and share what you know. If you think you know nothing, come and share yourself. Your very presence will stir someone to say something that may reveal to you what it is you are really there to provide and share.

This can’t be preached … or taught, only experienced.

Wherever you are … up or down, down or out, lost or found, God will find you … and bring you home.

I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today

2009-02-11T23:01:00.001-08:00

Sunday, January 18, 2009
Second Sunday After the Epiphany
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
1 Samuel 3:1-20
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

Audio sermon file: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/A2A56F7E-E0B7-4998-28F9-10DA6FD6657C.mp3

In the movie Clerks, Dante Hicks is called in to cover for his supervisor on his day off. Pastor Mohn affectionately recalled his calling cry: “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” This is so often our response when we are called to something more than we feel we are ready for. Often, she admits, this battle cry is heard as the prelude to “a call”.

The thing about Samuel was “He wasn’t supposed to be there at all”. He wasn’t supposed to be born even! But God put each of us here for a purpose, each of us a blessing to the others, each endowed with an incredible gift. But to find out what that gift is? Or when God would have us use it? This is quite another thing. And we are come to know our calling through several ingenious devices …

1st … We are often “placed” in new situations, ones often not of our own choosing, often not ones we would ever willingly choose. Places “we weren’t even supposed to be in” … In dealing with these new surroundings/happenings/circumstances, we come to discover something new about ourselves …that we were, in fact, meant to “be there” for some express purpose. In the book The Alchemist, a small shepherd boy sets out to find the meaning of his life and discover “a treasure”, only to return full circle to where he began. It is here he discovers the treasure that only having traveled away would provide the perspective needed to “see” the treasure.

2nd … A call is often “echoed” in community, seen and recognized by fellow disciples, friends, … family. It isn’t often until someone else notices the gift we have that we are able to see it ourselves as they echo it back. We hear God’s calling for us in the echo of community.

3rd … It’s OK to “say no” at first. People are often surprised when God calls … “Can I do this?”

You can almost bet on a call from God being a challenge, unexpected, something that will take us out of our comfort zone ...

… and require an echo from community.

The many characters called in the Bible often refused the call the 1st time, the 2nd time … but God continues to knock on the door. God will call again … when the time is right … when we’re ready.

Samuel is called to “give his boss the very bad news” …
Abraham’s asked to sacrifice his son …
Mary’s asked to bear Jesus …
Jesus is asked to live & die for us …

When we find ourselves saying “We weren’t even supposed to be here today!!”
That “here”? … God is “there”!!!

No matter how lonely that “here” feels, we are never alone!

So when you’re ready to bust out, “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today!”

…. Oh, yes, you were …

It's A CAN!!

2009-02-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Baptism of Our Lord

Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Genesis 1:1-5
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/9B933839-BA3F-E06B-AE17-7011027F9C23.mp3

In the beginning was Genesis, the story of creation. God is The Big Cheese who’s still creating the universe. His creation is not measurable in human terms. Much as this creation finds a microcosm in the development of a single child, from a formless void, shape; from chaos, order. Last Reformation Pastor Mohn said something very similar byextolling “all the possibility” held in the Confirmands’ lives about to unfold, the excitement of all they can and will become, the shaping of themselves by God as he continues his Creation odyssey.

Pastor Johnson took us back to when he was 7 years old, taken in by the Pastor at All Saints Lutheran at 152 DeSoto on the east side of Detroit. He was invited “to get baptized”.

“What I didn’t realize behind my itchy tie on a hot summer day was that my life would never be the same.”

It was the moment you signed your Eternal Life Insurance policy with Purgatory Indemnity, Inc. In Baptism, you are offered more than salvation from purgatory. It’s not about what you’re asved ffrom as much as what you’re born into … you are anointed into a community of believers, a family like no other. Pastor Johnson was taught conformation by a Paul Johnson, and confirmed by a Pastor P.T. “Cal” Johnson … all in the family, so to speak. At this particular crossroads in his life, his family found themselves homeless, yet taken in by a Church. Oh, and college? The debt paid down by a scholarship from the Lutheran Church of America. These are the things a family does … provides shelter and money for education, to shape a life wherein Creation marches on.

Baptism isn’t about “ should so I won’t go to Hell or Purgatory”. We’re not baptized into the Church of the Shield of Eternal Damnation, the Church of the Limited, but the limitless; not the stain of original sin, but the Church of Daily Forgiveness. It’s about God not being able to stand not being close to me, as a parent not being able to stand not being close to their children, those in whose creation they played a part. As Mark in verse 10 says, God will “tear apart the heavens” to get to us. Upon 6 days of creating God looks it all over & says “This is good”. This, the work of His very hands, even, he will tear apart … the order out of chaos, the shape out of void, he will tear apart to “get to us”

In our human families, as parents, we can be a very positive influence on our kids’ growing up. We can also be too easy on one kid, too hard on number 2, too absent for number 3. Baptism is God’s reminder that He can continually shape you, form you, grant you infinite access to His grace. God won’t be too easy, too hard or too absent. There is, through God’s infinite grace, always 2nd, 3rd and 100th chances … infinite possibility that we can be different, better tomorrow. Baptism means life can never be the same again.

Your Baptism is not “a Should”, it’s “a Can”!!

Our failings do not define who we are, who we might yet become.

I am not the sum of my mistakes.

Baptism wipes the slate clean each and every morning. You’re baptized into The Church of 2nd Chances, a community that cares if you’re in the hospital, that believes in the power of possibility, that believes the future holds “a better way” … and for that possibility, that future he will tear apart the very heavens and proclaim “This is My Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

K-Mart Saves Christmas

2009-01-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 4, 2009
First Sunday After Christmas
Sermon: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:1-18

Audio sermon link:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/FD4BFF81-E8F6-127D-B6A8-F9E9DD36A36F.mp3

It’s ten days after Christmas and the lights are starting to come down. More and more houses are shedding their nighttime signs of the season. Down and deflated are the pump-em-up Santa Clauses and even the lit up Nativity crèches. And, as witnessed in Pastor Mohn’s neighborhood, Santa on his Harley. Off the air are the “K-Mart Saves Christmas” commercials extolling the discount giant’s contribution to an otherwise deflated shopping talley. Commercial Christmas, having started immediately upon the heels of Halloween, is over. My wife said to me yesterday, “Don’t laugh … the swim suits are out already”.

Yes, commercial Christmas is gone, but in The Church, Christmas still persists. In fact, the twelve days of Christmas starts on Christmas Day and continues until the Epiphany. In the Church, we have as ense that Christmas needs to go on, needs to continue. Christmas is much bigger, much longer than we can cram into one day.

Christmas isn’t a day … it’s a season.

It’s a season to celebrate the light that has come into the world in the baby Jesus.

Pastor Mohn mentioned that while she’s amazed God sent His only Son to be born among humans, she’s even more amazed that He stayed!! His own did not accept him. But God is persistent. He didn’t come to stay for a day. He came to stay.

Parents of newborn children know the feeling. You prepare for 9 months for the miracle to arrive. Then you bring them home and the next morning, they’re still there! And the next, and the next, and all the next days. Your life is NEVER the same again.

So when the Santa on a Harley is deflated, where will the light of the real Christmas be? The Good News is … YOU’RE the light. WE’RE the light … for one another. In the apparent & real loneliness that often accompanies the dismantling of the lights of commercial Christmas, in the anti-climax of the hullabaloo of the shopping season, we are, all of us, sent out in to the darkness of the Monday morning world awaiting us again. We are sent into that darkness to BE His light for one another.
God sent Jesus, then the disciples, now us … to be lights for one another.

I was reminded of this watching and listening to my youngest child pray throughout Advent, but most especially AFTER Christmas. Often the dinner prayer started:

“For Barack Obama’s grandma and Pastor Mohn’s grandma … (who both passed away in November). For Santa who was bitten, that he’s OK (yes, NPR reported that a cat in New Jersey bit the Jolly Ol’ Elf only weeks before his fateful ride through the skies was to occur). And for the kids missing … that they find them.”

Even after Santa had been good to him, after the presents and the anti-climax, there was still Santa’s recovery, grandmothers’ souls, and missing children’s safety to ponder before a meal and at day’s end. My son’s voice in that moment is a light for me. I am obliged to Pay It Forward and contribute to the cost of the joint ride … to show concern, volunteer time and talent and treasure, to be there to bear a cross of those with more to carry than myself. Often a kind word and a smile will even suffice.

My son brought back memories of the children’s chorus in the Catholic Church where I grew up singing …

This little light o’ mine
I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine …

The Good News?

K-Mart doesn’t need to save Christmas … because God sent Christmas to save us!

Mary Did you Know?

2008-12-20T01:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Third Sunday of Advent
Service of Lessons and Carols

Isaiah 40:3-5
Isaiah 11:1-5,10Isaiah 42:6-9
Isaiah 9:1-3
Ephesians 2:11-18
Isaiah 7:13-15
Luke 3:1-6

This week we celebrated the Service of Lessons & Carols. While I was really moved by all the music, there’s a piece that gives me goose bumps, Mary Did You Know.

Mary Did You Know
That your baby boy
Has come to make things new
The child you deliver will soon deliver you

Mary Did You Know
That your baby boy
Would walk where angels trod
And when you kiss that little baby
You have kissed the face of God

Mary Did You Know
That that sleeping child you’re holding is the Great I Am

It begs the question. If we are asking Mary if SHE knew, do we?

Audio music link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1oHJR2g7Tw

God Logic 101

2008-12-20T01:06:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 7, 2008
Second Sunday of Advent
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/D847594C-6D00-3C64-4AB8-942879958631.mp3

God’s plan is hard to understand and often difficult to accept. Instead of the flood or the fire, He comes in mercy. Mountains will be leveled, but there will most assuredly be peace after the storm, rough made smooth, crooked made straight.

The world is a cynical place. It invites us and rewards us for dividing up rather than communing. One thing’s for sure:

There’s always someone who doesn’t fit in.

God’s time frame is not ours, clear, but not so simple. To God 1 day is as 1000 of our years. In his book, The Science of God, Gerald Schroeder offers this tantalizing realization from the world of physics. In Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, time scales ar different at high speeds approaching the speed of light, a speed very close to that of the expanding universe at and near the moment of the Big Bang. If you enter the numbers into the equation scaling time, 16 billion of our years (the time since the Big Bang or roughly the age of the universe as we perceive and understand it) is equal to roughly 6 days … the six days of creation?

Wouldn’t it just be fascinating if the relations Einstein imagined were the language of God written in the stars. Someone had to be “just crazy enough to see it”. God is patient with us and wants to wait until as many of as possible get on the right course before He comes again to finally clean things up and make things right.

He is patient because …

He wants everyone on The Ascension Train

… and He’ll wait for everyone, 6 days or 16 billion years, if you will.

God logic doesn’t make sense to us. We’re not about waiting. We’re about justice, and swift, if you don’t mind. I recall a preacher who admonished once:

If what you’re after is justice and not mercy, you’d better not make any mistakes!

Remember, Pastor Johnson reminds us, you find Jesus in the very worst parts of your life. John the Baptist was a weird character yelling out in the wilderness. But sometimes it takes a character to get our attention. And sometime it takes a month to step aside from the anger, the clamoring for retribution, from the vengeance vs. forgiveness. We are not baptized into vengeance, but into mercy.

Out there today it’s very hard in ways that 2 generations have never known. But around the corner, God is waiting patiently to show He is abundant, hopeful, merciful, forgiving.

What’s coming? What’s coming is an abundant, merciful, forgiving baby. The baby of 2nd, 3rd, and 100th chances. The baby comes for broken relationships, fractured families, the ones who don’t fit in. Prepare yourself for that gift, a gift it’s almost impossible to understand.

The Now and the Not Yet

2008-12-19T23:52:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Isaiah 64:1-9

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:24-37

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/B5C06DA8-8C18-70D6-DD4C-D6D98144EE72.mp3

“I love 2nd chances!” … and so starts the lesson. Don’t we all. In kid’s court, we called it “a do-over”. The color of the season of Advent is blue … for preparation. But like all good things, we don’t quite want to cut to the chase. Like a great meal, you want to savor it, take a deep breath before starting in. Christmas and Advent have a necessary element of waiting that is not passive. It perhaps should not be a waiting for someone to deliver the goods. But rather a “time before”, of preparation for a happening of extreme circumstance.

In the book Changing for Good, the so-called “spiral model of change” is presented: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action. In studies, people who reach the preparation stage are 3 times more likely to change their behavior than those who merely contemplate it. Advent is a time to go beyond contemplation to preparation. This preparation is active and takes time.

It takes time to appreciate His coming. Our sense is not one of fear, but rather one of awareness. Much like a baby’s birth, we know what’s coming, we know it’s good beyond measure, and we do need to prepare for what’s about to happen. Pastor Mohn shared that:

Advent is the season of the Now and the Not Yet.

Although the Kingdom of God has arrived in the person of Jesus, all is still not right with the world, not yet. Advent is the reminder of the work we’ve yet to do to get ready for His 2nd coming. Much as with the birth of a child, we all go about the 9 months of preparation differently. We clean, we paint, we hang a quilt from on grandmother, a rocking chair from another. We create a space. Our community creates the space together … to let this child know how special they are, that they’d been anticipated. The time in between now and Christmas is critical and Holy.

The temptation is to be closed off from our family, but this limits the power of the Good News. Advent is a blessing, a time to be aware of the expanded view, to contemplate “the now” and act and prepare while in “the not yet”.

Laughing at a Funeral

2008-12-19T23:21:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Psalm 41:1-3 1
Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/DC940E23-065E-3374-11FC-EE42DC8D2359.mp3

Today’s lesson seems to be speaking about a harsh master, and inequality in his doling out. As we’ve seen more often lately, we have to ask “Where’s the Good News here?”. We are called to take the time and acquire the eyes to see that good news.

Where’s the good news in the hoarding of the single talent. Well, Pastor Mohn puts part of the picture we often don’t see in perspective when she sheds light on the meaning of the word “talent”.

In our Savior's lifetime, a talent was a significant amount of money. A talent was equal to 60 minaes, and a mina was equal to 100 dinarii (pence). A worker might earn one dinarius a day.

So a talent was something on the order of 6000 days pay or 16 years salary! Five talents held the worth of an entire life! Well, this changes one’s perspective … or it can. Pastor Mohn evoked that sense when she challenged us all to view the text from a different angle. If the Master was harsh, was he not also extravagant in what he offered, provided? The Master’s instinct is to give extravagantly, abundantly! And what is expected in return is accountability. We are given each a unique gift. It is our job to discover it and use it as best we can to further The Plan. So let’s not “start with harsh”. God BEGINS with abundant giving. God gives us all LIFE.

Now on to the response. So now that we know the value of a single talent, we know the guy with even the one talent has got a lot to lose! “A lot” renders apprehension, fear, and a feeling of undeservedness. It’s fear that leads the last slave to hide and hoard his keep. Is the Master really harsh? Or is it in our heads “the fear talking”?

The other two slaves “see the opportunity”. They “see it a different way”. Pastor Mohn confesses that “she gets the third guy”. She gets his fear. We can all relate. But we also need to consider why the other two rise above it … why they were not afraid.

Pastor Mohn recently lost her grandmother and attended the funeral in Iowa. As mourners lined up to view the body, Annika, all of 7 months, was wiggling, smiling, and laughing. The scene caused others to break a smile. It was that image: laughing at a funeral that spoke a message. That …

Christians do foolish things, risky things. They take a chance!

They laugh at a funeral.

We all can acknowledge an economic crisis of proportions we have only read about, yet reach in deep and continue to give. We’ve been asked by the Master to dig deep, and to laugh at a funeral. Being asked to give is an invitation from God … to be held accountable for one’s having received in abundance, in extravagance. The request: that we help others smile at a funeral, see the world a different way.

We never deny the crisis or catharsis or The Cross, but we are tasked to live knowing that after, there is always a rainbow, a promise, a deliverance, a life everlasting.

And, if we learn the lesson of the talents, we, too, must “pay it forward” … so the giving never ends.

Mercy Mercy …

2008-11-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 2, 2008
Lay Preacher: Jon Stolz

Revelation 7:9-171

John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/395374B5-B143-5377-17F7-9DF65D29F93A.mp3

Today we were privileged to hear lay preacher, Jon Stolz, ponder on the meaning of The Beatitudes. Beatitude … from the Latin, beatis, for “to be blessed”, he reminded us.

I learned only today that the first several beatitudes are about “those who suffer” while the remainder are “about those who help those who suffer”. Reckoning back to a theme from Lent, we are either given a cross to bear or we are, in the absence of one of our own, tasked and challenged to help someone else take up theirs … to be modern day Simons of Cyrene.

Jon proffers that the beatitudes were Jesus’ way of identifying those that were truly blessed. Up until then, they had only The Law, but the Sermon on the Mount outlined a new set of rules, if you will.

Jon added to themes of past sermons by Pastors Johnson and Mohn … that Jesus’ “advice” is not a laundry list of things to do or accomplish to garner points; they were not a neat, little set of instructions for life. Jon offers that they were more a challenge to the status quo and “the mindset of The Law” up until Jesus arrived on the scene.

Jon also pointed to an interesting fact: that Jesus was supposedly seated on the ground when proclaiming the sermon, a common rabbinical practice of teachers. Was he speaking to the disciples alone? Was he addressing the crowd and, if so, could they hear him? Lutheran faith is predicated on knowing we can’t earn our way into eternal life. We are given salvation as a gift. God does ask us to live a life which is humble, penitent, meek and merciful.

Jon then elaborated on the beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy”

I remember well a powerful sermon I was privileged to experience in which the preacher extolled

“If what you’re after is justice, forget about mercy!”

If we “keep count” as Pastor Mohn preached so very recently, we’re missing the point. Mercy is about giving that up … for good. As Jon points out, mercy is putting aside prejudice, it’s care & concern for even the most undeserving; mercy is God, mercy is a way of living, a daily ritual …

And the world is not lacking in the need for it. The world is full of the broken-hearted, sin, hunger looking fo compassion, justice, a friendly ear. When Jon was growing up a son of a Lutheran pastor, he recalls, there were no organized food drives. When someone in need came knocking, it was at their door and one time he answered. Giving he man a lunch that included a ham sandwich, he was confronted by the man, “What!? No cheese?”. In what he admitted wasa sarcastic comeback, he said to the man, “Sorry, no cheese today”. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

Well, years later, it appears that sarcasm doesn’t rate on the mercy thermometer. Sometimes, it seems, real hunger can mask one’s gratitude. Mercy, perhaps, means “never having to say ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ “.

Jon wrapped up with a beautiful poetic quote from Edwin Hubbel Chapin, a Universalist minister who wrote hymns, editorials, and poems in the mid-19th century. Fearing he would give in to his propensity toward an acting career, his parents dutifully saw to it to send him to seminary. Perhaps this very act formed the basis of one of his quotes:

“A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.”

…and, this, on mercy:

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars,
not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is a bowl that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgement seat. The quality of mercy is not strained; it drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesses him that gives and him that takes. Mercy is an attitude of God Himself, and Earthly power shows like God’s when mercy seasons justice.

Lest we forget we are fraught with our innate ability, in fact our nature to make mistakes, let us heed the thoughts of Edwin Chapin and Maurice Boyd to be interested “not only injustice, but in mercy” for “the very essence of justice IS mercy”.

Blessed be the merciful …

Unless First a Dream

2008-11-02T01:13:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 26, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/0D295D8A-677D-5D7C-41D1-5DA3A50ACA21.mp3

Pastor Mohn began her admittedly short Reformation Sunday sermon with a quote from Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” (a Brief History of the 21st Century). In it Friedman asks

“Does your community have more dreams than memories? Or does it have more memories than dreams?”

Addressing the Confirmands and each of the rest of us somewhat uniquely, Pastor Mohn offered that whle it is important to have a sense of heritage and history and memories, if we place our dreams 2nd to them, we risk a time in the future when we will have no more memories to look back on.

Today, we commemorate that Martin Luther, by either design or accident, changed the world! We look back upon that as a wonderful memory. But Luther wasn’t in the business of memories; he was in the business of dreams.

The start of this sermon brought rife images of students at graduation. Another ritual that is both “an ending wrought with memories” as well as “a new beginning laced with apprehension and hope and dreams for what we can become”. I was reminded that when students return to campus a year or so after graduation, they actually dwell less on “go to the same old watering holes” and conjuring up memories, than they comment of “how they’d like things to work vs. how they actually work”. It is a time of awakening, reckoning with possibility vs. pragmatism. Some end up embracing “the system” and trying to work within it.

As John F. Kennedy might have meant when he said, “Some see the things as they are and say why?” Others embrace finding “the room for a better way”; what Kennedy might have been referring to when he said “I dream things that never were and say why not”. It’s perhaps no great secret that the word dreams is what Kennedy chose to inspire a nation of young people.

We see 18 young hearts before us today venture into that world. Will they see what is or what is not? Only they will discover for themselves. But Pastor Mohn was so gloriously open to possibility when she shared that today’s Confirmands are full of dreams, beautiful dreams. What will the world become? What role will they play in ‘making ti become’? Today is a moment, a snapshot that will, no doubt, become a memory. But what will you do to fulfill your dreams?

Today, admittedly, we fear the future, view it with apprehension – will I go to college, get a job? We want to minimize the apprehension, it’s human nature to do so. But we often also do that by “lowering the bar”. And when our dreams miss “the vision of God” as Pastor Mohn so aptly put it, we miss an opportunity to “dream what wasn’t and say ‘Why not?’ “. We miss an opportunity “to become” the best community we can be!

The problem may be not that our dreams are too big, but that they are too small.

In today’s Gospel text, John says “the truth will set us free”, not from a physical bondage or slavery, but from the bondage of fear and despair. The truth sets us free to dream and to hope, to believe in possibility!

I was near tears as she spoke, remembering a tiring yet magical, mystical Christmas when my daughter was only 20 days old, her lone small stocking hanging over the fireplace with a single world embroidered upon it

BELIEVE

Today the music was so aptly chosen. In one song, the words:

You never know why you’re here, until you know what you’d die for.

In the song “A Beautiful Day”, the words “one possible day”, Let’s go, let’s try, let’s hope … together. If you have no destination, but are driven by a beautiful imagination, see the world in green and blue in front of you. Touch me, teach me, take me to that other place.

Memories you look back to see; to see your dreams you must look in front of you!

Oh, and in the distance, the sweet words of Carl Sandburg …

Nothing happens … unless first a dream.

Not So Fast Cyrus …

2008-11-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 19, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Isaiah 45:1-71

Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/9A7435B6-5C5D-2343-6CAB-1750CBD8E2EB.mp3

It was a classic start to another classic Pastor Gary Johnson sermon.

It was 1962. social studies class. His teacher left the room, coming back some time later in silence with the news that he had been called up by the National Guard, that the Cuban Missile Crisis was in full swing. That WW III lay in the balance. The nukes … we had ‘em, they had ‘em. This was bad news.

All of today’s texts reckon with the theme that this could be WW III. The powers that be, the politics are all coming crashing down.

So how are we going to let the world affect us?

Millions of lost jobs. 1.5 wars. Dads, moms, wives, husbands, sons, daughters sacrificed. And in the end, the question:

Who has control over our lives. Or, most telling, whom do we allow to have this control? Several weeks ago, Pastor Mohn begged the question: Where are you from? Whom do you belong to? Today, we ask it again, albeit in a slightly different context.

Who do you belong to?

Pastor Johnson recounts the story that in 1849, archaeologists found the so-called Cyrus Cylinder on which was inscribed “I am Cyrus, King of Kings, King to the Four Quarters”. He had a message. He was the head honcho, big man on campus, and (forgive me, Wisconsin) the Big Cheese. Then The Almighty shows up not too unlike Steve Martin exclaiming, “EXCUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEEE!”

Excuse me, Cyrus, but, hey, I formed the light out of darkness. The life from no life, yeah, that was me too dude! Read it in Isaiah today … I go, I level, I break, I cut, I give, I call, I name, I arm, I am, I am, I am!

Translation: Cyrus, you’re not so hot.

Well, not in the grand scheme o’ things perspective.

Who do you belong to? God or some fellow named Cyrus, some Cyrus “of the moment”.

Paul, in his pastoral letter to the Thessalonians, claimed he knew the Word of God “came” to them. Pastor Johnson filled us in that the translation from the Greek text was more intimately “the Word fo God ‘came inside them’ … literally inside them”. And with God truly inside you, you’re not about THIS world, you’re not about “I’ve got mine and I want more. I never got no nothing from no body, thank you! You’re not about power and domination, bu about love & forgiveness & fellowship. You’re about the weekly rummage sale the Thessalonians had where they “shared the wealth” with each other. They were the socialists of their time. They belonged to God, not to Caesar.

In the context of this year’s heated election claims, it was not a hard leap to see the Herodians and the Pharisees join forces to spread the seeds of fallacy, to become (in Pastor Johnson’s well-chosen words) “total Eddie Haskel”, liar-liar. This was like Packer fans and Viking fans getting together, to rat out some Bear fans, or so he offered. And, not unlike this year, it was about your taxes. But these taxes were not “your Daddy’s taxes”. They were not for the common good, for roads, better health care, but merely a tribute to Caesar, a visual show for the Cyrus of his day so you’d get the message about who the Big Cheese was this century.

This is not a world that disenfranchises us? We thought they were our pension plans, but they were stolen by the likes of those we’d never met, and I hope we never do. People we don’t know bet our life’s savings and lost it. But Pastor Johnson paused and said it best after the quiet.

Real disciples know it was never ours to begin with. We have no control … in the end. Who do we belong to? God or Caesar? Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.

And what is God’s? Isaiah reminds us: EVERYTHING! Everything you are or could ever become. The world has no power over Jesus. And, IF YOU SO DECIDE, the world can and will have no power over you. In the most powerful moment of the morning, Pastor Johnson asked everyone to mentally conjure up “the very worst thing you’d done in your entire life, the absolute worst thing …. Now, do you have it? I imagine it wasn’t a long grasp to find it. You’ve got it? Now imagine this: It’s COMPLETELY FORGIVEN – no strings attached.

Caesar, Cyrus … on their very best days … can’t do that.

Whom do you belong to?

The Invitation

2008-10-17T01:28:00.001-07:00

Sunday, October 12, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Isaiah 25:1-9
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/6FD5C5F3-975A-69FE-90F3-A6EB7636E5AC.mp3

Pastor Mohn began by admitting this is a very difficult text. You’re hoping for good, reassuring news. You’re left asking, “Will I be one of the chosen few?”

Well, if you hang in there …. there is good news, but you’ll have to work your way through it. And it’s all about God’s invitation. The people made light of it. We made light of an invitation for which God did ALL the preparation. He had a robe in waiting, as was the custom for wedding guests and the guests refused the hospitality of the Host of Hosts. Remember last week when Pastor Johnson asked us if we’d ever been rejected … and what ti felt like? All dressed up and no one wanting us?

We are asked to do nothing more today than accept this most gracious invitation …. but, as Pastor Mohn concedes, there is a breakdown in trust, and with it, a lot of questions.

With the invitation outstanding, the people devoted themselves, instead, to idolatry. We placed out best, 1st efforts toward idols. We, as human beings, are good at finding other things to place our trust in. Sadly, we only often turn to God, as the Prodigal Sons, after the idols don’t deliver the goods.

The overriding question is “Where is God in all this?”

And the questions begs an answer, but receives none.

Look at the text from Isaiah where the people praise God for making of the city a heap of ruins. Pastor Mohn bemuses the notion of God being praised for destroying something?? And then the realization that what they are perhaps praising is not the destruction, but rather what God is replacing it with. Pastor Mohn thoughtfully shared the notion that it’s possible that with the destruction of one thing comes the room for creation of another, the story of the seasons, the circle of life, th closing of one door putting in motion the domino effect of events that open another door. God is busy in the details.

So where do we place our trust? We seem to want, crave a guarantee … that if we turn from these rather attractive looking idols,that it’ll somehow be made worth our while.

There is a book titled “What the Best College teachers Do” by Ken Bain in which he describes an intriguing aspect of teaching. When students (who are humans themselves) find themselves presented with a concept at odds with their interpretation of the world, they are VERY reticent to give up their false model without some guarantee that the newly offered goods are worth the trade. They seem to want a guarantee. Often, however, they must be willing to give up one to afford the free hands to grab the alternative. We, not only as students but as humans, suffer the same lack of trust.

Isaiah’s message is to Not Worry …. We are all called to help rebuild the mountain and set the table for everyone, even the undeserving prodigal sons coming down the road toward us. We are all called to be part of the rebuilding of a better place to replace the heap of a city that once was, but is now to be better. The “peace that surpasses all understanding” in Philippians is the fuel for that building, the courage to live that life of a disciple “without guarantees”, a trust and acceptance that what is to come will be better than what we are giving up to make room for it.

In Ken Bain’s book, he is careful to point out that in order for students to take the turn and “accept a new model of the universe and how it ticks”, they must do two things: they must care that their previous ways were somehow incorrect, and they must receive tremendous levels of support in order to transition to a new paradigm.

In Philippians, Paul is promising us that God will provide said support in “guarding our hearts and our minds”. He is saying to us all, “Come away from your idols and I will walk the road back with you, providing the peace that surpasses your understanding, providing safe haven for the uncertain journey to a place where we can live without fear, rejoicing at The Table prepared by the greatest host of all time”.

Here’s a robe for you … come now to the wedding feast!

Good News Network

2008-10-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 5, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Isaiah 5:1-7

Philippians 3:4b-14

Matthew 21:33-46

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/C50E913B-4D5E-4C8B-7FE7-6124D92E2B62.mp3

Tabloid journalism right in Matthew!! This is stuff of NY Post cover stories. Jesus is trying to GET OUR ATTENTION!!

But lots of talk about vineyards. Isaiah sings a love song as Pastor Johnson drifted into “You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh …” Oh, Play It Again, Isaiah!

But seriously, there is all this talk of vineyards, but more than just talk. A gardener plants vines, but not just any vines. He plants the BEST of vines, tills the grounds, prunes the vines, builds a watchtower, hews a vat. This is serious tending going on.
He invests love in this dream house, in a love about which Isaiah sings. These are no skanky vines, no minimal crop.

And for all this investment, what’s he get? …. With grapes. This gardener is broken-hearted. Pastor Johnson suggests that you can here them saying “I invested all of me & you rejected me. You rejected my best efforts. I don’t have another Church. I don’t have another vineyard. I don’t have another love but you … and you rejected me.”

… and then “I am taking my dreamhouse & going home”. This is the voice of God, the jilted lover, the broken-hearted and ….

It’s all about that vineyard.

We hear it in Paul’s voice. He’s Mr. Law, Mr. Rules, a Hebrew among Hebrews, Big Man on Campus. He’s spotless. He’s got it all – advanced degrees, status, material goods … and he comes to the realization it’s all crap (literally …). He says that a whole sense of a life well-lived is rooted in the message of Jesus. Everyhting else this world holds in esteem and of value is rubbish.
What is this vineyard that God would send His only Son amongst its wild grapes?

This is the vineyard of salvation – the blood of whose grapes are the precious blood of Christ. This is our vineyard that God has entrusted to us. And the key questions are these:

How do we treat the vineyard?
How do we treat those who come to the vineyard?

Pastor Johnson asked for a show of hands, asking if any of the congregation had been rejected from taking Communion in their Church lives. About 1/3 of those there said so. He felt strongly that this was one of those ultimate ironies of organized religion. Communion is one of the primal examples of our unity. It united Christians the world over every time bread is broken in community. It is a powerful mystery in whose presence we shoud ultimately feel humbled. It represents a sacrifice for which we should be willing to give our lives. As Paul says, “It is everything. It is everything you’ll ever need. The rest is rubbish.” At Church, we keep the bread on the altar, a pedestal, guarded by a rail encircling it. Imagine the irony of being rejected from partaking of that which unites us. It is everything. It is all we truly need. It is redemption. It is transformation. It is a reminder of something out there bigger than us.

The irony is that THIS should be the headline story on GNN!!

I attended the Youth Group Work Camp last summer (2007) and at one of the devotional evenings I saw a movie I will long remember. The setting was our world removed into the future. A terrible viral disease had gripped the Earth and millions were dying. Two parents of an only child learned that their son had the single rare blood type that could be “cloned” and mass-produced in sufficient quantities to save the human race. The catch? It would take all of the child’s blood and the child would not survive. I am the father of two young children that tug at my heart every single night. Even imagining the depth of sacrificing one of their lives was gut-wrenching, to say the least. The parents ask the child to decide and the child offers to give his life. Cut to a scene many years hence. The father is walking through a Times Square looking scene with people on cell phones rushing about, hardly recognizing one another. They were nto seeming to care about each other in as much as they were barely aware of their brothers around them, right next to them. The father muses, “I thought this would have made a difference. Do any of these people know the depths of that child’s sacrifice so that they could be walking here today, healthy, well-fed, alive, breathing clean air, seeing the colors of the rainbow, tasting the juice of raindrops? I thought it would make a difference …”

This is God the Father in the scripture of Matthew today looking down on the vineyard, carefully taking note of how we are tending it and who we welcome into the vineyard. He sacrificed His only Son, sending him in amongst the wild grapes at great cost.

There were no headlines on the billboards of Times Square regaling the ultimate sacrifice … only a father looking into that vineyard in dismay at the grapes gone wild despite his very best efforts.

So Jesus, today, is desperately trying to get our attention amidst the storm of our daily lives. He’s given all his blood for us. It was ALL we needed … to save a planet.

And He asks only this:

How are you treating the vineyard? … and
How are you treating your brothers who wander in?

Workin’ 8 to 5

2008-09-21T21:45:00.001-07:00

Sunday, September 21, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:

Jonah 3:10-4:11
Philippians 1:21-30

Matthew 20:1-16

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/58D7D696-A6D0-8FAD-AD0F-137D918F06E3.mp3

Pastor Johnson started by mentioning that today’s Gospel lesson is often referred to as the Sermon of Affirmative Action. Hey, somebody’s getting’ somethin’ for nothin’. That ain’t fair!

We take pride in our work and our working, our having earned our keep. We define ourselves by “what we do”, by our “busy-ness”. In admiring our being busy, we buy into the adage that our value-added IS our value. THESE PEOPLE who show up at 5 o’clock? What’s with them?

And I’ve been here workin’ and sweatin’ you-know-what since 8!

But this is the Kingdom of Heaven … and there’s no accounting sheet here (see Pastor Mohn’s sermon from last week …). In here, it’s not about an hourly wage earned; it’s about forgiveness (10 times the number you speak times the number you speak), it’s about love, it’s about being there.

We see the Heavenly Father full of gleefulness if the Prodigal Son shows up at all!!! And if he doesn't show up, the Father will go out and look for him!

This IS your Father’s workplace!

As I listened to Pastor Johnson craftily weave the lesson and sermon with that of the Prodigal Son, I was reminded that I’ve heard sermons here before about how it’s “not about the son … it’s about the father”!

I was also taken over by a metaphor of an emergency: a burning building, a sinking ship. About how in times such as these, even when Mr. 5 O’clock shows up running for the elevator door or shows up just as the last life raft is about to cut loose … the Captain is ecstatic to see another person “in the SAVED column”. In that scenario, isn’t it just plausible we’d extend a hand to someone who “showed up at 5 o’clock and did ‘way less’ than we did to earn their passage”? Maybe, just maybe, at such a moment, we realize we never earn our passage anyway.

In the heat of the burning building, all the rules are changed. Would we push anyone out of the last staircase down to salvation?

Maybe, maybe not …. But in the regular old Monday Morning working world, when we show up at 8 o’clock everyday and work ourselves hard and we watch Mr. 5 o’clock waste away his inheritance, squandering his keep, lulling around and then show up at closing time, we sure don’t expect he’s going to ge the fatted calf killed for the likes of him. Just as Pastor Mohn skillfully weaved Field of Dreams into yet another sermon last week, I’ll have to borrow it “one (last?) more time this week. When we see Mr. 5 O’clock get what we get for working since 8, we yell out “Hey, what’s in it for me?”

I listened to the Voice, I did everything it told me to do and not once did I ask “What’s in it for me?”

Who’s this Terence Mann guy you just invite into the cornfield when I BUILT IT???

Our Mr. 8 O’clock is very recognizable. They’re the ones taking care of their aging parent, making sure they’re at their doctor’s appointments, taking their medicine; they’re there when they get sick, they’re the ones calling the distant brothers and sisters, they’re the one there when their aging parent dies, they’re holding the reins, day after hot and scorching day … they’re in the hot vineyard. And they're more than likely Ms. or Mrs. 8 o'clock. And then Mr. 5 O’clock flies in from California for the funeral. And when he walks in, the surviving parent, their Mom lights up like a Christmas tree and hugs them ‘til it hurts. And Mom says, “I’m SO glad you’re here”.

The dutiful 8 o’clock sister or brother of the 5 o’clock prodigal son says “You have no idea what working in the scorching sun is, do you?

And you get the same as I do?!? ”

Who’s this Terence Mann guy you just invite into the cornfield when I BUILT IT???

Sounds like Ray gets a little angry. Well, when the lost son is found, who can be angry with the Father for his joy in finding him again. No matter what kind of scoundrel the son is, who can fault a father for crying tears of joy when he finds him and pulls him into that lifeboat or from that burning building?

You see … at that moment, it might be a good time to just stop and think; to think about what has brought the brother home … because, Pastor Johnson reminds us, often it is from around a corner where they have bottomed out, realizing that “back home” is their ONLY option. They have had some moment of dire realization, of transformation. Their road out might have been filled with wine, women, and philanderin’, but their road back was a tougher one.

To us who think we’ve been working since 8, it isn’t fair. To Mr. 8 O'clock, he's been trying to earn his Father's love, not realizing he already had it all along. To Mr. 5 O'clock, it's a hard look in the mirror that brings him to realize that home's the only place he's got left, the only road to salvation. To God, it’s about EVERYBODY, Mr. 8 O’clock AND Mr. 5 O’clock getting a FULL measure of God’s grace.

Sieben Multipliziert mit seibzig … dann … Bangen!

2008-09-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

Sunday, September 14, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Genesis 50:15-21

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/32745F1F-5C26-C20E-8EA4-C6B1EE86EF1B.mp3

Pastor Mohn pointed out a realization that often hits “the crowd” (perhaps) more often than “the Pastor” – that sometimes the three Scriptural texts seem to bear no common theme. Not so today. Today the three texts have a resounding emphasis on forgiveness – one of the most difficult things to face. In Genesis, we hear of the story of Joseph and his brothers and the sins of favoritism and jealousy. In Romans, the sins of conflict and disagreement.

Pastor Mohn pointed out that she was listening to the speeches at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions weeks ago and was struck when Barack Obama mentioned it was an election about small and big things. So, she felt, was partly the message on forgiveness. We often fight about the smallest things. Pastor Mohn shared a story about a church committee arguing over the choice of hymn for Mission Sunday – how it got so heated the decision had to be tabled. Remember the book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”?

We so often do. And God calls us to think of our petty grievances in a larger context.
We do not live or die to ourselves and the small things. If we live, we live to the Lord and if we die, we die to the Lord. So often the arguments are about what we eat, what hymn we’re going to sing. Today Jesus is saying “Why sweat the small stuff … when the big stuff’s already been taken care of for you?”

Pastor Mohn also shared that while last week’s text was her wedding text, this week’s is her funeral text … for reasons that in it:

Forgiveness is a matter of perspective.

There’s a new play called Seventy Times Seven then Pow! in which a husband keeps a chalkboard checking off the 490 forgivenesses he’s called to offer his wife. Presumably, he’s off the hook after that. Pastor Mohn offered the sense that we often seek the literal accounting, "in the German sense". We want to know EXACTLY what’s expected of us – how many times to forgive, precisely. We want a tally, a chalkboard. But make no mistake ... when we sin, we come to God with conditions … the extenuating circumstances that brought us to give into temptation – a rationalization, a host of excuses and reasons for transgressions beyond our control. We want understanding for the circumstantial nature of the evidence against us, that brought us to fall victim to sin. We’re victims, you see, when we sin. But when we’re sinned against? Well, thems different apples all together. Then we want a full accounting by the letter of the law. We want the tally in minute detail. So … if we forgive, we want tit for tat; we want equal forgiveness.

What happens when we’re confronted? Jesus told us how to handle conflict two weeks ago in the scripture readings. But after that thoughful progression of confrontation, Jesus says then let go. But that goes against our sense of fairness. It’s not attractive, it’s not fair and it goes against our sensibilities. When the “seventy times seven” message collided with the tally sheet analogy, I wondered if what Jesus meant was not even just “seventy times seven”. What the questioners in Scripture does is “pose a number” (an accounting we can see and taste and touch!). What if what Jesus is saying is “It’s (always) ten times the number you mention times the number you mention” ?? By that reckoning, when the husband gets to 490 “I forgive you’s”, the number turns to 4900 times that. Just as Pastor Johnson said two weeks back, the number God has in mind is “beyond our imagining”. It’s always bigger and bigger than we can ever write down or reach. And no matter how big it is, Jesus sacrifice for us all is bigger still.

What God seeks from us is a change in perspective, to see a bigger picture, a picture bigger than ourselves.

At the end of the movie Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella, who’s listened dutifully to The Voice and built The Field at great cost to himself and his family, sees the ballplayers invite Terrence Mann into the cornfield, but not Ray, who says “Why him? I built this field!” … to which the player responds, “What are you saying, Ray?” Are you saying what’s in it for you?”. And Ray says that he has done “exactly as he’s been told”, he’s forgiven seven times seventy times. And he bellows “Im saying …

’What’s in it for me?’

Well, Jesus has the answer today. What’s in it for us?

Nothing ……

We’re no more righteous than the next guy, no more deserving. You can’t “build-a-cornfield-your-way-into-heaven”. You have that gift, you had it … before you tried to earn it and build-your-way-in. That’s why Shoeless Joe Jackson tells Ray, “You better stay here, Ray … If you build it, He will come.”

What you get for putting down your clipboard, your accounting and balance sheet is this: freedom.

God put the clipboard down on each of us on the cross.

Everytime … EVERY time you forgive someone, you thank God for forgiving you

... for everything you’ve ever done wrong … and that tally sheet’s a mile long.

How ‘bout we stop fighting over that hymn for Mission Sunday? How ‘bout we stop crying “What’s in it for me?”

If we live, we do not live to ourselves. If we die, we do not die to ourselves. We are called to see “a bigger picture”, something bigger than ourselves. We are called to “build it” so “they will come” … by building it, we earn nothing, not even entrée for ourselves. That price’s already been paid in full. And He who paid it asks this: for us to live as brothers and sisters, to bask in the forgiveness we can never fully understand … and we are called to extend it to others, so we can live in the grace of God.

Kumbayada_yada_yada

2008-09-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 31, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Romans 12:9-21

Matthew 16:21-28

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/8093FB0B-D6F7-C829-028D-F66A5C8CAD69.mp3

Pastor Mohn glibly passes on to us that Pastor Johnson has left the task to her to expound upon “Who Jesus is” this week. She launched into how in Bible Study often someone, after reading a particularly intriguing text from Scripture, will add, “I wish Jesus were here to explain this to us. I wish Jesus could be here to “pull up a chair” and lend us His take on this. She admitted feeling similarly, but not, she said, with this today’s Gospel! When this text comes up, she confesses, she doesn’t want Jesus anywhere near her … for fear of what He might say.

Jesus has high expectations, as He does of Peter today, and he does not shy away from letting us know.

While “the wishing for Jesus” is a natural thing, actually getting Him would be a mixed bag. As with Peter, He may be quite complimentary one minute. The next, we’re no better than Satan. Would we really want Jesus to be with us in all His honesty & up-front-ness, really? After all, He does call a spade a spade. He calls it as it is … pretty much always. And we’re not always comfortable with that.

Pastor Mohn admitted that having been tasked with addressing who Jesus is, she asked several people. And what you find out is there are as many Jesuses as there are people you can ask. No matter who you ask, a person’s perception of Jesus is shaped by who they are, where they’ve been, what they’ve seen – their Jesus is their perception of Jesus, as unique as their experiences, based on their individual stories, their hopes, their fears.

No matter what, it’s safe to say that the question of “Who Jesus is?” is a pretty complicated one. And the answer will not be what you expect. It will not be our mind’s Jesus.

At summer camp, Pastor Mohn confessed to coming to campfire each night resolutely committed to NOT singing Kumbaya. It was old, cheesy, all too accepting-with-open-arms and not confrontational. Or as Wikipedia puts it:

Kumbaya was originally associated with unity and closeness, but more recently is also alluded to sarcastically to connote a blandly pious and naively optimistic view of the world and human nature.

Pastor Mohn admitted “they don’t say ‘come by’ in NW Iowa. Would we ask Jesus to “stop by”, only to stay a very short stint and move on? Wouldn’t we want Jesus to “pull up a chair” and join us by the fire for awhile? Well sometimes we want God to stop by so we can vent, dump it all out and have Him say “What a bummer!”, to listen to our cares and concerns and feel compassion and kinship with us. Also, we’d like to share what we’ve done that’s good and get our checkmark.

But to REALLY ask Jesus to “come by” is something more … it’s riskier than that because He doesn’t just listen, He speaks. And He will say things we won’t expect, we can’t control, and we won’t like. He’ll weigh in on what we’re doing and He’ll task us and challenge us.

Pastor Mohn shared with us that today’s text from Romans was her and Erik’s wedding text:

9Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.[a] Do not be conceited.
17Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"[b]says the Lord. 20On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."[c] 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

The heap of burning coals was quite dramatic, she admits, but she shared that she felt that it might be weighing in on a point Jesus wants to make:

When you’re kind when you don’t have to be, you change the rules.

You leave the person who’s been cruel unsure of what’s supposed to happen next. A devotional I read one day suggested that Jesus didn’t really want disciples who impressed people more than he wanted disciples who surprised people! Left them second-guessing. And Romans offers a litany of “How to’s” on this front. But it’s not a checklist you might aspire to attempt to complete. That would probably drive you crazy, Pastor Mohn admits.

Rather, it’s prescription of how one might try to live ... it's the result of a transformed soul and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Seeing the world this way, as Jesus does, is Who Jesus is. It’s about putting something else - other than self – first. When this Jesus is present, you see the world an entirely different way. And it’s not always comfortable for us. We’re not going to like it all the time.

When Christ is present, there’s room to treat the world in a way that doesn’t make sense – one that allows for God to work. And it will get dicey, sticky; it’ll offend some people, you can be sure.

When we invite God to “come by”, we have to be prepared for Him not just to listen, but to speak. With this invitation comes a burden – the burden that comes with seeking peace and justice – and that exacts a price. This is a costly invitation, one that the campfire song no longer seems to connote.

This was a heavy sermon, Pastor Mohn admits – but the texts are heavy – about God’s great gift and how we each can embody it … by singing Kumbaya … and taking the risk that comes with the offer for Jesus to truly “Come by” ...

Beyond Imagining

2008-08-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 24, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Isaiah 51:1-6
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/1BBF417E-A28C-D7DE-9158-F454AA2C43F2.mp3

Pastor Johnson admitted finding this week’s texts terribly disconnected. Today’s Gospel lessons needs to be seen in the context of the events leading to it and those subsequent to it. That said, we are left with the two terribly important questions. Who do people say Jesus is and “who do you (presumably meaning the disciples) say that I am?”. One of the key insights Pastor Johnson offers us is that Jesus is, perhaps, not addressing the disciples (only). He is addressing all of us when he asks, “Who do you say that I am?”

And Peter gets the answer right! And then Jesus tells him to not tell anyone. Right! You get 100 on the test and you need to keep it to yourself?! Pastor Johnson shared with us what we know – that we humans all share a need to put God in a box that makes sense to us. We need to package God in a way to which we can relate.

But Jesus knows the truth – that no human can fathom the depth and meaning of what God truly is. Isaiah implores us to “look to the rock from which we are hewn, and to the quarry from which we were dug”.

Pastor Johnson just returned from vacationing in Canada where he stood on 15,000 year old granite boulders. Geologic babies – compared with the 1 million year old granite that dots the plane we call home. When you stand on those baby rocks, you are in awe of the vastness of God’s universe and creation. You are humbled.

Many treatises on science quote Sir Arthur Eddington who said of our cosmos:

“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine ..."

If we equate the cosmos with the God who created it and strangeness implies that we have difficulty imagining, we can apply these very words to today’s lesson. God is not only more than we do imagine, He is more than we are capable of imagining. We want God to look and act just like us so He can understand us and give us what we want when we need it, what we need when we want it. As much as we may want to, we cannot put Him in a box, or in our brains.

The Olympics were a reminder in our own living rooms that the world is much bigger than 53213, 53226, or 53XXX. The planet is much more diverse than we ever often stop to imagine. It is all shades of black, tan, yellow, red. It is more than Wauwatosa, more than the small world we allow ourselves to be limited to living in. God is more than a white guy from the Midwest, He is not Democrat or Republican. He defies categorization or characterization as we attempt these. The diversity of creation, the vastness of the cosmos remind us we have no right to be smug or self-righteous.

Paul gets it. He gets that God is more than the law. We need for God to be more than the law. We need grace and mercy – and this is why Jesus comes to offer us what we have not the muster to imagine. Paul struggles with this for 11 chapters and in chapter 12, he reasons that God’s mercy and grace are not something “we can get or understand”.

And for all the struggling, Paul comes up with this, a two-part suggestion:

Present your bodies, yourselves as a living sacrifice. Paul’s “a temple guy”, he gets sacrifice and what it entails. He suggests that “we kill ourselves” – that we empty ourselves, let go of our egos, our demands, our preconceptions; empty ourselves so that we can fill ourselves up with God. Paul was sent with the message that we “empty the well”.

We are, each of us individually, only a part of a greater whole. We are, each of us, only ever endowed with special, unique gifts not to be measured by their size, but by their necessity as part of a whole. We all bring 2 saltines to the mix and together God uses us all to feed the 5000. All of our gifts together are as awesome as the 15,000 year old baby rocks beneath our feet.

But this need to get over ourselves, and recognize our part in a greater whole are both lessons that the world will seldom teach us – in fact, it often espouses pretty much the opposite. You won’t learn much about Paul’s suggestions by watching a world that is not about emptying, bu about winning, about accumulating, about medal counts and gold trumps silver trumps bronze trumps a twelfth place personal best.

If you watch that world, you don’t have to look hard to see what Rabbi Harold Kushner saw – a billboard on the highway in Massachusetts before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that read “You don’t win the silver – you lose the gold.” If you watch the world, you saw what I saw when the USA pole vaulting silver medalist in Beijing, Jennifer Stuczynski, a woman barely vaulting four years place second behind the reigning world champion from Russia. Upon "winning silver", she was crudely and callously chided by her coach on international television for taking “only the silver” … looking at her with disdain in her moment of personal triumph and best, offering only “What can you do? It’s a silver.”

Pastor Johnson was reminded of this by watching the coverage in Canada where stories of athletes performing their personal best were perhaps more compelling than the national coverage in America, stacked as it is around daily medal counts and its obsession with gold and supremacy and superlatives.

In the topsy-turvy world of Jesus, we are offered a different notion:

Be not conformed to this world, but instead be transformed.

There are not enough rules in the cosmos to help you.

Empty yourself … and then ask “God, is there anything I can do for you?”

For most of us (who are not Mother Theresa), this will be something ordinary, something simple – a small but not insignificant kindness, patience in the heat of happenings, forgiveness for a wrong done to you, a moment of not judging someone. It will be a kind word, a thought, a touch or a smile.

Our gifts are not spectacular, they’re not gold medals. God asks of us our 2nd place, our 5th place, our 89th place finish. Why? Because we can.

And He will use your thread as just one among many in the greatest of tapestries, one we may often be too close to see as it is seen from afar, one beyond our imagining, or our ability to imagine, but not beyond God’s making.

Where Are You From?

2008-08-19T01:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 17, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Readings:
Isaiah 56:1,6-8
Romans 11:1-2a,29-32
Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/CB7FEE81-12A7-B502-E8E4-DD5F0B0A8CBA.mp3

Pastor Mohn greeted us today with a confession that she’s on Round 2 of preaching the scriptures and she’s felt, at times, as if she’s out of stories, even ones about her family. So thank God for the Olympics. The theme resonating through this week’s texts is nationality, wha tit means to be foreign, to be from “away”.

The question “Where are you from?” permeates all the readings today.
Watching the Olympic opening ceremonies, we were regaled with images of the host country, its culture, the depth and richness of its country and people. Nation after nation marched into the Bird’s Nest in its own unique attire, with its own unique behavior and mannerisms. What a diverse world we live in and what a cool thing that is to see and realize. It is also a reminder that not every basketball player is American!

One thing that stuck out to Pastor Mohn was how many athletes were not competing for their home country of origin. One story was telling, a woman gymnast whose son was suffering from leukemia, but could not get medical help in her own country. So she moved to Germany, and became a gymnast while her son received the medical attention he required. And they would not play the German national anthem for her until she officially became a citizen. When she had, they claimed her for their own. She belonged to them.

And, yet, she remains from her home of origin as well.

The Olympics showcases this interesting and telling dichotomy. Our national identity says something about “where we’re from”, but it begs an accompanying question …

Is your place of origin as important as we’re you’re from “right now”?

Speaking as a self-professed nomad, Pastor Mohn laughingly recounted how when she and Erik are asked “Where are you from?”, they look at eachother and smile. As a relative nomad, myself, I often share a similar smile with Laurna when we’re asked that same question.

We think “Do you mean the last 3 years? …the four before that. Where I was born? Where my family comes from? I guess I’m from Wisconsin." I know Laurna and I only just this past year can say that we’ve lived in Wisconsin longer than we’ve lived anywhere our entire adult lives since moving out of our parents’ homes.

In Isaiah, the Israelites are not from where they’re from! They are in exile. They’re from Jerusalem, but they live in Babylon. If you ask them, they will tell you they “belong to God”.

“And foreigners who join themselves to the Lord … these I will bring to my holy mountain.”

God has made the net bigger!

Pastor Mohn offers a thought-provoking nuance. Often the question “Where are you from?” begs an underlying question “To whom do you belong? Who claims you as their own?”. This will tell us something about ‘who you are’.

Rcently David Brooks wrote his Op-Ed column in the NY Times pondering why Barack Obama in not leading by a landslide in the national presidential polls. His theory is that:

“ … Obama is a sojourner. He was in law school, but not of it … he was in the legislature, but not of it … he partook in Trinity United Church of Christ, but was not of it … He is in the US Senate, but not of it. He absorbed things from those diverse places, but was not fully of them. This has been a consistent pattern throughout his odyssey … and it does make him ‘hard to place’. We don’t just judge the individuals but the places that produced them. We judge them by the connections that exist beyond choice and the ground where they will go home to be laid to rest … If you grew up in the 1950s, you were inclined to regard your identity as something you were born with. If you grew up in the 1970s, you were more likely to regard your identity as something you created.”

Very telling, indeed, this “where’re you from” conundrum.

In Romans, Paul tells us that God is claiming a wider collection than was previously imagined (by us). Our imagining is faulty in this regard. The message in Romans is also that when Jesus comes and “does this new thing”, he is making the net wider, to be more inclusive.

And then, on the heels of this dramatic message, he calls a woman a dog, he ignores her in a dramatically rude fashion. Pastor Mohn shares that there are many interpretations of why Jesus might have done this. Perhaps he was being ironic to teach the disciples a lesson by proxy, maybe preaching “A”, then doing just the opposite to make a point. Pastor Mohn offers an alternative & truly human interpretation … maybe Jesus was just tired, at the end of a very long day with no gas left in his tank.

Haven’t we all been there? Working away finally at something we need done when the phone rings and we say “Do I have the time for them?” There’s often not enough of us, seemingly, to ‘go around’. Maybe Jesus was saying “Do I have anything left for one more person?” There’s not enough of me to go around.

But the woman answers him directly and forthrightly. She counters

“What if it’s even bigger than we thought? What if the net is, indeed, wider? What if God’s intention is beyond anything we’ve yet imagined? What if our imagination has been faulty ( to this point)?”

What if?

She is wise enough to remind Jesus that every loaf of bread sheds its crumbs that nobody wants. Even if she can’t sit at the table where Jesus is because of where she’s from, she wants those crumbs. She’ll take the scraps. She’s not proud. She knows she doesn’t deserve it, but she’ll take what she can get.

When the body of Jesus is broken, grace and mercy spill out all over the place. We know we don’t deserve it, but we each secretly hope there might be a crumb or two left over that nobody wants, that we can find later when there’s no one to tell us we can’t have it.

When the body of Jesus is broken, there’s plenty to go around. There’s nobody checking ID’s, saying “Where are you from? To whom do you belong?”.

They simply give and we receive … the scraps – that promise peace beyond our faulty imagining, hope beyond all that tomorrow will bring unbeknownst to us, love that is beyond that of a parent for their child.

So .. the answer to “Where are you from? To whom do we belong?” is we belong to God. It’s a miracle that the scraps left over are enough for all – even you!

No More Rules

2008-08-19T01:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 11, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Acts 2:1-21
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 20:19-23

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/7219B46F-94B2-F409-F5F4-C9D82E328734.mp3

“All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”

I am going to leave you now, but I will be leaving you the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter. Why? Well, maybe because He’s like the teaching assistant. The lecture’s over, but the learning is still to take place. And we’re all going to need the help.

Have all of us not done something we wished we hadn’t done, said something we wished we hadn’t said, were in a situation we wished were weren’t in? For all of our sinfulness and rottenness and shortcoming, how does Jesus welcome us? With messages of how far short we’ve fallen? No … but rather with “Peace Be With You”.

The kids, aka the apostles, thought school was out, finals were over. But we’re not being graded (yet) – we’re just beginning. And it’s not just a beginning, it’s a Grand Opening. Pastor Johnson illustrated the moment with images of driving through the streets of Detroit late at night following the search lights arcing through the night sky, driving around trying to locate them. Today, we’ve found the place that’s open! Our hearts and minds can be opened by the power of the Holy Spirit.

If you’ve ever spoken words you know you didn’t speak, spoke up for someone who couldn’t speak up for themselves, were visited at 2 a.m. in your kitchen by someone who came to comfort you, you have been visited by the Advocate. Who doesn’t want to spread that Word??

Today, all divisions – race, gender, age, ethnicity, denomination, religion, country – all divisions are antithetical. There are no more divisions, only community.

To God, there are no foreign languages. The Word of God is not spoken in English. The Living Word must be spoken in all languages. It is not one that reminds us of who’s out and who’s in, who’s down and who’s up, who’s bad and who’s good. There is, today, no longer East or West, slave or free, man or woman. There is no one part of the body to be judged any less worthy than another. Leave the judgment to God. Judgment will block the entry of the Holy Spirit. Each instrument was created to produce a unique sound, its individual contribution to the orchestra, each as pleasing to God as the other.

We hear today “Are these not Galilleans?” The Galilleans were known for not being smart enough to be erudite in many languages. There was prejudice against them and their accents. And these are the very ones God chooses to spread His Word.

Pastor Johnson pointed out that in their home, everyone contributes uniquely in accordance with their gifts: Hannah bakes, Caleb’s the techno-geek, Professor Scott Page of the University of Michigan recently published his research on the power of diversity in human working groups. His research has shown that a group comprised of a diverse set of people and talents statistically solve problems faster and better than a comparable size group of “the smartest people”. This, he surmises, is because diverse groups bring more and different ways of seeing a problem to the table. Professor Page states:

“Any one of us can get stuck. If we’re in groups where everyone thinks the same way, everyone will get stuck in the same place.”

Garrison Keillor has said it similarly when he said,

“Four wheel drive only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.”

The empirical data shows that more diverse cities are more productive, more diverse boards of directors make better decisions, and the most innovative companies are the most diverse in makeup. Even social science mathematical models developed by economists at the Loyola University in Chicago show that diversity trumps ability, that diverse groups of problem solvers outperformed the groups comprised of individuals deemed the best problem solvers.

We all have different gifts and we’re should be spending our time wisely to use them rather than judging which of ours is most beneficial overall. We are often too quick to tout strength as an asset. Yet the propeller on a boat is spared costly and irreparable damage when a shear pin fails. When the pin fails, the design and the overall mission succeeds! The shear pin’s the Galillean in the design and God sees their value in the grand scheme.

It’s the Grand Opening and the Holy Spirit announces:

There are No More Rules!

You thought it was for one people – but it’s or all peoples.
You thought there was but one language, but there are all languages.
You thought it was just America, but it’s for all countries.

We have work to do, but it’s fun work – to find our common ground. Pastor Johnson shared a warm story about Caleb’s summer job cutting grass at a country club, working with nearly all older Mexican workers. They weren’t the same age or marital status, they spoke different languages, ate different food, had very different names. But they once saw Caleb forget his lunch, and they reached in their lunch pails and shared theirs. For days afterward, when they rose at 3 a.m., they made sure they packed an extra bit for the kid who might, again, forget his lunch – the kid 'whose name we can’t pronounce'. They always made sure there was something extra for Caleb. The one thing they did have in common was knowing what it was like to be a young boy who’s hungry.

We have a lot in common: work, school, suffering, hunger, our aches, our pains, and our dreams. Let’s not exploit our differences or judge each other for them. Let’s instead, exploit our differences for the greater good of all.

We have to work so we can reach out to one another, in each others’ languages and say to one another … “Peace Be With You”.

I May Not Know Much

2008-08-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Lay Preacher: Sarah Naumann

Readings:
1 Kings 19:9-18
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/F4888F2A-C7F6-63C9-729B-0473C1ED74B1.mp3

Sarah Naumann was our lay preacher today and what a lucky bunch we were. Her interpretation and take on the Gospel message today was poignant, touching, and powerful.

Sarah’s dad, Mike Naumann, shared a story with her daughter about a co-worker, Pat, whose mother is suffering from dementia and who, herself, was recently diagnosed with a rare form of colon cancer. She asked Sarah’s dad ‘why this happens … why God allows this to happen’. Mike confessed to Sarah that he had no answer for her, that he didn’t know what to say to her.

And then the wisdom in the father shone through. He told Sarah, “Maybe you don’t have to have an answer. Maybe there is no answer.” There was (and is) a storm on Pat’s life like the storm on Galilee. We collectively have experienced the human condition: illness, crises, wars, school shootings, poverty, death … there are a bevy of emotional storms, earthquakes, tornadoes in our lives. And we often, while weathering these storms, feel, at times, as if we are fighting them alone. Like Elijah, we might be calling out “I alone am left”.

In the commencement advisement entitled Sunscreen, the graduates are admonished that if life is a race, “that race is long and, in the end, it’s only ever with yourself”. In our most difficult moments, we may well feel entirely alone or abandoned. We are told today, at those times, to keep sight of Jesus, to keep focused on Him. Yet, even though Peter has faith enough to try, the storm blows and he loses his focus. Within the storm, we are likely to lose sight of our focus and falter and doubt.

There is a great quote attributed to Henry Ford that “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” When Luke first meets master Yoda in his Jedi tutelage, he fails to raise the star cruiser spaceship. He says “I can’t” to which Yoda replies, “THAT is why you fail.”

Jesus, like Yoda, asks us to keep our focus on Him, on The Force. Being human, our faith will waver when we face tough situations if we focus on our circumstances. At such moments, we will sink in the waters. Even when we try to focus on Jesus, we often falter. It’s the human condition.

Sarah offered a brightly hopeful conjecture on why Jesus was able to supercede his human condition with a calling to his divinity.

Before he walked on the waters of Galilee, he made the waters; before he was crucified on Calvary, he made the tree they hung him on. When we have Jesus in our boat, we lay claim to that creation. And we don’t have to reach all the way as Jesus is there reaching out for us.

Tony Snow, former White House Press Secretary, penned a wise piece entitled Cancer’s Unexpected Blessings which Sarah offered as a telling testimony to today’s scriptural lesson:

“ … we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?

God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet don't. By his love and grace, we persevere.

We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God's hand.”

Just as last week, we meet up with the saying “We may not know much, but we know this.” Sarah said we know Jesus implored us “Be not afraid.” Scripture, she tells us, evokes this statement 366 times, one for every day of the year. And we all probably need, at least once a day, to here Jesus say to us, again, “Don’t worry. Trust me. I’m here.”

William Barkley, Sarah tells us, called us all the hands and feet of Jesus. So being without answers to the questions we can’t answer is maybe all too human. Sarah and Tony Snow wisely remind us that maybe we won’t recognize Jesus until we’re in the heart of the storm ourselves.

Two Saltines Worth

2008-08-10T23:29:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Readings:
Isaiah 55:1-5
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/246E9ACE-1450-C481-040A-72AB69F2450E.mp3

Pastor Mohn describes for us, in her inimitable sense of humor, how familiar and rote the liturgy of Church could be to a pre-teenager PK growing up in Iowa. She self-professed keeping a checklist of the weekly goings on and that she’d check each off as it occurred … just precisely as it had occurred the week before.

One of the trademarks of ‘the familiar’ is it’s obvious when deviation from it occurs. Ask a child who sings a song by rote memorization and they can (and will!) spot the very first deviation from its meter or lyrics. And apparently so it was one Sunday when Pastor Mohn’s father noticed one Communion deacon shy in the count and no one ‘on the bench’. He arose to fill the void. This was not on ‘the checklist’. Pastor Mohn recalls thinking “How did he know it was supposed to be him?” (to take on the role of Communion deacon in absentia). Well, her father responded, ‘somebody had to do it’. Pastor Mohn remembers this being a transitional moment, one in which her thinking about the liturgical procession of the service moved from one of passive observer to possibly one of active participant. And this led, ultimately, to a path to the seminary (Thank you, Lord!). Pastor Mohn then shared that she’s pretty sure that’s happened, at one point or another, to most fo us. Why? Maybe … because it’s supposed to.

Today the disciples are called … by Jesus. When told by the disciples that the crowd is hungry. Jesus responds, “You feed them”. Of course, we know their response is one of “We have only five loaves and two fish”. Translation: we haven’t enough to remedy this situation at hand. We don’t have what it takes. This problem is bigger than any solution we can offer. Sound familiar?

Jesus’ call today is this:

“I called you. So bring what you have.”

So what’s the protocol? Well something interesting happens when we’re brought face-to-face with our meagerness, with the little that we do have. Two things rear their heads:

We’re made more aware that we really don’t have much … and

We’re often reticent to show how little we really have.

All too often, when asked to feed the crowds, we will have to own up to only having a measly two saltines.

We might think “My little 2 saltines can’t make a dent.”

“Just because I don’t know what to do, there’s nothing can be done (by me anyway).”

Well, there’s thousands of reasons and rationalizations to stay seated. There’s only one reason to ‘get up’ …

Get up and feed the crowd … either at ‘the shore’ or at the Communion rail.

… and you ‘get up’ by trusting the one who called you, who sent you.

Remember the God and Spirit modeled Jedi master Yoda who chides Luke Skywalker “Judge me by my size, do you?” The scriptures are lined with references cautioning us against making such judgement(s).

God will work with whatever little you can bring. God will make it enough. Instead of nay-saying, perhaps we might learn from the disciples who said “If He says so, let’s give it a shot!” When Luther spoke and wrote on ‘good works’, he said what God wants is your two saltines worth. When you look at your familiar checklist, keep your eyes open. There may be something unfamiliar lurking around the next corner. You never know when the world might look different. Being aware for that moment is a blessing.

In the great movie Good Will Hunting, Ben Affleck portrays one of Will Hunting’s playful Southy sidekicks in Boston. He is no mathematical genius and is in every way ordinary. He is portrayed very adeptly in stark contrast to the boy prodigy. When Will is struggling coming to terms with his great intellectual gift, Affleck challenges him by saying “You’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket and you’re too scared to cash it in. If you’re still hanging around here in 20 years, with all due respect, I’ll kick your hide.” Will says “You don’t know that” … to which Ben replies:
"Let me tell you what I do know. Every day I come by to pick you up, the same way every day and we go out … and we have a few laughs. But you know what the best part of my day is? For ten seconds before I knock on the door …'cause I let myself think I might get there, and you'd be gone. I'd knock on the door and you wouldn't be there. No ‘Ga Bye’. No ‘See ya’. Nothin’. You just left. Now, I don't know much. But I know that."

Translation: Keep a cautious eye open. You never know when the familiar may give way to the day there’s no answer to the knock on the door. And that may be your call to rise and feed the crowd … with your two saltines worth.

Blog, Blog, Blog Revisited

2008-08-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

OK, so it's not going to happen. Catching up, that is. So we're back to weekly blogging of the sermon-of-the-week. There were some great sermons this past spring and early summer that I just never got to. The blogs on these may no longer be timely, but the messages are still great. So I hope to post these as "golden not-so-oldies" (appropriately labeled) ususally mid-weekly. In the meantime, I hope anbody reading (or until so recently having read) the weekly blogs can return with their coffee and donuts for Monday Morning Quarterbacking ... This QB (while admittedly not Hall of Fame caliber) did not, despite reports to the contrary, announce his retirement from blogging and then blog from churches in Minnesota, NY and Tampa Bay ... oooops, sorry.

Reach Out & Touch Someone

2008-08-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Readings:
1 Kings 3:5-12
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/E930C8EF-0605-3680-B58B-CFB6C2E76CC4.mp3

All three readings today relay two crucial things: that God is active in the world and in our lives. Also that that world can (and is often) a dark place in which it is hard to see God at work. In Romans today, Paul is intimately aware of the power of the Dark Side.

He is aware of what characterizes its power over the human soul. Its element of the unknown and fear, its ability to (without enormous efforts) bring about chaos and create conditions that have us feeling as if we are without options. Heath Ledger in Batman: Dark Knight engenders these devil-like qualities in his portrayal of The Joker. In a much older movie, The Chase, there is a devil-like figure of nearly equal (if less eerie) hands-offish-ness. Both characters remind us of the power of the devil to create such chaos and breeding ground for evil “without much effort”, as if to say “it didn’t take much”. Like a match before a pool of gasoline, it doesn’t take much. That gasoline is emblematic of our sinfulness. We’re wired for sin, for failure in the face of dwindling choices, for succumbing to fear and death; we wired to do wrong to one another. In The Chase, the devil-like character prods humans in a moment of vulnerability to turn on one another by their own choosing. It’s critical to notice the devil never lifts a hand against anyone – he simply gets us to “do it to one another”.

The character Kaiser Soze in The Usual Suspects has a memorable line when he says, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. In Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the devil is pictured as a cloaked androgynous figure who walks stealthily just beyond the crowd on the walk to Calvary. The devil preys on our feelings of there being no way out, no hope.

Pastor Mohn shared with us some of the writing of John Polkinghorne, physicist and theologian, who points out that when a child cries out in the middle of the night, a mother’s instinct is to reach out and tell the child “It’ll be fine. Everything’s OK”. Pastor Mohn paints the face of a bemused child that stares back, as if to say “Well, it’s not … can you see I’m crying?”

Translation: The world is not ‘an OK place’.

As much or as often as God reaches out to all of us to remind us that He loves us and He’s here. God is telling us today that He is the haven from the storm. Nothing can take that away: (not) death, nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nore height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God …’

And Pastor Mohn pointed out an important dichotomy. You can say ‘It’s OK’ all you want, but sometimes it’s just not enough. The baby needs for the mother to reach out and touch them, to touch the fear and the anxiety and quell it with a hug, with real, palpable contact. Analogously, God has reached out to us repeatedly through the disciples, the prophets and one another. But, at some point, He deemed it necessary to be among us, palpably, to allow us to see Him as one of us, reaching out to touch us and say ‘It’ll be OK’. The Word become flesh to quiet the crying infant in the night who is afraid and ‘not OK’.

Research indicates that touch is a critical feeling for a newborn infant. Babies that are not touched grow up with different pre-dispositions to feelings of hope calm, reassurance. I’ve written more than once (too often) in this blog that the Rabbi Harold Kushner has hypothesized that the Hebrew word for (Adam’s) ‘rib’ is ‘side’ indicating that when God created woman, He was creating another ‘side’ of God, presumably the ‘Mother’ side, the side that reassures us that all will ‘be OK’.

Pastor Mohn leaves us with this question: ‘How is the rest of the world to know this reassuring God today?’

The answer: ‘He sent you. He sent us.’

Reach out and touch someone …

The Ascension Train

2008-08-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Readings:
Acts 1:6-14
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

Just before the reading of the Gospel, we sang an African Alleluia. It was moving, prompting many feet to go a tapping in pews.

From this dark spot on the Earth a great light.

Luke, in Acts, has his quill scorching the parchment to tell us without a doubt that Jesus is The Messiah, that Jesus IS alive. What is occurring is not random. It is fitting like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. But it is important to remember that how that puzzle falls into place is not for us to know.

Don’t get stuck, then. Just because things do not work out just the way we thought they would doesn’t mean The Plan is not playing out as it should. He will bring it about through the power of the Holy Spirit. In Samaria, Jesus broke all the rules, talking with women in the light of day. It is here, at the well, to a woman, that He reveals He is The Messiah.

So we say, “Yeah, but ….”

To which Jesus replies, “When the time comes, none of this is going to matter.

Luke’s message is “This si the Messiah for all the people.” And first the people use their ears, then their eyes. They watched, then they gazed, peering, seeing a cloud, This cloud they SAW with their own eyes. This was no random act, but a vision with a strong Biblical connection. A cloud is a holy sign signifying God’s presence. Clouds, by day, pillars of fire by night. It is noted that two saw this cloud, reminiscent of the Talmudic indication that it took two witnesses to affirm that something has truly taken place. A note that twp witnesses were present assures us that Jesus IS alive. By prefacing this story with the fact that these witnesses were a Sabbath’s day’s journey away assures us also that the witnesses were reverant men following the law, unlikely to lie about what they saw.

If you don’t believe these guys, you haven’t got a lot going for you!
Luke knows that when hard times come, when we’re on the last lonely journey to recovery or salvation, we’d better have something going for us.

Like the apostles, we’re all wanting for something to happen. We find ourselves saying, “Lord, when are you going to take this off my shoulders? … Lord, is it today you will fix my marriage or my relationship with my kids?” And Jesus answer, Luke assures us, is Yes! If Christ is alive within us, our brokenness will be healed, our sins forgiven. This is why Luke works so hard to get us on the Ascension Train. This train is bound for The Promised Land. The cost of a ticket: to humble ourselves. Cast all your baggage aboard. No charge for a second or a third or fourth bag. He’s here to carry your burden. There’s no weight limit here. This IS your Father’s train!!

You know the feeling once your bags have been stowed overhead or beneath and you can relax in your seat? Then, climb aboard the Ascension Train. But, Luke tells us, there’s a catch: we have to be ready. We can’t let the Sabbath go, we can’t not pray, we can’t forget our devotions, we can’t not sing at the beginning of the day, we can’t not plead for forgiveness, we can’t not gather together. We can’t not humble ourselves before the Lord.

And … we can’t pray enough.

When we’re dropping the kids off, in the grocery store, in the car, on the playground.

I know this, Luke says, because there WERE witnesses. They were good men and women. This, then is The Good News. On the Ascension Train, we have everything we need riht here, right now …

Meet Them Where They Live

2008-08-06T07:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Readings:
Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

Pastor Johnson pointed us to Paul’s encounter with the Athenians. He illustrated some of the history of the times. This was a Post-resurrection Greece with no real Church yet; so far, just a cult religion, not born of the urban center, but rather by a carpenter from the countryside. Remember how they claimed ‘Nothing good can come from Nazareth’?

Paul ginds himself in the center of all things intellectual, the center of mathematics and Euclidian geometry, architecture, the burgeoning libraries. Greece of these times was a great center of learning respected for that. Paul then proceeds to engage the people in intellectual discussions, on their own turf. So let’s see, he wants to engage the Athenians in an argument on behalf of Christianity. How does he go about this. How do you engage an intellectual people in a discussion of theology? With ‘shoulda’s’? … ‘you betta’s’? … by wagging your finger? Well, this never works, and Paul knows it. Paul addresses them:

“Athenians … I see how extremely religious you are.”

He engages them on their real estate, in an area in which they are already passionate. In Paul’s time a hallmark of the intellectuals was how pious they were. He succeeds in telling them that God is a God who takes care of us. He sees to it that the lion and lamb lie down together, that brings Greeks and Romans … and Jews to sit down together, forgiven of their sins.

If want to tell the story of this God, Paul knows you don’t hit them over the head with it; you engage them by joining them in their life. Pastor Johnson shared with us the story of how his pastor and mentors of 81 years gave him a Confirmation Bible with the verse from 1st Peter written inside. Underlined was the reference to respect for their ethnicity, their religion, their habitat, their ‘stories’.

If you want to deliver the message, start by asking:

“Tell me about yourself”.

Everyone has some heart, some wonderment within them.
You will most likely not tap into that with ‘shoulda’s’, ‘coulda’s’, fire and brimstone, and preaching fear. Pastors who are out of touch with gays, with single Mom’s working for minimum wage, with mmebrs fo their congregation with their own stories risk missing a chance to deliver God’s message. Paul knew the Athenians were apt to listen when they first heard they were a religious people. Jesus knew the woman at the well had her own life in which she was entrenched when he said, ‘I know you’re having a tough day. Can I have a drink of water?’. In the tree top, Zacchaeus answered the call of first ‘Hey, come on down. I’m having dinner with you.’. At the washing machine, in the doctor’s office where a diagnosis is handed over, people need to know God knows what they are feeling. We need dreams, hope, and affirmation.

So ask about their stories – what brought you here? What are your doubts, your fears, your apprehensions? After we trade our stories, there is time and space enough for the Story that can not be contained. In that Story there is a voice that says, “I know a God who can help allay your fears”. This …THIS IS the Good News.

We Need Every Bruce We Can Find

2008-08-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Readings:
Acts 7:55-60
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

Pastor Johnson offered up the notion that as a pastor, one does a lot of funerals. And that they have less to do with death than they often do about affirming a life; they are less about passing to what’s next than about having lived a life in Christ.

Jesus is not (and never was) about the GOP or the Democrats, about consumerism or the economy. If we follow a life in Christ, we admit, we don’t need it all, we don’t even want it all. We’re much more about sharing, and not leftovers, but our first fruits. We’re about losing life to save it, about visiting the prisoner and giving up the ‘holier than thou’. Real Christians don’t sleep ewasy when kids go hungry, when homeless are sleeping in cardboard boxes. Unless we are sacrificing parts of out comfortable lives for such, we are not living ‘The Way, The Truth, and The Life’. It’s not about ‘those Muslims’, ‘those atheists’, ‘those Catholics’.

It’s more about what Bruce saw and what Bruce did.

Bruce was a non-practicing Jew who did not believe in God. On his 6 weeks of vacation, he provided free medical care at his own cost to the underprivileged in India. Bruce knows The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Bruce is a lover, a healer, a crusader, a respector, a carer. He wwas not a Catholic, a Methodist, a Lutheran.

Organized religion has its strengths, but it also gives power to the voice that continues to say ‘women shouldn’t be pastors, gays should not be pastors or even Church members’. Can women or gays be disciples? Maybe we’d best leave that to God to sort out on judgement day. In the meantime, we need every Bruce that we can find. Every Bruce that knows we don’t any of us win until we all win, that we are our brother’s keeper. Remember Pastor Johnson’s ‘fort friends’? Ricky, Christine and Mike? We’re all running from something. Once, we had a fort where we’d take stock … with Tommy Tucker who smelled, but he was funny; Frankie Schnobel who was a garbage picker, but he always had band-aids when we needed ‘em; Louie Shemansky whose bossy sister none of us could stand, but his Mom was the BEST cook. Yeah, that fort where we all had something we were running from, but to which we all somehow brought something. For we all bring something to the soup and, for all our eventual faults, we all have our saving graces.

Let’s let it to Jesus to say ‘who’s IN the fort’. He’s the real Truth, the Way, and the Light.

The Fort

2008-08-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Readings:
Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

“Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand …”

The analogies of The Teacher do often confound, at least in the near term. But as one wise teacher confronting his own mortality once said, “It is really important to master ‘the head fake’ … that move that teaches people things they don’t realize they’re learning until well into the process.

"Head-fake learning’ is absolutely vital.”

So if the disciples were struggling with this analogy, let’s grab another. Einstein claimed ALL learning was by analogy. Another great teacher postulated that the brain was wired to hang analogies on analogies, and, they were wired in triplets. So if one failed, but you had managed to ‘hook or anchor an understanding on another’, you could connect them ‘upstairs’ and continue the climb to enlightenment.

So Pastor Johnson today provided one such hook: the sheepfold as safe haven, a fort against adversity.

A sheepfold is constructed by the shepherd out of flat stone (and lots of it!). The shepherd builds walls to shoulder height. It’s a one-man job. Atop the walls, a shepherd places thorned bushes and shards of cut glass to disway predators. The sheepfold is a SAFE place. There is traditionally one, single opening, one-way-in, by the gate. The gate is as wide as a single sheep. It is where the shepherd sleeps astride the gate. The warning is voiced: all who would harm these sheep must first pass The Shepherd. The shepherd will lay down his life for his sheep. The sheep know the sounds and rhythm of the shepherd’s voice.

Sheep, in general, are nearly blind. They will not wander from the sun into the shadows, but if the shepherd’s voice calls from the shadow, they will come, knowing they have “no evil to fear”. When we are baptized, we are called into the sheepfold, within the walls of that safe haven.

Pastor Johnson painted a picture of the four walls that separate the sheep from the world of predators without. The first wall is the wall of teaching: the sermon and teaching of The Word. Within this one encounters the wall of fellowship where ALL are welcome and the message is one of inclusiveness. We pass the peace and acknowledge that entry is not about income, race, party, status, cars or bank accounts. We shed the world’s labels. Further within is the wall of the breaking of the bread wherein we admit we come to this place WITH NOTHING. Having shed our labels and our possessions, we are, here within, ALL EQUAL. Herein, we experience Christ’s call to a joint priesthood. Our strength comes from our brokenness. A Catholic priest who was a mentor to one of my most favorite priests in our parish growing up once told him “If I were to make you a priest, I would break your heart.” Finally, the fourth wall is the wall of prayer, the wall you ‘take with you’ when you exit the gate.

Within these walls, you can be mad, sad, honest, tell secrets and they will stay in these four walls. In these walls, we are healed, we are forgiven. Jesus, Himself, promises us that He has prepared a reserved place in there for each of us. Jesus says, “I, myself, will turn down your sheets.” That voice of the shepherd within the walls says “We have it all”. This is counter to the voices in the outside world that say “We want it all.”

Pastor Johnson recalled a band of friends he had as a kid: Ricky, Michael, Christine and himself. They had a ritual after school had let out. They would build a frt, a paradise in a field. A fort .. within which they were invincible! They made it out of tree branches, cardboard, plywood, complete with secret door. Inside – they were safe. “No one could see us, reach us, hurt us, “ he said. In this fort, we were ALL THE SAME. It was the great equalizer. We shared all the food … Ricky brought the PBJ’s, Gary the candy bars …Christine was welcome even with her contribution of warm Kool-Aid with no sugar. What they did not share was that they were, much like a congregation or a sheepfold, all there for different reasons (at home). Here, no one could touch us, not even our homes.

Pastor Johnson has called us, called our Church, to be that fort, that sheepfold … where ti matters that you’re here and it doesn’t feel the same when you’re not. Where you don’t only come in to hide and escape and get away, but you come to be fortified against whatever the outer world is hurling at you. Where you are called to be strengthened and strengthen your neighbor to allow you to take the fort with you into that world outside.

Pastor Johnson’s voice became calm and soft as he opened the gate with words spoken in a fortifying and resolute voice:

“Whatever the world throws at you, I won’t say it won’t hurt you, but it won’t ‘get you’ … because you belong to the Good Shepherd.”

Blog ... Blog ... Blog

2008-06-10T23:10:00.001-07:00

OK, it's taking longer than I thought, but here are four more and the rest are on their way. If you're curious what Brett Favre and Lazarus have in common or Joe DiMaggio and the apostle Thomas, it's here to ponder.

That Disappearing Jesus

2008-06-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Readings:
Acts 2:14a,36-41
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35

Jesus on the road to Emmaus is a rich piece of art. We can often be looking at it and not see all its subtlety and texture. In the breaking of the bread, it’s Jesus. No, it’s a wafer.

Jesus doesn’t always show up as we’d expect.

Pastor Johnson concedes that he loves “that disappearing Jesus” … now you see Him … now you don’t!!

It begs the question, “Why did not the disciples recognize Him?”

One of the problems we have in not knowing Jesus is that He doesn’t expect perfection in us. He knows us intimately in our brokenness, at our best and at our worst, in the sacred and the secular.

Archaeologists can’t say, exactly, where the actual physical road to Emmaus lies. What Jesus’ disciples discover is that …

The road to Emmaus is NOT a place you find … it’s one you’re already in!

Fredrick Buechner, a favorite of Pastor Johnson’s, put it aptly:

“And where was Emmaus? And why dd they go there? It is no place in particular really, and the only reason that they went there was that it was some seven miles distant from a situation that had become unbearable. Emmaus can be a trip to the movies just for the sake of seeing a movie or to a cocktail party just for the sake of the cocktails. Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred”

Whenever it seems like there’s nothing else you can do, no more you can bear, when it seems you can’t bear the weight of it anymore, it’s time to hit the road to Emmaus.
We all have been there … where it’s all muck ‘n mire, the cold and frightened and twisted places in our lives.

We like to stick Jesus on Easter Sunday and leave Him there.

But, truth is, on Monday morning, before 7 a.m. there’s a little kid spillin' milk all over his sister and Jesus is there mopping it up. He’s there in The Everyday and we don’t recognize Him still. Buechner says we may be like the disciples in more ways than one. He surmises the disciples might not have recognized Jesus when he returned, in part, because they failed to recognize Him when He was alive in their presence. And that because they had not seen Him as He actually was, but, rather, as they had wanted him to be. Sound familiar?

God is too big to be contained in any one form. He looks like the young man, the angel, the gardner, the fisherman, the stranger, the alien. In the movie “Oh, God”, George Burns comments on humans not expecting him to look as He appeared to them.

“I figured a fishing cap and jeans would do. What were you expecting? I tried the sandal and robe gig. It worked back then, but it wasn’t right today.”

The ending of the movie is quite poignant when, as God is walking away across a field of grass, He simply disappears. The point of the Disappearing Jesus is that …

God reveals Himself by hiding!

He appears under contrary appearances. Jesus is everywhere, but you can’t hold onto Him in only one form. He’s bigger than that.

Pastor Johnson read Billy Collins poem Questions About Angels in which Collins pens:

If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume the appearance of a regular mailman, & whistle up the driveway, reading the postcards.

Pastor Johnson shared a personal story of a weekend some time ago. Within the last 48 hours, he had gotten word that his Dad was very ill and his best friend was diagnosed with a fatal illness. It was the week of Vacation Bible School in his previous parish. The goings-on of the kids was just too much happiness to bear for him. He had retired to his office. He shut the door and with it, shut out the world. He was on the road to Emmaus. After reminiscing, crying and preparing his sermon, he heard a knock at the door. He ignored it – didn’t want to hear it. The knock came again, and again it persisted. He answered and in came a 15 year old, a Confirmation student he remembered well. She had come to help out with VBS. She was mute with a terribly misshapen head from a traumatic birth. But, he recalled, she never missed a single Confirmation class. She never once spoke. Pastor Johnson was surprised to see her. Drained of energy, he wondered why she was there. She said nothing for 5 minutes that was an hour if nothing longer. And then she hugged him – an enveloping bear hug – and it came out of nowhere. Now you see it, now you don’t.

Like the disciples on their road to Emmaus, he didn’t get it, Pastor Johnson confessed.

“But – to this day – 24 years later, my heart is still burning."

Such is life with The Disappearing Jesus on the Road to Emmaus.

Jesus and the Yankee Clipper

2008-06-10T22:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Readings:
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

The week immediately following Easter Sunday is sometimes dubbed Low Sunday – low attendance, low energy, low emotion levels. But a wekk later Jesus, again, greets his disciples in the same way. Why?

Maybe it’s because the Easter season is not a single day. Pastor Mohn paints a picture of what is in “the continuing” on after that eclipsing Sunday morning. Why is it important that Jesus continue to return, in a sense??

It is clear that Jesus returned on Easter in a mountain top experience, but he’s back today. And he’s back for Thomas, a repeat performance, if you will. Why?

Pastor Mohn gives us two good reasons:

He’s back for Thomas. He’s back because Jesus will continue to return for every last sheep, even the very last one. Jesus needs to be there in person for Thomas and so he comes. I had a great Professor in my undergraduate studies of mechanics. His name was Harry Conway. I remember a lot about him, but one of the many things that will always stick with me was his answer when asked why he spent so much time with students. He said, “Well, first, I don’t spend so much time with the A students because they don’t need me. It’s the B & C students I long for because they need me.” And Thomas needs to see Jesus … and so He comes. For Thomas, THIS is the 1st time he’s seeing Jesus so for Thomas TODAY is Easter Sunday, the day he sees the risen Lord. Thomas can truly say “This is MY 1st time seeing Him.”

As I heard Pastor Mohn say these words, it evoked memories of Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.
It’s reported that when a reporter pointed out that DiMaggio had already proven himself as an All Star caliber center fielder, he asked him why he continued to play his heart out, all out every game. He told the reporter,

“Because there might just be a kid up in the stands who’s never seen me play before.”

Maybe it was some kid from Brooklyn or the Bronx’s first time seeing The Yankee Clipper glide across the grass of center field in majestic Yankee Stadium. So he showed up and suited up again, and did it all over again with all he had. He brought his best to the ballpark every day.

And that leads to the second reason Jesus came back again. It’s us. We can all get lulled into “our old routine”, “our old rhythm” – same old Church altar, same old songs, same old sermons … Now rhythm has its merits, it’s important, but it can hide and mask the magic of Easter morning, just one week old. We need to be here, like Jesus and Joltin’ Joe, because it may be the first time somebody walks into our Church, and that somebody may need a hello, or a hand or a handshake from us. Jesus is no longer here, but He is here in us. Somebody we will cross paths with today has, perhaps, never experienced Jesus, or needs to experience Him again, anew today. They may have heard about it, but they need to put their hands in His side, literally, today.

One week later, and we often remain locked up in the upper room … for fear of whatever. Something’s locked us up and drowned out that voice of Easter morning, that voice that calls to send us out to “play center field” … cause somebody needs to see it or “it’s their 1st time”. We need to come back because Jesus has promised to be here … for every sheep’s 1st time … We are called to be that Jesus to our neighbor, to share the vision of that great rebirth, to extend a hand, and, maybe, bring Thomas back with us.

Unfinished Business

2008-06-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008

Readings:
Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10

It’s Easter morning and we take ourselves into the cemetery to see what’s happened. As Pastor Johnson attests, it’s not unusual for pastors to spend a fair amount of time in cemeteries. That place where Mary and others want to see the tomb.

Cemeteries proffer a mixture of feelings. They are a place where memories pour over you like the deluge of a waterfall under which you plant yourself to await the wash. Memories … happy and sad, recent and remote, ephemeral and lingering, born of unfinished business. Therein lie lots of unfinished hugs, kindnesses you had hoped to extend, arguments you had intended to end, apologies you wanted to offer, closure you sought to attain. Lots of unfinished business in cemeteries. Sins of omission, things we said that we shouldn’t have said, things we did that shouldn’t have done.

It all happened so fast. And then it all got crucified on that cross.

Jesus returns to us today on a triumphant note. He comes proclaiming:

“Aloha!”
“What’s hangin’?”
“See ya …. I’m off to Galilee!!”

Why Galilee?

It’s the place …. The place where the thirsty drank, the hungry fed, the blind were given sight again, where the storms were calmed, the 500 were fed, where little children have a voice, where great things happen.

That’s Jesus message today … “I’m outta here … I’m off to that place where great things happen!”

Pastor Johnson smiled as he raised an eyebrow, saying,

“Remember … when you’re in the cemetery, this is not the place where things end. This is the place where the road to Galilee takes off!”

We should not keep our fears to ourselves. There is, perhaps, no greater fear than the fear of death. And today, the Good News is “Death no longer rules, no longer trumps. Death is no longer hanging over us. So go and do His business in the world. You’ve been freed from these shackles. You are now free to build a home for your neighbor who needs one.

The message is so HUGE it’s hard to contain. Even the tomb can’t contain it!
Even the squalor can’t restrain it. The message finds its way to even a Church basement in El Salvador where hundreds of refugees are stowed away, where the ruddy face of a child baptized by a priest afraid for his life shines forth the message. The hope in that message is powerful. It transcends fear, bullets, squalor, darkness, basements, even death.

You can almost hear Jesus’ voice saying, “Tell the boys I’ll see ‘em there.”
In Galilee …

The road to Galilee leads to a place where all your broken dreams come for restoration, where all your fears, where your lost and forgotten dreams, where all that you hold dear, where your losses and hopes, all come to rest and rise again.

An Interesting Legacy

2008-06-10T22:40:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Readings:
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

Audio sermon link:
https://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/4C469A32-58D3-1379-689C-505CEA1C59E0.mp3

As Pastor Mohn started out her sermon, she mentioned, as often happens, she discussed her sermon with husband, Erik Gronberg, Pastor at Dr. Martin Luther Church in Oconomowoc. He said, “Whattcha gonna preach about Lazarus?” Upon her response about a planned approach, he replied “Well, you’re gonna preach Favre, aren’t ya?” As only a blog originating in the remorse-laden down-state areas of Wisconsin might attest, the message of Lazarus rising from the dead and the recent hanging up of cleats by one of the NFL’s most relentless of work-ethicists have something in common. Throughout Green Bay and beyond, there were more than shades of grief over the announcement of Favre’s retirement from professional football. There was a palpable sense of loss permeating conversations around water coolers (excuse me, bubblers) and coffee machines. If you didn’t know better, Pastor Mohn pointed out, you’da thought he’d died!? There was a sure-fire sense of a legacy left behind.

Number 4 played with reckless abandon, and inspired those around him to hope and believe they could go an extra yard, gain an extra step, gain an extra first down, reach further for a grab. People were resonantly disappointed that he’d leave and let the fire that was his presence be dimmed. The people around Jesus in today’s scripture reading are similarly disappointed that Jesus took the news of Lazarus’ dying without rushing or hurrying to his friend’s side at his time of need. They were disappointed in Jesus for allowing this light that was Lazarus to go out. But Jesus had a different plan. Lazarus’ illness was to be used as part of that bigger plan – to glorify God in his raising from the dead.

In Pastor Mohn’s aptly chosen words,

“That’s an interesting legacy.”

Even when what happens to you doesn’t seem to, it will be used “for good” by God, in God’s way, in God’s time. It’s interesting because is does not always conform to our view of how the plan maybe should be played out. And interesting because our understanding is not integral to the plan God has chosen to reveal His glory to the world.

Jesus DOES care and he truly grieves for Lazarus. His grief is REAL. But there is NO TONLY death. Jesus turns the tables, in a taste of what’s to come. If the blind man of recent scripture texts has been chosen to lead a “purpose driven life” in having his sight restored, it may be, Pastor Mohn notes, a “purpose driven death” through which Lazarus is chosen to illuminate the glory of God.

If this sounds too dramatic, too martyrdom-ish, death is never really as far from us as we’d like to think. It’s as close as The Cross.

Relative to God’s timeline, the length of any human life is but a left parenthesis on a much longer abundance beyond this life. If that left parenthesis is defined as much or more by its ending than anything in its Earthly duration, this may be an interesting legacy. And a twist on our interpretation of the importance of life’s length as contrasted with its abundance. As Pastor Johnson has reminded us several times, Jesus promised us not a long life, but rather an abundant one.

The season of Lent focuses on our mortality and our limits. The reality is we always give our money, our resources, our time, our lives to something. What are your dreams, the things you devote your best hours and your best self to? It’s an important question in life because very day, they cost you another 24 hours and, in the end, they cost you your life.
Each of us receives a call in Baptism to die and rise every day – the dietism and the Tree of Life. Each of us will give our life for something.

What are your dreams? To what are dedicating your life’s efforts? What are you giving your life for? What’s it costing you? What are you willing to pay?

Pastor Mohn casts a cloak of responsibility over this notion when she reminds us that we’re challenged in our answer to this call. We are challenged in that our answer to the call may require that we change to make that calling happen. Recently in Lent Pastor Johnson ended a sermon by leaving us with this thought:

It’s not sinful to leave your feet planted firmly on the ground, but if you’re willing to change to heed the call, if you’re willing to “ride the wind”, if you’re willing, like so many of Favre’s foot soldiers, to believe and to hope and to aspire to an extra charge then what can and will happen will be nothing short of extraordinary.

If we put our own notion of The Plan aside, if we are willing to trust and believe, there’s always another chance for life – as close as tomorrow morning. As Jame taylor sings:

“Another day, another day
Another chance that we may finally find our way
Another day.”

Another day, another chance to play with reckless abandon, and inspire those around you, not all too unlike Numero Quattro, to hope and to believe.

Return of The Blog

2008-05-18T04:29:00.000-07:00

OK, it doesn’t star Jimmy Stewart and maybe it’s just in time for summer when everybody takes a hiatus, but I’ve been off-line too long. Consider this the Return of the Blog. What you’ll find is a few select sermon blogs from Lent soon to be followed up by the sermons of the Pentecostal season. I think the Lenten sermons are telling in that they are referred to quite distinctly in the Word that follows Easter. In a strange way, maybe the connection backward will be more transparent for the delay. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll be back on track. Be sure to look for audio file links ot the sermons at the start of each blog or just click on the links on the Mt Zion home page (www.mtzionluthercan.org).

The Complacency of Hope

2008-05-18T04:17:00.000-07:00

Readings:
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

Audio sermon link:
http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/BFF89116-D8DD-4C4F-C43B-D7DA7B3DCE39.mp3

Everyone’s confused. What’s up??

God looks beyond outward appearances to read what is in your heart. He looks beyond the anonymity of David as the 8th child and sees in his heart that he lives th 23rd Psalm. He was the King no one thought would be King.

Oddly enough, there is a level of comfort in being well-enough off and helping a blind beggar. But we don’t want the donkey cart turned around. It’s not always a welcome thought that it is in times of illness, crisis … it is hard to believe that it’s in times like these that God is really at work. In the sinfulness, in the blindness, in the shadows, God works His ways through us and through our blindness.

Why, Pastor Johnson asks us, do you think mud is wiped in the blind man’s face and washed away before he sees??

To remind us … mud comes from dirt and dust, that of which we are made. It takes water to wash our nature away and cleanse us, the clear the way through the dirt enough for us to really see. Our Baptism (the waters) is what allows us to walk out of the darkness and walk with Jesus. Just as David is not the likely choice to be King, so the blind man is not the likely choice. It’s all supposed to look more official than this!

But Pastor Johnson reminds us it takes a certain humility to accept that it is our Baptism that enables us to see, that it’s our Baptism that takes us from mud to the light of walking with Jesus.

We take our sight for granted.

“Only once you appreciate and accept your ‘mudness’, are you able to open your eyes and see.”

Not too long ago, I and my family walked away from what, on any other day, any other time, would have been a fatal car crash. My children in my arms, alive and OK, I slept very differently that night of the accident. I awoke very early the next morning – in fact, I arose very early for weeks afterward … very much more aware that this day before me was a gift, a gift I did not deserve. A gift from my Baptism. The mud had been washed away from my eyes. I went to school to see people arguing over what that day seemed like petty annoyances, but about which I might have been just blind enough to have argued just days before. A good friend shared with me that I'd be seeing the world through new glasses ... for awhile. They were right.

Before we are shown the light, had the mud cleared from our eyes, it is too easy to be complacent in our mirage of self-control. It is too easy to dismiss hope in favor of cynicism masked as realism. Many’s the time a messenger of hope arose that he was greeted with the proverbial “We’ll decide when we need to hope, thank you very much.”

Every green light on our way comes from above.

Even ones we may never see ourselves to the other side of. We cannot see Him until we humble ourselves. We can’t see Him through eyes that are cynical, focused on laws and rules, through day planners filled with “the daily routine”. There’s a lack of humility in our thinking we know where we’re going.

Pastor Johnson shared a story that repeats a theme he’s spoken on before – the possibility for change, to “make a new thing”. Pastor’s Uncle Sonny was a happy drunk, one of those characters that told great stories, did voices and impersonations, told the best jokes, did card tricks. One day, he stopped drinking and got sober. And funny thing was he was still funny, still told great jokes, still lit up a room. God broke through his barriers and “made a new thing”. But the reaction to that breaking of barriers was not unlike in so many other families. Nobody really wanted to believe Sonny’d gotten sober. Not yet, they thought. He’s only this far away from his next drink. There was a weird air of cynicism, almost disappointment. Disappointment in a a weird way like when someone we thought of as “behind us in line”, fatter, slower, somehow takes themselves up by the boot straps and passes us up in line, loses weight, takes the lead. We view the world through the microcosm of ourselves at the center.

There is disappointment because it shed light on the rest of the family’s drinkers … those still choosing to hide behind their own ‘mudness’. “Uncle Sonny, hemade us look good … or at least OK”. His was the distraction you looked at ‘over there’ that prevented you from seeing the ‘mudness … over here’. Without that, people just might look for the next best thing. Maybe us?

We’re still not humble enough to see our own mudness, choosing rather to hide behind the façade of another’s, we’re still unable to see. We’re still complacent and not realizing we’re in need of a better brand of hope.

Lent is a time for us to turn some of our focus inward enough to see the mud. Inward enough to look at what’s really there, inward enough to allow the sight there to humble us, humble us enough to a point where we can ask for the waters of Baptism to once again flow over us on Easter and make us see.

Water Enough

2008-05-18T04:02:00.000-07:00

Readings:
Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

Audio sermon link:
http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/A0E5455E-933F-E254-339C-E8BE45C1F045.mp3

Today we hear the unforgettable story of the woman at the well, Jesus comes out during the day, at noon specifically, in order to be there when no one is there, to encounter a woman, a marginal member of society. It is known that women in Jesus’ day were marginal, accustomed to being discarded. The woman at the well remains intentionally nameless to drive the point home.

But this is no ordinary story. In his encounter with the woman at the well, Jesus undertakes the single longest conversation with any single person in the entire Bible. And it’s with a woman. It’s rich, deep, and profound. And it’s real. It’s not a patronizing lecture. Jesus makes her the centerpiece of his revelation: that He is the Messiah! Of all the ways in which to be born … in a manger, a cave. Of all the ways to announce you’re The One … to a woman, a person without name, status, rank, pedigree, power. Today Jesus brings us face to face with this woman. She almost brings us to shame. There are undertones of shame at her very image image. Shame over ourselves, our society, our culture for how we can marginalize with discrimination. And this shame, Pastor Mohn reminded us, has a power in its ignorance, its denial.

Pastor Mohn reminded us that Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House says a lot about how far we’ve come. It’s a positive thing, but it also reminds us that we are still discussing gender at all. Gender still matters … today. There is a refusal ongoing, to fit into some prescribed series of expectations that challenges us and challenges our culture. Hillary has stood as a monumental figure to many women today, a symbol of transcending those expectations.

And in his conversation with her at the well, this is precisely what Jesus is doing. He transcends the culture and its lowly expectations. He invites her in. He gives to this woman the gift of his attention, of a story of a people God has not discarded. He lives the story in the telling of the story. By encountering this marginal, nameless person at the well at the height of day, He is announcing the message that ALL are invited to the table!! All are invited and welcome in His house … where God provides “enough” water, enough to sustain us. The message He brings is of a God who provides enough water, enough sustenance.

Now, as with the encounter with Lazarus next week, this story almost guarantees misunderstanding. Jesus is beginning to undertake the discourse with humanity of coming to terms with our brokenness. He is venturing into spreading The Word that He has come to “make a new thing”.

To be an inspiration through your actions is a true calling.
It is water enough.

For in so doing, it calls to our inner prejudices, our inner demons and it calls us to a better place, a higher ground, a grander purpose, a place where there is water enough.

Until I Heard The Voice ...

2008-05-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

Readings:
Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Audio sermon link:
http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/2EE8DA73-76FB-207B-6703-12AA2E32DAB2.mp3

In today’s Scripture readings we are told of two calls, the responses to which are different.

Nicodemus knows Jesus is “the real deal”, “the guy”, but when Jesus speaks metaphorically to him, he doesn’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. We like a world that makes sense. It’s our nature to try to make sense of things. We like to think WE are in control. We crave things predictable, we look for and gravitate toward routine

But ...

… with God, nothing is routine.

Pastor Johnson used a great metaphorical expression himself when he said:

If you want to travel with God, you have to ride the wind, not knowing from whence it’s come nor where it’s going.

If you truly want to follow God, it’s a scary thing lacking in security. But I heard a great sermon once where the preacher said, “If what you’re after is security, you better forget about ecstasy!! It’s really hard to be after both.”

Traveling with God is risky. Remember, Jesus has reminded us in Scripture that “the Son of Man has no home”. In traveling with God, we may be asked to leave family, friends, home, security, familiarity … for the cause. Nicodemus is the 1st born son. If he leaves, he will incur the wrath of his family, he will have abandoned family obligations, skirted rigid and well-defined cultural expectations. And when He is asked WHERE he is going, Nicodemus is told “to the land I will show you”. Not very specific … like this is no AAA trip-tick. It’s almost for sure an open-ended proposition. We’ll be asked to go to a place we don’t know where it is …

Readers of this blog will have to forgive the seemingly constant analogies to Dyersville, Iowa, but Ray Kinsella is asked by “a voice” to “build a field” because “if he builds it, they will come”. Nothing too specific about “they”. Later, after asking for, begging for clarification, he is told it is to “ease his pain”. No reference to whose pain or what kind of pain. One of Amy Madigan’s memorable lines from the movie is “This voice is not very specific, Ray!!” Townsfolk and fellow farmers more than once think Ray’s lost a few marbles plowing down his crop to build a field in hopes “they” will come and ease “his” pain. When pressed to abandon the folly, Ray often responds with “I don’t know … I just know I’m supposed to do this.”

We are told by Scripture today that we are to trudge on for the cause even when we lack as much detail and specifics enough to make us comfortable. We are told that anyone who questions us, curses us, calls us crazy, God will deal with. We are told to let God deal with those that would stand in our way … we are to just listen to “the voice”, the call.

The second call was that to Abraham who heeded “the voice”. Most of us are not sure “we’re going to make it”. All kinds of people telling us we shouldn’t go. And yet Abraham delivers … Ray Kinsella knows he must continue on.

There is an old Gospel spiritual that chants:

“Abraham, what God is this that requires your only son?”

It’s the God with The Voice that is hard to ignore. And one that if we choose to ignore it (for a time), returns again and again. Abraham is called by That Voice to do the thing he thinks he cannot do.

For this time next year, Pastor Johnson reminds us …

… someone will be singing in the choir who thought they couldn’t sing
… someone new will be volunteering at a homeless shelter
… someone will see something unjust on the news and it will eat away at them

Do we ride the wind … or keep our feet planted firmly on terra firma? If we avoid the risk and trade it for security, we will miss the thrill of the ride that only the wind can offer. If what we’re after is security, we can forget about ecstasy.

It’s not a sin not to ride the wind … but what we’re gonna miss is nothing short of … … ecstacy.

Our Limits and Our Hope

2008-02-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

Readings:
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/5E148954-9828-244D-9C6E-8E9FF6364E43.mp3

In what was reported to be the worst snowstorm of an already long and cold winter, churches all over southeastern Wisconsin cancelled their Ash Wednesday services this week. On what was arguably one of the coldest days of that same winter, we at Mt. Zion Lutheran Church met for weekly service and celebration to join, for the first time, the distribution of ashes and the celebration of the Eucharist. For what may perhaps be a once in a lifetime happening, we were about to experience what Pastor Mohn termed “a profound confluence”.

Not only a reminder of our limits, but …
At the same time, a reminder of our hopes.

In the Gospel today, the telling of the story of temptation serves to remind us we are often and continually tempted to:

(1) Lead an easier life … often at the expense of others
(2) Show off or boast … whether it be something as different as our faith or our worldly possessions
(3) Grab as much power as we can muster … after all “Who better to run the store than ourselves?”

But, ultimately, the story of the temptation of humans is not that interesting. Because it always has the same ending. They give in.

It begins in Eden. We’ve been trying to “be God” ever since. The story always ends in death. The ashes we have placed on our foreheads today remind us of that eventual (and unavoidable) destination.

So why get up on the coldest day of the year and go to church to hear I’m going to die?

Because the ending of Christ’s story changes the end of all of our stories – and for the better. The ashes remind us of our death. They are traced out in a cross, a reminder of our hope, our redemption, a victory over death won for us by Jesus’ sacrifice.

Pastor Mohn told a remarkable story of an Ash Wednesday service she and Erik attended when she was in seminary. She said she watched a little boy walking up to receive ashes near the Baptismal font. When the child approached, he said “Over or under?” Wjen his Mom asked “ … over or under what?”, his reply was “Does the water go over or under the ashes?”

Pastor Mohn had a unique insight to what she called a most profound question … posed by a child. Do the ashes that are a reminder of death go above … or below … the water that reminds us of our redemption? She did not know the answer. The child asks the profound question … Does the eventuality of death loom over and cloud the hope or does the hope rise above and vanquish the unavoidable death?

We were reminded today that God is present in the apparent tension between things that seemingly can’t be held together. In an essay published in Esquire magazine near the end of his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald observed:

“ … the test of being fully alive in the world is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should be able to see that things are ultimately hopeless, and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

Mortality and, yet, hope

The trespass and, yet, the free gift

Today is about reminders. Today we experienced a remarkable and profound confluence of opposing realities. There is inevitably death and, yet, in a sacrifice owned by Jesus, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked by God, there is, as Emily Dickinson so eloquently penned, “the thing with feathers” … hope.

And God is present in the tension.

Backstage Pass

2008-02-08T02:56:00.000-08:00

Readings:
Exodus 24:12-18
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

Audio sermon link: https://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/52932BC0-41A0-D4F6-F90D-F7E83081CC9F.mp3

Today we were given the eye-opening metaphor of witnessing the Transfiguration as being invited backstage to met the great music stars and heavyweights. We are asked to imagine ourselves in that enviable position where we might ask the greats to “play that one song” for a private audience of one. It is a moment we wish would last. We have often heard preachers speak of “mountaintop experiences”. Today we hear about “the backstage experience” we’ll only ever have but once.

In Peter’s case, the excitement yields to the voice in the clouds at whose sound there is real fear. This goes beyond “a backstage moment or meeting with Jesus. He warns Peter not to tell anyone about the meeting ’until this other thing takes place’. Jesus, himself, is setting up the drama of His eventual walk to the Cross – when white gives way to purple, as the Halle, Halle, Halle – luiah is ‘put away’ until Easter, a premonition of the quiet time of Lent.

Yes, Pastor Mohn reminds us, we’re tempted to think of Jesus as the star (recall two weeks back He pushes aside the title of ‘The One’), the star very few ever get to see in concert, the one even fewer get to meet, the one delivered to concerts in limos via back door entries, someone protected by security, always separated from others by the stage curtain.

But, as Pastor Johnson brought front and center two weeks ago, Jesus reminds us the curtain will be torn, so the table can be open to all. Jesus will defy and forego His stardom to say “Come on in, one and all”.

We are suckers for power and stardom. We really need 40 days to ‘get’ the understanding that Jesus’ power is in poverty, exclusion, isolation. Jesus sees the invisible and goes to the place of pain and makes His home there. Jesus’ power is in death turned into life eternal.

We need the shadow to see how the light can transform our lives, so that we can come to a place where we cannot help but give thanks for the light of the world.
This is a very different kind of star, unlike any we have ever experienced. He welcomes us backstage, all of us, because he wants us to know we are all alike, no one better than the other, no one to be excluded - all called to further welcome one another.

Now some would say if just anybody could go backstage, well then it would lose its allure. What Jesus says is that a backstage where everyone is welcome is the only backstage we can accept. And He says “Now wouldn’t that be a place to be?” And then He opens wide the door and says “Come on in”.

The Jesus Dimension

2008-02-08T02:28:00.000-08:00

Readings:
Isaiah 9:1-4
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23

Audio sermon link: https://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/F9897C35-6F6D-AC9A-6088-1E2A56C9DD99.mp3

Pastor Johnson reminds us that like the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali who took a whoopin’ at the hands of the Assyrians, it is in those times when an army called Katrina shows up and hits our neighbor, when we see suffering like that, we are in a peculiar place. The Bible reminds us that when people of faith are crushed down, pushed down, in utter despair, in that place where what we have worked so hard to accomplish has been taken away from us – in these moments we are closest to God. When we are in moments of despair in our lives, we need to listen for God is very near. There is the Persian proverb that says:

"Only when it's dark enough can you see the stars"

God says, “I know what you are feeling, believe me …. From you Naphtali and Zebulun will come a light that will allow people to no longer walk in darkness, and that light will come from you”

It is easy to get caught up in the despair and suffering in our lives and it is easy to imagine that is all we have then. If we think that we can fix this and try to control the situation, then that is all we have. At these moments, God is certainly trying to intervene, but God’s efforts will go unheard if we don’t stop and listen.

It is even harder when someone else is in their dark moment and you are called to listen for God and assure them that they will get through this.

Lesson #1: How do you listen for God’s voice? You listen at all times and especially in times of despair.

Lesson #2: How do you keep from arguing with one another? We don’t have time for discord – there’s way too much to do. We haven’t time to jocky for position and status, to listen to our own ringing voices. This discord blocks out the sound of God’s voice speaking to us.

And then Matthew pens a tale …“Once upon a time, a man named Jesus came to Capernaum …” … what a ride, and the lesson?

You can’t respond to God’s voice if you insist on living your life business as usual, same-old-same-old, if you’re not willing to step outside of your lives into the realm of possibilities!

Zebedee finds too much comfort in his daily routine. Although sometimes he’s bored and he ekes out a living, it’s what he knows and he will not leave his comfort zone. There is part of us, too, that does not want to step outside of what we know. We like control, having our expectations, our day planners. That does not mean we are not disciples nor stop us from being worshipful, but it might … it just might impede us from hearing an invitation to what’s possible – from hearing a voice calling us into a place that will take us on the ride of our lives. In the poetry of The Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam asks:

Why ponder thus the future to foresee,
And jade thy brain to vain perplexity?
Cast off thy care, leave Allah's plans to him -
He formed them all without consulting thee.

There is something in the voice of Jesus that can wake us up to “a different life”, a different dimension called Jesus Land that is scary and unknown. Now how do we hear this voice? Everyone hears it a different way – some in the majesty of the Eucharist, some in service to another, some in a moment of kindness and sacrifice by someone else toward us…. a moment of realization that Jesus died for me and I have to do something about that.

We’re talking about more than politeness. This is what a life in Christ is like. It’s service without credit, humility so deep your kindnesses are almost invisible, and THAT’S a step into another dimension ... because we ALL want to be noticed.

It’s bringing peace where there’s discord, bringing kindness where there is meanness, always putting the best possible light on people’s behavior, believing in the impossible.

I have read some 7 volumes of mountaineering chronicles, of adventurers who have climbed all of the world’s elite 8000 meter peaks. And Pastor Johnson is coolly correct about this – these climbers are all intimately self-involved. You would think you almost have to be just to survive the conditions (except the Sherpa people tell us a very different tale). In his book Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortensen, who has just failed his attempted summit of K2, the second highest of the great 8000 meter peaks, shorter only (but harder to summit) than Everest, gets lost descending down the mountain and stumbles into a village in Northern Pakistan. And the local natives take him in. He is so taken by their complete hospitality that he vows to return to build a school for the village’s poor children. The villager’s listen, but do not expect him to ever return. But somehow, he manages to raise enough money to build a school for the children. Fast forward and he has continued this work and has, to date, built some 57 such schools.

What can I do about this problem or that, about problems so large and daunting and overwhelming that one person cannot possibly put a dent in them? When we think that very thought, this story of a "failure" turned majestic can convince us of what is possible. As the poem from the Rubaiyat reminds us ... to "cast off our cares .. for Allah made his plans without consulting us". We are called to cast off our personal cares and take the plunge into "Thy will be done" land.

And when we think that's not realistic, that we can't make a difference, that we are too small, too insignificant, we are reminded that ....

All we have to do is say we’ve had enough. Because when we’ve had enough of children going hungry, when we’ve had enough of people having no heat, when we’ve had enough racism, when we've had enough inequality, when we've had enough of people not being able to see a doctor, when we;ve had enough of poverty amidst wealth, illiteracy amidst ivory towers,when we’ve had enough of kids going to school with no backpacks, When we’ve had enough of it all?????? Like Howard Beal, the self-professed network anchor turned modern day prophet in the movie Network, we can go to our windows and open them up , and shout “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take this anymore”!!

At these moments we can step up, step out, step away from our fishing nets, we CAN "casy away our cares" and walk away from business as usual, we can step into the Jesus dimension and there ... there will be enough. Jesus will make it enough. Enough to feed 5000, enough schools to teach thousands upon thousands ...

You have NO IDEA what will happen when you step into the Jesus dimension. But you must listen for God’s voice calling you.

Finally there is the line in scripture: Repent for the Kingdom is near. We too often use repent as a punitive word. It does not really mean “to punish” as much as it means “to change”. The Irish speak of “the thin places” where you find God. The thin places are not on mountaintops, in sanctuaries. They are found in those unbelievable moments when you realize something’s different right now; that’s the moment God is calling your name, calling you from business as usual, calling you to walk into another dimension, reminding you that you are not alone,

… assuring you … yes, assuring you that you’re up to the task –

that all the things you thought you couldn’t do, will be done
that all the people you thought you could never be, you’ll be
that all the differences you thought you couldn’t make, you will make

We’ll Leave the Light On For You

2008-02-08T02:13:00.000-08:00

Readings:
Isaiah 49:1-7
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42

“We’ll leave the light on for you …” Probably everyone remembers Tom Bodett’s ad campaign for Motel 6. Tom Bodett’s a self-professed road-warrior-turned-writer. He recalls how he adlibbed the line at the end of a 1986 commercial shoot, claiming it “just came to him” as one of those things you hear now and then that makes you feel welcome and secure.

As Pastor Johnson pointed out, it wasn’t ever about pools, cable or “the amenities”. 'Cause there aren’t many. It was meant to say that “it felt like home”. Home is not about amenities. Home’s much more about hospitality, about feeling welcome and secure. All the amenities in the world can’t give that to you.

Or, as Pastor Johnson aptly put it,

“It’s not about hors d-oeuvres; it’s a philosophy, a morality.”

Some “hospitalities” are proper, hierarchical, scripted by rules and Miss Manners. They’re earned, delivered if you’re worthy; they’re not just for anybody. But true hospitality comes from the moral heart. It is an open invite, all encompassing, never exclusive. The morality of hospitality carries the corollary that it’s immoral not to be hospitable.

Jesus gave us His example when john the Baptist claimed Jesus as The One. Jesus’ reply is not that He is The One, but, on a much more even-handed note, he says “Come on over” … aka "We’ll leave the light on for you".

In as much as we are to follow His example, Church community doesn’t start with discipleship, it starts with hospitality. Jesus built His Church one convert at a time, by His hospitality and welcoming arms. I’ll never forget the day, where I was sitting, when I first heard Pastor Johnson say

“There’s nothing … nothing sweeter to a person than the sound of their own name.”

Remember that, and it means miles more than an invitation laden in gold. The only gold inlay that matters are the open arms of “You’re welcome here”.

Pastor Johnson reminds us of the story of Zacchaeus, a con artist and tax collector of his day, who climbs a tree to hear Jesus speak. Zacchaeus is no elder statesman. But Jesus calls to him regardless and yells, “Zacchaeus, I’m comin’ over to your house”. He bestows on Zacchaeus the feeling of being welcomed when he thought he'd be (and had gotten used to being) rejected.

When the youth choir from St. Pius recently sang at Mt. Zion, what they couldn’t talk enough about was the coffee hour, the donuts, the fireplace. They couldn’t get over the people asking them to come back .... living "We’ll leave the light on for you" ... "Y'all come back now, ya hear?".

Hospitality IS that transformation that occurs over a donut, a cup o’ joe, a conversation. That’s why it’s ‘a fellowship hall’, not a ‘ya’ll don’t belong hall’. We are called to LIVE the Gospel of Hospitality. A voice that you hear over your shoulder saying “Are you lost. Can I help you?”, a tap on the shoulder and a gentle “What’s your name?”, a smile and a “Hi, nice to have you with us this morning. Come back anytime … anytime.”

Remember the voice of Ray Kinsella when Shoeless Joe Jackson, a man without a home, asks if he can "come back". Ray’s response, “Yes … I built this (field) for you!” Then when Joe says “There were others”, Ray does not hesitate in answering “They’re ALL welcome here.”

In the tablecloth that comes from the sky in Peter’s dream, Jesus was introducing him to the concept that everyone’s invited to the table.

“It’s a big, big table with lots and lots of food! It’s My Father’s House.”

And ALL are invited. It’s not about rules anymore. The protocol is erased by Jesus.

Pastor Johnson retold the story of being invited to the house of his Greek professor in college. The room was full of PK’s (Pastor’s kids) – those who had a membership, of sorts, by blood. Pastor Johnson remembered the freshman feeling of not belonging. The “nervousness that’s nervous to be you” ... The house was a testament to world-wide travels, art on the walls, real food with napkins served at food stations. And his professor’s wife spoke to him and asked if she could show him their home. Imagine that? He did belong, after all. The “nervousness” was melted, or begun its melting, with the words of personal invitation into a world that one might have otherwise thought exclusive.

The testament to the moment is that 40 years later, he still recalls that conversation. His welcoming to the world of the belonging. On his professor’s wife’s passing, he wrote a letter to say he “pays it forward” by trying to be that person for others when they happen upon his doorstep. Because of her, in testament to her witness ... a voice that, when we otherwise could have been “too busy”, says “Come on in”.

Yes … transformational hospitality is a holy moment … a moment when a voice calls out “Come on in. We’ll leave the light on for you.”