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Pentecost 6, July 20, 2025
Tree As Witness
Genesis 18
The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him.
If you visit the city of Hebron in Israel, you can visit Abraham’s Oak that tradition says is where Abraham welcomed his three visitors, ones who told him he and his wife, Sarah, would have a son. That was difficult for these two senior adults to believe without laughing. So, when their son was born in due time, they named him Isaac, which means “he laughs.” Did the Oak at Mamre chuckle too?
The tree in the photo here is thought to be one of the oldest on Earth. It’s named Methuselah and is a White Bristlecone Pine that’s been living in California for 4,850 years.
But an even older tree root system is called Old Tijikko and has been living in Sweden for 9,560 years. If you look up a picture of it, you won’t be impressed because it looks like a skinny spruce tree. It’s the root system that has survived and cloned itself for millennia.
While what’s above ground can be significant when it comes to trees, it’s the root system that really matters. It can keep sending up shoots and new growth if the roots go deep.
This story of Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality to the three mysterious visitors under the oak tree, is one of those deep roots in our faith system. That was over 4,000 years ago, so the root system of Christianity is that ancient. In the scheme of things, it’s not that long ago compared to some trees and organisms still living today. But for we humans who live for such a short period of time – considering we refer to 65-year-olds as “seniors”; the faith of Abraham, Sarah, Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene is ancient indeed.
We are just little shoots from the roots of our faith. Abraham welcomes without knowing who these three are (Christians often say they are the Trinity). He responds with generosity, actually amazing generosity with a literal banquet in those ancient days. It’s not a ham and cheese sandwich picnic under that oak but more like a wedding banquet.
This story under the Oak of Mamre reminds us that faith doesn’t spring from the roots of knowledge but from the courage to remain open to what exceeds our imaginations. Take your wisdom from the oldest trees and let your roots go deep and strong. That’s staying power!
Pentecost 5, July 13, 2025
The Parable of Parallel Worlds
Luke 10:25-37
25 An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
29 But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
If you have been part of church for all or just a part of your life, you have heard this story called the Good Samaritan, read, taught, and preached at least 50 times. If you were a kids’ Sunday School teacher in the 1950s or 60s, you probably had those paper doll Bible characters with strips of sandpaper on the back and acted out the story on a flannel board. That was high tech back then. We had the man beaten in the ditch, we had the characters of the two Temple employees, priest and Levite, coming down the road, then we’d peal them off the flannel and move them as they passed by on the other side of the road. Then came Sam the Samaritan on his donkey helping the beaten man.
Jesus told this parable, a story to teach us about the Kingdom of God, in response to the law professor’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” And for a long time, the moral of this story has been taught in the same way: You should be helpful to those in need just like Sam on the donkey. And while Jesus was and is a champion of love and mercy to all people; just to have “help your neighbor” as the only thing we get out of this story, severely short-changes the parable and vastly underestimates Jesus’ deep message to us.
Remember, Jesus is creating this story to teach something about being neighbors in the Kingdom of God. Jesus wasn’t crucified and silenced because he taught people to be nice to each other. Something else is at work here.
In those days since Sunday School teachers were placing Sam and his donkey on a flannel board for 6-year-olds, teachers and scholars have done some great work bringing to light clearer understandings of storytelling elements from the 1stC when Jesus was preaching. We’ve learned more about Judaism and about the relationship between Jews and Samaritans in those ancient days. Because of that, we’ve been able to excavate this parable to some new depths.
One helpful thing Jewish and Christian scholars have pointed out recently is that in this parable, Jesus uses a very common literary device that we still use. It’s the rule of three, like The Three Little Pigs. The first one builds his house out of straw and the big bad wolf can blow it down. The second builds his house out of sticks, wolf blows it down. The third little pig builds his out of bricks and the wolf is done in. We know “Goldilocks and The Three Bears,” and so many others. But when we hear such stories or such jokes, we know the first two of anything aren’t going to be right, but the third bowl of porridge will be “just right.” Ancient Jews had a rule of three as well.
Whenever they heard a story where the first two characters in the story were a priest and then a Levite, they expected that the third one to come along would be an Israelite, because it always was.
If the moral of this story was to teach us to be kind and helpful to a fellow neighbor in need, why not just say that the third guy was a nice Israelite? Why did Jesus complicate the story by saying the third person who did the right thing, the merciful thing, was Sam the Samaritan?
Remember that because of history, religion and culture by the time of Jesus in the 1st century, these two peoples absolutely hated each other. Jews wouldn’t even walk through Samaritan territory, although the gospels tell us that Jesus would often walk through those lands on purpose. They didn’t speak, didn’t touch, didn’t eat with each other. It seems that this disgust was more intense from Jews toward Samaritans rather than the other way around. So, for Jesus to blow up what seemed like a sweet story of helping your neighbor by contaminating it with a disgusting Samaritan and realizing that the guy in the ditch was allowing himself to be touched by such a one; was almost too much. One of Jesus’ superpowers is his ability to poke the bear.
Remember, parables are about what God intends for us, what the Kingdom of God looks like when we see it. At the beginning of Luke’s gospel, he tells the story of the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary of Nazareth telling her that she would have a child. She asked the logical question, “How is this possible, since I’m just a young unmarried girl?” The angel’s response, “Because with God nothing is impossible.”
You might barely remember that 300 years before the angel appeared to Mary, a man of genius named Euclid, often called the "father of geometry", lived. He was a Greek mathematician who taught at the Library of Alexandriain Egypt. His theories are still taught today, were known in Jesus’ day. One of his teachings had to do with the theory of parallel lines, lines that when they are always the same distance from each other cannot, Euclid said, ever cross in this world, but perhaps can cross somewhere in eternity.
“Somewhere in eternity” is where Jesus points us in this parable. Jesus closes this story by instructing the law professor to “go and do likewise” which we have taken to mean lend a helping hand. That’s not a wrong takeaway; it’s just a superficial takeaway. Let’s move beyond the flannel graph lesson. The key question to ask of Jesus’ parables is: How do they point to the Kingdom of God?
Jesus probably didn’t know Euclid’s theories of parallel lines that never intersect in this world, but he lived among people who had become righteous and haughty about their agreement to disagree and live parallel lives separated by mutual disgust. Isn’t that the worst kind of “agreeing to disagree?” So, Jesus poked that bear with the law professor who had already quoted the requirements of the law from scripture, “Love God with all you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Go and do likewise Jesus said, break the laws of geometry for love of neighbor. With enough love and justice, we can enable parallel lines and parallel people to intersect. The Kingdom of God is coming and it’s already here for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. With God all things are possible, not just one day, but this day.
We are baptized into this hope and this possibility. To be a baptized community into the death and resurrection of Christ means we are often breaking the rules. The rules we live and survive by like: “it is what it is”, “that’s the way the world works”, or “we’ve agreed to disagree”. Those are the infections of our lives that constantly beat us up and toss us half dead in the ditch.
Christ shows us a still more excellent way. He’s an amazing shepherd carving a way out of no way, laying down paths of righteousness in fields of corruption. All is never lost. In this we are washed in baptism, lines are crossed, walls tumbled, peace made sure, and life is absolutely worth living.
Pentecost 4, July 6, 2025
Two By Two
Luke 10
1 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.
This story from Luke of Jesus sending out his disciples two by two in mission might remind us of Jehovah’s Witnesses riding through town on bikes with their white shirts and black pants knocking on doors. Or it might remind us of evangelism programs in the 1980s that encouraged folks to go out in the neighborhoods with church brochures and loaves of bread door to door.
Such “cold calling” made most people very uncomfortable. Worse, those in our Lutheran community once thought it seemed too much like something Baptist or Pentecostal churches would do. Our preference was to have strangers come to our church doors as first time worshipers. We preferred for the ones we hoped to reach with the gospel to feel awkward and vulnerable rather than ourselves.
Today we have distanced ways of reaching out in mission through social media or platforms like Gloo Connect that can help us reach those anonymous folks who tune into our worship livestreaming services. Jesus didn’t have all this stuff, of course, but he had a deeper strategy for mission than just instructing the disciples to get out there and knock on as many doors as possible in a day. His instructions were very detailed as this scripture records.
For many, the most interesting instruction is the requirement to travel light, actually ultralight. No bags with food or money or an extra pair of underwear. They even are to go barefooted. They simply have the clothes on their backs, the fire of mission in their hearts and the teaching of Jesus in their heads. It will be enough.
This makes them quite vulnerable when they knock on a stranger’s door and introduce themselves and their purpose. Jesus seems to anticipate that at least some will receive them and show them the hospitality they would desperately need. They will be hungry and will have sore feet in need of a soak. The missionary’s vulnerability is met by the stranger’s hospitality.
I find this interesting because it seems to me that this missionary script is flipped in our time. We haven’t gone out two-by-two for a long time. We have big comfortable “houses of worship.” The visitors are the ones who are vulnerable now and seek our hospitality. Visitors are vulnerable here in 2025 because those who come now often come empty-handed. They also travel light, ultralight. They have no religious upbringing, they don’t know the language of worship or spirituality, they don’t have much of a clue how to believe, behave, or belong. And yet, while so vulnerable, they feel called to knock on our door. We stationary missionaries are the ones now who offer hospitality to the vulnerable.
Even though times have changed immensely since the first century, this meeting of the vulnerable and the hospitable is still playing out. How do you see it in your mission field?
Pentecost 3, June 29, 2025
What is NRSVue?
Welcome, Readers!
For those who count on me (especially other preachers) for commenting on the scriptures for the coming Sunday, sorry to disappoint you! This week at my congregation, we are putting the Pentecost 3 texts aside and focusing on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, always recognized on June 29 since about 345 CE.
I wanted to invite my SQBS followers to my second Zoom Talk on the recently published updated version of the New Revised Standard Version. My denomination’s publishing house is switching all printed and digital copies of the Bible to this version. That final switch will happen on Monday, June 30.
Follow this link to register. You will receive the Zoom Invitation a few days before the event. I’ll spend the hour sharing some history of the many versions of the Bible, tell what this new version seeks to accomplish, and share examples of a few of the 20,000 changes made to the NRSV. Don’t fret, most of them are grammatical!
If you are a pastor, please feel free to invite members of your congregation to join as well.
I hope to see you then! When you join, let me know you are a SQBS reader.
Pentecost, June 8, 2025
And On We Go
Acts 2
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Much of what is told in the gospels is all about the events of Jesus’ life (birth to resurrection), as well as things Jesus said and did in between that birth and new life. At Pentecost, the story 50 days after Easter Day, a shift happens. The risen Christ becomes the ascended Lord. Now all of us disciples are left staring up into the clouds mumbling, “Now what?” It was a very reasonable question.
Yes, Jesus had spoken about not leaving them abandoned by his death or his “I won’t be with you anymore”-ness. But what really did all that mean? It was hard to imagine. Being a called disciple didn’t mean you always understood what Jesus was talking about. It just meant you were called to listen and learn as best you could.
For forty days after Easter the risen Christ spent time appearing to various disciples and kept teaching them. Then on Day 40, he ascended into heaven. For the next ten days, I assume the disciples were holding a very long discernment retreat. On the 50th day after Easter, they were all together in one place, with their retreat sticky notes and newsprint up on the walls recording their individual answers to questions like, “What I think Jesus would have us do if he was still here…” and “On a scale of 1 to 5, how confident are you that Jesus will return in the next two weeks?” Just when Peter asked, “Who wants to share first?”, a mighty wind blew through the windows and sucked all the sticky notes right off the walls. They knew that often in scripture God was present in cloud and wind. Next, they saw a flame above the heads of each one and yet, not a hair was charred. No one had to say it out loud, but they all thought, “This is what it was like when Moses saw the burning (unconsumed) bush!”
Scripture says they were filled with the Holy Spirit. They were filled with the power of the Spirit and empowered by it. One sign of this power was their ability to communicate the gospel in many languages. Yes, it was a miracle of communication, but more significantly, it was a miracle of community. That community abides today as the Christian Church, even with all its flaws and failings. Today, we are the faith descendants of those original Pentecost people.
The questions before us this Pentecost 2025 are: What sets your hearts and your hair on fire now? Where do you find your passion? What concern/issue/injustice/need keeps you up at night and how might the power of the Holy Spirit work through you to address it? How do you tell that gospel story that burns within you?
These were all things our ancestors in faith had to figure out in their generation. They made mistakes. They squandered opportunities. But they were also brave. They were willing to be guided in a new direction. They trusted that God was truly in the wind and fire, and in their messy ministry. They had a lot of “what now” questions and so do we. We have gratefully inherited the trust and confidence in God of those first disciples. And so, with Christ, we continue to abide. And on we go, in Jesus’ Name.
Easter 7, June 1, 2025
Encounters
Acts 16
6 One day, [as Paul and his companions] were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. 17 While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” 18 She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.
This story from ancient Philippi is longer than I quoted here. Crack open your Bible and read it to the end. What you’ll notice is that the woman in the story disappears. She fades into her new life. Did her run-in with the Spirit of God and the missionary Paul make any difference in her life? Was the future of the fortune-teller impacted?
As we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Spirit on the gathered disciples on Pentecost Day, this story helps us pause and ponder the multitude of ways the Spirit enters in. While many of us (though increasingly fewer of us) walk our journey of faith in the midst of a local congregation; there are others who do not have these long-haul relationships. It wasn’t so long ago in my current ministry site that everyone living within a mile radius of Pilgrim Lutheran attended that church. It was the center of the community. As you can imagine, our context has changed exponentially.
We all have encounters with individuals or families that are simply an episode in both our lives. The unknown young couple with two children who come to worship a few Sundays in a row, who tell you how meaningful the service was to them, who tell you they haven’t been involved in a church before, but this place feels like home to them. By week three they disappear. Address never known. Or the man living in his car who comes by the church at a desperate moment. You give him the $20 he says that he needs for gas, listen to the story he tells you. Say a prayer. Wish him well.
Really, a lot of life and ministry are episodic. But what I’ve also discovered is that even the one-off encounters can be amazingly impactful. There were many characters in the Bible who made cameo appearances as they had brief encounters with Jesus or Paul or Moses. This woman in Acts 16 is just one. We don’t think of fortune-telling as being demon-possession these days. For us, it’s either a scam or a quirky curiosity. We don’t know what happened to her after the Spirit set her free.
We know life changed in that she was now of no monetary use to her owners. Did she flourish or did she fail?
As with all our episodic relationships, we just don’t know. Our lives and maybe even our hearts touch for a moment and then our paths diverge in the wood. From my own experience, and I have a hunch from yours as well, these encounters were significant in our lives. Many is the teacher, the social worker, the nurse, the pastor, the housekeeper, the secretary, who is spoken of fondly or powerfully decades later.
Our fortune-teller might have gone on to start a Jesus community back in her hometown, telling of her unexpected encounter with the Spirit of God that sunny day in Philippi. She might have become a well-known preacher in her part of the world. Or perhaps it was just a funny story she told her grandkids from her fortune-telling days.
The Spirit was a wild thing in those early decades
of church. It’s hardly tame now. As much as we seek to domesticate the Holy Spirit’s behavior, it’s a lost cause. God works in infinite ways to bring faith, restore faith, give hope, and heal broken hearts.
The Spirit is not bound by our organized congregations, our constitutions or by-laws, or our requirements for membership. We are, at best, fluid communities powered by the Spirit’s guiding. A Spirit who can never seem to stick to our agendas.
Easter 6, May 25, 2025
Troubled Waters
John 5
1 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a sabbath.
This reading from John 5 is for us lectionary lovers therare “alternate” gospel for the day. It’s read much less than the primary gospel for this Sixth Sunday of Easter from John 14 “do not let your troubles be troubled,” including the promise to send the Spirit among us. This story from John 5 is a healing story with a few different elements.
Ancient times were a troubling era to live with a disability. Not only did you live with a chronic condition that caused you to be unable to see, hear, speak, walk, or think as well as most; but you were also thought to be spiritually disabled as well.
Disability was often considered a punishment for some sin that you or your parents committed. It was also before modern medicine and technological advances like cochlear implants or even wheelchairs.
The large pool at Bethsaida was a place where many with diseases and disabilities gathered or even livedtogether like homeless communities in many cities. An interesting element is a reference to the water in this pool occasionally becoming stirred up or troubled. We know of places in the world, like Old Faithful, where nature puts on a water show. We are attracted to such places as tourists, but also as people seeking healing as President Roosevelt did for his polio paralysis at WarmSprings, GA. The picture here is of another such place, one of the few “blow holes” in the world. This one is called La Bufadora near Ensenada, Mexico. I visited there in April and took this picture. You can see the many tourists who are gathered there hoping to see it make a spectacular display.
The 1st Century people in Jerusalem had no scientific knowledge of why these waters occasionally stirred, so their traditional explanation was that an angel came and make the waters troubled. They also believed that if a person who was in physical trouble entered them, they would be healed. The man in the story that Jesus notices has been paralyzed for 38 years, which back then was literally a lifetime.
It’s rather heartbreaking that this man reports to Jesus that he could never make his way to the waters while they were troubled because others would always get ahead of him. Imagine the desperate rush to throw yourself in those waters!
From a New Testament perspective, it’s a typical healing story by Jesus. It also becomes another occasion for Jesus to be criticized for healing (doing work) on the Sabbath. The man is also criticized for breaking the Sabbath by working to “pick up his mat and walk.” Oh well, we’ll leave those issues for another day.
I’m grateful for the following poem by Barrie Shepherd on this story in John 5. He does what poets do so well: emotionally analyze the obvious and help us see it with different eyes. In this poem, Bethsaida, he reflects on his 81-year-old self (a senior citizen in our time as that 38-year-old was in his) concerning his morning routine of jumping in a pool and swimming laps. It’s part of his seeking after the miracle to live longer and better. Such reflection helps us ponder what ways we seek miracles in our own time. You might want to make a list.
Bethsaida
These waters, I must trouble for myself,
in an age of the absence of angels, as I plunge,
first of the day to break the lambent surface of the pool,
and commence my daily reaching after miracles,
swimming laps at almost eighty-one.
The miracle I seek these recent years has been defined,
and then refined, by that old friendly temporizer, “yet”;
no longer seeking not-to-die-at-all, just not-to-die-quite-yet,
to win a couple bonus years, in which to pen another poem
or two, to pile a few more chosen words onto this heap
I have—for Oh so long—been working on.
Any healing that might come will clearly have to be
short term. Until, that is, I reach the final turn,
take up my beggar’s bed, and walk.
Easter 5, May 18, 2025
DEI Church Style!
Acts 11
15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” 18 When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
The story told in Acts 10 and then re-told by apostle Peter in Acts 11, is probably the next big event in the life of the early church after Pentecost Day when the Spirit was poured out on Jesus’ followers. This watershed moment, this ah-ha happening that divides time into a “before” and “after”; changed the perspective of the First Church and has been working to change it ever since.
This story of Peter being sent by the Spirit to the home of a Roman soldier, Cornelius, and being convinced by the circumstances to do something that just seemed wrong – baptize this pagan family and then eat with them – was the dividing point for the newborn church. Their world had been small, their mission limited only to other Jews. Now Peter and later all the Christian leadership in Jerusalem, got the message that anyone who believes in Jesus and is called by the Spirit can be baptized to join this amazing movement of faith. There are no other requirements.
Two millennia later, we still strive to practice the faith on this side of the watershed. Talk of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) has been all over the news the past year. Mostly we speak of DEI in terms of race, gender, LGBTQ identity, physical and mental abilities, and all the other things that make each of us distinctive somehow. For many Christians, such inclusion of everyone is the very heart of the gospel. For others, it seems to be anti-gospel. And so, the mission continues.
It's true in the story from Acts that Cornelius was racially different from Peter, true that he was the occupier of Israel and Peter was one of the many ones occupied. One was Jew and the other Gentile. These were big divides. They had different ways of living in the world.
It’s also true that we still struggle with such divides today. They are regularly in all media and social media. As a pastor who continues to lead a congregation in this time between the Christian and post-Christian eras in both America and the Western World, I’m experiencing a DEI situation unique in our congregations.
We have been comfortably accustomed to new people coming to our established congregations, seeking a new church for a variety of reasons. We welcome them, teach them the small differences between Lutheranism and whatever Christian community they came from, and then make them members of our congregation.
Less often, people from different religions may feel called to be part of this Church catholic. Then we teach them how Christianity is different from their other spiritual life as Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists. The differences may be quite large, but what’s the same is that they have some knowledge of what it is to have a spiritual life, a faith practice, rituals and scriptures or teachings they follow. We can DEI that.
But now, as the number of people who have no religious faith at all, who never have and whose parents never have, make their way to our Sunday morning pews or to the pastor’s office door unannounced; it is a watershed moment akin to Acts 11. Peter was blindsided by the Spirit’s openness to all people. He knew how to talk to his Jewish brothers and sisters about Jesus as the Messiah but what did this Roman solider know about any of it? The early church was so locked into their own small religious circle that for decades after Easter Day they conducted their evangelism with the assumption that any non-Jewish person who felt called to be baptized would have to become Jewish first. That meant circumcision for men, learning Torah, obeying all the dietary laws and rituals, etc. Jumping from Gentile to Christian was absolutely a foreign idea.
How do we handle now the thoroughly non-religious person who is seeking a community,
seeking to belong to a loving and accepting group of people? What paces do we put them, if any? I think that was Peter’s concern and his confusion. Eventually it became his astonishment.
Figuring out how to let go of some of our old ways of doing things without tossing out our core convictions remains a challenge. We really must trust the Spirit because none of us has quite been here before.
Easter Saturday Vigil, April 19, 2025
Joy Comes Back
On this Holy Saturday, as the church keeps vigil at the tomb of Jesus, both grieving and hoping,
I offer this poem by Donna Ashworth.
Joy Comes Back
When you finally realize
that joy is less fireworks
more firefly
less orchestra
more birdsong
she will come back much more often
for joy will not fight
with the fast pace of this life
she is not in the shiny or the new
she breathes in the basic
shimmers in the simple
and dances in the daily to and for
joy has been beckoning you
for many a year my friend
you were just too busy doing, to see
the very next time joy wraps
her quiet warmth around you
as the garden embraces your weary body
in its wildness
tip her a nod
you cannot force her to stay
but if you are a gracious host
joy comes back.
Easter 4, May 11, 2025
Easter Conclave
Revelation 7
17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
I’ve been away on my Easter break for a couple of weeks, but I’m now back pondering the texts of scriptures and our current context along with all of you. Since Easter has consistently been seven weeks long from the 4th century on, we are now in the middle of it. Easter is over and done everywhere except the traditional Church. We’ll keep singing our hymns out of the Easter section of the worship book and proclaiming, “Alleluia, Christ is risen” at every opportunity; but it will seem as though the scriptures for the day aren’t cooperating.
On the first three weeks of Easter, we hear stories of the risen Christ appearing first to Mary Magdalene and then to the other disciples. In fact, scripture tells us that Jesus appeared, taught, and inspired his followers for a full forty days after his resurrection. That’s the reason we celebrate it so long. But as we roll on into the 4th week of Easter, we cease to hear such stories. It’s not that we’ve moved on, we have gone deeper in the meaning of Easter.
In our Lutheran community, we always hear psalms, songs, and gospel readings that reflect the image of Christ as both lamb and shepherd. We have a long-standing tradition of calling this Easter 4 celebration, “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Our scriptures from Genesis to Revelation are rich with metaphors, images, and poetry that simultaneously inspire and perplex us.
On this Sunday we are comforted and confronted with a paradoxical image of Christ as both Lamb and Shepherd. Psalm 23 and John 10 will paint the serene picture of that devoted shepherd carrying a little lamb on his shoulders. But as our highlighted text from Revelation reminds us, Christ is not only shepherd but is the slain Passover lamb. Christ is complicated. Christ is paradox. Christ is not one thing. Christ is everything.
Many of you may have watched the movie “Conclave” about the process is the Vatican of gathering the world’s cardinals to elect a new pope from among themselves. And now today, as I write, the real Conclave gathered to elect a new Pope has done just that. Blessings to Pope Leo XIV and all our siblings in Christ in the Catholic Church. This American cardinal was certainly considered a dark horse candidate largely because he was from the U.S.
Eerily, the in the movie about this process, the cardinal who is eventually chosen as Pope is an outsider, unknown, one who has served in the Congo and is now the Cardinal of Kabul. While many of the other cardinals sequestered in the Sistine Chapel are jockeying for votes and bruising themselves on their ambition, this Cardinal Benitez of Kabul displays a selfless attitude and an unswerving commitment to the Church.
He has been in the real trenches of ministry, has been a victim of violence, and knows what it is to struggle with personal and pastoral challenges. I realized, he was the only cardinal in the Conclave who was the Jesus figure in the room. He was the lowly lamb whose meekness and gentleness made him the perfect Shepherd.
Christ Jesus was not and is not a flat two-dimensional figure. He defies description with our limited language. Only poetry and paradoxical metaphors can begin to touch the edges of his essence. Easter celebrates the risen Christ with all the language we can beg and borrow. Yet, he remains: Christus Paradox.
Easter Saturday Vigil, April 19, 2025
Joy Comes Back
On this Holy Saturday, as the church keeps vigil at the tomb of Jesus, both grieving and hoping,
I offer this poem by Donna Ashworth.
Joy Comes Back
When you finally realize
that joy is less fireworks
more firefly
less orchestra
more birdsong
she will come back much more often
for joy will not fight
with the fast pace of this life
she is not in the shiny or the new
she breathes in the basic
shimmers in the simple
and dances in the daily to and for
joy has been beckoning you
for many a year my friend
you were just too busy doing, to see
the very next time joy wraps
her quiet warmth around you
as the garden embraces your weary body
in its wildness
tip her a nod
you cannot force her to stay
but if you are a gracious host
joy comes back.
Holy Week, April 16, 2025
Passion Politics
Today is Holy Wednesday in this holiest week of the Christian year. It’s, of course, a pastorally and liturgically hectic time for parish pastors. I love the rich remembrances and gospel challenges of this time. I secretly wish I could don my black cassock all week and only attend to the liturgies, read theological and devotional literature, and make home communion visits. But no matter how much I think I’ve planned ahead, it’s just never to be. I’m not complaining, just sayin’.
Nevertheless, one book in my theological library always calls to me this time of year. It’s Borg and Crossan’s The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem. It uses Mark’s gospel because only this one of the four gives a day-by-day account from the entry into Jerusalem to Easter dawn. Of course, it doesn’t say things like, “on Monday Jesus did this, on Tuesday he did something else.” But Mark does leave wonderful date stamps and time stamps such as “the next day” or “when it was evening”.
The authors of this book guide us through Holy Week. I have long loved one of the revelations they make at the very beginning of their narrative as they relate the Palm Sunday story. They reveal things that aren’t spoken in the gospels because everybody hearing these stories in the first century didn’t need to be told.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem seems an odd story to our modern ears. What was this parade all about? Borg and Crossan remind us that in the year 30, two processions entered Jerusalem that spring day at the beginning of Passover week. One was a peasant celebration, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down from the Mount of Olives. From the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, entered Jerusalem riding a horse at the head of a column of imperial soldiers. Jesus was proclaiming the kingdom of God. Pilate proclaimed the power of the empire. It is the clash of these two kingdoms that comes to a climax in this Holy Week. Mark doesn’t mention this contrast because it was simply standard practice of the day. What he focuses on is what Jesus is doing, which was in its own way an act of rebellion. Mark tells us this entry of opposites was no coincidence. Jesus had planned it in advance.
In our culture and even in our faith lives, we frequently proclaim that religion and politics don’t mix or shouldn’t. But they always have and always do. Holy Week is a drama in which these worlds collide. The whole passion story is political through and through. The political world is obsessed with who has control, who wins, who has the power to rule.
Much to some of the disciples’ dismay, Jesus did not fight back. He didn’t rain down fire from heaven. He didn’t even answer any questions at his trial. He didn’t meet violence with violence. Even those crucified next to him tried to shame him into fighting back. He just quietly suffered until the pain finally came to an end.
The crucifixion, the meaning of the cross, is both mystery and miracle. It was a political act of resistance. Crucifixion was the worst of Roman capital punishment. The political machine did its worst. But it couldn’t destroy God’s way in the world. Love wins. That’s the end of the story and its beginning.
Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 2025
What's That Smell?
John 12
1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
One of the precious things we miss in the way most of us read the scriptures is that we tend to feed on them a teaspoon at a time. We don’t feast on them by reading a whole gospel or fifty of the psalms at one sitting uninterrupted. What we miss with our tiny spaced-out bites are the echoes of metaphors, the contrasts, the building of a narrative, and so much more. We miss the golden thread of theology that often runs through the chapters and verses and books.
The fifth Sunday of Lent, we hear in our assembly reading the isolated story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany hosting Jesus and the disciples in their home six days before the Passover celebration. But this story isn’t isolated in the gospel of John. It’s stitched to the whole narrative. The twelfth chapter of John stands, obviously, right next to the eleventh chapter of John. In that chapter we hear the remarkable story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead after he had been dead several days. It seems that story wants us to understand that Lazarus was truly “dead dead” – not in a coma, not almost dead in one of those unusual medical cases – but dead as a door nail. Meaning, by the time Jesus arrived in Bethany Lararus’ rotting flesh was starting to overpower the smell of the spices they had packed around his body. Lazarus’ sisters even caution Jesus that the horrible odor would be overwhelming. We hear with unbelieving ears that Jesus called his name, and the rotting Lazarus walked out of the tomb leaving the stench behind him. Did he smell now like a just washed newborn?
I find it both moving and a bit comical that Jesus comes back to that Bethany house days later to dine with the newborn Lazarus and the exuberant sisters. What in the world do you serve a guest who raised your brother from the dead? Would even your fine china seem fine enough? How can you possibly show your gratitude for this extravagant gift of life?
We aren’t told what was served, but we are told what was offered. Sister Mary went into her room and pulled out what likely was her most expensive possession – a pound of perfume made of pure nard. Calculating the value, it was worth a year’s salary for the average worker. It was so expensive because nard is made from a flower that only grows in the Himalayan mountains.
Who knows how she obtained it, how she afforded it, or what she was planning to do with it? But seeing the beloved Savior sitting next to her beloved brother; she offered an extravagant gift. Judas and probably many others at the table, saw it as a waste. Mary and Jesus knew it was an abundant gift of gratitude for Lazarus’ life. It was also a way of anointing Jesus’ body before his death.
The gospel of John is all about extravagance from start to finish. The beginning foreshadows what is coming with the declaration that we have all received “grace upon grace.” And then we witness that abundance illustrated again and again. The abundance of wine at Cana, the abundance of bread and fish, the abundance of sight to the man born blind, abundance of living water, abundance of life to Lazarus, and an abundance of fragrant anointing. Many of these abundant gifts are ones we can smell. Sniff the best wine at Cana, the mountains of fresh loaves, the smell of death that’s replaced by the best perfume.
We see grace, witness to grace, offer grace, and sometimes we smell grace. Considering the sense of smell can bring back memories quicker than other senses, we’d best not underestimate its power. Breathe in that fragrance of new life. It’s all around you.
Lent 4, March 30, 2025
Kaleidoscope Parables
Luke 15
There was a man who had two sons.
If you think the parables of Jesus are like Aesop’s fables with a single moral point to the story that can be taught and learned, think again. Jesus’ parables are often open-ended with the hearer to determine what is to be learned that day in her or his circumstance. In other words, they are living documents read through a kaleidoscope.
I loved those tubes of wonder when I was a kid. They have two or more mirrors tilted to each other at an angle. A repeated reflection shows through at the other end. Beautiful. We can see many perspectives as they move and change.
The parable many call “The Prodigal Son” begins with the simple sentence, “There was a man who had two sons.” From the get-go we see the kaleidoscope’s three reflecting mirrors: the father, the younger son, and the older son. The parable could be named after any one of them, but traditionally it’s the younger son who gets the spotlight. Should he?
Those mirrors are significant when seeing and hearing the parable but they aren’t the only ones. Another mirror is you, the hearer. And yet another one is your context. You are in a different circumstance than the last time you may have heard this parable. The world is at a different place. The kaleidoscope has turned a notch or two.
At its heart, this is a parable of sheer grace. The grace extended to the younger, foolish son, is abundant at the joy of the son’s return. Many parents have a wayward child either temporarily or permanently. As a pastor, I’ve seen their anguish. Whether the child is lost due to poor decisions, drugs, mental illness, or some other stumbling block to their living; parents often give them money or chances or understanding in abundance. Others look at such parents and believe them gullible idiots.
Many read this parable with the assumption that the younger son was truly repentant of his poor behavior and really would have come home to serve as a slave. Maybe he meant it in his desperation, but do you think he’s honest in his confession? Such adult children have been found to take advantage like this with steady repetition.
The elder son is steadfast, dedicated to the family business and to the family. If these sons are like most brothers who share a bedroom and who know each other’s secrets, my guess is that the elder brother knows the younger’s intentions better than Dad. Maybe that’s why he’s angry at this over-the-top welcome. Might he wonder why bad behavior is being rewarded with grace and mercy? And perhaps this wandering and returning has happened before.
Families are complicated, because people are complicated. We are crippled with our sinful nature and often do wrong even when we know better.
Sometimes we have no idea how terribly screwed up we are, and yet God continues to love us. Every word of this parable is underlined with a Sharpie highlighting God’s amazing grace and forgiveness. God is often immensely foolish for the sheer love of us. Welcome Home!
Third Sunday in Lent, March 23, 2025
What You Love Matters
Isaiah 55
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy...Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.
A preacher must choose a primary scripture to focus on for a sermon and for me this week, that will be Luke 13. But the Old Testament scripture for the day is Isaiah 55: 1-9, a very powerful scripture worthy of pondering anew the Lent. In my preaching research, I came across this writing by Rev. E. Carrington Heath from 2016. He is a United Church of Christ pastor. I hope his reflection resonates with you especially in these days of religious and political chaos and concern. We need all the deep discernment we can get. Here is Rev. Heath:
One of the lessons I try to teach the young people I know is this: never give the best of yourself to someone or something that can never love you back.
I’ve been surprised at how much this advice resonates with young adults. It becomes a measure not just for judging boyfriends and girlfriends but also for asking the larger questions in life.
Discernment about vocation and calling becomes more focused. Questions of meaning take center stage.
Most surprisingly, this lesson generates discussion in young people’s families about how they use precious resources like time and money. I have been amused that it is these discussions, more than any about dating or sex or love, that trouble their parents.
We do not talk about idolatry much anymore, despite the caution against it in everything from the Ten Commandments to the New Testament epistles. This is ironic, because idolatry flourishes in our culture. We have not yet started building literal golden calves, but we have all spent plenty of time worshiping at equally dangerous altars. Money, success, popularity, greatness, security—these are powerful gods. And in worshiping these gods, we have too often driven ourselves to the point of living overwhelming lives.
Isaiah asks us, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”
In her book Overwhelmed, journalist Brigid Schulte shares this shocking fact: “The average high school kid today experiences the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient of the 1950s.” What’s more, stress in children “can alter not only their neurological and hormonal systems but also their very DNA.”
As it turns out, we have created a culture that is literally making our kids sick and actively rewiring them, and not for the better. We may have smartphones and advanced placement and conspicuous consumption, but we are not very wise. We focus on what doesn’t matter first, and we get around to what matters more than anything else only if we have the time. We spend our money for that which is not bread, and our labor for what does not satisfy.
But what if it does not have to be this way? In Lent we are called to turn away from the things that can never love us back and toward that which is good and rich—that which can fill us. Counter to the narrative we often write for ourselves, however, we are not called by a God who speaks to us casually, without urgency. We are called by a God with time-sensitive conviction.
In this week’s Gospel passage Jesus tells a story about a fig tree, a gardener, and a landowner. Year after year the tree fails to bear fruit. Tired of wasting good soil, the landowner tells the gardener to cut it down. But the gardener refuses to give up and negotiates for a one-year reprieve for the tree. They pledge to take care of it and shore it up with good soil. If even after all of that it does not bear good fruit, the gardener says, then you can cut it down.
I often want to ask people I know, people who feel overwhelmed by the demands of life, why they keep living like this. Why do you make the choices that leave you overextended and exhausted? Do you want to live a life utterly devoid of abundant new fruit? Why do you give the best of yourself to the things that can never love you back?
We all want to believe that we have infinite time to start loving the right things, eating that which will satisfy us, and bearing good fruit. But despite the urgency that defines the rest of our lives, scheduling everything from the car pool to the 401(k) contribution, we respond to Christ’s call to transformation by hesitating. There is always tomorrow..... Our transformation can no longer wait. We have failed to bear good fruit for far too long, choosing instead to focus on those things that will not bring us joy. The good news for both preacher and congregation is that there is great freedom in proclaiming to the people of God that they no longer have to wait to focus on what matters the most. Now is the time to put first things first—no excuses.
This urgency does not come from a fear that God will smite us. I do not believe that God wants to destroy us the way the landowner wants to destroy the dormant fig tree. But I do believe that Jesus speaks with urgency because he knows how quickly most of us are destroying ourselves. And I believe God wants better for us than that.
God wants us to have new life, and this life will begin only when we put our spiritual houses—and our priorities—back in order. Only when we embrace God’s call on our lives will we find that we can once again bear spiritual fruit. That will happen when we start telling one another the hard truth: the clock is ticking, the time is now, and life is too short to waste another minute on what can never love us back.
Lent 2, March 16, 2025
Allyship
Leviticus 19
9When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
Luke 13
31At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." 32He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.
Many will hear this Sunday the story of Jesus weeping over beloved Jerusalem, center of the world, center of the holy. We will hear Jesus receiving a warning from an unlikely source. Some of the Pharisees warn him to flee from the city because horrible King Herod already has a handful of nails bearing his name.
The Pharisees are often portrayed in the four gospels as a group of religious legalists who are seeking to debate Jesus or trap Jesus. They are the bad guys in the gospels, though not the worst guys. They emerged around 150 BCE and were a significant force in the time of Jesus. But, like all groups of people, they aren’t monolithic. Some were intrigued with Jesus’ teaching, some had dinner with him, some like Nicodemus came to learn from him in secret. In this story, they come to warn him that he’s in great danger. In other words, in this case, some of them are allies with Jesus. What did they have in common?
The Pharisees loved Jerusalem at the center of their world as much as Jesus did, and they hated what Rome and those who collaborated with them had made of this cherished holy city. While this little part of Sunday’s story is referred to as Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, or captured in artwork as Jesus, the mother hen, gathering her chicks under her wings; I wanted to point out this often ignored sign of allyship between Jesus and the Pharisees.
Since “love of God and love of neighbor” are the very heart of the Bible, the concept of “allyship” is peppered throughout scripture in both subtle and obvious ways. Allyship became a buzz word in the corporate world around 2019 and means the “active support for the rights of a minority or marginalized group without being a member of it.” There are four pillars of allyship: yielding, listening, learning, and action. You guessed it, allyship is a DEI staple! Jesus wasn’t a Pharisee, but some of the Pharisees had his back.
The verses above from Leviticus are a different example of allyship in the Bible. In the heart of a book of the Bible many barely know, specific commandments are given that illuminate what love of neighbor looks like. In these verses, those who are privileged to possess land and crops are commanded to be allies to those who have little. In some ways it was like what we do today with our Food Pantries, buying some extra food on our grocery store runs to give to the pantry for those unseen folks in need of help. In ancient times, those with crops and vineyards were commanded to leave some of the fruits of the earth in the fields so those with few resources could come by and take what was left.
Allies aren’t the same as friends who know you personally, who love you for you. Allies are people unlike you yet are ones who clearly see you as a fellow child of God, worthy of compassion and care. They have your back. They have the courage to publicly support your journey. Often, we never know who our allies really are. Give thanks for them today.
Transfiguration of Our Lord, March 2, 2025
Perspective
Luke 9
Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray…On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. 39 Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him.
One of the reasons many of us adore mountains and other wilderness places is because they are truly places apart. You leave “the real world” behind, as we often say. No traffic, no strip malls or fast-food restaurants, no chores or job to do. We are away. You don’t hear police sirens or even your phone beeping at you.
In Sunday’s end-of-Epiphany story, Jesus takes a few disciples up a mountain to pray. There he becomes “transfigured” before them and is suddenly in conversation with Moses and Elijah. It’s truly a mountaintop experience. In the Bible God often visits mountain peaks. Jesus is pausing here before he travels back to “the real world” where his journey to Jerusalem and to his crucifixion will continue. Very real world.
As we know, it’s hard to leave the cool clear air of mountains with their stunning views. We are refreshed, we clear our heads, offer up our prayers and then travel back down. It doesn’t take long to be back on the busy highway with your email box filling up as a strong Wi-Fi connection is finally available.
Jesus and the disciples hiked down to the bottom of the mountain and were immediately greeted by emergency sirens blaring. People were suffering, needed help. A father is desperate to have his demon-possessed/mentally disabled son cured. Too many of us know what this is like. This is the real world where people are in need, where help can be scarce, where some people flourish and others beg. It’s a transactional world of give and take, where the powerful exert their privilege.
But the story of the Transfiguration teaches us that the real world is up on the mountain as well. It’s not a dream, it’s not make-believe. God is large and powerful, loving and merciful. When we have our mountain-top experiences they remind us that beauty, quiet, holiness, and love are very much a part of the “real world” too.
The circumstances of our lives (the good and the rough) are part of our real world, but so is God’s majesty and mystery. It’s our perspective, rather than our circumstances, that the mountaintop refreshes.
Epiphany 6, February 16, 2025
On Spiritual Hydration
Jeremiah 17
7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
This is a beautiful piece of scripture, isn’t it? It’s full of hope for those who are like trees planted by water. They seem to survive anything. While this is a comforting metaphor, the prophet Jeremiah is often called the “prophet of doom.” Why?
Well, Jeremiah was one of those prophets living and preaching during extremely difficult political times. His prophetic career started around 627 BCE in Israel and continued until 587 BCE. You might recognize that last date as the ancient 9.11 for the kingdom of Judah. Jeremiah saw that destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians coming. He saw it as God’s judgment on the people for their wickedness. Mostly, he preached tough sermons about their false and insincere worship, and their failure to trust God in their national affairs. Their sin and stubbornness would be their undoing. He said some foreign nations were more loyal to their pagan/false gods than Judah was to the real God of all. Ouch!
What the metaphor about the tree next to streams of water does is offer a very specific hope rather than, if you will, generalized hope. You see, Dr. Doom here assumes that the growing Babylonian empire marching their way is going to succeed in conquering his people. In his theology, God is either causing it or allowing it, as punishment for Israel’s multivalent sins. This theological position of God punishing us with tragedy remains a debate. The Bible speaks both of God causing harm because of divine anger toward us and refusing to cause harm out of love for us. I would say Jeremiah sees it going both ways over a span of time. But at this particular time in his history, he realizes destruction is coming.
He tells the people so and speaks for God in Jeremiah 17:4 saying, “by your own act you shall lose the heritage that I gave you.” And he was right. The Babylonians did march in, destroyed the Temple, took the strongest into exile (for 70 years) and left the old and weak to fend for themselves in what must have looked like Gaza right now. He tells the people they’ll just have to submit to this military incursion, to God’s punishment, and to endure decades in exile.
How can they possibly endure? How can they raise children and grandchildren in a foreign land, surrounded by foreign gods, away from the Temple and all that made them a people?
Even in Babylon, the prophet says with hope, you can be a tree planted by streams of water. Be the tree with deep roots that can endure through drought and heat. Continue to flourish. Find a way.
Some of the scriptures we hold most precious were written during this time in Babylonian exile. Most scholars agree that the creation story of Genesis 1 was written during the Exile. Others say about 80% of the Old Testament was written done during this time to preserve their stories of God for future generations – including us!
It was one of the ways the exiles were trees planted by water. It was how they stayed spiritually hydrated. Their children and grandchildren never saw Jerusalem. All they knew was Babylon. But they kept praying that one day they would be released and allowed to return. After all, empires don’t last forever.
Jeremiah, prophet of doom and preacher of hope, encourages us to ponder how we stay spiritually hydrated in dry and difficult times. How will we preserve our faith, our beliefs, our knowledge of God for future generations?
Our physical bodies cannot live without water. Our spiritual selves languish without the living water of God’s Word. Stay hydrated in difficult times. We need you!
Epiphany 5, February 9, 2025
In This Year
Isaiah 6
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
It's “Holy, Holy, Holy” Sunday this February 9. This story referred to as Isaiah’s call story will be our Old Testament reading. Isaiah’s response, “Here am I; send me” is needlepointed into the ordination stole hung around my neck when I was called to serve as a pastor in the church in 1983 and when, in effect, I responded, “send me.” Our liturgy and hymns are captivated by the seraphs’ holy song here and clergy and prophets are dazzled by the dramatic call by God, which we romanticize as similar to our own.
But this Bible study go-round, I found myself captivated by the very beginning of the story. I think it might answer the question of why God is so in need of a prophet at this particular time and place. The first sentence is an historical time stamp: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord… Until this week, I have only heard that as a date placed on this sermon of the prophet. But now, I suspect it’s much more than that. Uzziah died in 740 B.C.E. I think it’s more than a time stamp. I think it’s the very reason God needs a prophet for a time such as this.
Uzziah was a very successful king in Judah. Go to 2 Chronicles 26 and read all about it. The death of King U was part of a sociopolitical crisis in Judah along with the Syro-Ephraimite war, and the Assyrian empire’s growing dominance. In other words, these were tough political times, and God needed a strong voice in the world.
But, while Uzziah enabled economic and political stability in Judah he became a victim of his own power. He became king when he was only 16 years old and ruled for 52 years. He was righteous before the Lord, successful in being a king until, as 2 Chronicles 26:16 says, “But when he had become strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.” Apparently, Uzziah began to think everything belonged to him, including the Temple in Jerusalem. Against all holy law, he went into the holiest part of the Temple and made an offering on the altar. The 80 priests nearly passed out, but instead of fainting or kowtowing, they resisted. They told him to get out of the Temple because he had done wrong. The King was angry in return. After all, he was the big KU! Through what could only be divine intervention, Uzziah’s forehead broke out with leprosy. Not only was he expelled from this holy place, but from his house and his throne. Being leprous, when he died, he was buried separately from all the other kings. His son took over for him after the leprosy hit.
So, in the year that King Uzziah died, Judah was hoping to recover from a beloved king gone bad and war was at the door. Such times do call for full-throated prophets to bring God’s Word to the table.
Scripture is full of ordinary, imperfect people who are called to speak truth to power or to their neighbor, or to their congregation. You are also a person for times such as these. You don’t have to speak to everything, just speak to one thing. Make one difference, not all the difference.
The times they are a-calling, in this year that . . .
Presentation of Our Lord/Candlemas, February 2, 2025
In A World Of Candle Snuffers
Luke 2
29 “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
This Sunday is February 2 and comes in the middle of our Epiphany season of light. This date is liturgically significant (nope, not Groundhog Day!) For the church ancient and modern, it marks the 40th day after Christmas and therefore the official end of the Christmas cycle. The gospel reading for this day is always the story from Luke 2 of Mary and Joseph bringing baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for his presentation to the Lord. There they encounter Simeon who felt led by the Spirit to go to the Temple that day and encounter the 84-year-old Anna, who was a prophet who had lived in the Temple for many decades.
In Luke’s telling, it was Simeon who proclaimed this baby as the promised Savior, a light to all peoples. Because of this image of Christ as Light, many churches speak prayers of blessings for the candles which will provide light in their homes and in their sanctuaries. This little festival is called Candlemas.
The newly baptized are given a lighted candle at their baptism as the pastor exhorts him or her with the words of Jesus: Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your God in heaven. Letting our lights shine is often a way Christians describe their discipleship to live the gospel by being an active part of a worshiping community, by loving and serving their neighbors, by a radical inclusiveness, by striving for justice in all the earth, and by caring for creation.
Many wonder how we can faithfully keep our lights shining in a world filled with candle snuffers. Our faith encourages us to pray, to go deep as a community, to maintain our hope, and to be brave. These are all our tools, but so are the tools of other disciplines.
Sociologist Jennifer Walter recently wrote a wise article to help us keep our lights shining as we navigate these times when despair can crush our hope. Here is her wisdom concerning what is happening in our country and what we can do about it. She says:
As a sociologist, I need to tell you:
Your being overwhelmed is the goal.
The flood of 200+ executive orders during the first days exemplifies Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" - using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn't just politics as usual - it's a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.
Media theorist McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.
Agenda-setting theory explains the strategy: When multiple major policies compete for attention simultaneously, it fragments public discourse. Traditional media can't keep up with the pace, leading to superficial coverage and resulting in weakened democratic oversight and reduced public engagement.
What now?
Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can't track everything - that's by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.
Use aggregators & experts: Find trusted analysts who do the heavy lifting of synthesis. Look for those explaining patterns, not just events.
Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.
Practice going slow: Wait 48hrs before reacting to new policies. The urgent clouds the important. Initial reporting often misses context.
Build community: Share the cognitive load. Different people track different issues. Network intelligence beats individual overload.
Remember: They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance.
I acknowledge, as do many others, that some believe all the decisions being made in our country right now are making things brighter rather than darker. But for those who are feeling loss, stress, and hopelessness, I hope these words reignite the flame within you. As the old spiritual sings, “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning!”