My first duathlon: A recap

There's something awfully great about working toward a goal for a long time and finally completing the work. The harder the goal; the more rewarding the finish line. That was certainly the case this weekend. After the Thief River Falls triathlon in May I made the decision that Ngede was the next, big goal, and I started to work doggedly toward that goal. This weekend I finally did it. The verdict? Hard. Awfully hard. But worth it. Well worth it.

First of all I should say I am indebted to Peter and Janelle Rimmereid for giving me a place to stay on Friday night, even though they were out of town. That made preparation so much easier (driving six miles in the morning rather than over an hour was very helpful). Also, it was great to see people I haven't seen in awhile--Wapo people, seminary people, and all of that. Doing this with familiar friends certainly helped.

With that, let's get to the race. When I arrived at Ox Lake for the start I went through the normal routine of checking over the bikes and warming up, which is usually pretty uneventful. However, if there's one thing I've learned from things like this it is that something--usually little--always goes wrong. This time the problem was more than a little one. When I got around to testing the road bike, checking shifting and all that, I ran into a serious problem. When I accelerated or put a lot of pressure on the pedals the chain was slipping on the gears quite badly. The chain was brand new, which could mean only one thing: the teeth on the rear cassette were worn down. This was something the bike shop had told me was not a problem, but now I was finding it most certainly was. Unfortunately, there was no way to fix this. I would simply have to ride with slipping gears. My best leg (the road bike) was starting to look a lot more challenging.

The other thing was the humidity. It wasn't super hot--right around 72 degrees at start time--but the humidity was around 75% and it meant almost nothing was evaporating. And the thing is I sweat A LOT. It's something we Scandanavians struggle with--we are very white. So, that would prove to be an additional challenge.

10k road run
As always the race started at much too fast a pace. I ran with a group (not the lead group, mind you) that did the first and second miles at 7:10 pace, which considering the hills was blistering (both for me and for most of the others). Some of them were relay runners, but several were individuals like myself. I hung at the back of the group, aware we were running too fast. However, I felt pretty good. The legs were good and I was probably pushing myself around 75%, which was only slightly harder than I would have liked.

Predictably, the times slowed down. My mile times went from 7:10 and 7:10 to 7:35 and 8:00, then a bit over 8 minutes for the last two miles. My goal time was between 47 and 48 minutes, which is about 4 minutes slower than my personal best. I wanted to leave plenty of energy for the next three legs, so I consciously slowed down for the last couple of miles (especially mile 5 which was largely uphill). I even let the small group around me put a little distance between us. I could have closed down the gap, but I knew this was most definitely not a sprint. So, I finished at the back of a group of five--four of which were individuals. My time? 47:50... I was pretty content with that.

10k mountain bike
I knew this was going to be a tough leg. It was much harder than I thought. The elevation change was tough--lots of big hills, some of which also had sand that made riding extremely difficult. The only time I had ever "mashed the gnar" (that's for you, Evan) was prior to my buddy Jesson's wedding last year, which was considerably easier only because of the superior bicycle I was riding and--I can't stress this enough--the clip pedals. I discovered very quickly that riding a mountain bike without clip pedals is just tough. The hills are just awful. Hear that again: awful. Also the shocks, while good, were not good enough to save my back from taking a serious beating.

As the ride went along I felt worse and worse. My back was tightening up. Two guys who I had passed earlier came back and passed me, and I was focusing mostly on not being in pain. I never thought I would have a fast time, but my time was becoming slow, slower and slowest. This leg just never seemed to end. When I finally came out of the woods I was just so thankful to get off the bike that it didn't really matter how fast I finished, but the clock showed I was slow. Right around 0:38:00.

25k road bike
Remember the state of my bike? Well, yes, it sucked. I mean, I'm a good road bicyclist. I'm no cycling star; it's not like I'm going to average 24 mph like some insane triathletes do, but 20 mph is in the picture on a good day. Also, the Ngede course is absolutely made for my strengths. It is filled with short little hills that are absolutely in my wheelhouse. I could have gained a lot of time here (last year when I raced this course as part of a relay I finished with the second fastest time on the longer 40k bike course in spite of crashing and losing 2-3 minutes fixing my bike... and my injuries). Unfortunately, my slipping gears killed any chance of a similar performance this year. I wasn't going to empty the tank--what with the tough trail run yet to come--but I planned on having a very solid, 19+ mph ride. That simply was impossible given the mechanical issues.

So I was a little frustrated. But here's the thing: I still passed people. I passed one of the guys who had passed me on the mountain bike. My time wasn't fast, but it wasn't a complete disaster. I didn't keep up a 19 mph pace, but I did average 18 mph over hills... so considering the situation I wasn't unhappy. But on the other hand, I expended A LOT more energy getting that 18 mph than I otherwise would have. So, that's all I have to say about that. This leg: 51:30.

"5k" trail run
The first thing you need to know about this is the "" around 5k. This was NOT 5k. It's funny/cruel that the two big races I did this year--the TRF tri and Ngede--both advertised their closing runs as "5k"s and neither was particularly close to accurate. The TRF tri was actually 3.28 miles--or 5.3k. Ngede was even more cruel. I was told afterwards that it was more like 6.2k. That's a whole freaking 1.2k extra... over AWFUL hills.

About a half mile into the "run" I realized there was no way I would be doing anything approaching running up some of those hills. I have talked with long distance trail runners before who told me that many people walk up steep hills to save their legs, and I quickly decided that was a good philosophy. At first I was walking up sharp hills--anything that looked over about 4%--then it slowly became every hill big or small, long or short. This course was incredibly hard. It would have been a tough route if it was the only thing I was running, but after three events it was deathly hard.

I felt miserable. My only brief encouragement was that I wasn't getting passed. In fact, I passed two people in front of me over the course and I saw two more a bit ahead though I never could make the pass. Clearly, this was miserable for more than just me. It was almost cruel. Scratch that, it was. I finished right around 36:00 at an average pace of 9:22. That seems slow... and yet, not at all. I walked a lot. My "run" was more like a painful slog. I was just happy to be done. So happy. It was just incredible to no longer be moving forward, whether on a bike or my two feet.

I finished in 2:59:10.

Three hours was a goal of mine, but I realized on the final leg that the time no longer mattered. Neither did it matter who I finished before or after. All that mattered was doing it. After the finish line I struggled to cool down. I overheated like crazy. The humidity meant that little of my sweat was being wicked away. Eventually, I got ice packs on the neck, forehead and arm pits and slowly started to come back to normal. Food started to look attractive again. I was starting to come around.

So, the big question is what's next. Truthfully, I don't know. I'm not sure if I'll be back for Ngede next year, or if there will be another big challenge on the horizon. My next race is in two weeks. There is a half marathon run/bike/rollerblade from Hallock to Lancaster on September 8 with an additional 10k option. I think I will probably run the 10k... or possibly make up for my poor cycling performance by crushing the bike ride. Other than that, there are no firm races on the calendar. I plan on improving my fitness over the winter, then we'll see what next year has in store!

Til then, happy duathlon-ing!

Joseph, the Pit, and Inception

Text: Genesis 37:12-28

           Do you have a younger sibling? Or are you the youngest child in a family? 

Those of you who are older siblings know what I know, which is that this Joseph story was most definitely written by a younger sibling. See, I have a younger brother, so I can imagine what I would feel if he came up to my parents and I one day and said, “Oh, by the way, I had a dream last night, and you were all bowing to me, because—well—I’m going to rule over you.” That would not have gone over well. I can imagine how much worse it would be for eleven brothers—ten of them older—who actually have quite a bit to gain from their father’s favoritism. We older siblings know that if this story was written by one of us Joseph would not have amounted to much.

            What to do with Joseph…

            This is a hard topic for me—perhaps it is for all older siblings—because Joseph earned none of this, and as an older brother I am tempted to play the “That’s not fair!” card on this one. Joseph was the epitome of the spoiled brat, feasting on the riches of his father through no merit of his own. Unlike other Biblical heroes—David, for example—he had no Goliath moment of character. All we know about Joseph is a couple of dreams and, worse still, his exuberance in sharing those dreams with his family. Not only is he brash and arrogant, he is completely unaware of the effect his brashness is likely to have. He is walking on thin ice.

            These dreams are the thing that sets Joseph apart. Analysis and interpretation of dreams has been around since at least the time of Joseph and probably for as long as human beings have dreamt. We have a fascination with this aspect of our subconscious. Are we telling ourselves something? Is something outside of us giving us wisdom? What do dreams mean?

            I can imagine that if I were preaching this sermon sixty years ago I would have talked about Sigmund Freud and his interpretation of dreams, or if I was preaching this forty years ago I would have talked about Carl Jung and his revisions of Freud’s psychology of dreaming, but since this is 2012 I will ditch the psychology and instead interpret Joseph’s dreaming through the only lens that a 26-year-old guy knows—the 2010 Christopher Nolan film, Inception.

For those of you unfamiliar, Inception is a film about invading a person's dream and planting an idea that will ultimately change the course of their lives. One of the questions that the movie raises is: What emotion is so powerful to plant an idea deep enough for it to take hold? Is it personal gain or fear perhaps? No, none of those things emotions will do. The person dreaming rejects these as unrealistic bases for a new idea. Instead, the only emotion that sticks is catharsis. Catharsis combines both reconciliation and forgiveness, which are the only emotions powerful enough to make a person change his course.

            So what does any of this have to do with Joseph?

In these early dreams, Joseph interprets from a point of self-interest. We don’t know if it is God or Joseph’s self-conscious desires that are causing him to dream these dreams, but regardless of their source Joseph sees them as visions of his own future glory. Nobody can mistake his reasons for sharing the dreams with his family. He is setting himself above his clan, but in so doing he is misreading the situation. The vision at the heart of those dreams is one of leadership, but in his excitement to share what he has seen Joseph shows he is not yet fit to be a leader. First, he must fall. Then, there will be the possibility of catharsis before he rises to the place he will one day stand.

            There’s that old saying that pride comes before a fall. That saying may very well originate here, as Joseph quite literally falls into the pit, albeit with a forceful nudge from his brothers. It’s not that his brothers are justified in their actions, though in their situation I probably would have been right there shoving little Joey (I can’t tell you how often I would have sold my brother to some passing Ishmaelites if the opportunity arose). Joseph doesn’t have a voice in this part of the story. We don’t know exactly what is going through his head, but I can imagine this is not what he expected. The dreams of greatness he had were portents of a future beyond his grasp. This was going to be much harder than he could have imagined. It was going to be much harder for the entire family. God had a trajectory in mind for Israel, but it took them much farther astray than anybody could have predicted.

            We have this problem with God’s will. For one, most of us don’t have dreams that depict what the future will hold, or if we do they are muddled visions of a reality we cannot yet discern. There is a real debate among Christians as to whether God has everything planned and whether we have any control over the future. Well, Joseph teaches us quite a lot about what God’s plan looks like. It is never fully crafted, or at the very least it appears to us only dimly. It is never without our input—both positive and negative. God’s plan is not intended for our ill, though ill may come of our response to it. Finally, God’s plan is God’s and not ours.

            I cannot imagine that God, being God and not subject to constraints like time and space, looks at the world like we do. When Joseph dreams these dreams they are visions of a future—yes—but not one that can come to be without the active participation of Joseph, his brothers and his father. Man plans and God laughs—not because God knows every little action that’s going to follow but because God’s view is much wider; ours is one-dimensional. Like Joseph, we interpret things in terms of personal gain. Joseph knew nothing of how to be a leader to his brothers until he was rejected and cast into the pit.

I hope it doesn’t take that kind of betrayal for you to understand your purpose in this life, but some of you have already been down into that pit. You have already had awful things happen to you—some, like Joseph, at the hands of family. You have to fall in order to rise.

            The Joseph story is a story lived out again and again in our lives. First we are prideful and exuberant, then we get shot down; then—slowly and after much backsliding—we discover our purpose in this world. Almost universally, that place in life looks nothing like we imagined it. When his family finally does bow to Joseph it is not in the place or manner he would have supposed. He becomes a leader in Egypt but finally wants nothing more than catharsis for those years gone by.

            We don’t know what we want. That is our fundamental flaw. We think we know—we think we want simple things: money, time, a person or a thing. We think if we have those things then we will be happy, but when we have it all we discover we want more. Soon, we are numb to life, unable to care for the good or the bad. The worst life is the life that no longer values catharsis; the life that learns no lessons from loss; the life that does not care. Catharsis requires loss, then a turning, and finally redemption. It requires falling into the pit. It requires looking deep within ourselves to find the essence of our humanity and turning around. It requires forgiveness.

            May you forgive as you are forgiven; may you find catharsis for all your hurt; and may God lead you in paths you would not have imagined.

My first duathlon

You see all those goodies?

Yes, I am a complete dork, but there is not much that gets me more excited than prepping for a race I have been working toward for a long time. Saturday morning I'll be doing something completely different. Well, maybe not completely. I have done four triathlons now since starting in 2006, but all of them have been sprints--pretty easy, straightforward, fast--you get the picture. This is a duathlon--so easier, right?--no swimming. Woot! Well, except this is definitively not a sprint.

The Ngede Challenge is a 10k road run, 10k mountain bike, 25k road bike and a 5k trail run. And it's hilly--like, western Wisconsin hilly.

Four months ago I had never run 10k. 5 miles was pretty much my limit. And you know what? That extra 1.2 miles sucked. Really sucked. Then it didn't. This has been a fun process of training. I have pushed all kinds of limits and shattered some personal bests. I'm faster and I can go A LOT longer than before. There are still some worries: I've trained exactly zero on the mountain bike (I'm picking one up tomorrow), I've never run more than 8 miles, and I really don't know what three transitions will do to me. But this is all a part of the process. This race has been my goal for some time, but it's not the end of the road. There are plenty of races ahead; it's just a matter of picking the next big challenge.

So, I'm heading out to Wisconsin tomorrow, spending the night at a friend's place and racing Saturday morning. I'm mostly over being sick, mostly over crashing three days ago; I'm mostly feeling really good. So, yes, I'm excited.

Wish me luck!

The Simplest Idea: Inception and the Church

A pastor at our weekly text study came in with an idea yesterday to read a book together and discuss. The book was titled, I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church, by Paul Nixon. This pastor was in need of finding some wisdom to deal with the travails of leading a struggling congregation in the midst of a declining mainline Protestant denomination. In short, he was in a place where a lot of clergy find themselves--pastoring to decline.

I found myself thinking, "Are we still there?" Are we still focusing on leadership techniques and programs for pastors to churches in decline? Are we still moping about the challenges of churches with fewer members? Are we still talking about the death of the church?

Some of us have moved on. I mean, we have thought about this. For many church leaders in my generation the decline of the church is not something new but in fact the only reality we have ever known. When pastors and professors have tried to shock us by saying things like, "The church as you knew it is over" we have looked at them blankly and thought, "Actually, this is the only church I've known. The church you've known is over."

But most of all, we think about how the church is going to look different. I was struck yesterday by the methodology of having a book study in the midst of declining congregations. It felt so wrong. For one, it is not the pastors who need to think about this; it is the congregation members who have no formal training. But more importantly, they need to come to this idea in such a way that it actually sticks--that it actually penetrates their psyche and makes the light bulb go on. For most people, that's not so easy.

That's when it hit me. This is really a matter of inception. The 2010 Christopher Nolan motion picture, Inception, is based on the premise of changing a subject's mind by planting an idea in that person's brain. In order to make inception work you first need a goal--what you want the subject to believe. Second, you need an idea powerful enough to accomplish that change. In the movie, the goal was to get the subject to break up his father's company; the idea was that the subject's father loved him and wanted him to choose his own path.

Crucial to the success of inception is implanting the right idea. I find that churches recognize a problem--there are less people in mainline denominations, less vitality, less energy, etc. But then they come up with all sorts of massive philosophical changes without synthesizing the singular idea behind the matter. So, pastors throw out frightening words like change, missional imagination, rooted confessionalism and the like, which members of our congregation are neither ready nor able to hear. What the mainline denominations have seemingly failed to do is find that one idea that needs to be planted deep in the psyche of our people. So, what is it?

Let's start with what it's not. It's not "we must change;" or "we need to grow." In Inception we learn that neither fear nor material gain are powerful enough motivators to plant an idea. The only emotion powerful enough to make an idea stick is catharsis. Our churches--our congregation members, our people--are desperately in need of catharsis. We need to face our past and hear, like Robert Fischer Jr. on his father's death bed, that the monumental figures of our past want us to go our own way. Semper reformandum, said the leaders of the Reformation, "Always reforming."

But the way most of our people see the church is like that lowest dream level where the buildings and structures of the world are collapsing before their eyes. Moreover, since the structures of the church are tied inextricably to the outside world, this is also how they view their lives. Things are changing: the world is becoming more complicated and chaotic. There are horrible people doing horrible things. There is so much out of our control. The world that we recognize from our past is disintegrating before our eyes.

So, we come to the goal we want to accomplish. In a world whose edifices seem to be crumbling the only catharsis, the only good news, is that this world is not the ultimate reality. Like the spinning top totem that Cobb (Leonardo diCaprio) uses to determine whether he is in the real world, we are in need of something to ground us. The goal of the mainline church's inception, therefore, is not to acclimate our people to change or to get them to see the necessity of being the church in new and different ways. No, none of that will work, and it is precisely the kind of things we have been trying all along. Instead, the goal of our inception is to show people that this world is a mere dream of the ultimate reality. We live in the shadow-lands where things don't quite make sense.

But this realization is not easily achieved. I can preach death and resurrection week after week and it will often seem to be falling on deaf ears. Sure, the Holy Spirit will do its best to open the ears of the people, but I know well enough that the very premise that I'm preaching is far too big. I'm in need of a simpler idea; a synthesis of this new creation. I'm in need of catharsis.

That's when it hit me like a bolt from the blue. We have been making this way, way too complicated. We have been telling people about systems, about programs, about theology and eschatology. We have been telling them about Christology and pneumatology. We have been telling them about historical criticism and other modern methods of reading the Bible. We have been teaching them bits of Greek, Hebrew and Latin. We have been preaching meta-theories when the simplest idea of all has never sunk in, because we never went deep enough. We tried "God loves you" but it just feels so shallow. We tried "You are saved" but it does not connect. These, too, were too complicated. They involved static realities that we could not see. Neither involved catharsis.

You see, we've only taken it down a single level. We've never touched that second dream state, let alone the third, so the idea never stuck. We have to press harder into the subconsciousness of the people we meet and tell them the most fundamental truth that can shape their realities. The truth is this:

You are forgiven.

This is the very essence of catharsis. They are the words that break down the walls around our supposed realities and show us a creation more real than anything our dream-like waking could ever promise. Forgiveness--true forgiveness, not the "I'm sorry" hokum that passes for such in our world--opens doors to a new future with hope.

Church leaders, I cannot impress this enough, the key is going deep enough. This is not just a matter of reciting some words in the liturgy. It is instead meeting those in the most desperate need in their most desperate moments, when their tops are spinning wildly out of whack, and pointing them back to the ultimate, Christ-drenched reality and saying, "You are forgiven in spite of your faults, in spite of the past, in spite of everything historical that binds you to this moment and this place. You are set free--by a Savior who came to re-write history, to make the dead rise and bring about a creation so much more real than anything you experience here and now."

But more important than the words is that single moment of catharsis. In the movie it was the pinwheel that Robert Fischer made for his father, hidden in the safe, that represented the pride his father felt. For us it may be a hug, it may be a cup of tea; it may be something much simpler still. But remember, it is never complicated. Forgiveness never is. But true forgiveness will set the church on fire. It will shake the foundations of our world. It will make us rise again.

So, get planting.

Wrestling with God

Text this week: Genesis 32:22-32

My favorite Religion professor at Augustana College had a door filled with stories, quotes and comics, and I spent a healthy chunk of my undergraduate time reading that wisdom again and again. One story in particular always grabbed my attention. It was the story of a 17^th century man and his family who were shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They managed to swim to a small, desolate island where they struggled to get by. Nobody came to rescue them. Slowly over time the man’s family became diseased and died—first the youngest children, then the oldest and finally his wife, until the man alone was left. When it was only him remaining he turned to the sky and shouted, “God, I know you are trying to get me to not believe in you, but I refuse to give in. I will believe in you in spite of everything.”

            I can’t help but think of that shipwrecked man when I think of Jacob. In today’s reading Jacob was left alone at the banks of the Jabbok River. This is the first time, since Adam was without Eve in the Garden of Eden, that anybody in the Bible is described as being alone. And, just like the shipwrecked man, when he found himself alone Jacob wrestled. The man shipwrecked on the island wrestled with God’s will in the face of sorrow and loss; Jacob wrestles with something just as personal—a mysterious man, a kind of God-figure, who came in the night. The stakes are high for both. In the face of loss and terror, an uncertain future and a broken past, both Jacob and the shipwrecked man wrestle for the things that matter most: their faith and their lives.

            Jacob teaches us at the Jabbok River is that it is OK to grapple with God. In fact, God needs people strong enough to question everything dear to them in this hostile world. God needs people who can stand up in the face of tragedy and proclaim in spite of it all that “We know you are trying to get us to not believe in you, God, but we refuse to do it.” When Jacob stole the birthright of Esau he chose the harder path, and this is his reward. There’s a difference between wrestling and “wrassling,” a teacher of mine once said. When you wrestle you have to follow the rules, but in “wrassling” there are no rules. This man-God-figure Jacob encounters is most definitely a wrassler, and he shows it when Jacob refuses to let go. It’s painful, quite literally, when God gives you a whack, but incredibly even that blow is not enough to make Jacob let go. This is for him a matter of faith, as much as it is a matter of physical strength. Our world is in need of those willing to accept the challenge to their faith, to wrestle with God’s will for us and ask the most difficult questions. We need more Jacobs.

            Most of us don’t think about the hard side of faith very often, because the path of deference and obedience seems the more faithful road to travel. Yet, if we look close God was the one who initiated the struggle with Jacob. It’s not that God tested Jacob with misfortune—Jacob brought that upon himself—but God does challenge his faith. And when God wrestles he blesses those strong enough to prevail against him. This is kind of a crazy thought. I mean, nobody can actually hold down and subdue God. I’m not talking about making God do our will or suggesting that we can have any power whatsoever over the divine. Instead, I am talking about standing up when those challenges and tragedies come into our lives and proclaiming, along with the shipwrecked man on the island, that our faith is not dependent on receiving good things or easy times; in fact, our faith is about proclaiming Christ crucified in the face of every power of this world that’s shouting otherwise. That is what Jacob is doing by refusing to let go. He is proclaiming that his faith is strong enough to take the blows.

            There’s a Lutheran historian and theologian by the name of Jim Nestingen who is famous in Lutheran circles for his teaching and his stories that are almost completely untrue but also so utterly engaging that you cannot help but want them to be. So, I heard this story from Jim and it may or may not be true, but I’m going to treat it like it is, just like he would.

Jim was attending the funeral of his professor’s wife. His professor, whose name I can’t recall, but it was something like “Papa Schmidt” so that’s the name I’m going to give him, was a gentle giant of a man and also, by the way, a Lutheran theologian to the core. In the receiving line at the prayer service preceding the funeral, Papa Schmidt grabbed a hold of Jim Nestingen (who is not a small man by anyone’s definition), put him in a big bear hug, picked him off the ground and said, “Oh, Jimmy, I’m so glad you have come to remind me of the promise that my wife had in Jesus Christ, our Lord. I’m so glad you came to tell me that her sins are washed away in the waters of her baptism and that Christ died for her sake. Thank you, Jimmy, for coming to remind me of the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead.”

            He was doing this with every single person in the receiving line.

            But you know what? That is that man on an island screaming at God that I know the reality of my situation looks dire, I know you have taken from me what I love most, but what of it? I believe nonetheless. That is Jacob wrestling with God all night long and refusing to let go even when it is painful. To wrestle with God is to stare down our mortality. So for Jacob, or the shipwrecked man, or Papa Schmidt, giving up the fight is not an option. To prevail is to keep at it; to look mortality in the face and demand something better, because we know the promises—we know the end of the story. Death is met by resurrection.

            When we prevail against God, God is going to give us a good whack, just as the man did with Jacob. God’s going to give us a limp. None of us can walk in wholeness before God. The Hebrew word for limp here is “tsala,” which is the same word for “rib.” It all brings us back to Adam and Eve. From the rib of Adam came Eve; one set in need of another. Just as Adam needed Eve for companionship, Jacob limps through the world in desperate need of finding his other side. For Jacob it has a double-meaning. He is half a twin to Esau, and he is a half a man without God. We have very similar limps. We need that other side—that completing rib. For us, just as for Jacob, we are in need of God. The very thing that we are wrestling with through this long life is the thing that we need to make ourselves whole.

            So, wrestle away. Obedience has its place, but Jacob reminds us it is no less faithful to look God straight in the eyes and refuse to let go. There is no fear or pain so horrid that it is beyond God’s grasp. What Jacob understood is that when God challenges us the key is to not let go. It will be painful; it will be awfully tempting to say, “So long, God. You have been an absolute brute. I have no time for you.” But the blessing only comes after the pain. Jacob refuses to let go, just as the shipwrecked man refuses to let go of his faith. May each of you have a faith so strong to wrestle with God in the face of adversity. May each of you refuse to let go.

Is it OK to cheat? A sermon on Jacob.

Text: Genesis 27:15-29

As I was thinking about the Jacob story this week, a line from Ocean’s 11 got stuck in my head—not the 1960 original version but the George Clooney, Brad Pitt, 2001 version—where Tess says “You’re a liar and a thief” to which Danny replies, “I only lied about being a thief.”

Everybody lies. I mean, not all the time. Often we tell the truth, but every one of us has lied from time to time. Same thing with cheating: every one of us has bent the rules to our advantage. In spite of this, we have this default setting when reading the Bible that every character must be some kind of other-worldly rock of virtue. Some of you grew up watching those religious Sunday School movies about Jesus’ life, or about Moses and the burning bush, or Charlton Heston’s Ten Commandments. The one universal theme in these movies is that all the characters are incredibly pious people who, if they were living today, would probably be monks or at the very least would cross themselves every couple of seconds—and recite a few Hail Maries—to remind you how devout they are. So, basically what we have done in this mythologizing of the biblical characters is create models for our faith that are so incredibly unreal that we can no longer relate to them as human beings.

Who of you gets up in the morning and thinks, “I really want to be like Moses today?” This is a problem since the Bible is filled with these really human characters.

Let's start with Jacob. He is no pillar of virtue. He comes out of the womb grabbing on to his brother’s ankle, and his mother, Rebekah, takes one look and exclaims, “He cheats!” or in Hebrew, ya-chov—Jacob. And Jacob, for his part, lives up to the name—tricking his brother out of his birthright, lying to his father about his identity, and stealing the blessing that should have been Esau’s. If you’re looking for one of those stuffy, pious paragons of the faith it is not Jacob.

So what's the moral of the story: Should we be like Jacob? Is it OK for us to cheat others, to cast them aside on our way to the top as long as it is part of God’s plan? The great thing about this question is that I can ask it to five and six year olds and every one of them will say, “No! It’s not OK.” But you ask it of adults and they’re less sure. Well… no… but… sometimes it’s the way the world works. You hear this kind of justification all the time. We revel in Jacob stories. We love stories of the person who is born without means and rises to the top through sheer determination and grit—and perhaps some timely advantages—to become something great. If you haven’t watched the Olympics this year—or any year for that matter—I just summed up every single story that NBC has told you for the past couple of weeks.

If it’s OK for Jacob then it’s OK for us, right? That’s the conclusion we tend to draw… I mean, God did bless the people through Jacob and eventually form the nation of Israel from his progeny. That must mean that Jacob was justified in his actions, doesn’t it?

I think, intuitively, we know the answer. There is something not right about Jacob. He is clearly not the person we want him to be. He’s not a model of virtue. He’s not the kind of son we want to raise. He’s not the kind of person we want leading our country, even if he is exactly the kind of person who does end up leading our country. Jacob is a mess, and still, God works through him.

You see, this is not a story about Jacob’s morality. The future of Israel is not dependent on the conniving actions of a very determined man. It is not dependent on Rebekah’s guile in deceiving her husband, Isaac. It is not dependent on a dim-witted brother, Esau, who is more concerned with food than with the future.

This is not a story about Jacob. This is a story about God.

It doesn’t matter if you think Jacob is justified in his actions or not; God is justified in getting the job done. The job is to lead the chosen people into their future, and whether that’s through a starving brute of a man in Esau or a scheming genius in Jacob, God is the star of the show. But still, our little minds with our little desires keep us captive to the little questions raised by Jacob. Is it OK to cheat? Is it OK to cut corners to get what we want? Or most dangerously, could God be calling me to cheat? Do the ends justify the means?

Our trouble is that we live in a cheater culture. It’s become not just common-place but in some places completely acceptable to cheat on your taxes, to cheat on your spouse, or to cheat in school or sports. And for those of you who are feeling pretty good that I didn’t mention anything that you’ve done, I have one word for you: speeding. We have all cheated.

I have cheated in the past—and I’m sure in spite of my best intentions, whether it’s speeding down the highway, rolling through a stop sign on my bike (and yes, I do that A LOT), or something much worse—I will cheat again sometime soon. And I’m willing to bet so will you, and the worst part is that we cannot justify the choice to cheat. We are cheating the rules—yes—but more than that we are cheating ourselves. There’s a saying that cheaters never prosper; that might sometimes be true, but I think it’s more accurate to say that cheaters do initially prosper. But cheating also takes a toll. It makes us guilty, it compels us to lie to cover our tracks, it turns our consciences inside out and we don’t like what we see. Then, ultimately, we discover that cheating wasn’t worth it; not because we didn’t prosper but because the collateral damage was much worse. For example, it’s not that every person who texts while they are driving will have a horrible accident, but some will. Is it worth the collateral damage?

So our paradigm of cheating and prospering, Jacob, is struck down by the very blessing he receives. As it turns out, the easier life would have been to sit in Esau’s shadow. Jacob’s blessing means challenge after challenge. It means fleeing to strange lands, difficult relationships, the rape of his daughter, and the travails of his sons. It means pain, suffering and regret long before it means the adoption of Israel. Only then can we see how God was working through Jacob all along—not for his own prosperity but for the prosperity of a people yet unborn. Jacob’s foresight was pretty good—it is after all how he robbed Esau of his blessing—but God’s foresight trumped Jacob’s by leaps and bounds. His cheating meant both blessing and burden.

So does ours.

The church vs extra-curriculars: Changing a culture

I just came from a rather good ministerial meeting in Hallock where I was encouraged a good deal about the pulse of the wider church. We are getting together and doing things--gasp--across denominational lines. This is all very exciting, and for this idealist it is a great sign for a future where most everybody can learn to get along. However, there was one point of contention that concerned a statement crafted by a local pastor pertaining to times set aside for the church in the community.

In many (probably all) places, sports and other extra-curriculars have made family attendance at Sunday worship--shall we say--spotty. Sports now occupy a more valued place in the hierarchy of event scheduling than do religious traditions. You would probably not be surprised that most leaders in the church, myself included, take issue with this trend and would love to see it reversed. How to change the culture, however, remains in dispute.

The statement we were presented with today was, in my humble opinion, fantastic. It was designed to be a tool for parents to use so they would have words to speak against the organizations that have put strain on their ability to participate fully in the life of their religious community. It is supposed to be a help to parents who feel helpless raging against the machine that is club athletics in America. But, even at our meeting of religious leaders, it was controversial.

The concern was over the methodology. One church leader felt it was a matter of strong families picking themselves up by their own bootstraps and saying, "Enough." He felt this kind of statement was a waste of time, since parents were ultimately responsible for their children's priorities.

In a sense I think he's right that parents may be the most integral factor in determining their children's priorities, but let's not pretend that we live in a vacuum. Suggesting that parents alone can determine their children's participation and prioritization in activities without any environmental influence is both ignorant and a potentially dangerous policy of isolation. Such a policy creates young people who have a chip on their shoulder because their families were, depending on their view of it, either crueler or more pious than the families of other kids.

Sometimes a culture does change when individuals take a stand, but more often what is needed is the combined efforts of a group. Individual families have been upset about the trend toward sporting events on Wednesdays and Sundays for years. Some have given in and their kids are often absent on Sunday mornings; others have forbade their kids from playing. Neither of these choices is ideal. What we need is more than strong families. What we need is a culture shift. And these things only happen when people unite. That's exactly what we were doing this morning. It may not change the world--it may only give words to a single family, or it may do nothing at all--but to give up before the fact admits that our message isn't very powerful.

I tend to think the opposite. Setting God before our idols is the most powerful statement we can ever make. If it doesn't work it has nothing to do with the message and everything to do with our faithfulness to it.

New layout!

Hey friends, family, parishioners, folks I don't know, and whoever else is reading this!

Over the last couple of months I have been seeking a way to make this blog more interesting while, at the same time, keeping up on content. Sermons are particularly tricky, because they don't get very many page views (I can see why: I'd much rather experience a sermon in person than read it online... and if I don't want to read it why would you?). So, I've been searching to find a balance. Creating a second blog for sermons only was an option, but that too seemed a little silly. Finally, I settled on a dramatic layout shift.

Thanks to some nice upgrades in blogger the "dynamic" layouts should allow for better viewing. I also have a new policy: for sermon-posts there will be no images; for other posts there will always be an image. That way you can easily differentiate between sermons and non-sermons on the main blog page. A few other things may change. I took down the book review tab and I'll be looking to add another tab at some point but not until I know what I want up there.

Anyway, I hope you continue to find your way over to this page, and I'm always looking for advice/suggestions on how to make it better.

Thanks,
Frank

Great is Thy Faithfulness!

            There’s a temptation whenever we come together in public celebration to blur the hard edges of history—to glaze over the challenges of our past for the sake of our present. And it’s easy on a day like this to talk about fluff. It’s perhaps easier still to recite a litany of those ministries that this congregation has accomplished over the last century and a quarter. We’ve had much of that so far this weekend and there will be time later for still more. For my part I feel compelled to offer something different, because the readings for today so happen to be some of the most challenging and serious in all of scripture, and I’d be doing you a disservice to ignore them.

Two months ago, I first noticed that the narrative lectionary we are using for the summer was going to cross paths with our 125^th Celebration just as we hit the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, and so I found myself with a choice: change the readings or leave it alone. It would have been pretty easy to move things around—none of you would have even known about it had I done that—but something was nagging at me. Here we were making a big deal about “faithfulness” as the theme for this celebration, and what would it say about faithfulness, I wondered, if we ignored this story? That was my first thought and like many faced with tough decisions, my initial reaction was fearful. Are we brave enough to hear this on a day whose tenor is so distinctly celebratory? But importantly, fear did not have the final word. I had a second thought, and it was something like this: What would it say about us if we did tackle Abraham and Isaac head on? What would it say if we were unafraid of the most difficult questions raised by our faith? That this is a story where faithfulness is put to the test sealed the deal. The sacrifice of Isaac would stay.

This is a story about an ethical dilemma. Abraham is faced with a quandary that we may find to which we may find ourselves impossibly removed. It is awfully tough to put ourselves in Abraham’s shoes and ask, “What would I do if God commanded this of me? What choice would I make?” If you’re like most people, the question almost sounds like blasphemy. Nobody wants to decide between God and family, between love and faithfulness, between a child and a promise. We don’t want to think about a God who would ever ask us for such a choice, and yet here it is. For all of the wonder that we are as human beings we remain paralyzed by choice. When we have too many choices we are overwhelmed; but when we are left without a choice we bemoan our lack of options.

Faithfulness and choice often go hand-in-hand. History is made when men and women rise above the fear and paralysis that come from weighing difficult options, and finally make a choice to dive headlong forward, often straight into the unknown. One hundred and twenty-five years ago nineteen adults and seventeen children dove in and established a Swedish Lutheran Church in Hallock, Minnesota. One year later they chose to bring together resources enough to construct a building. In both of those instances somebody had to step out on a limb and dive into the unknown. Every one of those choices represented those early members of what would become Grace Lutheran taking the harder path, rejecting the status quo for the sake of a calling to create something new. Again and again over these 125 years Grace has been put to challenging decisions. Remarkably, we’re still here.

It’s remarkable because as far as I know at no point in the history of this congregation did anybody have all the necessary info to make a completely informed choice. And though our choices are not always as serious as Abraham’s, they are often no less convoluted. Sometimes we have to make a decision between impossible choices where no option can be considered good. That is Abraham’s dilemma: does he give up the son for whom he had waited over a century or disobey the God who gave him Isaac in the first place? Neither would do. The amazing thing about Abraham is not that he followed through on God’s command—we can debate the morality of that choice all day long—the amazing thing about Abraham is that he was able to make a choice at all.

Faithfulness is taking a stand for God even when God asks the impossible.

Our church stands where Abraham stood. Maybe the stakes aren’t as high, but then again maybe they are. Abraham’s walk up the mountain to sacrifice his son foreshadows Christ’s walk up to the cross, and as disciples of Christ we walk the same path in turn. To be a disciple, Jesus said to pick up your cross and follow. Choose the harder path. You have the choice between sacrificing yourselves or rejecting God’s promises. Neither looks like a very good choice, but it’s the same decision that Abraham faced. Do we live for ourselves or die to ourselves? Do we live for God, or, like Peter denying Christ in his time of need, do we become ashamed and fearful in a time of crisis?

It’s been said too many times that the church is always one generation away from extinction. The truth is that it’s much more dire than that. The church is always moments away from its death. Every time the church turns inward and loves only itself, it dies a spiritual death. Every time the church fails to proclaim Christ and becomes only a social club, it dies a spiritual death. Every time the church is paralyzed by choice or fearful of the repercussions, it dies a spiritual death. But every time the church makes the harder choice to walk where Abraham walked, to proclaim Christ crucified and risen and to shout it out in the face of every power of the world that says that’s not really such a big deal; every time the church is what the church can be, what the church has been, and what the church will be when Christ comes again, then this church has done the impossible and has picked up its cross and followed—to its death, yes; but ultimately to its resurrection!

A good church dies every day, just as a good Christian dies every day. Every day we get up and say to ourselves, “Well, church, we haven’t really been the kind of church we should be. We didn’t feed the hungry; we didn’t clothe the poor; we didn’t visit the homebound, or give hope to the hopeless. We didn’t do a very good job of being Jesus to the world. We’re sorry. We messed up. But today we will rise. We will be Christ. We will make the harder choice. We will reject sin, the devil and all his empty promises. We will be the church, not as we have been for the past 125 years but as we will be today and tomorrow—now and forever.”

As Abraham walked up Mt. Moriah to sacrifice Isaac he gave us the blueprint for everything that we do. He was faithful—even to a fault, even when faithfulness seemed to be the crazy thing to do. So we are faced with our own Moriah, our own Isaacs, our own things we love more than life itself. Are we willing to offer them up to God? Are we willing to step out on the most precarious limb and trade our comfort for uncertainty? It’s the question we face every day, and remember: the church is a moment away from failure; we’re a moment away from turning our backs on the God who brought us thus far by faith; we’re a moment away from death.

So was Isaac.

It’s only when the angel of the Lord breaks in at that last second, with Abraham’s knife raised precariously over his son, that we find the greatness of God’s faithfulness. A moment away from death, Isaac is saved. A moment away from our death, the church looks unblinkingly forward and says, in the words of Martin Luther,

 “I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!”

Amen.