Be a member--why not--but, more importantly, be a follower

Scripture: 1 Kings 8:1-13

            Confirmation is a seminal event in the life of the church. It’s the day that brings to fruition the promises that were made in your baptism, and it is your opportunity to publicly respond to that baptismal promise that your parents and godparents made for you. But first I want to be clear about a couple things, the first of which I say every year and will continue to say every year until I’m satisfied we are a church that doesn’t act like this: confirmation is not graduation. We parade you up here in gowns and applaud for you so it feels like graduation, but it is my profound hope that you are not done with the church even as you are just becoming members. If so, we have failed you.

Confirmation also does not mean that you agree with every detail of what our church confesses. If we honestly felt that way none of you would be getting confirmed. You are all little heretics who think for yourselves, but it’s not a sin to have independent thoughts. To be a member of the church is not to become an automaton who goes through the motions of worship once a week. While we ask that you respect the traditions that have been handed down for tens, or hundreds, or, in some cases, thousands of years, you are free also to respectfully disagree with those traditions. People have disagreed about things as long as there has been a church, and they can do this and faithfully remain a part of the church because we do not worship traditions or theological viewpoints. We worship Jesus. All of our traditions and confessions and doctrines are cornerstones for temple-building, but the temple is not the thing that we worship.

The politicians we elect (then hate), and the ones we reject and God elects

Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:1-13

            As I read through the call of David this past week I was struck by the kind of people that God elects compared with the kind of people we elect. According to polls[1] from this past week 10% of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing, 8.5% don’t know or care (which is probably misleading because I’m pretty sure at this point 100% of us don’t care, in addition to our other feelings), and 82.5% disapprove. Given the nature of things in Washington these days I can’t really say I’m stunned, but taken on its own those numbers are staggering. Isn’t it at least a little insane that only 1 out of 10 of us approve of the people that we elected to represent us? We live in a representative democracy wherein the people decide who gets to serve, and yet we pretty much all dislike the very people we have elected into that service. And though there is a side of us that really would never be completely content with any representative, the fact remains that a majority of us decided that each and every one of these people is the best person to serve our country.

So, we can be comforted in knowing that God chooses people very differently from us!

We like to go the sexy route in our elections. We like to pick the people who are really smart and attractive, who have a fancy degree from a prestigious university, and who have done a good job of running a business or making speeches. We assume that those are the kinds of people that we need running the country because they have experience doing important stuff, which suggests they can faithfully represent the issues that are important to us.

            Notice, on the other hand, that God calls a boy shepherd to be king. David isn’t especially smart; he’s not really attractive in the authoritative way we expect of our leaders; he has no experience with anything resembling politics; he has no business acumen; and God doesn’t even ask where he stands on the issues. What a mockery of the political process! David doesn’t know a thing about leadership, he has no political convictions whatsoever, and he never went to Yale or was made captain of the football team. No human being would have ever elected David to be king.

Eli: A priest in need of the cross

Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-21

            There are worse fates in life than to be born a pastor’s kid, but then again there are many better fates, too. I’m not one—a pastor’s kid—but I’ve seen them firsthand, and since I’m kind of going to have one myself soon I’ve been thinking about this some lately. Pastor’s kids, by no fault of their own, are held to an entirely different standards from other children; this is true of police kids and teacher’s kids, too, to different degrees. Because of this, these kids either rise up to that standard to become good, but often sheltered, children; or they fail to rise up to that standard and go the other way, doing pretty much anything they can to distance themselves from that responsibility unfairly entrusted to them.

            This is not a new problem. Eli, the priest in today’s scripture, has two of the worst pastor’s kids you can imagine. The two of them were doing the B.C. equivalent of spray painting the sanctuary, smoking behind the bleachers, and stealing mom and dad’s car. They went the “other” way, and for it Eli and his family are cursed.

This is basically a parent’s worst nightmare.

Cold, rain, pain and redemption, part III (The conclusion)

This is part 3 of 3 of my tale of trying to ride 100 miles in one go. Check out part I here and part II here.

The Monday after

I had a plan. It was brilliant. Yes, I was thwarted by weather and a cold on Saturday but I had this awesome opportunity to just do it again on Monday. I was already planning on riding 30 miles with Steve Peterson, the Assistant to the Bishop in NW Minnesota, and Nate Houge, a church musician and (as it happens) bike enthusiast. What if I just added in 70 miles on my own?

Sounded easy enough. At least it did Saturday when I got home and felt completely recovered from the cold. Things changed Sunday as the chest cold made its triumphant return. Still, I figured it would be gone by Monday morning and I would do it--I had to do it. To leave a goal unreached was absolutely unthinkable.