Not a little more. All.

Matthew 2:1-12

One of the big emotions of this holiday season, and one of the ones we associate most with the season of Christmas, is joy. The wise men had it right there in chapter 2 of Matthew: "When they saw the star had stopped they were overwhelmed with joy." Not just kind of happy but overwhelmed with joy.

Joy isn't necessarily the emotion we associate with wise people, or with kings, or with people who have a lot of education. We tend to think that they're the pensive ones who are just kind of always level. So to have wise people be joyous sticks out. Joy is something we tend to associate much more freely with children. Now, if we think about what it is that wise men we might say that they study, and in those days what they were studying was, among other things, the stars. That happens to be why they noticed this new thing in the first place. It's guys who are looking at the stars who found Jesus, because you can't notice a new star in the sky unless you're looking in the first place. If a new star showed up in the sky tonight I wouldn't have a clue because I wouldn't be looking, and even if I did happen to look up I wouldn't notice that there was anything different about it because I don't know the sky that well in the first place. It's just not something I know intimately. So it was the wise men who studied, who had that background to observe this, who experience this overwhelming joy. It's worth starting there.

My 2014 year in review

So, basically, my 2014 can be summed up in one picture:

That's Bean, and she's a monster of cuteness.

Basically all other 2014 achievements are dwarfed by that monster in pink.

But other things did happen this year. Many other things, actually. In fact, as much as people liked to tell me that I wouldn't have time for other things, 2014 was a year of plenty of other things. Here are just a few:

Stories, not numbers, on this Christmas Eve

Scripture: Luke 2:1-20

After our Christmas concert at Grace last Sunday afternoon one of the high-schoolers said something to me that has been on my mind this week, and since I have a pulpit and a congregation I’m going to think through it with all of you. She said, “There must be a lot of pressure on you to say something on Christmas Eve that will make all those people come back to church during the rest of the year.”

You can tell a young person said that because she still believes that I have actual power and influence and stuff. It’s cute.

The reason I’m beginning tonight’s sermon with that quote is not to make some of you uncomfortable—well, maybe it’s partially to make some of you uncomfortable—but primarily I want to address it because this attitude that our success or failure as a church is determined by butts in the seats just doesn’t work. Numbers tell a story, just not a very deep one. It’s not data but people that matter, and I worry about some of you not because of the percentage of Sundays you show up in church but because, if I don’t see you very often, I don’t know your story. And I don’t know who does. Do your families? Do you? And I don’t know how the Christmas story matters within the story that is your life. Does it?

Joseph and the importance of just showing up

Scripture: Matthew 1:1-25

Whenever we read about Joseph (the father of Jesus) in the Bible, which admittedly is not often because he only appears in first two chapters of Matthew and even less in Luke, I am reminded of a quote from the 1998 movie, Simon Birch, where one of the boys, Eddie, gloats after being cast as Joseph in the Christmas pageant. He’s pretty full of himself until Simon, the little misfit title character, says, “It's the Virgin Mary, Eddie. What does Joseph have to do with anything?”

Right. What does Joseph have to do with anything?

This really is the question. Joseph is just along for the ride; in fact, it’s his fault they need to make this journey to Bethlehem in the first place. What does Joseph have to do with anything? I mean, how many lines does he get in the Christmas pageant? How many songs are written about him? Nobody cares! And I suppose that’s natural and it’s even kind of funny… until we consider that perhaps Joseph does have a role to play, that, in fact, this story of Jesus’ birth hinges on adoption… and it centers around naming… both of which are incredibly powerful and both of which are Joseph’s job.

I bet most people would say that these verses in Matthew are about the Virgin birth, which is true in part, but I would hazard to guess that we say that primarily because that’s controversial, and our eyes tend to focus on sex if it’s to be found anywhere in the text. If there’s one verse out of one hundred that has to do with sex we’ll pick it out as the most important, because it tends to be one of our big hang-ups. For example, I can all but guarantee that even though this sermon has nothing to do with sex and I’m not going to mention it again after this moment it will show up in a couple of sermon notes. We get so hung up on Virgin birth stuff that we tend to miss the rest of what’s going on altogether. This is a story about Joseph staying in the picture, being the adoptive father of the Son of God, and it’s about the power of naming. It’s Joseph to whom the name of Emmanuel is given, not Mary, though, being the typical guy that he is, he apparently wasn’t listening to the angel very closely because instead of Emmanuel he went with “Jesus.”

Joseph is also important because of his lineage. The first reading today with that overly long list of descendents connects Jesus with the heroes of biblical history. That lineage runs through Joseph. None of those connections exist without Joseph, which is kind of funny if you stop and think about it because it means that Jesus was not actually a flesh and blood descendant of David or Abraham or any of the others. He is only an adoptive descendant of that line. If Joseph goes, so does Jesus’ primary connection with the Old Testament. Jesus’ flesh and blood lineage is through the more-anonymous Mary.

So why does any of this matter?

Know yourself... or else you'll never know why Jesus had to come.

Scripture:Isaiah 42:1-9

I wonder how much we really know ourselves. On the surface that probably seems like a silly thought. Who could you possibly know better than yourself? But we played a little game with our Confirmation students—and I’m going to have you play it wherever you are in a minute. I want you to think about two things--to really think and pore over it--and, if you can, share them with somebody else. The two things are these: #1: What is something you are good at? And #2: What is something you need to work at or improve upon? Take as much time as you need to ponder.

********************************************************************************

Was that easy? I think for most of us it’s a challenge, especially when we get to talking about what we need to improve. Most of us have stock answers to those questions: I really need to work on balancing my time better, or I really need to work on getting out more, or I really need to work on having a more positive attitude, but those answers are often only scratching the surface of what’s really going on with us. We have a hard time being introspective enough to know what we need to work on, because it’s scary to look at ourselves in the mirror so closely. In many ways our families and friends can answer those questions about us better than we can answer them ourselves.

Many of our societal problems are rooted in our unrealistic opinion of ourselves. As Bertrand Russell once said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” To use biblical language, there’s a lot of pointing out specks in other peoples’ eyes and not a lot of acknowledging the log in our own. And what ends up happening in a world where we don’t know ourselves very well is that we get awfully defensive. Arguments escalate. Since we are not comfortable in the situation—since we aren’t very sure of ourselves—we overcompensate, and we become louder and brasher. We talk over others. We never listen. Listening is weakness, letting others talk is weakness, admitting there are things we don’t know is weakness.

The general rule of thumb is that the person who is loudest knows him or herself the least.

An argument for reading the parts of the Bible you don't like

“That’s not the God I believe in.” I’ve heard this phrase countless times in many different contexts. Sometimes it’s helpful. I remember our former presiding bishop Mark Hanson talking about meeting with people who don’t believe in God, listening to their stories of why they don’t believe, and then relating that the god they are describing is not the God he believes in either. Our conflicts over religion have a great deal to do with misunderstanding the kind of God that one another believe in. In that way this phrase is useful.

But in other ways I find it a cop out. For example: when it’s used by educated Christians who read the Bible until they find an attribute of God they don’t like, and then they explain that they don’t agree with that scripture because that’s not the God I believe in. This has always seemed backwards to me—I mean, how can you say that’s not the God you believe in when the God you believe in is revealed primarily through scripture? Aren’t you admitting that the God you believe in is only a reflection of the traits you define as “good”? Then, isn't God really only a reflection of you? It’s a pretty short jaunt from ignoring scripture we don’t like to making God in our image.

It bothers me even more when this comes from pastors, because most of them, like me, had to take vows in their ordination that contain a line that reads something like this: “The church in which you are to be ordained confesses that the holy scriptures are the word of God and are the norm of its faith and life…. Will you therefore preach and teach in accordance with the holy scriptures…?” Can we really take that vow seriously if we discount certain bits of scripture out of hand because of our preconceived notions of who or what God is?

I believe strongly in an open-minded approach to scripture, because I believe that all scripture exists to reveal God to us, and if that’s the case then what have we to fear from reading something that rubs us the wrong way? That doesn’t always mean that the Bible is clear or that we will like it; in fact, it pretty much guarantees the opposite; but it promises us that the Bible as we have it is sufficient for faith in the true God. Scripture might contain allegories and parables, events that are described as if historical even if they may not have ever happened, and even words of human people that conceal as much as they reveal, but God is found everywhere in the midst of it all.

In fact, I tend to believe that God is found particularly in the places we are challenged.

It's harder to be thankful as the oppressor than the oppressed (thoughts on Thanksgiving, Habakkuk, Ferguson, and whether we should be affected))

Scripture: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:2-4, 3:17-19

The following is a transcript

 

We’re reading from Habakkuk today, which is one of my favorite books in the Bible—also, coincidentally, impossible to pronounce. Habakkuk’s preaching has a good deal of weight because he is preaching from a place where he has absolutely nothing. It begs the question in this season of Thanksgiving: how can you be thankful when you have nothing? Thankfulness is something we associate with having things. That makes sense. I mean, it’s much easier when you have things, but Habakkuk tells us something different—that he is thankful precisely for having nothing.

He says, “Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines… though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:17-18)

Though I have nothing… I will praise God for everything.

Habbakuk sounds so un-American. We tend to associate good things as things that we thank God for and bad things as things that we pray to God to remove from our lives. When we say we're "thankful in all things" usually it means that we find the positive in the negative--not that the bad things themselves are worthy of being thankful for. But on the other hand this attitude of Habakkuk is really refreshing, because he’s treating God as more than a good luck charm. We need more of that. At certain times in life this philosophy is very useful. This is why this scripture from Habakkuk has been used against regimes in Nazi Germany and apartheid in South Africa. It’s scripture for people who are being murdered and ruthlessly suppressed. People who have nothing but discover that being thankful even then gives them a kind of power.

Generational lines, "All Star" clergy, and reaching the aliens

Scripture: Jeremiah 1:4-10, 7:1-11
The following is a transcript

I'm going to start with a little poll. How many of you are subscribers or regular readers of The Lutheran magazine? Anybody here? Alright, we have some people who read The Lutheran. For those of you who do not (or for those that do but did not read this month's issue) they had a big issue on the clergy retirement wave, and the age demographics of clergy (and implicitly also congregations) in the ELCA. This became something of a controversial issue, because never did they say anything negative about the next generation--my generation--of clergy, but they did kind of imply things--like we're in the process retiring the "All Star team" of clergy. That's a message that many of us heard loud and clear, saying "Oh, so we're the minor league team, I guess." What ended up happening was a lot of good discussion already--and I expect more in the future. But what came up more than anything else is a sense of frustration at how easily we fracture along those lines of demographics and age.

So this call of Jeremiah that we read about today is a call to somebody who is extremely young. I think we fool ourselves if we think that God only calls people that are extremely young, but we also fool ourselves if we think that the only people who ever receive worthy calls from God are in their 50s and 60s and 70s. I think that God calls people of all sorts. There's no such thing in God's mind as too young or too old. In fact, in the Jeremiah reading God says that he set him apart before he was even born.

Are "All" really welcome?

            I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about what it means to be welcome (a colleague who I knew from seminary is partly to blame for this; read her--no doubt better--reflection here). Like when we say “All are welcome!” or “Anybody can come!” or “Open to all!” and how that is, or is not, reflected in how we actually act. Is everybody welcome in our church? Is everybody welcome to become a member? To come forward for communion? To serve on council? To sing in the choir? You name it.

I know the nice thing to say is, “Yes, all truly are welcome.” But just because it’s nice doesn’t make it true, or even right. And also, come to think of it, are we really so sure saying “All are welcome” is even nice? Isn’t saying “All are welcome” actually kind of condescending when our actions don’t bare it out? I tend to think so, and I would be willing to bet that some folks who have drifted away from the church probably have similar thoughts.

It’s much easier to say “All are welcome” than to make it so. When we put it into practice welcoming people often comes with strings attached--i.e., you need to look more like us, or you need to talk more like us, or you need to believe more like us, or you need to work in one way or another on becoming more like us. You might say that you don’t actually believe that, but isn’t that exactly why we teach Confirmation, or send leaders to seminary, or teach deacons to serve communion?

See, this is what I’m getting at: It’s OK that not everybody is welcome to everything. Really, it is. An example: it’s OK that a person who refuses to confess a faith in Jesus is not allowed to become a member of the church. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be in the church at all. It doesn’t mean we don’t have room for “seekers.” It just means that there are doctrinal boundaries for the sake of defining who we are. It’s also OK that we create rules around people in our community who have issues with emotional or physical boundaries; it’s OK that we protect victims by helping to maintain good boundaries with those who have victimized them (in fact it’s more than OK; it’s necessary). It’s also OK that we have our own practices about when a person can take part in the various milestones of the church.

But that’s not usually what we mean when we say “All are welcome.” We’re usually not talking about the creedal stuff (what we believe) or the legal stuff (who we need to protect). We’re usually talking about people who are nominally Christians, or former Christians, or people who could become Christians, but they don’t come to church. If we consider this ideal imaginary person whom we are welcoming then I would hazard to guess that he/she is a person who looks, acts, and thinks like us, but who, for whatever reason, has never discovered this church that will feed him/her with exactly what he/she needs. Rarely do we consider that every person we are welcoming is a person who is necessarily different from us. Rarely do we consider that every act of welcoming a person is an act of changing who we are.

Bullying into prayer, swords into plowshares

Scripture: Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7, 2:1-4

            This is a story about bullying. Sure, it uses kings and nations as the characters, guys with long names that distract us. Who names their kid Sennacherib? All of that merely serves as a distraction from a story about a person with a loud voice, shouting “Be afraid! Be very afraid!” This is a story about bullying, about fear, and about all the terrible, awful, untrue things that people say to try to grab your attention. So this is a perfect story for our age.

            The Rabshakeh always gets a lot of attention. He’s the guy—or gal—who yells the loudest, who is the most threatening, and who seems the most sure of himself. I’m reminded of a time on The Simpsons when all the characters are bemoaning that nobody listens to them and Homer Simpson chimes in, saying, “I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.” That’s what it feels like when there’s somebody yelling from a place of power. We feel like we need to engage with the person shouting on the TV or the radio because he or she is loud and given air time; even though that engagement only gives them more power.

            There are a lot of bullies out there. Some of them live in our schools—that much is still true. More and more of them live online these days. Plenty of them, like the Rabshakeh, are willing to stand up on a chair and scream to instill fear in the masses. Isn’t that what we expect from our legislators when they are passionate about an issue? Stand up and shout to show us how passionate you are. The loudest voice is the one that gets heard, after all.

Does fear of the Lord still matter? (And other leading questions)

Scripture: Micah 5:2-4; 6:6-8

The book of Proverbs reminds us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now, that doesn’t get much play these days. I suspect most people would say that the beginning of wisdom is found in college, or the beginning of wisdom is discovered in the process of aging, or the beginning of wisdom is starting a career, or having a family. Fear of the Lord may be biblical but we rarely consider fear of a thing to be good—not today—and certainly wisdom must start somewhere else. “Why should we be afraid of God?” we might ask in our best modern voices. We love God, or we have faith in God, but fearing God? No, no. That’s something for less civilized folk.

We’ve done our best to make God into the flavorless communion wafers that we serve as his body. He can be loving, and powerful, and good, but fearful? Nope, no good. We have become afraid to ascribe to God any attribute that we do not consider proper in our fellow human beings, and the end result has been a kind of arrogance in our understanding of who God is and what God does. We first decide what it is that a good God will look like, then we decide which parts of our God fit that description, and finally we only believe those things we have already decided befit the God of our choice. In this way we make God in our image. God has all the traits we like and likes the people we like.

Because this Old Testament God doesn’t act like the God we have created in our image we make this God out to be a different God that, because of Jesus, we can ignore. We do this even though Jesus seemed perfectly happy to pray to this God whom he called “Father” and even though our creeds confess this God to be one and the same with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is important when it comes to reading the prophets, like Micah, because our weakened images of God mean that we are tempted to take shortcuts and find in the prophets what we want to find. When Micah says, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” we read that as if it is a moral-ethical imperative. Do these things and you’ll be right in the sight of God. Perfect. After all, that’s exactly what Jesus says when he’s asked what a person has to do to inherit eternal life: “Be perfect like your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Not politics as usual: Election Day and the story of Naaman

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14

           So it’s election season, and, as such, we know to drown out the incessant political ads, the editorials and letters to the editor that read as if the person writing in is standing on a chair screaming, and the substance-less promises of people in far off places looking for our vote. Closer to home we have friends and neighbors seeking elected offices of one sort or another, which is a whole other thing that, while not nearly as obnoxious as campaigns in St. Paul or Washington D.C., still contributes to a good deal of local stress—even if we’re all too polite to acknowledge it. It’s that political time of the year, and all I can think is, “Thank God it’s not a presidential election year.”

            It’s also a confusing time for churches because we aren’t allowed to endorse candidates but we can, apparently, take stands on issues; hence the churches who put up banners saying “Vote Yes on measure such and such” or “Vote no on something else.” These are the kind of razor-thin ethical distinctions that only politicians could create. The church lives in the world, so we are political in the sense that all people making decisions about how to live are political, but we are also apolitical—in that we do not put our trust in elected leaders or legislation to tell the world about Jesus.

            This is a good time to read from 2 Kings for that reason. Naaman, who is introduced as a commander in the army of the king of Aram, has a skin problem. He has some really bad acne. The translation we just read suggests it is leprosy, but since leprosy was more or less unknown during this period it could be as serious as that or, more likely, it was something like psoriasis. Either way, Naaman has a skin issue and he needs some help. Hearing that there is a prophet in Israel—that lowly country that he has been raiding again and again—who can heal his disease, he sends word to the king and asks for an audience with the prophet.

Wisdom vs knowledge, or why Confirmation doesn't work

Scripture: 1 Kings 3:4-28

The last two years on Confirmation Sunday we’ve read about Solomon’s Temple, which is a nice bit of scripture for Confirmation because it provides an opportunity to talk about the difference between church buildings and being the church. But today we have something even better: this early story of Solomon as ruler over Israel is the perfect opportunity to talk about something that is sincerely lacking in our confirmation curriculum: the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

The truth is: we have a Confirmation problem. We have a system that does a wonderful job of keeping youth in the building for these few years and a terrible job of cultivating lifelong faith formation. If you look at the data, ELCA Lutherans have a higher percentage of Junior High kids in a church learning environment than any other major church body in the United States. 70% of our youth in grades 7-9 are involved in Christian Education; that’s more than any other denomination, period. Locally, we’re even higher than that. Right now, at Grace-Red River we have 100% involvement in Christian Education amongst our Junior High kids. We can pat ourselves on the back for that.

Oh, but there’s one little problem. As a church body on the whole, we’re first amongst Junior High participation, but last in High School participation. And we’re nearly last (ahead of only the UCC) in adult participation. This is astounding if you think about it. There’s a cliff at the end of Confirmation where we seem to say, “So long! Good luck! That’s all the education you’re getting until you die and go to heaven. Hope you’ve got your books of the Bible memorized for when you get there!” We’ve done such a good job of teaching our confirmands that they don’t have to do a thing to earn their salvation that they have said, “OK, thanks. Bye now.” And that’s it.

 Our practice has been to teach you things during your Junior High years when studies have shown that this is when you will absorb the absolute least amount of information of any point in your life; the time where your hormones are raging, your bodies are changing, and your brains are quite literally checked out. We’ve chosen that time to load you up with knowledge about the faith. Sure, we have good reasons for it. It seems like an appropriate time to respond to your baptism. You can finally begin to think for yourselves (as we know all 8^th and 9^th graders are models of individuality </sarcasm>). And what’s happened over time is that we have young people who not only do not know anything about the faith (because we’ve tried to pack knowledge into heads that can’t hold it), but they also have no wisdom because in our hurry to pack in that knowledge we’ve had no time to actually practice faith. Instead of faith we teach doctrine, but even the doctrine we teach is generally shallow, so information-based, and so little lived that we might as well have been teaching them how to cook communion bread.

Becoming Goliath: Underdogs and the career arc of King David

Scripture: 2 Samuel 12:1-25

            On Friday I had planned on spending the day putting together thoughts for today’s sermon when I had an unexpected cat-sickness-related detour to Grand Forks that took most of the day. Stranded in the “big city” with no computer, Bible, or anything with which to actually “work” on a sermon, I made my way to Target to pick up a notebook, a pen, and also a Bible. When it came time to find the Bible I meandered into the book section of the Target store, which feels like it shrinks every time I’m there, slowly being eaten away, as it is, by the electronics. Today you can practically buy more different versions of Grand Theft Auto than you can books of any title from a given Target store—I’m only slightly exaggerating.

            So, when I found myself in the two aisles of books at Target I was at least thankful that they did have Bibles—two of them; both King James versions, of course—but next to these a couple of other books caught my eye. First was a book called Jesus>Heaven that I was vaguely familiar with but thought it might be mildly appropriate for Sunday sermon material, and then there was another book by Malcolm Gladwell that had very little to do with religion but, I can only assume because Target doesn’t actually care where they shelve books, it was placed right next to these other religious titles with its own title of David and Goliath. The subtitle reads: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. OK, I thought, I’ve got what I need. Which was a funny thought because I honestly didn’t even realize at first that this David of David-and-Goliath-fame is the same David from today’s reading. There is such a stark contrast between the David of youth and the adult David that you too can be largely excused if you don’t remember at first that this David who looked down on Bathsheba was the David who slew a giant. So when I left Target I did so with a notebook, a pen, a book that only vaguely had anything to do with religion, and no Bible, but I had this realization that the David story was maybe exactly what I needed.

            It was a reminder of who David was that I needed in order to get to the David we see in this reading today. I needed to remember that this King David who acts reprehensibly, without scruples or any kind of remorse, was once the underdog—was once the model of purity and devotion to God.

            I had to check myself and ask honestly, “What does this mean?” What do we do with this David. And that was a perfect launching pad for today’s sermon.

Inspired? Yes. Absolute and final... maybe not.

There's a billboard along I-29 that you can see driving north from Grand Forks toward the Canadian border. I see it about once a week or so when we make the trip down to the "big city," and it reads like this: "The Holy Bible: Inspired. Absolute. Final."

There's one thing I like about this sign--well, maybe two things. I like that somebody cares enough to put the Bible on a billboard; it sure beats other things that people are selling. And I like that they use the word: "Inspired" rather than "inerrant," though I'm a little worried that, to the people who put this up, they mean the same thing. But if I'm being honest I also must admit that putting this on a billboard opens us up to other billboards, like these (put up by atheist groups):

I mean... if the Bible is absolute and final those second category of billboards seem to have a point. The language we use to talk about God's word is so important, because if we use phrases like absolute and final we think we are suggesting that the Bible is above criticism, being God-inspired as it is, but it also means that we are bringing some massive assumptions to the reading of holy scripture, namely that one verse is as true as all others and interpreting one verse--or one story, or one idea--in the context of others is pointless. After all, that's what "final" means, isn't it? So we're left shouting one Bible verse, while others shout others. If we've already decided that the Bible is absolute and final, then why even think, why even read? Nobody is listening--why would they?--because they have the absolute and final authority.

That first billboard I see on a regular basis has Psalm 119:89 quoted in the lower right-hand corner, which I find mildly troubling.

Psalm 119:89 reads,
"The Lord exists for ever;
   your word is firmly fixed in heaven" (NRSV)

OK, that's fine. I get it. You're pointing out that scripture seems to say that the word is eternal, but let's stop for a second and consider why you are putting this verse on your billboard. It seems to me that you are more concerned with showing that your Bible is perfect and absolute than you are with telling people about God... or Jesus... or anything else. I'm sure that you feel like this will lead people to eventually discover that the Bible is a book about Jesus, but why not just come out and say that? Why do we feel the need to first establish the perfection of the biblical witness before actually confessing what the Bible leads us to believe? This feels like worshiping the Bible, which is just another form of idolatry.

Choose your gods wisely

Scripture: Joshua 24:1-15

            This reading from Joshua is a perfect example of what the Old Testament is like, which means it’s also a perfect example of why we don’t read the Old Testament. Seriously. It’s 20% laws that we don’t know how to (or if we should) apply to our lives, 5% stories that are mostly familiar to us, 120% recap of stories that have already happened and 1% wise, pithy sayings that we can put on t-shirts. And that’s only the first 146% of the Old Testament!

So, it’s sometimes hard to know what to do with the Old Testament. We tend to zero in on those few wise pithy things in the text and ignore the rest, which is pretty much what I am going to do today. We have fourteen verses in Joshua chapter 24 before we get to the payoff; fourteen verses that nobody is preaching on this weekend. It’s all about the wisdom; all about the nugget that reads: “…If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

That last half-sentence is the snippet for your t-shirt; the Bible quote in your “About Me” on Facebook; the verse on your door; or for those 9^th graders who are starting to think about Bible verses for their faith statements, you could do worse than Joshua 24:15. Oh yeah, it’s also on our bulletin cover. Nothing about the Perizzites and the Girgashites; just this little bit of wisdom. Funny how that works.

            So I am going to talk a little about the preceding fourteen verses today, because, as much as we cite Bible verses like Joshua 24:15 in our daily lives as evidence that we are good Christians, the real payoff is in how we get there. It’s not the destination, right? It’s the journey. The Israelites need this long recitation of the history of their people because they are so, so stupid when it comes to worshiping other gods. Yeah, Yahweh, you sent plagues on Pharaoh and brought us out of Egypt, and parted the Red Sea, and you made Balaam into a donkey, and you fed us in the desert from absolutely nothing, and you gave us this land that we did nothing to earn, but, really, Yahweh, what have you done for us lately?

Law, love, power, and death; the commandments pretty much have it all

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17

A transcript of today's sermon
I’m going to do something crazy… I think I can do this out here… I don’t know [stepping outside the pulpit].

I’m going to do a recap of what we did on Confirmation on Wednesday. This is going to be a sermon, but it’s going to be a recap of a lot of what we talked about on Wednesday, so if I happen to drop dead in the middle of the sermon any of our ninth-graders here could finish it for me. So, I’m expecting really good sermon notes.

We talked about power on Wednesday—and we especially talked about power in terms of law and gospel—and today we’re reading about the Ten Commandments, which are fundamentally about the law. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about some of the same things we talked about with our ninth-graders. And they seemed to be able to wrap their heads around it a little bit, which was really kind of neat, so I hope that some of you can too.

When we talk about law and we talk about gospel we are really talking about two different kinds of power. The law is right-handed power. The gospel—Jesus dying on the cross—is left-handed power. 99% of our lives happen in the right-handed power world, so it’s actually really difficult for us to imagine any other kind of power. Right-handed power includes everything we do—studying for a test, playing sports, the work that we do. Anything that we do; anything that we are; anything that we work hard for—whether it’s a new job or a marriage, or whatever it is that you’re working at in your life—this is the right-handed kingdom. We live in that world 99—maybe 99.9—percent of our lives, and that’s what the Ten Commandments speak to.

The Ten Commandments are telling us how to live in that 99% of our lives. The insufficiency in the Ten Commandments is that they leave us there. They leave us in the right-handed kingdom, and they don’t themselves bring us across to the left-handed kingdom, which only happens when Jesus comes into the picture.

Remember the good ol' days?

Scripture: Exodus 14:10-14, 21-29

             I love the Israelites. They invented the “good old days.” Remember how great it was back in Egypt? Didn’t we tell you we wanted to stay in Egypt? We told you this would never work, Moses. We have always stayed in Egypt. We tried to leave Egypt before and it didn’t work; it never works. Please allow us to go back to Egypt… please, pretty please?

            Has anybody ever heard anything like this?

            These were slaves. They were in slavery in Egypt—there’s no way to spin it otherwise. Never minimize our ability to delude ourselves into thinking that the past was better than it was. Remember the good old days? Yeah, sure, we were worried about getting drafted into the war, and the family farm was barely making enough food to feed us (let alone anybody else), but it was a simpler time then—a better time. The church was filled with kids—never mind that they were only there because there was literally nothing else to do and their parents would do things to them if they didn’t go that today would be illegal. People weren’t more faithful back in the day—they were more bored and they were more scared; and maybe not all of that was so bad, but better? Was it really better?

Many of you remember those days because you lived through them. Today we are afraid of terrorism… then we were afraid of communism. Today we are afraid of dwindling numbers of people… then we were afraid that we couldn’t support the people that we had. Today we are afraid that our church no longer matters in our culture… then we were afraid that our church had too much stake in our culture. Every age has its advantages and disadvantages, but certain times—like the Israelites on their way out of Egypt—we delude ourselves into thinking something that clearly isn’t true. Egpyt was never the “good old days.”

"Unconventional" Prayer

I wish I did prayer better most of the time, especially these days. With an infant at home and long days at the church it is more and more difficult to find time to be still, let alone to intentionally spend time in prayer. Like most people, I have a lot of things in life, and the fact that I'm a pastor doesn't necessarily mean that prayer is high up on that priority list. But I also know I need it. I'm not the same person when I'm not reflecting, taking the time necessary for God to work in and through me.

But one thing I've discovered in the last few months is a realm of "unconventional" prayer. I put that in quotation marks because I'm not sure it's actually all that unconventional. I think more often we assume prayer is either spoken petitions in a community or silent petitions on our own, but just because that's our predominant view of it does not mean that those are the best ways to pray. Often, I think they are not.

My unconventional praying has happened most often lately when I'm riding my bike or on a long run. That might seem convenient--I thought so at first--and so I was always trying to excuse myself for a workout and thinking, "Oh crap, I need to get back to work and then I need to find time to reflect." What I've discovered, though, is that exercise often offers a great cover for reflection. This doesn't happen all the time; I wouldn't say that when I'm racing it's a great time for prayer. It happens more often on the days where I ride long but not hard, or run far but not fast. But it also doesn't happen all the time.

The thing that seems most important is the intention. There are days I spend my whole ride looking at my bike computer and how fast I'm going, or worrying about what I have to do when I get home. Those aren't prayerful rides. But other days I set out with the intention of reflecting. That doesn't mean I'm not going to get a workout (I'm terrible at moseying), but I find on those days that I finish my workout more refreshed than tired. More importantly, when I come back to my office I do so with renewed perspective.

Individual purpose? Meet the body of Christ.

Scripture: Genesis 12:1-9

            When I was in high school the big thing in the world of pop Christianity was Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life. In some ways, that book branded what it means to be a Christian in the 21^st century with its emphasis on God’s purpose for your life. Warren tapped into something that resonates deeply with our culture, something that leads more people than ever to consider Jeremiah 29:11 as one of their favorite Bible verses, “So I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper… and a future with hope.” Purpose. That’s what we’re looking for. A purpose and a plan.

            At around the same time that The Purpose-Driven Life was becoming a best-seller, The Matrix Reloaded was hitting theaters. The Matrix movies might not seem to have much to do with The Purpose-Driven Life, being as they were about a computer-driven world, virtual reality, and the like, but at its core The Matrix is a story about fate and purpose. And in The Matrix Reloaded we get this great line from one of my favorite actors, Hugo Weaving, who plays Agent Smith and says, “We're not here because we're free. We're here because we're not free. There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist. It is purpose that created us. Purpose that pulls us. That guides us. That drives us. It is purpose that defines us. Purpose that binds us… We're here to take from you what you tried to take from us. Purpose.”

            I’m a child of the 90s and so you sometimes run the risk of getting all sorts of references from my youth, but I think I’m right in believing that this obsession with purpose is not limited to one generation. In fact, I find people of all ages concerned with this question in different ways. Young people who don’t know what they want to be in life. Middle-aged folks who feel like they haven’t accomplished enough. Older folks who have lost that sense that they are productive members of society. Finding our purpose is sometimes a challenge.

Downstream of the flood: Water, Death, and Resurrection

Scripture: Genesis 9:1-17

           This morning’s readings are bookends to the very familiar story of Noah’s ark and the great flood. They are a perfect new beginnings text for a September day when school has started, Sunday School and Confirmation are in short order, and we are all beginning to settle back into the familiar rhythm that the summer seems to take away. We all know the story: People were bad, God sent lots of rain (maybe this hits too close to home), the world floods, and then the water recedes. What’s left is just Noah and family, the creatures on the ark, and God’s promise to Noah, signified by the rainbow, that he would never again destroy the world—at least by means of a flood. This is a story about a promise, and it’s a more wide-reaching promise than we often consider. This is the only covenant God makes anywhere in the Bible that is with not only human beings but also with every living creature that lives and breathes and moves on this earth, above, and below it.

            Every time I read this story, especially with young people, there’s always that one kid who looks at you skeptically, because this is a story that elicits many, many questions. For goodness sake, when Noah gets off the ark the first thing he does is sacrifice a handful of birds. After 40 days on a boat, you can imagine what the birds were thinking, “Oh boy! We made it!” …

Then there’s the matter of the people who appear on the scene after the Noah story. Who are they and where did they come from?

            And then there’s the question that’s more on the subject I want to talk about today, which is the one you get from the smart kid who knows a bit about earth science, and asks: “Where did all the water come from?” This is about when I long for the glory days when pastors just told kids like these to shut up. The problem is that this is a great question, because if you understand nature a bit you know that water doesn’t just appear from space. We have evaporation and precipitation. Sometimes water is in the ground, or in the air, or in glaciers, but water doesn’t just appear. So, how do you flood the whole world?

Lakes Country Triathlon Recap

It's not often that I have a race that's an after-thought. Normally, I tend to obsess over these things, but in this case the Lakes Country Triathlon was really just a sideshow to Kate's first triathlon the day before in the Cities. I'm going to let her recap that one (she said she would!), so we'll pick up the action the evening after Kate's triathlon, the night before mine.

The part where I eat like an idiot:

This part is pretty self-explanatory. We went to Olive Garden in Baxter the night before the race because... well.. I'm not very smart. Now, eating pasta the night before a race is not a bad idea. However, eating cheesy, loaded pasta and a ton of breadsticks and more raspberry lemonade than a person should ever drink is definitely not very smart. I waddled the rest of the evening.

The part where I'm not sure the race is going to happen:

It stormed overnight--like thunder and lightning and winds and heavy rains and all that business. So, when I got up around 5:30 I was less than sure that the race was going to happen, but a check of the radar showed that the heavy storms were just passing. It just looked like rain ahead. So, we packed things up and headed down to the race, which was 15 minutes away from our hotel.

As we pulled up to Whipple Lake the rain had slowed to a drizzle and things were looking up. I was racing. So, I had better figure out pretty quick what the heck I was doing. Thankfully, I now have a checklist, so setting up the bike in the transition area wasn't nearly as difficult as it used to be. Things were pretty well organized. I had some extra time to ogle the super nice bikes that signified this was a race with actual fast people, and then Kate and I walked around for a bit, and I used the port-a-potties a half dozen times because of nerves (this is, as far as I can tell, completely normal).

The part where we race:

Why Ruth? ... Not a moral but a genealogy

Scripture: Ruth 4

            For the last week, Kate, Natalie and I have spent time with both sides of our family, and, because we have fairly typical families, family time is both good and it has its moments. Families are great and fun, and they also magnify all of our issues, meaning that family time can be the most relaxing and most stressful time all at once. But no matter how messed up some of our families are we can all take solace that at least our family systems are not like they were in ancient Israel. Or maybe some of us think that still might be an improvement in which case… oy.

As much as we remember the story of Ruth for being a nice tale of Ruth’s faithfulness to her mother-in-law, it’s hard to miss that that faithfulness is necessary because of societal structures where women were treated as property. This story, like so many from the Bible, is timeless in a sense—its morals play as well today as they did three thousand years ago—but it’s also a story with elements of a particular time and culture that we would find unacceptable today. Each generation changes. Every new set of children brings a new sense of what is right. From one generation to another those changes can be significant, but over the course of centuries those changes can make for a cultural sea change. We like to think that we are enlightened, but give it a generation or two and they’ll look back at us as uncultured, and give it a century more and we’ll be considered next to barbarians. This is why it is so important that we do not worship cultural things that change but instead we worship a God who does not.

Ngede Challenge Recap

Apologies this has taken so long. It's been well over a week since the race, but life has been busy! We've been packing for a week and half which includes a triathlon for each of us, a week at a resort, a stay at a hotel, two days with my parents, and of course there's a baby involved, so it's possible the packing has taken longer than the vacation. But anyway... on to the story.

This year started out with the hope of completing my first Olympic distance triathlon. Well, it didn't work out that way. The dates just didn't fit right, and I didn't have any more Sundays to take off. So, I needed a challenge. Naturally, I wanted to pick up where I left off last year and work toward a 100-mile "century" ride, but again the dates didn't work. All the big rides around these parts fell on days where I had weddings or Sundays. So, on to plan C: A revisit to the Ngede Challenge.

Two years ago I did this race (see recap here) and it went well... or as well as something that really hurt, left me heat exhausted, and included a busted up bike and a hurting back could go. Anyway, I finished in under 3 hours then (2:59:10 to be exact) and my goal was to improve on that this time. All in all it should be doable: my physical condition was as good or better, my equipment was in better shape, and I was two years older and wiser (not sure if that last one is really a help or not).

So, what is the Ngede Challenge? Four parts: A 10k road run, 10k mountain bike, 25k road bike, and a "5k" trail run. Notice the "5k" in quotation marks. We'll get to that.

10k road run

No matter how prepared I am for a race the start line is a place of jitters. But this time I felt like I had things fairly together. The weather was nice--maybe a little warmer than I would like--but it wasn't overly muggy. My transition zone was set up precisely according to my pre-list instructions. Kate was there with Natalie to cheer me on. Basically, things were good.


Then the gun went off and I forgot all plans and preparation. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration. The first part of the run is uphill for almost a mile. This stinks. It also makes pacing a problem. I settled into a gait that was comfortable, but I had no idea if I was too fast, too slow, or just right. I would have to wait and see.

This year's race was small. They always are, but this one particularly so. Only 12 people were out on the road, and of those I think 4 or 5 were relay teams, but I didn't know who was a team and who was an individual. So, as we started the run I sized up the competition. The first guy on the road is ridiculous. His name is Craig and he's won this race every year. I didn't need to worry about Craig, except to see how far ahead of me he was going to be on this leg and then again when he was coming back on the road bike. Second on the road was a guy I didn't know who seemed to be trying to keep up with Craig. Then there was a high school kid in a blue shirt who was running fast but whose form didn't look good. Then a guy, Corey, who I finished in front of two years ago but who looked much stronger now. Then a woman in purple who seemed to be a runner of similar ability to my own. Then me.

Commitment matters

Scripture: Ruth 2

             Ruth is a terrible book for Lutherans because everything turns out so darn well. I looked and couldn’t find a single mention of sin, the devil, or judgment, so frankly I didn’t know what to preach on. The more “nice” I found Ruth to be, the more suspicious I became that I was reading it wrong. Years of seminary training and bland, tasteless Scandinavian food have taught me to treat all scripture with humility and reverence by finding the part of it that makes me feel like a terrible person long before I look for the hope that my terrible-ness is not the last word. But I’m hard pressed to do that with Ruth, because everybody acts like they’re supposed to. There’s not a bad guy in the bunch. The laws are followed. Ruth and Naomi find a nice, good life. Everyone’s happy.

            …except for me because I don’t have a sermon.

            Seriously, where’s the hard edge in this story? Where’s the part that matters for you and me today when we face the real hard struggles that we face? What happens when it doesn’t work out so swimmingly for us as it did for Ruth and Naomi?

            You know, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that those are absolutely the wrong questions to ask of Ruth. Those are questions that can only be asked by a person who is sitting in a comfortable chair, worried about the bigger picture. This is not a story about how the world is all of the time—that’s where us big-headed seminary-educated theologians get caught up—this is a story about Ruth and Naomi, loyalty and devotion. We big-heads are so focused on big-picture conceptions of God that we find ourselves unable to actually enjoy a story that is encouraging and has a good moral center. We are deeply suspicious of miracles because God sometimes doesn’t do that. And all the while we miss God actually doing things in the world because that God doesn’t fit into our nice, convenient, vacuum packed boxes in which we like God to live.

North Shore Confirmation Retreat Recap

This is going to be quick because, well, I have a lot to get together. What am I working on? Oh, just this...

 Packing for a race... putting together a plan of attack... basically just making sure I don't forget things this time... for about the first time ever.
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Anyway, this isn't about me. It's about what we did this past weekend. Fifteen Confirmation students and eight adults piled into vehicles and headed to the north shore of Lake Superior. We had supper at Grandma's Sports Garden in Duluth and then made our way to Tettegouche State Park as it turned dark where we set up camp in a primitive campsite. Just tents and whatnot. In the dark. With Jr High kids. All in all I was pretty impressed that it all came together.

We had a brief worship and talked a little about why we were there. This was a preview to Confirmation; it was also a little snippet of what a mission trip is (even if it's just one night). Then we had s'mores and hit the hay--by which I mean hit the hard rocks we were sleeping on. We were going to be getting up nice and early.

The morning meant an early start: wake up at 6, breakfast and ready to roll by 7. We split into two groups. One was going to stay in Tettegouche and hike Mt. Trudee; the other was heading to Gooseberry Falls State Park. The Gooseberry group was led by Kate and they had a shorter, one mile hike along with various devotional practices. They especially focused on reflection in art, thinking about what God has given them and how that might be reflected in their lives. This was part of a plan to improve our focus on prayer in Confirmation this year. We wanted to give a little taste of what was to come.

The other group joined with myself and Sam and we headed up a mountain... or at least as much of a mountain as Minnesota has to offer. Tettegouche is home to several of the best views in Minnesota that I know of, and one of these is certainly Mt. Trudee, which is a 3.7 mile hike from our campsite. I'm proud to say that our group did that hike (for a round trip of 7.4 miles) and there was absolutely no complaining. They just rocked it. Along the way we practiced some examples of "pilgrim's prayer." Prayers for a journey. We walked in silence for three and five minute intervals. They also listened to scripture and were intentional about noticing the world around them. Then, of course, we got to enjoy the view from the top.

Following our morning activities, we spent some time in Duluth and then hit the road back home. It was quick and we were spent, but all in all a good trip. I look forward to a fun year of Confirmation ahead!

We love because he first loved us

Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21

            Sometimes we need to step back for a moment and admire how stunning some bits of scripture are. “We love because he first loved us,” writes John, which is a nice little Christian Hallmark card waiting to be made, but he goes on: “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” I am utterly floored by that scripture not because I don’t believe it, but because it’s the kind of thing that I honestly don’t expect to find in the Bible. Usually, the Bible focuses on elements of faith and then treats acts of love as a response to that faith—and so it is in that little diddy in verse 19: “We love because he first loved us.” But to take it one step further and say that our love of God is proven in our love of our brothers and sisters—not in the strength of our faith—is so dang practical; it makes my job easy because I don’t even need to make that small leap. It means that a Christian who does not demonstrate love for her neighbor is an oxymoron.

            And what does that love look like? Well, according to John “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” Love can’t be compelled—this is not a case of God saying “love your neighbor or else.” If you feel that this is a command of the law then you’ve already missed the point, because the kind of love that God loves is love that has no ounce of self in it. You don’t love because you’re going to get something out of it, and you don’t love because it’s the right thing to do; you love because God loves us, and the only way to experience God is to pass it on.

A last training run

Yes, I know I haven't put up Sunday's sermon yet. That will happen tomorrow when I'm in the office. Today I'm off, recovering from the weekend... and getting in one last training run.

The Ngede Challenge 50k is four days away, which is exciting and terrifying. This also means that the training is winding down. Today was supposed to be a swimming day, followed by a bike ride tomorrow, an off day Thursday, and a short mountain bike ride Friday on a portion of the race course. Plans changed, though, as I was completely exhausted when we got back from our Confirmation retreat last night and there was absolutely no way I was getting up early to lap swim this morning.

So I changed things up and added in a short 5k run instead. This allowed me to sleep in (like an extra thirty minutes but with an infant I'll take what I can get) and run instead at my leisure. Fast forward to eight-something this morning and I was walking to the arbitrary crack in the pavement where I start my run, planning, as I told Kate, to do an easy interval: code for one mile easy warmup, then one mile hard, and one last mile of easy recovery. Boom.

Hence, nobody was more surprised than me that when I reached my start I took off like a crazy person. My first mile was going to be hard. In the split second before I started to run I had decided that this was not going to be an easy 5k interval; instead, it was going to be a 5k at a hard, race-like pace. I am nothing if not a masochist.

Behind schedule

Due to a confirmation retreat leaving today immediately after church (and a lack of time to pack for said retreat) Sunday's sermon will not be on the blog until Tuesday. Look for that and a full report on our two day, one night trip to the north shore on the blog this week!

What is the world?

Scripture: 1 John 4:1-6

            When reading from the Gospel of John or the letters attributed to John there is a dumb-sounding question that should really be addressed, and it is this: What is the world?

            It's the kind of question most of us would be ashamed to ask because it sounds so stupid. The world is the earth and all that is in it, duh! That’s true, but that’s not the primary definition that John uses, and it’s not the definition Christians often use when talking about things that are spiritual and things that are secular. John sets up this dichotomy between those who are in Christ and those who are in the world that has infiltrated our language as Christians to this day, and I have to admit that on most days I wish this idea didn’t exist because it is so confusing and so appallingly used by those who see themselves as the morality police that it ruins the original intent. It is one thing for John to say, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us.” But it is quite another thing for one of us to say the same thing. I don’t know about you, but I’m always concerned whenever somebody claims God’s authority for what they are about to say because what they use that authority to say is usually offensive and poorly thought out.

            The misuse of this phrase, “the world,” has led to the implication that everything out there is bad and everything in here is good. The idea that there are those set apart who are above reproach in the midst of a broken world may sound nice in principle, but the problem is (if I’m honest) that I can never know on which side of that fence I’m standing. Yes, the world is broken—a quick check of the news is enough to know this is true. War in Israel and Gaza; the mess that is Ukraine and Russia; the killing of Christians in Iraq; Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia; plane crashes and tornadoes. The world out there clearly has its problems, but this idea that we are a beacon of righteousness in a sea of godlessness is about as dangerous an idea as a person can have. To say that I am in Christ but he or she is in the world is not only arrogant; it’s an impossible distinction for us to make.

Why this youth trip meant more to me

For all I write I'm usually not very personal. This is mostly by design. I mean, I never much cared for pastors who preached all about their own lives, and I'm not much into self-promotion on the blog. There is a danger in not talking about myself--at a certain point I lose my humanity and become a thinking-head, a writing-automaton. It's posts like this that will hopefully keep me from becoming that. This is going to be more personal than most, and for that I do not apologize in the slightest.

This year marked my third mission trip/service trip/cultural immersion/whatever you want to call what we do with our high school youth each summer (personally I prefer service trip, generally, though this year was more of a cultural immersion). And this year was different than every other year--as it tends to be. Some parts were rough; some parts were great. We persevered and had what I would consider a great trip.

But the reason this trip meant more to me than years' past had little to do with what we actually did. It had far more to do with the relationships built over the course of three years, and (maybe more importantly) it had everything to do with the roller coaster ride I've been on professionally since Natalie was born. Things have been fine at home, but my time and energy has been sapped, and we have had a string of rather serious events in the life of our parish since I returned to the job in April. A change of secretary was tough, especially given the circumstances, then a spate of deaths, including a suicide of a man with a young family and a murder involving family of our congregation were tougher. Finally, in the last month we've lost a couple members who lived good long lives, but, frankly, they always made me happy to visit and, selfishly, I was very sad to see them go.

Almost like falling in love: On service and comfort

Scripture: 1 John 1:1-4

            I’m going to say something radical that you might not believe, but it’s my goal by the end of this sermon that you may not only say “OK, that’s kind of true.” I want more than that. I want this to change you, because it is that important.
            What I want to say is this: “Comfort is the enemy of the meaningful life.”

            OK, that might not be completely radical. You can probably see that there’s at least some truth in that. If you grew up playing sports (or if you play sports still) you know that your success in athletics has a lot to do with how well you the push the boundaries of your comfort in training. If you’ve ever been self-employed or started a business you know how vulnerable, and yet immensely purposeful and gratifying, that can be. If you’ve ever fallen in love you know how scary and uncomfortable that is.

            So, if comfort is our goal, it makes sense to avoid sports, challenging work, and relationships. 

            But for reasons of our own we choose the pain of training, the risk of investment, the possibility of unrequited love, and the messiness of failed relationships. The things that we value the most—the things we talk about around the dinner table—are the very things that are most difficult. Every great story we read—every heartwarming example we have—testifies that life is better when we are impassioned for what is good and true in the world. That is why we serve—it’s a reflection of God’s coming into the world—to serve, not to be served. “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” We spend a good deal of energy telling you about the good news that is the incarnation, but we are often confusing when it comes to what that good news actually looks like today. We are freed not to comfort but to servitude. Nothing shows this better than falling in love, and nothing  shows it better in the church than serving in uncomfortable places. The two actually go hand in hand. When we serve, we love.

Bondage or freedom: What really makes us happy?

Scripture: Exodus 20:12-16

            So, today I knew I wanted to start this sermon talking about what is the good life, and so I did what any self-respecting pastor does these days and Googled it. “What is the good life?” I asked the Google, and it responded with a 2012 article from Forbes. Goodie, I thought. This was exactly what I was looking for. According to this Forbes article the good news—the secret of happiness--is based on ten golden rules (sound familiar?). If I’m to sum up these rules briefly (which may be difficult because they are decidedly more wordy than the original Ten Commandments) they are essentially this: Have new experiences, be responsible, don’t do evil to others, and be kind. As it turns out, with some minor tweaking this Forbes article essentially took the Ten Commandments and modernized them by making them positive (be and do this rather than “do not” do that) and by contextualizing them in such a way that each piece of advice drips with this magic elixir of our modern lives that we call freedom.

This is extremely typical of our postmodern world, which considers the good life to be the one where we are most free to choose whatever life we would like and whatever things we would like to fill that life. Freedom has become the symbol of the highest advancement in our society, more important to us than wealth, or even companionship. Our troops fight wars for our freedom; our politicians attack one another for limiting freedoms; we spout the line “It’s a free country” as if it’s a truism. The implication behind all the freedom talk is that the best life for you and for me is one where we are unencumbered by rules and free to do anything and everything we want.

            This may get politicians elected, but it is also a big fat lie. The good life is not being free to be all things. Rather, freedom only means anything when we choose to become bound to things that matter. A really good example of this is when we go shopping—or, better said, when you go shopping, because I hate shopping. But whether you like to shop or not, shopping is the ultimate example of the perils of freedom, because shopping presents a set of choices that promise a reality that is endlessly unfulfilling. Whenever you buy something, you convince yourself that the thing you have is more valuable than it actually is because you own it until, gradually over time, reality sinks in and you realize that your freedom to purchase a thing only results in your bondage to the things that you buy—either that or you just keep buying new things that make you proportionally less and less happy.

Race against me in 2014!

So, if you know me you know I need goals. Better than that: I need goals that others know about to keep me honest. Best still: I want goals that push others to do things alongside me, or even with me. So that's the real purpose of this: it's a challenge for you to join me in one or another (or all?!) of these things, or to do something similar.

So far this year I've done the local "Just for the Health of It" 5k in Hallock, and then I participated in the Crookston Duathlon (see a recap here).

Here's what I'm up to the rest of 2014:

Friday, June 27 (hey, that's tomorrow!): The Celebrate Kennedy FTB Troll Stroll

A 5-mile run from Donaldson to Kennedy. Weather looks iffy, but last year we ran through lightning, so...

Saturday, August 9: The Ngede Challenge 50k 

Probably my favorite event that I've ever finished (covered here from 2012). This is a 10k road run, 10k mountain bike, 25k road bike, and 5(make that 6)k trail run. It's benefits a great cause, takes place in the area around Ox Lake Bible Camp near Amery, Wisconsin, and basically it's a bunch of Lutherans trying to survive/thrive in a very difficult event. I'm aiming to beat my 2012 time of 2 hours, 59 minutes, 10 seconds.

 Sunday, August 24: The Lakes Country Triathlon

It didn't work in my schedule to fit in an Olympic triathlon this summer so it will have to be a sprint variety in Baxter. If you don't want to join me there, then come along with Kate for her first ever tri the day before in Hudson, Wisconsin. It's for first-timers only and called "My First Tri" (click here for more info).

 Saturday, September 13: Grasshopper Run, Roll, Ride Half Marathon and 10k run

One of my favorite local events, this is a 13.1 mile run, rollerblade or bike ride (or combination thereof) between Hallock and Lancaster. You can also do a 10k run where you start at Grasshopper corner (the event's namesake). Last year a ridiculous tailwind helped me average 25 mph on the bike leg. This year I haven't decided if it's a run or ride kind of year. Perhaps my first half marathon? We'll see...

TBD (potentially Sunday, September 21): A Bike/Roll/Run-athon fundraiser for the 2015 ELCA National Youth Gathering

Details are not confirmed (including the date), but we're looking forward to a four-hour relay (or individual if you're up for it!) race/fundraiser in Hallock to help send our youth to the 2015 ELCA National Youth Gathering. Runners will tackle a 1-mile run course, rollerbladers a 1.5 mile course, and bicyclists will have a 2 mile course. Teams can be all runners, all cyclists, all rollerbladers, or a mix of the three. Most laps in four hours wins! But everybody is raising money for a great cause. More info coming soon!

Diet Doom and Gloom: The first commandment with a side of hope.

Scripture: Exodus 19:1-6, 20:1-3

            As the week was winding down, and I still hadn’t gotten to thinking about a sermon on the 1^st commandment, I had this realization: I really don’t need to preach because Martin Luther already explained the 1^st commandment in his small catechism. Maybe some of you even remember this: “You shall have no other Gods. What does this mean? We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Boom, end of sermon. Sure, it’s short but what more is there to add? Better still, this was a moderately cheery message for what can often seem like the doom and gloom of the law that we feel while reading the commandments. But then I figured, “Well, maybe a one line isn’t quite enough." So I went big (literally) and turned to the Large Catechism--that bastion of all things Lutheran that even pastors rarely crack open.

            And I started reading… and reading… and reading… and about four thousand words later I thought, “You know, maybe an hour long sermon isn’t a great idea either.” So, we’re going to have a sermon today that lasts somewhere between five seconds and an hour, which is kind of the trouble with the first commandment. On the one hand, it’s so clear that it hardly needs an explanation; on the other hand, it impacts basically everything we believe because it is the basis for our relationship with God. Have no other Gods before me. That’s pretty central to our faith.

Race Report: Crookston (not-so) Triathlon

I wasn't sure exactly what to call this race. The official name everywhere was the Crookston Triathlon--and that's what it was last year--but, because of pool filter issues this year it was decidedly lacking a swim and so they switched it up to a run/bike/run duathlon format. However, since all the signage and t-shirts and website say "Crookston Triathlon" I'm still lost as to what to call this.

But I digress. This year's event was hosted on a nice cool June morning. We could not have ordered better weather: mid-50s, warming to 60 during the race, with sun and a cool, light breeze. Hard to complain. In fact, a little too nice so as to ruin any/all of my excuses when my race inevitably fell short of expectations.

Natalie at the finish

The lead-up

I've been fairly shy about my training this year, markedly talking down any expectations for myself. We did, after all, have a baby on March 2, and that does kind of create a new (happy) wrinkle for training. This has also been a difficult spring at work for a couple of reasons, and so the stress has been fairly high, and the weather this spring was pretty terrible for getting outside. In fact, we didn't really have a spring--just miserable weather and then, boom, summer. However, with all of that said, I have something to say to the people who smiled knowingly at me when I said I was going to stay in good shape even after the baby arrived--all the people who said "You'll see" and gave me that knowing wink, suggesting I had no idea what I was getting into. All those people? They were wrong. In fact, now, a little over three months after Natalie was born, I am in the best shape of my life.

So... nanner-nanner.

This happened for a few reasons. Firstly, I really was pretty darn dedicated in the months prior to Natalie's birth. After an October of running I did Insanity again in November and December, mixing in basketball twice a week. Then, in January I hit the bike trainer full force. I bought two videos from Sufferfest--one an hour long and the other two hours long, and I did them not once or twice, but so many times that I now have the videos and music down to heart, and I kept playing basketball all the while. When the spring eventually came, I started running and biking outside (even in terrible weather) and then we had our Hunger Ride, which meant a week of long days on the bike (whether I wanted to be riding or not).

So, that was a lot of unnecessary background, but I wanted to share a bit about how accomplished I felt even before taking the starting line.

Our biggest handicap: The #1 thing life in Kittson Co. lacks

Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

            When we talking about scripture, one of the things that is very difficult to understand is the way that languages live and breathe and move. It’s why it is notoriously difficult to pin down meanings of words and why I sometimes talk about Greek and Hebrew until your eyes roll back into your skull. But this is a side effect of speaking only a single language in our day to day routines. Those of us who speak English in an Anglo-centric world are slowly losing the ability to describe things, and this is in no small part because we don’t have to work very hard to explain what we are talking about.

            You see this with texting. Why write “I don’t know” when “idk” will do? Why waste your time with “OK” when “k” will do? Why use four characters when you can use two? Why spell out a word when you can use only the consonants or make it into an acronym? Our language is dumbed down in this way, but texting is only a symptom and not the real disease. We are thinking in narrower and narrower terms because our way of seeing the world works for us—we don’t have to work at it. We are handicapped by our lack of exposure to different ways of relating to the world, and this is true in Hallock, Minnesota, but it’s also becoming truer and truer in many other, supposedly diverse places.

            All of this dulls our reactions to the incredible event that was Pentecost. The miracle at Pentecost was not that a group of people all spoke the same language—that’s a misunderstanding that only a dominant group who speaks a single language could make. The miracle at Pentecost was that a group of people spoke in a whole wide variety of languages and people heard them each in the native tongue of each, which is far cooler than everybody picking up the same boring language, because in a multitude of languages meaning deepens and we come to a greater understand of what a thing is. Maybe for the first time in these peoples’ lives they were able to understand concepts that had remained abstract. For the first time, the people could understand their neighbor fully—not in their own language but in a language that deepened and widened their own.

Thank you, Kittson County drivers

I've come across several stories lately on bicyclists getting run over, or nearly run over, while out for a ride in many different areas of the country. This always makes me shudder a bit because, well, I bike a lot and there is an ever-present danger of riding around automobiles. I hear a lot of people complain about cyclists, and in many cases the complaints are justified, because there are enough cyclists who do break rules and ride stupidly to ruin it for all of us, but let's make one thing clear: If a bicyclist gets in an accident with a driver, the bicyclist loses. Every time. So, when I've had motorists honk their horns, or yell at me to get off the road, or, worse still, swerve in front of me, I have to shake my head, because, believe it or not, your car does not give you more right to the road than me, and the fact that you are the one upset enough to put my life in danger suggests you are probably just a pretty terrible person.

The Hunger Ride at the Bemidji food shelf

But I'm writing this for a different reason, because, as much as I can relate to the stories I've heard, I've also come to realize how grateful I am for the motorists in Kittson County who have never once honked at me or swerved in front of me or even given me insufficient room while passing. You can say that that's because there isn't much traffic here, which is true, but in approximately 2500 miles of riding in Kittson County over two years I've had less problems than we had on our Hunger Ride in the first two miles (when an SUV swerved around us, honking his horn, with no other cars in sight).

Maybe there's an advantage to knowing your neighbors by name. Maybe you realize that the five seconds of your day that this bicyclist just cost you isn't worth the risk of putting me in the hospital or killing me--at least not when you know who I am. And that's really the point, I think. There are so many excuses for getting aggravated in life, and we keep making more and more, but most have at their base the fact that we no longer care enough to see other people as human beings like ourselves. If I'm just a "cyclist" then I'm a thing in the way, but if I'm Frank--a husband and father and pastor and other things that make me human--then maybe I'm worth moving over for.

So, thank you, Kittson county drivers. For seeing me. For waving at me. For not running me off the road. And for treating me like a human being. It means a lot.