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.

True humility vs Minnesota nice

Scripture: Philippians 2:1-13

             Sometimes I long for the good old Puritan days when I could read scripture like this, do my fire and brimstone sermon about your selfish ambition and conceit, and then return to my seat and sing “Amazing Grace.” That would be so easy. Lift up Paul saying “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” and let that sit in your stomach and see how well you do with it. The only problem with the straightforward, law-heavy approach to this scripture is that Paul ends this rambling exhortation to good behavior by saying “it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” which is kind of frustrating, because it means that, in spite of all the advice Paul is giving you, the only good you will ever do is not because you’ll be able to observe the law, but because God sees fit to actually do good with you. So, you’re all sinners that will never measure up without the grace of God—yay! (I love my job)

But this is what humility is. In a world of self-sufficiency it's so backwards that we don’t quite know what to do with it. True humility—the kind that takes no credit and honestly expects nothing in return—is beyond us most of the time, even if it’s the kind of thing we hope for our children. It goes beyond the don’ts: Don’t brag. Don’t talk only about yourself. Don’t rub it in when you win. Don’t blame others when you lose. The problem for Scandinavian Lutherans is that we tend to think that since we follow the don’ts we have this one covered. We don’t brag or rub it in; we don’t often talk ourselves up or others down. Sure, we might occasional forget all this at sporting events, but for the most part we’ve got Minnesota nice covered… and Minnesota nice must pretty much be close to humble, right?

            Actually, I’m thinking no.