tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7014777864514531902024-03-14T04:25:47.949-05:00Frank JohnsonExecutive Director, Ewalu Bible Camp and Retreat CenterFrank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.comBlogger659125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-29457086489297976722024-02-20T12:44:00.003-06:002024-02-20T12:44:54.298-06:00Into the Wilderness<p><b>Sermon for Christ the King Lutheran Church, Iowa City</b></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=575454591">Mark 1:9-15</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">“And the Spirit
immediately drove Jesus into the wilderness.” –Mark 1:12. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Leave it to the
camp guy to ignore the other stuff and head straight into the verse about the
wilderness. Then again, if you’ve been paying attention these last several
weeks to the Gospel readings in Mark, the wilderness shows up a whole lot. Six
times in the first chapter of Mark alone we get this Greek word “eremos,” a
word that is the basis for J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Eriador”—the land of the free
peoples of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Two things you
will get with me: Love of wilderness and nerdy stuff.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">“Eremos” means a
place that is desolate, lonely, solitary, and uninhabited; in other words, not
really the place we expect Jesus to be. Yet, Mark 1:12 says that the Spirit
drove him into the wilderness <i>immediately</i>, and there he stayed for forty
days, being tempted by Satan and hanging out with the wild beasts.<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Why? Why would the Spirit send
him there in the first place—why immediately go from baptism to temptation. Why
does the wilderness matter to our faith?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I want to share
with you a bit of my experience with wild spaces and why I believe they matter
so profoundly to faith. I’m going to get to camp—I know you were worried—but
I’m going to start with my experience out in the wild—in this case, on a hike.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">In 2019, I took a
sabbatical from my pastoral call in northwestern Minnesota and spent a month
hiking the Superior Hiking Trail along the north shore of Lake Superior in
Minnesota’s arrowhead, starting at the Wisconsin border just south of Duluth and
finishing at the Canadian border. I meandered through 310 miles of forest and
rivers over rocks and roots, spending days on end in wild spaces. It sounds
silly to admit, but if I’m being completely honest, for the first week or so, I
did not know why I was out there. Like so many places we find ourselves in
life, I was just doing a thing that seemed like a good idea at the time only to
find out it was hard and uncomfortable, and any day I might end up getting
eaten by wolves. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Near the end of my
second week on the trail, I paused at a sign along the trail—a pleasant wooden
sign that shared how many miles you still had to walk to find the next
campsite—in this case, too many miles. While I was standing there reading the
bad news, I saw what appeared to be a blemish in the face of the wood—like
somebody had taken a knife to the soft wood and pealed it back. I don’t know
how long I sat there staring at that blemish, but it was probably a couple
minutes at least since I was taking the opportunity to eat M&Ms—and, let me
tell you, those were prolonged breaks—before I chanced to look closer. Only
then did I realized that the blemish was not a blemish at all, but a moth of
the same color and texture as the wood beneath it. All I was seeing was the
shadow of the moth’s head lifted up from the flat wooden sign. It was
remarkable.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">That is the
picture behind me today. That moth—partially covering the letter “A” in
“CAMPSITE.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I am 100%
confident that had I come across the same sign on day one on the trail—or day
five on the trail—I would not have noticed that moth. It was day 10 and I had
only just slowed down and opened my eyes long enough to see, but when my eyes
were opened, I started to see more and more.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">What happened to
me was perhaps a less dramatic version of what happened to Jesus—and indeed
what I believe happens to everybody who spends time in contemplation in the
wilderness. The things that we pray in our hustled and bustled lives back home
find their answers when we slow down enough to see what God is doing before our
eyes. In the wilderness, we discover that answers to prayer are not given, they
are discerned through discipline. Even Jesus Christ, the Son of God, needed
that distance from distraction to discover it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><i>Once I get started
on that whole alliteration thing with all of those “d” words, I can’t stop—I
apologize.<span></span></i></p><a name='more'></a><i><o:p></o:p></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">If we take it as
truth that distance from distraction is what we need to become spiritually
whole people—that all of us need to enter the wilderness from time to time to
center ourselves, whether a literal wilderness or not—then the real question is
“How on earth do we do that?” Not everybody gets a sabbatical—not everybody
gets to get away easily at all. Most of us feel the hustle and bustle most of
the time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Well, let me tell
you about the power of camp, because Ewalu is fertile ground for wilderness
experiences in the midst of a hurried and harried world. Obviously, Ewalu is an
outdoor ministry so we have that going for us, and even amongst outdoor
ministries, Ewalu is set apart by our focus on the outdoors. We are what’s
called a “decentralized” camping experience, which means that our camps take
place apart from one another over a large territory and beyond on out-trips.
However, we are also decentralized into the communities of eastern Iowa through
day camps in local congregations, and we are further decentralized into
communities that form amongst camp alumni, and retreat groups, and supporters,
and more! In a given year, 10,000 people encounter Christ through Ewalu—from
the kids who come to traditional overnight summer camp to you in the pews this
morning.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Lives are changed
by this ministry. In fact, I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say
that outdoor ministry is the single most successful evangelism ministry within
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is the first word in our
churches name, after all, so I think that’s a pretty big deal. Better still, we
do evangelism the right way. We don’t bring kids to Christ. After all, Christ
is already there with them, meeting them in their baptism (if they have been), Christ
is revealed to them in their parents, and family, and all those who love them.
No, we don’t bring kids to Christ—we provide the ground for them to discover
what it means to be known and loved by Christ already—to be saved by grace
through faith already—to be children of God. We do evangelism by letting Christ
lead us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">We provide the
ground along the Maquoketa River—and often within the Maquoketa River—for
Christ to be made known to these kids—for Jesus to be more than an historical
figure but the person of God who knows them inside-out, who is pursuing them
and will never let them go, no matter what they face in their own personal
wildernesses. But you know what’s even better? The ground that Ewalu provides
does not end at the boundaries of camp. We are partners in all the work that you
do here at Christ the King, and I believe one of the best ways that we can be
your partners is to kick you out of your comfort zones from time to time. Your
pastor might want to do more of that, but she has to deal with the
ramifications—she has to take measurements of the temperature in the room and
decide to do this new thing but never change too much, because you are
Lutherans and change makes you nervous. She has to worry about that… <u>but I
don’t</u>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">You see, the
wilderness is absolutely a critical, vital, important place, but it is also
much more than a place. Anywhere can be wilderness, because it is far more
about where you are being tested and where you are able to encounter God than
it is whether that place has bugs or natural sunlight. In fact, I suspect many
of us here today are in our own wildernesses at the moment, or perhaps you have
been recently, or will be soon. More than anything, I want you to know and
remember that Jesus Christ went into the wilderness often—in fact, he seemed to
prefer to be there when he wasn’t hanging out with sinners, and lost sheep, and
all the wrong sort. So, Jesus is there with you whatever you are facing. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Jesus meets us
most often in simple places that are set apart. Often like Ewalu. Often like
Christ the King. Other times it is in no place in particular but simply when we
slow down and take the time to see God somewhere we hadn’t before.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Thank you for
being a partner with us at Ewalu in this great adventure. When I say we are
your camp, I mean it in exactly the same way that any wilderness can be yours.
It is there if you use it. So, come and see. Pray. Encounter Christ, because
that’s where he is—in the wild, but more than that, with you. In your
wilderness. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">May you encounter
Christ there, and come back alive. <o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-30117037547652174052024-02-04T06:31:00.000-06:002024-02-04T06:31:16.792-06:00We need the wilderness<p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=574049651">Scripture: Mark 1:29-39</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd5eXVLCyzXzvLnjOnAz96nTmL3nvkw7j4YT6J9yVW0ntUBWyX12GP25JnOoY2Q7_AzSpka-s6m7aAS63TBIcmYul3zH_DFwsLtHoxsonS8PvShpIWvpMRCIrWeqnXkHHFWJv6o6MmQnBrPjUeR0dALpwDbsR6g2vs2QL2BNdXsnChiXm5xmYbQT8W5IY/s1080/425930353_788062300026223_8533312372064716763_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd5eXVLCyzXzvLnjOnAz96nTmL3nvkw7j4YT6J9yVW0ntUBWyX12GP25JnOoY2Q7_AzSpka-s6m7aAS63TBIcmYul3zH_DFwsLtHoxsonS8PvShpIWvpMRCIrWeqnXkHHFWJv6o6MmQnBrPjUeR0dALpwDbsR6g2vs2QL2BNdXsnChiXm5xmYbQT8W5IY/s320/425930353_788062300026223_8533312372064716763_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">“In the morning, while it was still very dark,
Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
don’t know about you, but that sounds awfully nice to me. Away from the kids.
Away from the bustle—the demands on his time and attention. Away from dinging
phones, emails, social media. Just away. We probably don’t talk enough about
Jesus’s penchant for leaving it all behind and heading off into the wilderness.
And Jesus wasn’t alone. It seems like most heroes in the Bible would go off
from time to time, whether Abraham, or Moses, or Elijah, or John the Baptist.
They all went off to pray and reflect.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
is the last time you prioritized going off on your own? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
hope you don’t hear that question as judgment. Lord knows, we have so many forces
in life begging us to never take a break. There is always more work to do—more,
more, more. There is so much to do, in fact, that it can never get done, so we
keep at it—more, more, more. Because our work is important—so very, very
important. Raising a family is important—so very, very important. If we don’t
give it 100% all the time, we will regret it—we will wonder why we didn’t do
just a little more. We want to give our kids, our families, and our selves our
best shot. What could be wrong with that?<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s
amazing to me how we can demand more of ourselves than even Jesus would
accomplish. Jesus was out there performing all of these miraculous healings. He
was even raising people from the dead. If anybody could justify never stopping
it was Jesus. Yet, time and again, Jesus departs—he leaves the work undone.
This is why the disciples hunt Jesus down (did you notice that? It actually
says they hunted him down!)—and when they find him, they tell him that <i>everyone</i>
is looking for him, presumably because there is more healing to do. After all,
there is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i>always</i></b> more healing
to do. People are always getting sick. People are always dying. Everyone needs
Jesus to stay.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
quite to form in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus heads on to the next town. You can
imagine the indignity of the people in the town he just came from! Excuse me,
what? Jesus, there are <i>more sick people!</i> How can you abandon them? Why
heal this person but not the other? How can you leave when the work is
unfinished? And you call yourself the Son of God?!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Scripture
doesn’t report any of this, of course, but we know that’s what people are
thinking. It is always what people are thinking, because the work is never
complete. It is never enough. There are more sick people, more dying people,
more dead people. The people who follow Jesus fail to understand that Jesus did
not come to heal people. Healing is never enough. God bless all the doctors and
nurses and healthcare workers among you. You know better than anyway that sometimes
it feels like all you are ever doing is managing decline, because if you want
to see it that way, it is true. All of us our getting older. All of us will get
sick. All of us will die. If Jesus could fix that by hard work, maybe he would
have worked harder, but he can’t, so he didn’t.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Instead,
there is something else going on here. Jesus has his eyes fixed somewhere
further ahead. So, when the disciples find him, off he goes to the next town,
because the good news lies further ahead—not in healings, after all, this is
why Jesus so often holds up a finger, “Shh…” don’t tell anybody about this, he
says throughout the Gospel of Mark, because the good news of Jesus Christ is
not to be found in temporary healings but on the cross in his death—and,
ultimately, his resurrection from the dead. That is how he will fix the problem
of death—by dying on a cross.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
is well worth the rest of us reflecting on what that means for us in our
work—and by work, I mean our jobs of course, but I also mean our work around
the house, our work in raising a family, and our work in being friends and
neighbors to others around us. You will never do enough in your work to save
anybody—even Jesus couldn’t do it, not that way. So, I have a revolutionary
idea for you to try out: Stop trying to fix the world’s problems. Instead, do
what you can, care for those in front of you, turn off the news, and then,
after you have done something (not enough, mind you, but something) go
somewhere to pray. In short, be more like Jesus, and less like the idol of
productivity that tells you that you can save anybody, least of all yourself.
You can’t. So, instead, retreat to pray.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
that prayer could look like a lot of things. I feel like we imagine that we
have to be actively talking to God and following a formula for prayer to work,
like “Dear God, thank you for such and such, help me with such and such, Amen.”
Totally cool if that’s what works for you, but I have found that my most
prayerful moments are often spent in silence, sometimes casting a fly on the
river, sometimes running through the woods, sometimes just stopping and looking
at something I hadn’t noticed before. It’s in the gratitude for simple things
that some part of me opens up and I find that God has granted me some
perspective I didn’t have before.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
would not surprise you that Ewalu is one of those places where this happens a
lot. For sixty-plus years, our tagline has been “A place apart” and we are. A
place apart from all the busy-ness of life back home. A place apart from the
stress of emails and phones dinging. A place apart even from the façade of an
identity we feel we need to wear for those who know us in “normal” life. Ewalu
exists as that kind of refuge for people to disconnect and listen for the Word
of God that comes alive in the wilderness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is certainly one of the strengths of outdoor ministry, but I want to be quick
to note that outdoor ministry is far from the only place this is happening.
Even for our young people who get to come to camp every summer, they need a
place apart in their home life as well. We need more than mountain top
experiences—we also need to find space in our daily lives to slow down and hear
God apart from our busy-ness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is hard stuff, because outside forces are forever trying to rip that away from
you. They have trained you so well that even that feeling of needing to get
away starts to feel like another obligation. If you are not careful, rest just will
start to feel like just another law that you are too busy to follow, and then
comes the guilt. I know—I’ve been there—I often am there. This is how we human
beings cope with a big and complicated world—we constantly feel insufficient. Yet,
through Christ, we are called to a different kind of freedom. Yes, we should
take care of the sick. Yes, we should love on our kids and care for those dear
to us. Of course, we should be working for a just and equitable world for
all—feeding the hungry, caring for those who need help. Yes, we should do all
that. But just as importantly, when the work becomes too much, when we are
overwhelmed or anxious or afraid, we need to find that space to remember that
we cannot save the world—we are just drops in the ocean. Yet, through Christ,
we are more.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
need some kind of wilderness to see that, but that wilderness does not need to
look like Ewalu! It can be the farm or a tree stand or a park or even our own
backyards. It can even be our church or a quiet space within our homes. It is
less the place than the act of slowing down and retreating from the noise that
matters. But this work is important. It is not a luxury—rather, it is part and
parcel of what it means to be human: Slowing down and encountering God in the
midst of the silence. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Most
of all, it is us admitting something important and true: We cannot save
ourselves. We cannot save anybody, really. We need a Savior for that. A savior
who rested, who retreated to the wilderness. A savior who could heal but it
wasn’t about the healing. Because there is something better ahead, something
better we need to slow down to see. Grace for all we cannot do. Salvation, if
only we can believe it; if only we can feel it, if only we can slow down enough
to believe it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>May
you find that place apart—wherever it may be—and may you find that peace that
comes through Christ Jesus, who can do what we cannot. And I hope very much
that you hear that as good news.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Amen.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-8159597106784613292024-01-14T06:59:00.010-06:002024-01-14T07:01:04.612-06:00The wrong side of town<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMLJQPyrL6gb6rtUnu3yG5rMNvXMpcKM8vdLd8ZtgQlVaL64lllsYAe7ige_hkznLQfeTYOEA01VxXt7_15wu0ahqGGDSyChzDKkS3o9mMML9rMJwwMhnGG-LrNj3zAdR6VZJAYFhb9lQbF53H45j8IpgxczwSjtDsTwfIfbGLIDy4f5AxMDkBJnG76YM/s1080/on%20the%20road.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT3XZLxSHXUcPJfCh8uO3HfEp21OJ0iO2csZxcFnuxCo0vEf_eK_QJE-uxUS6OKFPvaNLdg16HwWZJXmK-hsV50w8vOz5LP6ffb9vTAyQYomWpgkDY44AiT9YQfMIPUEvhX8P-SMrrXC8ih9ISvSHbc5rA9-IYgXGm6QtoH3WC3bvvN3uGTrHr7QFl7wk/s1080/on%20the%20road.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT3XZLxSHXUcPJfCh8uO3HfEp21OJ0iO2csZxcFnuxCo0vEf_eK_QJE-uxUS6OKFPvaNLdg16HwWZJXmK-hsV50w8vOz5LP6ffb9vTAyQYomWpgkDY44AiT9YQfMIPUEvhX8P-SMrrXC8ih9ISvSHbc5rA9-IYgXGm6QtoH3WC3bvvN3uGTrHr7QFl7wk/s320/on%20the%20road.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><i><b>For St. John Lutheran Church, Cedar Falls</b></i><p></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=572236963">John 1:43-51</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="background: white; color: #010000; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Jesus is always hanging
out in the wrong side of town, but we shouldn’t be surprised—that’s where he’s
from. Always the wrong side of town—hanging out with the wrong people—sinners,
mostly. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The story starts with Jesus
out recruiting disciples one day. He finds Philip and says, “Follow me.” And we
know right away that Philip is a good catch, because the first thing Philip
does is go about recruiting more friends for the party. He really takes that
fisher-of-men thing to heart. So, he finds his friend, Nathanael, and straightaway
tells him that the Messiah has come and he is Jesus of Nazareth. However,
Nathanael, you might recall, is not listed amongst the original twelve
disciples, and the reason for this may soon become obvious, because Nathanael has
his concerns about the origins of this Messiah. Nazareth? “Can anything good
come out of Nazareth?” he asks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">You can substitute every
wrong side of town you can imagine here, if you like. Even for those of us who
try to see the best in all dark places, we can certainly list a few—places with
a negative connotation in our minds—places we wouldn’t want to go—places we
mistrust.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Then again, of course Jesus
came from Nazareth! Of course, Jesus came from a backwater nowhere. I sat at
home over Christmas and caught a bit of the Lutheran worship service from
Bethlehem broadcast on Facebook, which they called “Christ in the rubble.”
Today, Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, is a majority Muslim town in the West
Bank. In those days, it was a quiet place—a nowhere place. Of course, Christ was
born there! Not Jerusalem—not even Nazareth—not New York City—not London or
Tokyo. Nowhere. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“Can anything good come from
Nazareth?” Could anyone good be born in Bethlehem?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Well, here’s the backward,
amazing thing about the Christian faith: Jesus Christ only ever dwells in those
dark places. Jesus Christ only ever shows up on the wrong side of town. Jesus appears
in A.A. meetings and under the rubble of natural disasters and war; Jesus shows
up in dementia wards and children’s oncology units; Jesus is found in
underpasses and in redlight districts and wherever the poor and neglected and
hurting gather. Jesus Christ came into a world of darkness to meet us when it
appears all hope has turned to dust. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The problem for those of us
in the church is a practical one: That backwards, wrong-side-of-town mentality
is not marketable, which is a problem because it means that Jesus is not
marketable. After all, Jesus tells us that in order to be his disciples we must
pick up our crosses and follow—and those crosses are not the kinds of minor
inconveniences that we so often talk about to tone down the enormity of this
calling. Our crosses are not our children or our relatives. Our crosses are our
very lives—that is what Jesus ultimately calls us to give up. As Dietrich
Bonhoeffer said, “When Jesus Christ calls a disciple, he bids them come and
die.” You won’t see that on many billboards: Come, die. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">You also won’t see that on
any Ewalu brochures. And, yet… Ewalu is a place where faith is sticky—where
kids depart at the end of the week singing songs—where adults look back on
their time at camp as their deepest experience of faith formation—and I believe
this happens so often at Ewalu because camp is a place where Christ does bid us
to come and die. We die to the self we construct in our life apart from camp.
We forget about the Instagram posts, and whether that one person read our text
or not, and who won that game, and what you scored on that test. All that stuff
dies at the boundaries of camp. At Ewalu, campers encounter this Jesus Christ
who comes from a lowly, unexpected, wrong-side-of-town place kind of like many
of the places they come from. For the first time, many of them experience this
backward faith that seeks after lost sheep and celebrates the wrong sort of
people—Samaritans and women and the poor and the sick—and campers latch onto
that with all their might because so many of them are desperate for it to be
true. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Why?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Because they already know
that they are the lost sheep—they’ve just never had anybody spell it out for
them! Because they know that they were born in the wrong place. They know that
they have the wrong cheek bones and they carry weight in the wrong areas. They
know that they can never be skinny enough or muscly enough. They know that they
are fundamentally imperfect people, and their whole lives have been spent with
adults (who hopefully love them and care for them, telling them that they are
beautiful children of God), but they also know that those adults lie—that those
adults, who we call parents, also aren’t very smart. They know we are faking
it, and most of us are just doing exactly what our parents did (or exactly the
opposite of what our parents did) and our parents didn’t know what they were
doing either.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Our kids <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">know</b> this. Now, don’t get me wrong, you
should be telling your kids you love them; you should be telling your grandkids
you love them. I know many of you come from stoic, Nordic-heritage families
like my own where all feelings are to be treated like a game of charades—where
you act them out but it’s against the rules to actually say anything about
them. Yeah, don’t do that. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Do</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>tell your kids you love them, but
don’t be surprised when they run away from that love—and when they don’t
believe you.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The reason the
camp experience sticks with campers is because they discover that Jesus Christ
loves them not because they are good, but because God is good. Better still,
Jesus Christ comes to us from places like Nazareth—places from which reasonable
people like Nathanael can wonder: Can anything good come from there? The
Christian faith is not a reasonable faith. It is a faith that only makes sense
in a broken world—it is a faith that can <i>only </i>be practiced by broken
people. Cross-bearers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Camp and church
are after the same thing, but camp has an easier time marketing ourselves
because it is temporary. One week of discomfort—full of fun, sure—but
discomfort nonetheless. Nobody is arguing that Foresters village is more
comfortable than your bed at home. Instead, we are saying that there is very
good reason to get out there—to encounter Christ in creation—if only for a
week. I don’t envy your congregation. I was a parish pastor for nine years, and
I struggled with this myself quite often. As Christians we are called to go
into all the backwards wrong-side-of-town places where Jesus is, but in a world
that often feels so mixed up, we often come to church just needing a refuge.
It’s hard to see that the refuge we need is to go deeper into discomfort.
Churches have it hard because this is your calling every single week.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">All of this is why
I am glad we are in this work together. Help us help you (and your kids) to
encounter Christ on the wrong side of town. Let us work together to discover
how God shows up through discomfort. Together, we can meet a world of
Nathanaels, who say, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” with an
emphatic, “Yes! Come and see.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">In fact, the best
things only ever come out of the wrong kinds of places. After all, that’s where
God has promised to dwell. In our pain. In our hurt. In our grief. In our
discomfort. This faith will drive you crazy, but it will also save you. <o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-17394565809849071172023-12-02T21:25:00.003-06:002023-12-02T21:25:52.557-06:00On curiosity and the moth<p><b>A sermon for St. John's Lutheran Church, Arlington and St. Sebald Lutheran Church, Strawberry Point</b></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=568573655">Scripture: Mark 1:1-8</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span>In the Mark year in the lectionary, Advent is contained exclusively in these 8 verses. The next verse after this passage reads: “In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” We fast-forward straight to adult Jesus baptized by John. In Mark’s Gospel, there is no baby in a manger, no shepherds in the fields, no kings bringing gifts; and before that, no Mary wondering what these things mean, no Elizabeth, no Joseph, no angels. There is no Christmas at all, and the entire season of Advent is distilled into this single passage about John, the baptizer in the wilderness.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now you know why the Christmas pageant is never read from the Gospel of Mark.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, while we have none of the Christmas story to contend with, we do have themes—whispers you might call them. We have John the Baptist, and we have this opening salvo from the book of Isaiah, </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> who will prepare your way;</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> “Prepare the way of the Lord,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> make his paths straight” </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOt5mVV4gjMmtcZZz7Fy4grHlumUrAU5g5_6LxN64kbgj3sX1rzGgfppaIDOC94gydyBxgDY4-Hl-S6uK6bTugN_hEvHNes0vmVpyFKqpziEjzfxe0rzQPuXBSCvaMPsHWajNYN-pAUAD4ok2VNF6xtjc89nRieHF-S5xanX1sh1M46EX_9aQI7oLO-nA/s960/Moth%20pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOt5mVV4gjMmtcZZz7Fy4grHlumUrAU5g5_6LxN64kbgj3sX1rzGgfppaIDOC94gydyBxgDY4-Hl-S6uK6bTugN_hEvHNes0vmVpyFKqpziEjzfxe0rzQPuXBSCvaMPsHWajNYN-pAUAD4ok2VNF6xtjc89nRieHF-S5xanX1sh1M46EX_9aQI7oLO-nA/s320/Moth%20pic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <span><a name='more'></a></span>One of the great loaded themes in the Bible is: “The wilderness.” Because the wilderness is meant to be scary and vast and dangerous, but the wilderness is also a place of retreat and respite. It is where Jesus goes to pray. It is where God speaks to Elijah in the silence. It is where Jacob wrestled with God and became Israel. It is also where the nation of Israel would wander for forty years. The wilderness is a place to fear and a place of curiosity. It still is today.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately, because I see a lot of fear in the world. Against these particular fears I also have found it is becoming increasingly hard to act courageously. Even if we can summon the requisite gumption to act courageously, we don’t even agree with our neighbors about what courage looks like anymore. Courage is still important in a world of fear, but when we are afraid, it is also not a simple solution. After all, if being courageous was as simple as choosing courage, you wouldn’t have been afraid in the first place!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span>No, the more critical opposing force in a world full of fears is what I believe to be the greatest spiritual gift—that is, the gift of curiosity. A mind that is curious will resist fear, because a curious person does not immediately distrust things that are unfamiliar. John the Baptist is a bit of a scary dude out in the wilderness, but a curious person may yet be capable of looking at John and pausing for a moment to think: “Hmm… I wonder what is happening here!” And that wonder is the bedrock for the Advent season. That wonder is the cure for fear.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the Christmas story that I suspect most of you know well from Luke’s Gospel, the shepherds are met by the angels while tending their fields, and do you remember the first thing that the angels say? “Do not be afraid!” Once upon a time—in the book of Proverbs—we were told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but with the coming of Jesus we are met with a common refrain, “Do not be afraid!” Again and again in the Gospels, he says it, “Fear not! Do not be afraid!” Because the time for fear has ended. Now is a time of wonder—and wonder begins with curiosity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I turn on the news—and, let’s be honest, I’m a millennial so I don’t turn on the news—I mean, I don’t even have live TV. I get my news is bite-sized content from apps and I see stories on social media—but news comes to me, as it does to you, in one way or another—and so much of this news is presented in a way to evoke fear. And, of course, I’m talking about polarized and politicized news channels, but I’m even talking about your run-of-the-mill middle-of-the-road news station, who will always cover wars and rarely cover bake sales, because one of those is must-see news. Because fear sells. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span>Fear hits us deep in our survival instincts. Worse, it’s much more complicated than it was a few thousand years ago when human beings only had to determine if that person or that animal constituted a threat. Today, we are constantly assessing whether that system, or that economy, or that political party or allegiance poses a threat to us. These are abstract things—things that folks who are yelling at one another about often cannot even define. For example, I have a master’s degree, a decade as a parish pastor, and several years as an executive in camping ministry—and in all of those fields I took some kind of anti-racism training—and I still cannot for the life of me tell you what critical race theory has to do with anything happening in any K-12 school in America. It’s an abstract fear that means a thousand different things to a thousand people, and it is the kind of thing that tears us apart from one another. You can’t solve that with courage.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> <span> </span><span> </span>It is so much easier to identify, “That wolf is a threat to my cows” than it is to say “that economic system is a threat to my existence,” which makes the fear all the more encompassing. We are so easily overwhelmed because we know deep-down that so many things are outside of our control, but the honest truth (and this isn’t going to make you feel better at first) is that they always were outside of our control. You and me can do nothing to stop wars on the other side of the world—we can do very little to impact violence closer to home. Our individual impact on our economy and politics is similarly small and seemingly insignificant. How can we influence an economy that creates so much disparity? How can we tackle large, complex problems that affect everybody—whether it be health care, or climate change, or energy needs, or inflation? </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I suspect that if you’re anything like me, even hearing this stuff sends signals to your brain to be defensive, to perceive opposition as a threat, and to live in a state of fear. You’re probably wondering why the camp guy is coming here to preach this stuff during the time of year when we are avoiding all of it with Christmas lights and Amazon shopping lists. So, here’s the point: You are not wrong for reacting out of fear—you are trained to be this way—but you need to know something this day and every day—something that changes everything: You cannot sent to save the world, but there is one who already has. If you try to fix everything broken in the world, you will quickly get overwhelmed. You will perceive everything as a threat—fear will drive you. But—and this is a big BUT—you are also not free to ignore the problems of the world. Instead, what we all need is a mindset shift. Instead, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are to act simply, as the prophet Micah says, “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” And Micah can speak from experience! He wrote these words in an insanely unjust period in the history of Israel. He recognized that doing these things was going to fix the problem of injustice, but yet, they were what God called us to—and that is all we can ever do. And that is how we overcome our fears. As David Mitchell wrote in one of my favorite books, Cloud Atlas, “My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Therefore, in the spirit of John the Baptist and all the other weirdos in the Bible who spend time in the wilderness, I would like to suggest a better way forward in a world drenched in fear: Be curious. Live in wonder. Chance to see beauty in the thing that others tell you to fear.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And I can hear the devil’s advocates in my ear already, saying, “That’s not the real world. The real world will spit you out and stab you in the back.” And to them I say: Yeah, it might. Bad things do happen. Worst fears occasionally come true. But to give up curiosity for fear of what might happen means that fear has already won—it has already robbed you of the life you might have led—it has already taken from you the most essential thing to your humanity—it has robbed you of your joy. This is the central challenge of parenting—for those of you who are parents or grandparents—in order to let your child experience joy you have to allow them to live beyond your fears—and we have to acknowledge that living out there might kill them, whether because of their bad choices or mere happenstance—but to be a follower of Jesus is to understand that in those darkest possibilities, that is precisely where God lives. We have a God—who we know in Jesus Christ—who headed straight into death so that we need not live in fear any longer. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span>When Jesus says, “Fear not!” all those times in the Gospels, it is not because he is promising you won’t get hurt. Rather, “fear not” because death no longer wins the day—death is in fact the only path to new life, the only way to resurrection—so what are we so afraid of?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, I feel I have said quite enough about fear. Instead, I want to bring this home with more words about curiosity, because I represent a ministry in Ewalu that is absolutely drenched in the waters in curiosity—where kids explore the river bottom looking for fossils, and rocks, and other hints of what once was, and discovering new fish and invertebrates, plants, and other hints of what is, and then they look off into the vastness of space to consider what will be. Ewalu is a place where campers who are afraid of heights experience the exhilaration of leaping off a zipline, where names of trees are learned and owl calls discerned through the darkness, where the still spirit of God meets countless young people when it all slows down and they have time to sit under the trees or the open skies—to reflect. It all seems more possible out there. Of course, it does! The story of God comes alive under the open skies with expansive images not to be cloistered in stale studies but to be explored in nature.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Better still, Ewalu is just one place with fertile ground for curiosity. We can be curious wherever we are, though it does require something from us. In order to be curious, we must leave behind the mindset that tells us to go-go-go—the words we often say—that we are busy; that our time is so important; that what matters most is the quantity of things we accomplish is a day. Curiosity requires us to slow down and consider things deeply—to ask better questions—to get at the quality of things, not their quantity. To be curious about people is to see every individual as a reflection of the image of God, because that’s what they are.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span>This is hard work, because curiosity opens us to a certain level of vulnerability—whether we are curious about a person, or the natural world, or some particular thing that we love that few others seem to care about, curiosity inevitably leads us to question who we are, and that can be scary! But curiosity is also a great unifier in a world that is seeking to divide, because when you look more deeply at other people, you will also discover your common humanity. And your common humanity demands a common creator.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, this Advent I beg you to slow down, as the season demands of us—when you have a million things to do and the world around you goes by in swirls of obligation, instead pay attention. Be curious. Wonder about others. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’m going to close this morning with a story about a moth. That moth (the one in the picture on this blog post). I wonder if you realized it was a moth? There over the “a” in “Campsites”?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span>I took that picture four years ago on the 3rd week of a thru-hike of the Superior Hiking Trail, but the real story of that picture is how long it took me to realize that moth was there. I’d say it took me 5 minutes of looking to see what it really was, but the honest truth is that it took me at least three weeks. Because if I would have passed that sign on the trail on day one of my hike I would not have stopped to look at that moth. By day 22, my curiosity was only just starting to pay dividends. It took 22 days to see that moth. And it changed me. Not only to notice it, but to ask questions about it—to wonder about it. I mean, it’s just a moth. But so is anything if you are going to be cynical. You are just a person. This is just a life. John the Baptist was just a weirdo out in the woods. There’s plenty of fire here for cynics. Don’t be one. Instead, be on the lookout—for me, it was a moth, but for you, I wonder what it might be. What is that thing you will notice for the first time that will change you? I don’t know what it could be, but I bet it will be something unexpected and simple.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span>Like a baby in a manger. </p><div><br /></div>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-79328432382390100012023-11-12T14:39:00.001-06:002023-11-12T14:39:51.790-06:00Creek stomping in the river of justice and righteousness<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>A sermon for Bethel Lutheran Church, Parkersburg, IA</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=566821381" style="font-family: georgia;">Amos 5:18-24</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The scripture readings for today are like a river in and of
themselves—to follow that river I think it’s best to start at the confluence
and to wind our way back upstream, which means I’m going to begin with the
Gospel of Matthew and the reading from Thessalonians—both of which are about
Jesus Christ coming along to reconcile and redeem a broken world. This is the
central hope and belief of the Christian faith—that what Christ did on the
cross, dying for all of us, will be work that is completed when the world has
ended and when our lives here are over. “Keep awake!” says Jesus in the Gospel
reading—for you do not know when Christ is coming.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>However,
there is one thing about Jesus telling us to stay awake that can be
misconstrued. The goal of life on earth is not to escape life on earth. It is
to be awake; it is to see Christ when Christ appears before you. And Christ
will come when all of this is over—for most of us, most likely, that will be
when we die. And that day could be years from now or today. But Christ also
comes to us in the form of others who enter our lives—others who do not know
they are being Christ—and all of us can see Christ in those encounters if we
are awake to it. Christ comes in a child who wants you to read a bedtime story.
Christ comes as a beggar, or a prisoner, or a reject. The incarnation of Christ
means that Christ has entered into all humanity, and as Victor Hugo said, “To
love another person is to see the face of God.”</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqkA1u1OR7bE4Kmk202q2I8acaSqlR6uFaPeVrKNyb1L5g-Gila6AioxA_cA2dvBET8KZcKY4kZmnL0RpxD6m46J1IEiphxW-SEBO6BQT5e3pY5BwDQGwEb_KH8hSdHPeYtSz_BHdv0NMRI-yuM_AbFmOpOF-J1QCAPiExNvnp8VGoHDzRO5Mrq94y0w/s960/292532370_10100407081029505_5775441353193905106_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqkA1u1OR7bE4Kmk202q2I8acaSqlR6uFaPeVrKNyb1L5g-Gila6AioxA_cA2dvBET8KZcKY4kZmnL0RpxD6m46J1IEiphxW-SEBO6BQT5e3pY5BwDQGwEb_KH8hSdHPeYtSz_BHdv0NMRI-yuM_AbFmOpOF-J1QCAPiExNvnp8VGoHDzRO5Mrq94y0w/s320/292532370_10100407081029505_5775441353193905106_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So, it is
well worth venturing further upstream in these readings back to Amos to
discover what it means to act as a follower of God who is awake. Wonderfully,
for the purposes of my river metaphor, Amos quotes God using the image of a
river to talk about what it means to be human beings who are attempting to be
faithful followers of Christ. “Let justice roll down like waters, and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But that is not where Amos begins.
No, we have to go even further upstream to find something perhaps a bit
surprising. Amos quotes God as saying, “I despise your festivals, and I take no
delight in your solemn assemblies.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If that
doesn’t concern you a little bit, then I don’t know what kind of church you
have going on here, because most of what we do as a Christian church is either
a festival—a celebration—or a solemn assembly. This is one of those readings
where we are effectively saying, “This worship thing on its own is no good!”
and then the lector says “The Word of the Lord,” and we respond “Thanks be to
God!” as if we are thanking God for telling us we are doing this all wrong.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, what’s going on here? Does God
not want us to worship? Because you know, I’m feeling a bit of responsibility
in this moment. The question, I think, is what does God want of us?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And Amos provides an answer:
Justice and righteousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But—and this is a BIG BUT—justice
rolls down like water, and righteousness flows like an unending stream. It is
passive. It is like a river flowing over us. It is not something we create, but
something we participate in. We dip our toes in the river—perhaps we even
submerge ourselves in the river—we cannot control God’s justice and
righteousness. We do not create justice—justice flows from God. We do not make
ourselves righteous—not through observance of the law, not by coming to church
and partaking in these festivals or solemn assemblies. No, righteousness flows
from God. It is God’s work in us.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, I’ve said a lot without saying
anything about camp, but the truth is I’ve been talking about camp all along. I
have the immense privilege of seeing streams of justice and rivers of
righteousness sweeping through camp every single day every single summer. I see
it with campers and young adult counselors at Ewalu. I see kids who experience
that river and feel the pull toward being part of something magical—something
amazing, a grace almost too powerful to name. Justice that flows from God in to
a thirsty world that is desperate for justice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Our summer camp parent survey
results show that only about half of these kids regularly attend church. Even
those that do have varying degrees of comfortability with worship. They often
do not know what to do, how to do it, or for what reason we do anything as
church. I certainly didn’t understand as a child—I barely did after seminary! Some
of these campers have never been to a church.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">At camp, they discover that there
is a river they never knew existed, one that they get to dip their toes in and
perhaps creek stomp about, but it is not the Maquoketa River. Well, they do
that, too. That’s the kind of creek stomping they’ll tell you about on the ride
home from camp. But there is another kind of river that is far more impactful,
and this river flows by the grace of God through generations of folks like you,
who have been the church, so that a child can know that there is justice that
will make right whatever is wrong in their lives, and there is righteousness
that comes to them as a gift from God, who created them, loves them, and
redeems them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Too often, we have talked about
camp as something that happens out there at Ewalu, where we have used the tag
line “a place apart” for as long as we have been a camp, but the truth is that
everything done at camp is an integral part of the church—not just a ministry
you financially support, but an evangelism tool of your congregation. We are
connecting kids with Christ every single day of every single summer. We are
doing this work together, and we can’t do it alone.</span><span style="font-family: georgia; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are some distinctions between
camp and church. Camp has some qualities that allow us to do things that may be
a challenge for your congregation, so use us! See us as your partner who is
able to move a bit more nimbly, who is free to take a few more chances, because
our nimbleness allows us to engage with young people more deeply, who come to
us with far more questions than answers, sometimes in need of far more love
than we would ever hope, often needing a safe space to experience the river for
the first time. Sure, camp can be the lightning rod for all the issues of the
day, but we are also able to slough off the polarizing ways of our world and
focus on the heart of Gospel—the promise of redemption through Jesus
Christ—because young people and old people alike mostly just want to be known
and loved, and boy, can we do that!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, we do our best to stay awake.
Awake to Christ who comes to us more often than we realize. Awake to the river
of justice and righteousness flowing from the God who created and redeems us.
Awake, because life is full of adventure and that is a wonderful thing to
embrace, keeping our eyes on the grace that carries us when we cannot.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I want to close with a story from
last week. I was at the Lutheran Outdoor Ministries national convention in Lake
Geneva, Wisconsin, and one of the keynotes was Jenny Sung, a pastor from St.
Paul, who talked about her first time at camp, backpacking in the Colorado
mountains as a city girl who had never experienced a night in a tent, let alone
digging holes to use the wilderness restroom. Jenny talked about the challenges
of being out of her comfort zone, and yet, how God met her through that
experience and nudged her into a path that led her to ministry. I think so many
of us have a story like this—where entering into a place of discomfort leads to
immeasurable joy. For those of you who are parents, I suspect that was one of
those moments. Uncomfortable and challenging as they are, children give us
meaning and purpose. And I suspect those children need the same freedom to
adventure into uncertainty to discover who they are and whose they are.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">We all do. So, stay awake, says
Jesus. You don’t know the hour. But I have to point out that the best way to
stay awake is not to sit still but to move toward one another, discovering
Christ in one another, and finding ourselves—perhaps out under the open skies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let </span></span><span style="color: #010000;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing
stream. Oh, we do. And we will. And I thank God for you, who are partners in
that effort. May you experience that river of justice and righteousness—today
and every day.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-2747630033726958372023-09-30T21:43:00.005-05:002023-09-30T21:46:25.664-05:00The missing grace ( Or why wrestling with scripture we don't like is way more reverent than ignoring it)<p><b>Preached at Peace Lutheran, Clayton and St. Peter Lutheran, Garnavillo</b></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=563127914">Philippians 2:1-13</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> I am going to preach on the
Philippians hymn today, which I do with some measure of trepidation,
because I feel I should be up-front about this from the start: I don’t
particularly like this passage. Maybe
this is very familiar scripture to you, it is for me (now), but once upon a
time, I was sitting in a class at seminary and the professor told us that we
would be meditating on this scripture to begin class… every period… all
semester long. Our professor expected that we would already know this scripture
pretty well, seeing as it was so commonly read in church, which was news to me
(who had a degree in Religion at the time), but the professor also said we
would see and hear new things when we meditated on this passage over and over…
and over again.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps
you all have experienced the sensation of repeating a word ad nauseum until it
loses its meaning—a phenomena that is called <i>semantic satiation</i>? Well,
what I experienced with this passage is what I am going to call <i>theological
satiation</i>. Rather than opening up new thoughts, ideas, and possibilities, the
more I read, the less meaning I found. It began to feel like meaningless ideas
that I was obligated to nod along with, because that was what it meant to treat
the scripture with the reverence it deserved. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What
word stuck out to you today?” the professor would ask.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Humbled,”
I would think for the seventh time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And
what image do you see when you hear the text?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Nothing.
Meaninglessness. The void.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>These
were all things I wouldn’t say, so I mostly didn’t say anything at all, which—looking
back—was a huge mistake, because I was so fearful of saying what I truly felt
(which was nothing) that it kept me from being honest. And whenever we are lying,
or faking it, or whatever, because we feel obligated to do something or be
something or think something, it is precisely <i>then</i> that we are not giving
the scripture the reverence it deserves. I forgot in that class that all
scripture is meant to be wrestled with—that’s what faithfulness looks like—not ignoring
it, but wrestling—confronting what I found to be, frankly, boring.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP8sVBt50Hy9xW94TQ6T7STR_Yj0s66MCNEN2kjY1MtCFdsA1qsPKdL8thshTZzKnDeTETv9BjGiqLsQG0L6sMRkC5okKOE54Hha1-OMI15TS8A4dwuxHC3MOBeFYVktjyD3A6JlP_SWmoQ1LNpk3E3NLV9uiXMQhSx_Rx4yrrbnlPAhw6_JNHtxGvBRI/s500/10991704204900459700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="500" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP8sVBt50Hy9xW94TQ6T7STR_Yj0s66MCNEN2kjY1MtCFdsA1qsPKdL8thshTZzKnDeTETv9BjGiqLsQG0L6sMRkC5okKOE54Hha1-OMI15TS8A4dwuxHC3MOBeFYVktjyD3A6JlP_SWmoQ1LNpk3E3NLV9uiXMQhSx_Rx4yrrbnlPAhw6_JNHtxGvBRI/s320/10991704204900459700.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> So,
today I have the opportunity to re-enter this scripture from a different
perspective. There is a lot of good stuff here. My professor was right about
that, but the Philippians Song (as it is called) is really a summation of
everything that we hold in the faith—and it’s all very heady and
theological—and neither my Religion degree nor my Masters in Divinity have made
me particularly interested in theoretical theology. I suspect this is one
reason why I work at camp—I’d rather be out doing things.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
it is worth understanding why we do the things we do—and it is important to
check ourselves against our tendency to do what’s best only for us, and
Philippians 2 does help us in that regard. These are passages about being
humble, like Jesus was humble. “Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others,” writes Paul (Phil 2:4). Now this resonates
with me. In fact, after a while, it was the only line in the entire passage
that still felt fresh. I can get behind an ethos that is about putting others
before myself. This undergirds everything we do as a church and as a camp;
everything is for the sake of those who need it most—for the child who has not
known enough love, for the parent who sees growth in their camper. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">90% of Ewalu
parents report that their campers see improved self-confidence after a week at
camp. 90%! Perhaps this may sound strange, but I believe that humility starts
with self-confidence. You have to be confident enough in yourself to let go.
There is this maxim, “Fake it until you make it.” That’s just about the
opposite of what I’m talking about. Instead, know that through Christ you are
able to do anything. You were created to be exactly who you are. You are
enough. Given that God created you to be you, now choose to humble yourself for
others who do not yet see it. That is humility. It is a mark of confidence in
the right things.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">That is a two-part
lesson we teach at Ewalu: You are enough, now go give yourself away for a world
that needs you. And it isn’t easy! Paul writes lines like this: “Let the same
mind me in you that was in Christ Jesus” as if that is straightforward to
follow. I don’t know about you, but I find myself wondering: How exactly do I
have the same mind as Jesus? Can I really take up my cross and follow? What
would that even look like?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Asking this
question led me to a realization, which I had only two days ago. So, I guess my
professor was right—I <i>can </i>still find new things after so many readings
of the scripture, though perhaps this is not what they meant. I realized why I
have zoned out this passage for over a decade. In these verses, Paul is heavy
on theology and big on humility, but absent is another theme in so much of his
writing: A thing we call “grace”. And I don’t know about you, but flowery
language about faith is unapproachable for me without grace. I need grace even
more than I need humility. I need to know that when I fail to have the same
mind as Jesus (and boy, do I!), that there is something there to catch me.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I don’t get there
in Philippians 2. And that’s OK, there’s plenty of other scripture about grace
if I just keep reading, but it struck me that perhaps some of you are in the same
shoes as well. And I know that many of our campers are in those shoes. They
need grace not every so often, not just on occasion, but ALL THE TIME, because
our awareness of our inadequacy never goes away. I believe that one of the
primary reasons our campers see such growth in self-confidence is because of
grace—because (perhaps for the first time) they come to understand that they
are loved whether they are perfect or not—and that frees something in their
souls. That self-confidence is born from the cross where all our brokenness is
put to death. But next, like Easter morning, they rise! Our campers become
Easter-people, and Easter-people are humble people because they know that they
are dead, yet through Christ they live.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Which brings me to
the final realization I had about this passage, which came to me also just this
week: This is not an Easter passage. Which is OK, again not every passage in
scripture needs to be about the empty tomb, but for those of us who are
Christians in the year of our Lord 2023, we must be Easter-people. We must
proclaim not just the law that drives us to Jesus Christ, but also the full
power of the Gospel that is marked by the cross and the empty tomb. And I
wonder if this passage has any room for we-Easter-people. Or is this just more
hedging of the law? Because, ultimately, the good news is not only what Jesus
Christ has done—dying on the cross, rising on Easter morning—but also what his
death and resurrection mean for you. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">This is why I’m
going to quarrel with Paul one last time about how this passage ends. I do not
believe, as Paul says, that you need to “work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling.” Or at least I believe we all do that anyway—that’s like telling
a worrier to worry. <i>OK, check!</i> Rather, we need to know that our fear and
trembling is met by a God who gathers lost sheep and says, “I got you!” And who
preaches “The first shall be last and the last shall be first,” and all those
other parables of grace that we have been reading these last several weeks.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I wonder now if
that isn’t the best lesson that this scripture has taught me. After a dozen
years in ministry, I now have context for what was once theory. There is value
in the law as a tool to drive us to Jesus Christ, but to leave anybody with the
impression that God is only going to meet them halfway—that they need to try harder—to
become humble like Christ is humble—well, that’s just nonsense. Worse, it makes
a mockery of the cross. After a dozen years reflecting on this passage, I realized
for the first time that it needs way more context, because for many folks it might
be the only chance to hear the good news and I’m not going to waste it!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I am acutely aware
of this both when I go into congregations and preach (and let me tell you, I
was handed a preaching text on divorce last January that was not the one
impression I wanted to give to that congregation), but also I am aware of how
this works for campers who come to Ewalu for the first time. It is OK for
campers to hear about their need for a Savior if we deliver on the promise that
there is one for them. And it is OK for campers to learn that they are sinners
(which they already know, by the way) if we help them meet the God who takes
away their sins. But it is not OK to leave campers with the impression that
their salvation depends on their own holiness, or that there is something
broken in them that cannot be fixed, hoping that someday down the line they
discover that that fix will come in Jesus Christ. We do much better than that!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">At camp, we seek
to embody grace, because Jesus does too. So, I’m sorry to Paul with his
beautiful Philippians hymn, but I am going to make even this about grace.
Because <i>I </i>need it. And so do you. Because I do not believe that God is
interested in us spending any more of our time working out our salvation with
fear and trembling than we already are. Because Jesus Christ didn’t die for us
to meet him halfway. Because the power of the resurrection is the power that
inspires campers and their parents, camp counselors, and every person who steps
foot at Ewalu to understand why Ewalu as a place apart matters. Because we are
Gospel-people. We are Jesus-people. We are Easter-people. And if I get one
chance to preach with you, I’m not going to spend a moment saying anything
else.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">And that’s maybe
the best lesson I’ve learned since seminary.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-59686993680048988242023-09-24T07:22:00.001-05:002023-09-24T07:22:09.327-05:00Not karma--not a great balancing act--just grace<p><b>A sermon for American Lutheran Church, Grundy Center, IA</b></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=562557974">Matthew 20:1-16</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
past week, I got some great news. Maybe I shouldn’t say this because my kids
are here and I don’t want any of them to get a big head, but at the risk of
bragging, I just want to say that my kindergartener, Elias, got his first FAST
test results back and, let me tell you, he’s <i>pretty smart.</i> So, the tests
say. I started looking at early admission to Harvard and I don’t think he’s
quite eligible yet, but by his spring FAST test results, maybe he’ll be ready
to skip 1<sup>st</sup>-12<sup>th</sup> grade. And, yeah, sure, he just turned
five, but he’s on the fast-track to great things—the results say.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
those test results—they’re a bit funny—because while they say he is doing quite
well in reading and math, they don’t seem to mention some of his best
qualities. I don’t see a single category for kindness or how well he cares for
his friends. I don’t see any measurement of his capacity for empathy or the joy
that comes from all the nonsense jokes that he concocts. I don’t see a single
thing about his goofy grin, his love of the outdoors, or even his excitement
about dinosaurs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
be fair, I don’t think any of these tests claim to say much about peoples’ best
qualities—whether FAST, or the ACTs, or your credit score—but it’s worth
noticing that how readily we are reduced to numbers when it comes to areas of
our life that are deemed valuable to society. There is always somebody ready to
assign us a value for how well we answer questions, or how we look, or how high
we can jump. And this may work just fine and dandy to power an economic system
that is built on merit, but according to Jesus in the parable we read today, it
is simply not the way that the kingdom of God works. The kingdom of God is a
kingdom of grace, which kind of stinks for me—what with such talented kids. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">But then again, I
have seen how they behave sometimes, too. I have seen how badly they need to be
loved in and through their mistakes—how they need to be defined not by their worst
moments but loved for who they are, even if it takes some time for them to become
more who we would like—even if they are occasionally just awful to one another—even,
in fact, if they never improve. It is for children like these that the parable
of the vineyard is told. But, I suspect more than that, it is for we-parents
who know how imperfect we are, who need to know that when everything goes to
hell, God’s grace will catch us.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">It just so happens
that grace is one of our six core values at Camp Ewalu.
Faith-Based—Community-Building—Hospitality and Inclusion—Stewardship—Leadership
Development—and Grace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Of these values,
grace is perhaps the hardest to see day to day. We have a deeply engrained fear
of being taken advantage of—just as we have a deeply-engrained suspicion of
anything that is free. “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” the maxim goes—the
implication being that everybody expects something in return. A free lunch will
require a lavish dinner in return someday down the line.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Grace
is foolish on the one hand and offensive on the other. Certainly, the laborers
who worked all day thought so. Not only did they work longer but they were paid
last of all. So, when they saw the folks who just got there leaving with a full
day’s wage, they expected that they must be getting paid more.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s
worth pausing for a moment to note that the landowner could have avoided any of
this frustration simply by paying those who worked all day first and then
paying everyone else in the order they arrived. If he would have done that,
grace would not have been so offensive because it would not have been known,
but the moment it became public, that’s when it became offensive. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Grace
is unfair. Like the prodigal son who returns home and receives the great party
that his faithful brother was never offered, those who show up last of all are
blessed with a reward they have done nothing to earn. The vineyard owner has
sent his bookkeeper packing and is no longer keeping score. Depending on where
you stand in the moment, this is either a tremendous relief or a terrible
offense. At varying points in our lives, it flips—we are offended sometimes
because of the work we put in and other times we are relieved because our
efforts were not nearly enough.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
I say that “Grace” is a core value at Ewalu, I mean that we strive to live
after the kind of world that Jesus envisions in this parable—a world where our
campers are treated not as first picks or after-thoughts but as children of God,
one and all. The amazing thing about grace is that those after-thoughts receive
the greatest reward. The last are first—just as the laborers who showed up at
the dead end of the day got their pay in full and first of all. At Ewalu, we strive
to be a place where those on the outside are welcomed even before those on the
inside—where God’s love is evident for all the outcasts and the misfits,
because eventually, we realize, that is all of us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
you know what? At Ewalu, we don’t always do a great job of it. Living into
grace is hard work in a broken world full of sinners like you and me. This
parable shows us what the kingdom of God is like, not what we can ever really
attain. The best news is that God’s grace is for those of us who try and fail
to live as if grace is true, as well. God’s grace is for those trying to live like
the landowner, and God’s grace is also for the worker who works all day and
feels resentment to the one who works only in part. After all, that worker too
has fallen short, resenting grace given to another. Everybody in the parable is
valued not for the work they have done but for the work God has done for them.
This is a parable about our need for a Savior, since none of us can work long
enough to do it on our own.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now,
it’s hard to tell sometimes how well we are doing when it comes to grace, but
at Ewalu, we have one strong indicator that folks who come to us see us as a
place full of grace. That indicator, of course, is that we attract folks who do
not care about the size of their paycheck. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">And I say this
jokingly, but also quite seriously, because young adults who come to work for
us each summer could be making considerably more money in many other lines of
work or working internships on their way to much higher paying careers, but instead,
they come to us and work long hours with lots of responsibility for a pittance
of a wage. Seventeen years ago, that was me—working 23 hours a day, five or six
days a week for the grand sum of $175. Still, I look back on that time as the
most incredible, formative, faith-filled days of my life. For many reasons: Because
of the power of community, because of the feeling of joy watching kids come to
know they are loved by the God who created and called them by name. Because
grace is true. And it isn’t fair, because life isn’t either. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If
you strive in this life to make all the calculations balance out at the end of
the day, you will end up frustrated. Some will work more than others. Bad
things will still happen to good people. The powerful still stomp on the weak.
We cannot be naïve enough to pretend that people will not look out for
themselves, taking what they can and caring little for the beautiful earth
entrusted to us or all the people that God created and called “very good.” All
of us still keep tallies, and when it doesn’t add up, we assign the remainder
to karma, or assess that it is unfathomable and so part of God’s unknowable plan.
<i>Not so</i>, suggests Jesus. If this parable is any indication, God’s plan is
that all receive what they need. That’s what the kingdom of God looks like. Not
karma—not a great balancing act—just grace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ironically,
it’s those very same uber-talented kids of mine who have taught me so much
about grace, because there are times, I tell you, when they deserve to go to
their rooms not just for the night but well into adulthood. This past Thursday,
in the midst of what will forever-after be known as the great spaghetti
disaster, I briefly but seriously considered leaving the dog in charge because
he couldn’t possibly do more damage than had been done by three screaming
children with plates of spaghetti. Parents get these little reminders of our
need for grace all the time—both for our sake and for the sake of our kids.
Whether we spend the whole day working hard or show up last minute with
spaghetti in our hair, we need grace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
have the privilege at camp of seeing loads of kids like mine—and like yours—who
need that grace, and we, at Ewalu, have the great privilege of sharing grace
with them. It’s just a little taste of the kingdom of God. It is beautiful and
messy—that is camp. I hope you can experience it, too—in whatever way you
can—because grace is an amazing thing to behold, and we could do with so much
more of it in our lives. Thanks be to God.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-82187085674097711972023-09-16T06:47:00.002-05:002023-09-16T06:48:49.519-05:00Ewalu Quilt Auction: Lost Sheep and God's Love of Material Things<p><b><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=561864716">Scripture: Luke 15:1-7</a></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">I’m going to begin this morning by reading another version
of the Parable of the Lost Sheep—this one from the gnostic <i>Gospel of Thomas</i>.
Now, if you don’t remember the <i>Gospel of Thomas </i>from your days in Sunday
School, it will soon become obvious why. <i>Thomas</i> is a book of sayings
discovered in 1945 in the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt. It <i>is</i> very
old—perhaps as old as the Gospel of John—but it was obviously not included in
the Biblical canon—again, for reasons you will soon understand.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Without further ado—the Parable of the Lost Sheep according
to the Gospel of Thomas:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Gospel of Thomas, verse 107:<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jesus said, "The kingdom is like a shepherd who had a
hundred sheep. One of them, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i>the
largest</i></b>, went astray. He left the ninety-nine sheep and looked for that
one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble, he said to the sheep,
'I care for you more than the ninety-nine.'"</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That is how you change the whole vibe of a passage with two
words—one qualifier, “the largest”. Two words stir up a rather important
question: Does God seek us out because we are lost creatures that he loves, or is
God only going to pursue us if we are the best, the biggest, or the most
beautiful? </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This brings up a whole other category of questions, like: Where
does my worth come from? Am I valuable in and of myself, or only for what I
produce, or only for what I consume? Then, a step further removed: What is
God’s economy?</p><p class="MsoNormal">
I believe Christians have done a terrible job of talking about worthiness,
because too often we have slipped into this dialectic where faith is about
spiritual things and life is about material things and never shall the two
meet, presumably because God does not like material things. Now, I can say that
almost without objection in the Christian church in spite of how ridiculous it
is when we have a God was the one who made those material things and called
them good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">God loves trees and rocks, but God also loves the works of
our hands. I suspect God loves marvels of architecture just as God loves water
and sun, livestock and companion animals, and every other thing that God
created and called “good.” It is not sinful to marvel at created things—after
all, you are one of them! If God cares for you, as a lost sheep, then I have to
believe God also cares for quilts and bowls and all sorts of things we create.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYFRgkKHIeeYMo4E5H4JIYxG_M3O09BZWzfp96Pv6534HDZ3AzfqVQpQlyESbkZvtSITlE87TPqoOEHT_lDQH7mopaclWvRa48EByBKFbYauE5gLp2ks3Ae7OOYq7Z_bbnrzM40Bt8h8fa3wWKE1odJXnbbFcaAxU6-YTCZSX-IWqA4Tg6xbPD4R2RPgw/s900/Ewalu-Quilt-Auction-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="598" data-original-width="900" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYFRgkKHIeeYMo4E5H4JIYxG_M3O09BZWzfp96Pv6534HDZ3AzfqVQpQlyESbkZvtSITlE87TPqoOEHT_lDQH7mopaclWvRa48EByBKFbYauE5gLp2ks3Ae7OOYq7Z_bbnrzM40Bt8h8fa3wWKE1odJXnbbFcaAxU6-YTCZSX-IWqA4Tg6xbPD4R2RPgw/s320/Ewalu-Quilt-Auction-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><p class="MsoNormal">I am not saying anything particularly new or radical here.
In <i>Mere Christianity, </i>C.S. Lewis wrote that “God loves material things;
he invented them.” Of course, we are skeptical of this, because generations of
preachers have warned you about the dangers of living “in the world today” as
if any of us are living anywhere but “in the world today”. Regardless, there <i>is</i>
a danger with material things and it has to do with their purpose. Are we using
them to steward and grow what God has given us? Or are we hoarding them and
trading them for power. In his essay, <i>The Gift of Good Land</i>, Wendell
Berry teases out what it looks like to love material things for the wrong
reasons. He writes, “The Devil’s work is abstraction—not the love of material
things, but the love of their qualities.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Loving wealth is a problem, because wealth is an
abstraction. Loving weapons for the feeling of power it gives you is a problem because
those qualities are an abstraction.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The question is the same question we are always asking as
good Christians: Are these things instruments of power for me or instruments in
service of others?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I feel this need to defend material things in part because Ewalu
is full of these things that make this place special: trees and rivers,
buildings and quilts. All of these are reflections of love and devotion and
care, because they reflect our love for one another. God loves material things,
because God loves good work. The Devil’s work, as Berry points out, is in
valuing a building or a quilt only for the money or status that it brings, not
for the heart put into it—not for the person it warms nor the feelings of
wonder it inspires.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In spite of what the Thomases of the world say, God does not
seek after the sheep because of its economic value. In fact, he risks leaving
the 99 to attend to the weakest link. It is risk management nightmare! God
seeks the lost precisely because they are lost, and God does this because God
loves that stinking sheep. God loves sinners. And the good news is that we are
all most certainly that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As Christians, we are called to love things that reflect
God’s good creation. In fact, I’m going to take this a step further and say
this: Good spirituality requires good love of creation. You cannot separate the
two, and those who try end up doing terrible damage under the guise of living a
spiritual life. There is no spiritual life apart from one spent caring for
others by the work of your hands.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not surprisingly, C.S. Lewis’ buddy, Tolkien, fleshed out
what this looks like in <i>The Two Towers </i>when he wrote<i>, </i>“I do not
love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor
the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And what do they defend but created beings loved and called
good? Which reminds me to remind you what today is about: Quilts, yes, but only
secondarily. They’re beautiful. They are. Still more beautiful are the hands
that sewed them, the feet that moved them, the hearts that gave them away. And
most beautiful of all are the campers who benefit from them—the kids who never
realize they are at Ewalu in no small part because of the work of people they
will never meet, producing quilts they will never see.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These campers are kids like Cody (not his real name). This is
what Cody’s mom said after he spent a week at camp this summer:</p>“Camp is a wonderful experience for Cody. He has learned how to use nature and God to help him along his journey. Cody has a learning disability and was physically abused as a baby. He came into our lives when he was 2 years old. It has been a struggle for our family and Cody to understand why he reacts and goes on fight or flight mode. This will always be a struggle for him but with your camp he has been able to understand and learn to have God and nature be there for him.” <br /><br />That, my friends, is not an abstraction. That is as real as it gets. When we talk about God meeting campers, we mean Cody. There were 875 different Codys last summer. <br /><br />I don’t know if God smiles down on buildings, but I have to believe that God loves what our beloved safe spaces have meant for all those Codys, what this chapel has meant, what Cedar has meant. And I don’t know if God enjoys quilts for their quilt-y-ness. But I have to believe that God smiles for the heart and passion that goes into them, the love that flows out of them, and the joy that that brings—for the warmth they provide and the care of those who are wrapped in them. Not abstract things—true, real joy lived out in the most valuable material thing of all: People, like you and like Cody, and like everyone else who shows up at Ewalu. <br /><br />You are what this ministry is about. <br /><br />And you are actual, lovely human beings—not abstract, not statistics, but lovely creatures—and still (and always) lost sheep. <br /><br />So, God delights in finding you. Just as some of you delight in finding that really wonderful quilt. There is absolutely no shame in loving beautiful things. After all, their beauty is a reflection of creation—created and called “good”—and where good work meets a good world in a place apart drenched in God’s word. Now, THAT is something really special.Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-87599558240334126142023-09-11T14:25:00.003-05:002023-09-11T14:26:13.684-05:00As yourself: God's gracious love for YOU<p><b>Preached at Zion Lutheran, Jubilee, and American Lutheran, Jesup </b></p><p>Scripture: <a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=561459978">Romans 13:8-14</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Love your neighbor as yourself is
one of those wonderful, golden rule bits of wisdom that is so universal that
every major faith tradition in the world has some version of it. On the one
hand, it’s very simple: Treat others the way you want to be treated. Only do
things to people that you would want done to you. Seems straightforward.<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But there are a couple of
challenges with this little morsel of a moral. The first is that we don’t do it
very well. That’s no secret. We are certainly not guaranteed that our love will
be returned with love. We often have to face the question of how to respond to
disinterest or disdain, and showing love to folks who don’t care or don’t want
it is rather hard. Paul writing Romans didn’t seem to have a problem with this,
but then again, for the first half of his career, Paul sort of made his living
killing people, so it’s pretty hard to put us in the moral absolutist shoes of
St. Paul. Elsewhere in his writings, it is pretty obvious that Paul feels he
really deserves to have his love met with hate. In some ways, it seems the
self-hatred runs deep with him.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Which gets at the 2<sup>nd</sup>,
larger and more universal challenge with loving your neighbor as you love
yourself. There is one enormous assumption in this phrase—perhaps you see it? To
love our neighbor as ourselves assumes that we love ourselves. The honest
truth: A lot of people do not love themselves. Many people are hardest on their
own self. And this is particularly true of people who treat other people poorly—they
do not love others so often because they first fail to love themselves.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I think we all recognize this on
some level. We recognize the lack of love in others, and sometimes also in
ourselves, but what to do about it? Some folks are able to escape from cycles
of self-hatred, but for many it is a bridge too far. Worse, the self-hatred
grows when they feel they have tried and tried but cannot love who they are. This
is because transformation seems to have less to do with any willpower we
possess than it does with something outside of ourselves. If I had to give it a
name, I’d call it grace.</span><br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This is where the whole business of
love ends up landing. We can’t fix a lack of love by deciding we are going to
love more just as we cannot decide to have faith. All these things are gifts
that come to us—faith, hope, love (as Paul later talks about in 1 Corinthians
13)—the greatest of these is love, but all of them are gifts we cannot earn,
feelings we can do nothing to create. They all come to us as a gift. So, if you
feel no hope; if you lack in love; if you cannot find faith, it is <i>not </i>because
something in you is broken, and it is not because you have not done enough, or said
the right things, or because you are weak—whatever narrative you tell yourself.
If you feel you have no love, it is because something has blocked you from the
truth. You ARE loved. It starts with understanding that simplest of songs,
“Jesus Loves Me.” You are loved.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Now, I know what Lutherans do with
that knowledge. They make a transfer from their emotional bank (and Lutherans
try not to go to this bank very often, so it pains us to do anything at the
emotional bank at all, but we are obliged when somebody tells us we are loved.)
Too often, Lutherans make a withdrawal of love from the emotional bank and then
we make a transfer into the guilt account, because we are told we are loved,
but we don’t feel it strongly enough, so now we have convinced ourselves we <i>should</i>
feel loved, and since we don’t, here comes the guilt.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I make fun of Lutherans, but all
people of every faith (and no faith at all) do this. They might receive a
deposit of love and transfer it into their pride account. They might receive a
deposit of love and transfer it into their power account. Or guilt. Or
unworthiness. Or you name it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I use this metaphor of a bank
transaction intentionally, because it is the kind of thing we do… and it is
also completely and totally the opposite of how God works.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">When God receives love, God pays
out love. When God receives hate, God pays out love. When God receives
disinterest, God pays out love. There is no transaction, because God <i>is </i>love.
There is no debt. All of that is over, settled, done. You are saved by grace.
You are loved apart from all the ways you have fallen short. You owe nothing
for this. It is all a gift.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But once you feel this love, it
will make you do things. It will inspire you for service. It will push you to
care for others. It will make you interested in their stories; in their
passions—in their whole selves—because the more you know, the more there is to
love. In short, God’s love will make you love. The law won’t do that. The law
will suggest that perhaps you haven’t loved enough—perhaps you are not good
enough—perhaps you should do something else to <i>earn </i>love. The law is a
liar, but it is a persistent one, and it would be foolish to say we don’t
listen to it. Somedays, it wins. But not in the end…</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7kNnhIXGzH5mM_kaxvRuEV4KQ2qlgbBTZXLUn5n_0H0fQOkB8Hi-jFdtBgRAoLArlqyiLhrjcGOmJ8qt2lpZoDrsL2mHcNz5QrlXxBt6VITEJrqpuAbrVEKaQzndFh2W-m23OSY4X7iVtEj6lQMqnfJ8HlLcWiabJ5yjXgNRqWtwpL1E7sBckKeE6Yl8/s800/Camp%20Ewalu%20Logo%20-%20black.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="800" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7kNnhIXGzH5mM_kaxvRuEV4KQ2qlgbBTZXLUn5n_0H0fQOkB8Hi-jFdtBgRAoLArlqyiLhrjcGOmJ8qt2lpZoDrsL2mHcNz5QrlXxBt6VITEJrqpuAbrVEKaQzndFh2W-m23OSY4X7iVtEj6lQMqnfJ8HlLcWiabJ5yjXgNRqWtwpL1E7sBckKeE6Yl8/w200-h136/Camp%20Ewalu%20Logo%20-%20black.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />At Ewalu, a central principle that
guides our mission is that God’s love is for every child, every young adult,
and all the generations that come to this place. We are a place apart because
we are a beautiful corner of God’s creation, but we are also a place apart
because the God we proclaim is love-incarnate, and that is not the message most
of us get in most of our lives. We are expected to do more, to do better, to
earn love, to earn grace; to hope for more; to bring up faith from somewhere
inside of us. Most of the messages we receive in life are a litany of all the
ways more is expected of us. At Ewalu, we resist the temptation to levy more
expectations on our campers—instead, we seek to embody grace.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">We nurture faith through music and
Bible study, through caring relationships and fun. Mostly, I suspect we nurture
faith by allowing kids the space—often for the first time in their lives—for
them to see that God is meeting them right where they are. And then what do
campers experience when God meets them? Faith and hope and love. Hopefully
love—that is our goal, first and foremost. It starts with love of their own
self. Of all the positive outcomes of summer camp, one that strikes me that we
don’t talk about enough is that 90% of parents report improved self-confidence
in their summer campers after a week at camp. That is not just some metric for
life—that is a measure of faith. If we can discover that God loves us for the
person we are, we will spend our lives paying that love forward to others.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I should
point out the obvious here: We won’t do this perfectly. We too often focus on
all the ways we fail to do it, which is fine—it’s worth confessing—but it is
also not the last word, because while we won’t do this perfectly, God will. And
that is a great comfort to me in a world that is so often lacking in love for
one another. In a world of transactions, God just keeps flooding the market.
Call it grace—call it impossible—but ultimately, it is the fulfilling of the
law. Just love.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-28567511794664660962023-08-12T08:13:00.003-05:002023-08-12T08:43:44.617-05:00The broken pieces<p><b>Preached at St. Paul's Lutheran, Maynard, August 6, 2023</b></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=558846663">Matthew 14:13-21</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #010000; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Abundance
over scarcity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Scarcity is
a real fear, especially in rural, agricultural communities. There are fewer things.
Fewer opportunities in our towns, in our schools, in our churches. Fewer
people. Less and less.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> When I was a
pastor in NW Minnesota, I did a little research in our church history books. I
looked at the year when church attendance peaked in our congregation. An
average of 430 people every Sunday in 1965. At the time (in 2016), average
attendance had fallen under 100. So, I went back into the church council
minutes to see how the church felt about all of its growth in 1965. Surely,
they were basking in the glow of all those baby boomers, thrilled at all the
vibrant ministries possible with over four times as many people as would
eventually be there?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Not so much.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The Luther
League report read much like a youth report in 2023: There was not enough
engagement with the young people, it said. Young people needed to be more
involved in the church, they worried.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Those
Lutherans couldn’t see abundance when it was staring them in the face. The
truth is: There would never be enough to satisfy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Our churches
have drifted in the same thinking that drives capitalism—the premise that
everything must grow in perpetuity in order for us to strive. And capitalism may
well be the best of all the dismal economic systems we have developed as human
beings, but God’s economy does not work like this. God’s economy is nonsense to
all our sensibilities. God’s economy suggests something absolutely startling:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style=" color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The problem is not that we have too
little; the problem is that we still have too much.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> God’s
economy is Jesus, taking a look at the five thousand men (plus women and
children) and saying, “Five loaves? Two fish? That’s plenty!” After all, we are
dealing with a God who spoke the world into being with words. A few loaves and
fish are more than enough.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> For us to
participate in God’s economy, we have to give—our selves, our money, our
time—until there is nothing left. This is why in another story we have a rich
man who comes to Jesus looking to justify himself only to go away disappointed.
He followed the laws. He obeyed the commandments. But he was lacking one
crucial detail: He had things.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Faith is
only faith when all the other things that we are really trusting in are cast
aside.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> As usual, I
am mostly preaching to myself this morning, because I was born in 1986 and in
the 37 years of my life, the ELCA has declined in numbers every single year. Since the pandemic, many churches have fewer
people around. At Ewalu, we have fewer campers around. The landscape has
changed swiftly. When I was ordained in 2011, I waited five months for a
first-call. Now, I had a lot going for me—I mean, I don’t know if I was a
particularly good pastoral candidate, but I was single, male, white, straight.
The grand slam that would offend nobody in any church. In 2011, there were
exactly as many pastors graduating seminary (211) as there were calls open to
first-call pastors (211). In 2023, seminary graduates are roughly half that and
open calls have ballooned.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> It is
entirely likely if you are under 65 years old, you have never experienced a church
that is growing in worship attendance.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> All of this
is to say that it is <i>incredibly</i> easy to be scarcity people. There is
less and less and less every year. Or it feels that way.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Clearly, we
are not Jesus, who can do so much with so little. But I don’t believe we are
the recipients of that feast either. Yes, we ought to remember that Jesus can
do much with so little. Yes, our problem is still that we have too much. But
man, that doesn’t sound like good news, does it? Like the rich man who came to
Jesus, we would do well to give more away—more of our time, our talents, our
gifts—but we can’t give it all away, can we? That is the harsh word of the law
and what Jesus demands: Give everything. But shoot, that is kind of depressing,
isn’t it? Not only do we feel we have less and less; we also feel we have less
to give; and we feel even less capable of giving it away.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> This is
where we stand, feeling the weight of scarcity UNTIL we consider a vitally
important question: “Where are we in this story?” Where are we in the feeding
of the 5000? We are not Jesus, clearly. But are we the people—hungry and with
little to offer? Or are we the bread and the fish—provisions for a needy world?
In some ways, we may be both hungry people and the food to feed them, but I
believe that most of us are neither the hungry people nor the bread and fish. But
we ARE in the story.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">You and me? We are the broken pieces.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> We are the
bits of bread and fish gathered together that are more than they started with.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> We are the
broken pieces, because we see a world that appears to be spread thinner and
thinner, but we cannot see the whole picture. In fact, we can see very little
of what Jesus is doing. We are only ever feeding one person here, another
there. On our own, we are not enough. And yet, by some mystery, our whole is
greater than the sum of our parts. We are broken for the sake of those who need
it, but that act of breaking does not destroy us. In fact, that breaking is the
only hope we have.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> I see it at
camp every single year, every single week. We are an ecosystem full of broken
people. By this point of the summer, literally broken people—like a broken foot
here, a broken thumb there. Exhausted, humbled, broken people. But the broken
pieces are where you will find God’s handiwork. The broken pieces are evidence
of the proclamation of God’s grace. You can’t follow after Christ without
breaking apart. You can’t rise without dying. This is the paradox of the
Christian faith. The less you have, the more capacity you have for God’s grace
to fill you.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The problem is not that we have too
little; it’s that we are holding on to too much.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> So, we break
apart, and that’s when God puts us to use. When we admit we are not enough, we
discover that God is.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> So, what to
do with all this—what nuggets of wisdom to take away—how then shall we live?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> I suspect
it’s pretty simple: Be open to being broken open, because God will do just
that. Be put to use. Do not be afraid to be broken pieces. Broken pieces are
the surest evidence of good work, after all. But also, and this is probably an
important point in a broken world, don’t let others break you. Instead, <u>choose</u>
to break for the sake of those you care about—for the sake of those who need
you.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> There is no
need to pretend that we have it all together, because nobody in this story
does. Jesus does everything with nothing. We, in turn, are called to remember
that <b>our problem is not that we have too
little; it’s that there is too much in the way for us to see God at work.</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My prayer is that we all let go. That we
break—willingly and completely. Because I have found, whether at camp or at
church or in the lives of my children, that the most meaningful moments happen
when we just let go—when we break apart and let someone in.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">May you be broken and discover your
worth—and may you be healed by Jesus Christ, who is broken for you.</span><span style=" text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9AY6RVdPNXQXR60Pr0J6mZIM3Bx6dRLzAS-JgBrkycf4Jjr0oJ2DGpmjqkOLpuSkVpiPBhguHiV5ZPtnH6EnHK-fRzzsoPrjzU5bEkUvQqUg2m7zVbYtWlRjCih0CeyDfSJD-4cah_zSbzkxkxAgzSHG95Hu7qMPYB1mkRQSCoWAu4vbM-lOrzTNbJVM/s612/istockphoto-1295812321-612x612.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="612" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9AY6RVdPNXQXR60Pr0J6mZIM3Bx6dRLzAS-JgBrkycf4Jjr0oJ2DGpmjqkOLpuSkVpiPBhguHiV5ZPtnH6EnHK-fRzzsoPrjzU5bEkUvQqUg2m7zVbYtWlRjCih0CeyDfSJD-4cah_zSbzkxkxAgzSHG95Hu7qMPYB1mkRQSCoWAu4vbM-lOrzTNbJVM/w208-h208/istockphoto-1295812321-612x612.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-75001545324529701542023-08-10T19:09:00.005-05:002023-08-10T19:10:33.085-05:00At camp, we go!<p><b>2023 Summer Staff Commissioning -- </b>Preached June 3-4, 2023 @ First Lutheran, Decorah</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnWUgyFBhEdJN-cssD_JDmW6XowKsjeioXLMJ2JOx92f19p3XN3pXSN5ryH6ujVjyDIqHlJ1pnnerpK_l027_4zDKYFeUBwYuNd12cErrJULXHw_DBfHomYVTOChovKwagBSM5FIP4GW2CitS872fGWz_mp0I8rPk9aeAYxX2ZhG2jiI4sms-bmTKi-uI/s150/HOLY-TRINITY_logo-150x150.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="150" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnWUgyFBhEdJN-cssD_JDmW6XowKsjeioXLMJ2JOx92f19p3XN3pXSN5ryH6ujVjyDIqHlJ1pnnerpK_l027_4zDKYFeUBwYuNd12cErrJULXHw_DBfHomYVTOChovKwagBSM5FIP4GW2CitS872fGWz_mp0I8rPk9aeAYxX2ZhG2jiI4sms-bmTKi-uI/s1600/HOLY-TRINITY_logo-150x150.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=558712462"> Matthew 28:16-20</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Fittingly, the
scripture readings for today are about both the great outdoors and great work.
Psalm 8 tells us that God’s majesty is a reflection of the majesty of creation,
which is something that I feel deep in my soul whenever I am climbing a hill
and anticipating the view of the world below. Hopefully, you can slow down
enough to experience the wonder of the earth and the heavens as a window into
God’s playground. I could preach only on this today and have plenty to say. But
even better, we mark the Holy Trinity this weekend with Matthew’s Great
Commission, which takes all that business about the outdoors and the world and
tells us, “Get to work!” Which is great, because right now, at camp, let me
tell you, there is a lot of work to do!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">And since there is
a lot to do, I am in the mindset to focus on the verbs—the specific actions
Jesus expects of us. There are five of them—five verbs of the Great Commission—five
directives for Christians to accomplish while passing through this big,
beautiful world. Those five verbs are: Make disciples, baptize, teach, and
remember… I never claimed I was good at counting. <i>Make disciples, baptize,
teach, and remember… what did I forget?<span></span></i></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Oh, yes, GO! It is
the one that Lutherans seem to skip over if we’re being honest. We are great at
baptizing. We baptize babies and adults and everybody in-between; we baptize as
a reflection of God’s grace poured out for us, and man, do I believe God is
pleased with how we baptize! And what about teaching? Holy cow, do we teach
well! We have one of these incredible institutions of Lutheran teaching here in
Decorah in Luther College. And they might not like me telling you this, but
Lutherans teach so well that there are many options for higher learning with a
Lutheran heritage—places with names like Wartburg, Augustana, Augsburg,
Concordia, St. Olaf, Gustavus, Grand View, Carthage, Midland—and those are just
the ones you could drive to today! My wife, Kate, would be very disappointed
with me if I didn’t mention Wittenberg—the point is that there are a lot of
these places! We teach really well. We teach the faith. And, as I remember so
well from my days at Augustana College (now University, <i>go Augie!</i>), we
ask the question, “How then shall we live?” I have to believe Jesus is pleased
with this.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">We also remember
well. Here’s how I know this: Some of you enjoy eating lutefisk. There is no
godly reason in the year of our Lord 2023, when you all have refrigerators in
your houses and in your garages, coolers in the pickup, and ice on demand at
every gas station in every town, that you should be eating air-dried cod soaked
in lye. But some of you do. In fact, you have convinced yourself you like it,
and that is of course not because of the taste or the texture, but because you
remember! And that memory is valuable. Your heritage matters. You have a whole
weekend at the end of July dedicated to Norwegian heritage, and I’ve been told
it’s kind of a big deal. Whether you are Norwegian or some other variety of
Europeans, or like some of our staff you come from a place like Mexico or
Guyana or somewhere else really unique, it is good to remember where you are
from! Perhaps you also remember the liturgy of your grandparents, which flows
like a river from the time of those first churches in Acts, using language from
places exactly like Matthew 28. We recognize this commission because we
remember, and I believe Jesus would be quite pleased with this act of memory.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">We also make
disciples. This is trickier. I hear enough about how we are not making enough
disciples. We mourn the grown kids who no longer participate in the life of the
church, wondering what else we could be doing to keep them in the fold, concerned
we did something wrong. Yes, we make disciples, but perhaps we haven’t yet
stumbled upon the best program or the right preacher, or… you fill in the
blank.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Hmmm…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I want to pause
there for a moment, because I believe our challenge in disciple-making is
directly connected with our inability to hear the first verb in the Great
Commission. We skip over to baptizing and teaching and remembering, and we
struggle with disciple-making because we haven’t gone anywhere. We have waited
for folks to come to us. We have sat in our pews faithfully on Sunday mornings,
wondering why new folks don’t show up. And I get it—it’s hard to know what it
means to GO! I suspect that knocking on doors and telling people about Jesus
would get poor results in Decorah in 2023. I don’t know—perhaps we should ask
the Jehovah’s Witnesses how it’s going—and maybe we’ll learn something. Regardless,
we must go <i>somewhere</i> to see about this disciple-making business.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">But I fear I’ve
misled you now in the same way we have often failed to tell the bigger story of
our faith, because the church is already going many places. What if I told you
that that whole narrative about Lutherans struggling to go anywhere is
completely bogus? What if I told you that you <i>have</i> been making many disciples
in the last century? What if I told you that Lutherans have been on the cutting
edge of evangelism and continue to make huge strides in going out into the
world today? I know this is hard for some of you to stomach because <i>Lutherans</i>
and <i>cutting edge</i> are not necessarily words you have been taught to
associate, but that’s somebody’s fault who is stuck on the idea of church as
the building.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Because do you
know where your church is going out into the world? Well, I know one huge place
where this is happening, and it is in camping ministry. And this is not just
the work of some young adults… and it’s not just the work of some adults like
me who never outgrow it, this is your work, because we are part of the very
same body of Christ. (Can I get an Amen?) <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Now, I am going to
lob one big criticism at the ELCA here regarding how we talk about church. There
is this common line in the ELCA said by churchwide and Synods and regurgitated
in congregations by pastors who really hope that their people understand how
they are part of a wider church. The line is that we are a church with three
expressions—churchwide (the folks who exist to be grumbled at by everybody),
Synods (the folks who exist to deal with congregations grumbling about
churchwide), and congregations (<i>God’s gift to the universe who never have
problems</i> /s). Now, I humbly ask, “Where does outdoor ministry fit into
those three expressions?” Because we are none of those. We are not financially
supported by churchwide or Synods; we are not a congregation that baptizes and
confirms. Instead, we are lumped into a category of “affiliated ministries,”
which makes it sound like we a small side venture loosely associated with the
church.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The effect has been that the ELCA has hidden
in plain sight its strongest evangelism arm, and you all have been told in
varying ways that Lutherans stink at going out and making disciples, because the
method that has been incredibly successful at disciple-making is not even
considered an expression of the church! So, let us all thank God that God is
not limited by how we describe the function and reach of the church. God has
been meeting people at Ewalu and countless other outdoor ministries, and disciples
are being made every single day every single summer. Lutherans are not the
first or only religious organization to do this through camping ministries, but
we have done a magnificent job of crafting camping ministries that take kids
and young adults out of their normal and instilling in them a fire for faith
that comes alive under the open skies.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">At camp, we GO! We
go out into a world and meet young people who need to know that there is more
to life than their cell phones and computer screens; that there is a story that
they are a part of that makes whatever they are binging on Netflix look pretty
meager by comparison. We make disciples by going out into the beauty of
creation and allowing kids the space to engage in holy play. They are free to explore,
to ask questions in a safe place where God is not used to enforce conformity
but where God meets them and shapes them where they are. And then, something
incredible happens. Those campers and counselors and volunteers get to work. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The great criticism
of the Lutheran faith has often been that because we proclaim a salvation by
grace that is so all-encompassing, we therefore do not demand much from our
people. At some point, our prospective disciples have asked, “What do I need to
do to be saved?” And we have responded, “Nothing.” And they’ve said, “OK,
check.” And they’ve turned to their sports and video games to pass the time
until they have a family, and then they turn to their family to give them joy
and a purpose in life, since their salvation is taken care of.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">At camp, we proclaim
the very same God who died for our sake and rose so that we may be saved by
grace through faith apart from the works of the law, and yet, we have 45 young
adults who have come back to us this summer to work long hours for a pittance
of a wage with a lot of responsibility on hot summer days. Why? Why do they do
this?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">For two main
reasons: 1) The power of a devoted community in Christ, and 2) Because we were
made for meaningful work. In a world that tells us that we are supposed to
spend our youth putting ourselves in a position either to earn the most money
possible or to find the fastest way possible out of work, camp teaches
something different, which is this: God calls us to good work in community, and
good work in good company is holy and meaningful and it will stick with you.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, at camp we GO!
We make disciples. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Now, let me be
clear: I am not saying you should be changing yourselves to be more like camp.
Rather, I am saying you are doing this work already! You are instrumental to
this work! So, by all means, imagine how you can do more of the work of going
out into your community and making disciples locally, but don’t for a second
think you have failed in this work so far! When I sat around the campfire last
summer and watched the good work of these summer staff, mentoring, shepherding,
counseling these young kids, praying for them, showing them they care, I know
that Jesus is smiling. I know we are doing the great work of the Great
Commission. And I want you to know that work is happening through <i>your</i>
efforts, even if you don’t see it. It is happening and it is great!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, let me
conclude with the best news: You are saved by grace through faith, so you are
set free to do this work with abandon. You are not being judged on whether you
do enough, but instead you are called to follow into giving more than you ever
expected you can give. When you give more, you will discover that joy keeps on
coming; it is inexhaustible like that living water that Jesus promised the
woman at the well.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, let’s all GO!
Each in our own ways, doing great work together for the sake of a world that
needs it. After all, God is doing it already! Join in! In whatever way you can.
Then, at the end, take a moment to soak in this wonderful world that bears
testimony to this God we worship together, sit around a campfire or out on the
deck, breathe in the free air. You didn’t have to do a thing, but you chose to…
because we are itching to go!<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-4427395353697034742023-04-15T21:16:00.002-05:002023-04-15T21:16:28.624-05:00Courageous Thomas<p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=548611233"> John 20:19-31</a></p><p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>A sermon for Decorah Lutheran Church</i></span></p><p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRUrrzVxll95HqypaceU0aL8JNtXqUPzXOktHLCCB-_hk4lPK1cBLOauu6eU48x1ADHtk7oAtcxYsRGBkeOieKFrEEHrWsVaZGo1QhrWQgpGHuK4JQTmkH73kwDJluzuUQlRHHU_X_Lcbn0MVzkJIhLAt_RFYucGnh7NFcX9hdPOPOgMBDg_BJtbm9/s600/DecorahLutheranChurch_vertical.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="208" data-original-width="600" height="91" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRUrrzVxll95HqypaceU0aL8JNtXqUPzXOktHLCCB-_hk4lPK1cBLOauu6eU48x1ADHtk7oAtcxYsRGBkeOieKFrEEHrWsVaZGo1QhrWQgpGHuK4JQTmkH73kwDJluzuUQlRHHU_X_Lcbn0MVzkJIhLAt_RFYucGnh7NFcX9hdPOPOgMBDg_BJtbm9/w263-h91/DecorahLutheranChurch_vertical.png" width="263" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #010000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i><br /></i></span><p></p><p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">I want to talk with you this morning about
Thomas and courage. I realize courageous is not the usual adjective given to Thomas.
He is the “doubter,” they say, because he asked for proof—the same proof the
other disciples received a week before. But just because he is no more a
doubter than the rest of them certainly does not make him courageous, so what I
am I talking about? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Let’s step back for a moment. “The doors of the
house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews,” the
scripture says. I remember in church growing up how our pastor was very careful
to remind us that everybody is a Jew here—the chief priests and the Pharisees
who wanted Jesus killed, the disciples; the women who discovered the tomb
empty; and Jesus himself. All Jews. Everybody of import in the story except
Pilate is a Jew. My pastor made this point so that we were careful not to drift
into some form of anti-Semitism, claiming that the Jews killed Jesus, as many
Christians throughout the centuries have done. Nonetheless, this week it struck
me that the reason the disciples are hiding is because of fear of their own
people. They had every reason to be afraid, because their own people had done
this to Jesus and now Jesus was gone. They had every reason to believe they
were next<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
given all that in the background, have you ever stopped to wonder why Thomas
wasn’t there?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The moment you wonder,
something about this whole story flips, doesn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">I mean, there’s only one likely
reason Thomas was not in the house and that had to be because he was the one
braving the streets full of people who might be looking for them, getting the
rest of them food and water, and maybe sniffing out whether anybody was going
to drag them off before Pilate next. Not only that, Thomas was alone—or at
least none of the other male disciples were with him. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Which brings us to a strange
part of the story. This is one of the few times—maybe the only time I can think
of—where Jesus appears not to the outsider but to the insiders. In every other
instance in Jesus’ ministry that I can think of, he seeks out the least and the
lost—a woman at a well, a Samaritan, the unclean, the poor, even a Roman
centurion. Jesus even called the disciples from among the rejects—young men who
were not good enough to continue the study of the Torah, who left to become
fishermen and tax collectors and carpenters. Jesus always picked the outsiders!
Yet, here, he appears to the disciples hunkering in the house and not to
Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’
first appearance was on the road to Galilee (again, how quickly we exclude the
women at the tomb is kind of breathtaking, but I digress). In the Emmaus story,
Jesus appears to those who are out in the world, as he did throughout his
ministry—folks who were curious and attentive to God’s presence. But again, in
John, it is to the disciples cowering in the upper room. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">So, why doesn’t Jesus go to
Thomas first? That would have fit with the kind of people he met in his
ministry—as Robert Farrar Capon called them, “the least, the last, the lost,
the lowly, the little, and the dead.” It seems like Jesus should have gone to
Thomas first.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">I have a guess—only a
guess—why Jesus appeared this way. After the resurrection, the rules changed. Suddenly,
the disciples have become the least and the lowly—the disciples in the room are
the ones stranded by their own fears, and after the resurrection, Jesus comes
first to those who are afraid. The disciples back home need Jesus more than
Thomas, and Jesus comes first and foremost to abolish fear. After all, the very
first words from the angel in the empty tomb to Mary Magdalene and the other
women were “Do not be afraid!”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Where once our faith was
founded on fear of hell and damnation, now we have a God in Jesus Christ who
has already gone there and come back so that we may know that there is no
longer anything to fear. Jesus comes to the poor, sad, lowly disciples
first—not Thomas—because Thomas has the courage to be outside in a dangerous
world, doing what needed to be done. But—here’s where it gets really
interesting—Thomas’ courage is also not enough. If I were to hazard a guess why
the Gospel of John lingers over Thomas’ doubt, it is to remind all of us that brave
though we may be, we are not saved by our courage. It is not the strength of
our willpower that redeems us but the grace of God through Jesus, who showed us
the saving power of true humility, humbling himself to death. Jesus returned to
Thomas as a cautionary tale of putting things in the right order. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Grace first, faith second; and
courage, last of all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The change in the disciples
after Jesus’ ultimate ascension is worth pondering for a moment here. Jesus
came to them and revealed all their doubts; none of the disciples come out of
this scene looking particularly good. But by the time we come to Acts and the
accounts of the apostles in the early church, every one of these guys becomes a
superhero. Having received grace, they are set free with courage. And—you know
what?—every single one of them suffered for their faith, and according to
tradition, every one of them but John was killed for their faith. Courage
followed faith; faith followed grace. It didn’t lead them to comfort, yet they
followed nonetheless.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">It is the same at camp—courage
follows faith; faith follows grace. We don’t start with courage—quite often
campers begin with fear. There are plenty of things to be afraid of at camp. If
you come from a loving, safe family, then being away from that family can be
scary. That is a healthy fear. If you are used to being indoors, then being
outdoors can be scary. If you are accustomed to twelve hours a day of screen
time, then sixteen hours a day of face-to-face interaction can be <i>really</i>
scary. If you are uncertain about your faith, or feel you don’t fit in, or have
been told that, for whatever reason, something about you is wrong or broken,
then coming to a place that deals with real questions and real faith can be terrifying.
You don’t know if it’s a safe space! How would you? If you feel you are not
enough, you may well fear that camp is just another place that will tell that
you need to fix something about yourself. We start with fear because we are all
lost in our own ways—like the disciples—but Jesus comes for exactly this
reason. Jesus meets us when we are afraid, and comes saying the words he always
uses, “Fear not!” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Never once in Jesus’ time on
earth does Jesus say to fear God—not once! Instead, he says, “Do not be
afraid!” I can only assume this is because he knows who he is dealing
with—little campers like you and me, who just cannot believe that grace could
possibly be for us. But when we come together, whether as a camp or as a
church, something amazing happens. We look in the face of one another and see
we are <i>all </i>these lowly, fearful creatures, all in need of grace, but
also, we bear in us the image of the very God who saves us! So, we come
together and what began with fear turns to courage once we know we are saved by
grace, once we experience faith, and once we see it alive in one another. Then,
we crave that assurance, again and again, so we come back to the waters of
baptism—or the waters of the Maquoketa River—each of us, looking in the mirror
and bringing with us new fears—every year—because the truth is there is much to
be afraid of. But something changes when we meet Jesus Christ and that fear
defines us no longer. Instead, we have courage—courage better than Thomas’s
courage—courage built on the foundation of the resurrection. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Blessed are these campers
whose faith comes alive under the open skies, for where there was not enough,
they will find grace; where there was doubt, they will find faith; where there
was fear, they will find courage. And that courage will continue to propel this
and every ministry into a future that only God can see. A future that will not
be easy, but why did we ever think that was where God was leading us?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The disciples were killed,
remember? They suffered, absolutely. You could easily look at the lives of the
disciples and say that the courage granted by Jesus’ appearance to them was foolish,
but in this Easter season of all seasons, we need to stop living as if death
has the last word!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">We see this courage playing
out at Ewalu every year. This summer we will be having a cross walk for our
mid-week worship at camp, which is part of our three-year rotation of Wednesday
night services. I have seen these types of services at many camps now, and I
confess I am often leery of this kind of thing, because I have seen camps where
the goal was to make kids cry, or to have some kind of altar call that suggests
these kids are capable of saving themselves by their own choosing. However, when
done well, a cross walk can be particularly powerful because it achieves that
very movement—first, to grace, in the sweeping awareness of the need for a
Savior to do what we cannot; second, to faith, as a gift we cannot earn from a
Holy Spirit who meets us in water, and bread, and wine; and finally, to
courage, revealed when all the fears we carry are released at the foot of the
cross—all our doubts about our own standing in the world, about whether we are
good enough, whether we are popular enough, whether we are smart enough,
whether we are brave enough—all of those feelings die at the cross and we rise
to what comes next. When you rise from death, you are sure as hell going to be
courageous.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "Georgia",serif;">So, I hope all of you can go
forward today in courage. After all, what is there to be afraid of? You are
saved by grace, apart from all the things you have and haven’t done. You have
the gift of faith, which exists even through doubt as it did for Thomas,
because we have a God who meets us even when we do not believe. And, so you too
can be courageous. You will be.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-66591720754302474852023-02-19T13:25:00.006-06:002023-02-19T13:26:56.330-06:00There is nothing to fear<p>Sermon for Immanuel Lutheran Church, Independence</p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=543834646">Matthew 16:24-17:8</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2M148ZusMD9ZEoLMQ4aWrs9K58NP43NFUbZx2FMCl0bjxLqIjHE6nZH3puN6l0mQuqQD2NrNQbiQIxFlKTQOV-PqV21VQajD-2w5p5f9lWPJ9KLdIxObJJoFY80o6pPiQB_fEb9jGcC7sehP10eLdBXYu5YKS6eJuiwov9eJC-DlglEvM1qwbcVho/s1080/332151257_723606162734791_8550624602454295931_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2M148ZusMD9ZEoLMQ4aWrs9K58NP43NFUbZx2FMCl0bjxLqIjHE6nZH3puN6l0mQuqQD2NrNQbiQIxFlKTQOV-PqV21VQajD-2w5p5f9lWPJ9KLdIxObJJoFY80o6pPiQB_fEb9jGcC7sehP10eLdBXYu5YKS6eJuiwov9eJC-DlglEvM1qwbcVho/w156-h156/332151257_723606162734791_8550624602454295931_n.jpg" width="156" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">“When the disciples heard this,
they fell to the ground and were overcome with fear. But Jesus came and touched
them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
first religion course as a freshman at Augustana College was Murray Haar’s
Religion 110 course, and the primary textbook for that class was a 666-page (I
kid you not) tome called <i>The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis</i> by
Leon Katz. If that phrase—<i>The Beginning of Wisdom</i>—means something to
you, it is probably because you have heard it in scripture before, not in Genesis
but in Proverbs—Proverbs 9:10, which reads: “The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom.” The fear of the Lord is then picked up and repeated several
times in Proverbs, and then in the book of Job and in Isaiah and in the Psalms.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
my ears perk up every time Jesus speaks of fear, because not once—not a single
time in all the accounts of Jesus’ ministry—does he tell us to be afraid. Not
once does Jesus say we are to fear him; not once does he say we are to fear
God. Instead, he repeats the words, “Fear not.” Get up and do not be afraid.
You have nothing to fear any longer.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Too
much of our lives are spent in fear. You all may have seen that business about
spy balloons that the military shot down this week. Some say they are from
China, some say they are from aliens. Choose your fear, really. We tend to imagine
the worst possible outcome to fear. Reality, meanwhile, will remain unchanged—what
will be will still be. We are reminded that we do not have everything under
control. We are fragile. We are little. We need something to save us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
some extent, this is the state in which every single one of God’s campers arrives
at camp, whether that camp is Ewalu or the camp of your congregation on a
Sunday morning. God’s campers come afraid and in need of the reminder that we
have a Savior in Jesus Christ who beckons us not to run but to stand, because
our fears are not to be realized. The disciples never get this, by the way.
They are always freaking out, whether it is in a boat on the water as it was in
the Children’s message or atop a mountain. The disciples continue to live in
fear, even most poignantly after the crucifixion when they are locked in a
room. Meanwhile, Jesus repeats, “There is nothing to fear.”<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Campers
come to Ewalu with all sorts of fears. Little fears, like spiders; medium
fears, like the dark; big fears, like what is going to happen when some of them
go back home to families that are not as loving, accepting, and affirming as those
campers deserve. We have kids who are scared to say they aren’t going out for
that one sport… we have kids who are scared to come out as gay; kids who are
scared of losing things… or losing people; kids who are scared of what is
happening back at school; kids who are scared of being away from home. We see
it all. The fear of the Lord may well be the beginning of wisdom because it is
fear of the one thing that holds all our other fears. Can we trust in this God
who can smush us with the holy finger at any moment, or is God just another,
bigger thing to be afraid up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jesus,
meanwhile, says only this: “Get up… do not be afraid.” This God who created you
could certainly wipe you off the face of the planet if God so-chose, but God
does not and will not do so. In fact, this God who needs nothing has instead
elected you—to love you—to care about you. When folks call me and say “What are
you teaching campers at Ewalu?” this is exactly what I say: We teach campers
that they are loved by a mighty God who is the only thing worthy of fear so
that they need not live in fear any longer. This God, who we know in Jesus
Christ, came to die for you. For you--in spite of all of your fears. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
a single Sunday morning church service, it is hard to make a real impact on
those fears, but in a week’s time at camp, let me tell you, we punch above our
weight for making a dent in the fears that kids bring to us. Kids who were
missing home discover that they are safe even apart from a loving family. Kids
who have experienced not enough love at home get that hint that they are
beloved, sometimes more deeply than ever before. Camp is a petri dish of latent
fears and daring hopes where young adults and children converge and find their
voice and deepen their faith. And all of it is only because of Jesus Christ,
who tells us “Do not be afraid.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
we live into those words in all we do. On the challenge course, when I get
groups of kids I often begin with trust leans and the first question I have
them ask one another is, “Am I safe?” It’s a question of incredible importance
and not just for the activity. Everything hinges on the person who is catching
them meaning it. It is the foundation for everything we do at camp, because if
a person asks, “Am I safe?” and you say, “Yes” and then they lean backwards and
fall on their butt, then you have signaled that we are not about the truth
here. And the truth is Jesus Christ, who said he is the way, the truth, and the
life. We walk in the way of Jesus, often mis-stepping, often like the disciples
desiring to make shrines to things and people that are not the right things to
worship. We all make mistakes, but our faith is grounded in what is true—and
the truth is that we have a God who conquers fears.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is a partial advertisement for camp, but it is something that I believe plays
for all of us every day. We all carry fears with us. For those of you who have
children or grandchildren, those fears tend to multiply with every new, fragile
human being you love. Fear is the shadowy reminder that we cannot save what we
love—not ultimately, not even day to day. Living involves risk. So, if fear is
the beginning of wisdom, it is because we are mortal, because we have to come
to terms with the reality of living in a world broken by sin where children get
cancer and terrible people commit terrible crimes against innocent victims. We
don’t have to have the “why” figured out, but we do need to understand two
foundation realities: 1. There is much that is worthy to fear, but 2. You have
a God who holds it all—who did not ascend a throne but a cross. So, when we
struggle, when we are desperately hurt, and especially when we are dying or
when others we love meet death, God is not absent but more present than ever,
crying alongside, suffering alongside. The end of wisdom is that there is
nothing to fear not because bad things don’t happen; after all, Jesus cried
over Lazarus even though he would be raised, and we cry over what we lose
because of genuine, Christ-like love for our sisters and brothers. Instead, the
end of wisdom is that cascade of peace that drowns out even death—when the hope
of salvation lies not in our capacity to protect what we ultimately cannot save
but in God’s infinite capacity to love and save us. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
need love. Just like our fears, every one of us seems to need love in different
ways and our love gravitates toward different things. We are not cookie-cutters
but made in the wide diversity of God’s image, which is the best news of all,
because it means that no matter who we are, who we love, what we love, or what
we fear, God has made us in God’s image and says, “Get up, fear not.” Because
God loves you in the way you are desperately craving. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">God holds together
what you cannot—all of your fears. They are nothing in the face of a God who
enters into death on our behalf and raises us as a new creation, beloved,
saved, and free. In Jesus Christ, there is truly nothing to fear.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-49938281936008143002023-02-14T09:48:00.002-06:002023-02-14T09:48:18.104-06:00Not hard but impossible<p>Sermon for St. John Lutheran Church, Cedar Falls</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb9iobuIcOxN21QGHsCDnGd-Spf1lZvgcdvH_TPiGbokd5gJCSolgTR7wo6RhTx_I9GPxBgVZDzngjD43KpLIPfmowFIbVolN-7JtKDPGYcjVub6jBYjhDc1xKSVp6I7ArEIaRo-hJS6jaa6E49C1K_iM7zzJAUmGRww35qGXXszFt2ZyMehqt8XVl/s501/St-John-American-Cedar-Falls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="501" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb9iobuIcOxN21QGHsCDnGd-Spf1lZvgcdvH_TPiGbokd5gJCSolgTR7wo6RhTx_I9GPxBgVZDzngjD43KpLIPfmowFIbVolN-7JtKDPGYcjVub6jBYjhDc1xKSVp6I7ArEIaRo-hJS6jaa6E49C1K_iM7zzJAUmGRww35qGXXszFt2ZyMehqt8XVl/w192-h136/St-John-American-Cedar-Falls.jpg" width="192" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=543389673">Matthew 5:21-37</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Thank you so much the invitation to
be with you this morning, and especially for the invitation to preach on… let
me get this right, Matthew 5, but not the beatitudes part… or the
turn-the-other-cheek part… or the love your enemies part… but the middle part.
The heavy part. Well, at least I feel like you must trust me or something.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b>We need some
context. So, I’m going to go back a few verses and get Jesus’ introduction to
all this business. In verse 17, Jesus says, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“</b>Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I
have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” Now, that doesn’t sound like great
news to start, and it just gets worse and worse as we read through today’s
Gospel reading. Not only shall you not murder, but whoever is angry has
committed murder in their hearts. Not only shall you not commit adultery, but
you should start tearing out eyes and things to stop yourself from doing so if
that will help. Jesus takes all the laws and levels them up. After all, he says
he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
trend continues throughout the Gospel of Matthew—again and again, seemingly
righteous folks come to Jesus and he says, “Yeah, but what about this?” and
they leave him upset, angry, and eventually it gets him murdered. I suspect one
of the reasons the crowd turned so quickly against Jesus before Pilate is that
they felt what Jesus was asking was too hard. Certainly, the rich man who came
to him much later did. Jesus told him to give away everything, which
precipitates that famous exchange between the disciples where they ask
(finally!) the question we should all be wondering right about now, “Then, who
can be saved????” And Jesus replies, “For mortals it is impossible but for God
all things are possible.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is the heart of a very serious question in the Gospel of Matthew: Is salvation
under the law really hard… or is it impossible? This is maybe the very most
important question for you in your faith life, because how you answer it
changes EVERYTHING. How you answer that question will color everything you ever
read in the Gospel; it will change your faith life; it has divided the
Christian church for as long as there has been a church, and we don’t talk
about it enough. Instead, we read passages like Matthew 5 in Bible studies and
then we go around the circle and say things like, “Well, that was a downer” and
we quickly move on, because we know something… we feel something when we read
this scripture. If we are honest, we are deeply convicted by this scripture,
and we would likely prefer to scratch this right out of the Bible, because we
have been taught from an early age that being faithful is about being a good
person and this passage seems to suggest that we need to be REALLY, REALLY good
people, and it sounds REALLY, REALLY hard.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
if that is how we are supposed to read this, then the Gospel of Matthew is
terrible news. It’s like that scene in The Good Place where the characters
discover that nobody has been getting into the Good Place (i.e. heaven) for
centuries, because nobody has been remotely good enough, and the best guy in
the world, who has been working his entire life solely for the purpose of
reaching the Good Place, is still not remotely on track to do enough to get
there. That’s the kind of realization that has led certain Christian sects
through the ages to claim that the very smallest remnant will be saved, and
everybody else will be condemned to hell. This is where you end up if following
Christ is really hard. Not good news… also not true.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
follow the full law is not really hard; instead, it is impossible. And it takes
following Jesus for his entire ministry for the disciples to get there, because
they are so locked into this idea of righteousness that depends on the holiness
of the believer. It takes until Matthew, chapter 19, and the story of the rich man
for them to finally turn around and exclaim, “Jesus Christ! (the disciples
alone had the right to do this without breaking the 2<sup>nd</sup> commandment,
so I like to imagine they took full advantage) How can anybody be saved?!?!”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For
mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
is impossible. Following the law is not possible. Do you realize how incredible
a revelation that is? Because it means that we cannot be dependent on
ourselves—a truth we have known deep down all along—but in this world, we are
supposed to pretend we have it all together. So, when Jesus says, “Anyone who
looks at a woman with lust has committed adultery in his heart,” we nod along
and say, “Ah, yes, Jesus. I agree. I have never once looked upon anybody with
anything but the purest of hearts. I never even looked at my wife until the day
we were married. Huzzah, Jesus, huzzah!”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
when Jesus says, “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you are liable to
judgment the same as a murderer,” again we respond, “Too true, Jesus—too true!
I, myself, have never once been angry with anyone, not least my family, who you
will tell me I should hate later in the Gospels.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Let
me tell you what happens when we stop pretending that Jesus is telling us to do
something hard and instead telling us it is impossible to be righteous by our
actions: When we are freed by grace in the knowledge that our salvation is not
dependent on correctly following the rules, rather than becoming little
hellions, we become disciples. We follow Jesus Christ out of joy, not fear. They
say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of the wisdom (Proverbs 9:10),
but the end of wisdom is the sweeping awareness that there is nothing to
fear—not any longer—because we have a God who we know in Jesus Christ who went
before us. After all, Jesus said he had come to fulfill the law, and fulfill it
he did. You see, if the law was only to become really hard, then Jesus would
have only needed to be a really righteous man. Since it is impossible, then
only God-incarnate can do it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
what does it look like to be a Christian under the banner of a fulfilled law
that is impossible for us to keep? Well, Martin Luther said, “Sin boldly!” And
for five hundred years that has often been misinterpreted to mean, “Do whatever
you please!” The reality is much cooler: You are free to love! You are free to
care for a world that desperately needs it! You are free to take chances and
make mistakes! You will never do enough, but what you do is amazing and
valuable and you remain the very best instruments for God to work through! You
are the best—every one of you! And we don’t say that enough, because we read
scripture like Matthew 5 solemnly as if we can do it. Of course, you should not
go out and be angry… of course, you should not go out and cheat on your spouse,
but you will already do these things if you are filled with gratitude for the
grace of God that frees you from trying to be perfect. The law never makes you
more righteous—it only shows you your need for a Savior.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
best news is that you have one! So, go be Christ-filled, spiritual people! Not
because it will save you but because you already are saved. Go, be disciples of
Christ! Not because you feel obligated to but as a free expression of what
people do who have received an incredible gift! Go, love one another! Care for
one another! Lift another’s spirit! Pay forward this gift of grace!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
suspect you all need to hear this one more time: You are good people—not
because of how well you keep the commandments but because of Jesus Christ, who
kept them on your behalf. You are good people—sinners, yes, but so much more.
And I know this because you are human beings—like me. Like all God’s campers.
There is absolutely nothing that separates us from God any longer. So, if you
read Matthew 5:21-37 in Bible study again someday—perhaps even this week—make
sure you also read the resurrection— or make sure you also turn to Paul in
Romans and read about justification by faith through grace. Do not let one
heavy word beat you up without reminding yourself of a God who has something
better lying just ahead. Instead, paint with all the colors—dark and light—then
come back to Matthew 5 and hear Jesus for who he is: The Son of God come to the
world to save sinners like you and me. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
you do that, everything changes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amen.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-29045332143101291902023-02-08T14:09:00.009-06:002023-02-08T14:15:00.219-06:00Just ask the fish<p>Sermon for Wartburg College</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvX8duXvxNu0N5mc2irFzn1qIubltKR-1ElgP5pdIY0y_gA3q07Ln6LbgpPyx7U_QmCEFFUlectI05rW9qE2YOixxLo-ToKgakI-GtagfAsOc2aR9hCG1_HEigvNBxfK6uOMMt4WFHqp83wO8SuzWlhsv-tDpC5F_4Ttqt_x0SSF6XUoMJlUVqTpfc/s1024/logocolor-1024x614.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="1024" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvX8duXvxNu0N5mc2irFzn1qIubltKR-1ElgP5pdIY0y_gA3q07Ln6LbgpPyx7U_QmCEFFUlectI05rW9qE2YOixxLo-ToKgakI-GtagfAsOc2aR9hCG1_HEigvNBxfK6uOMMt4WFHqp83wO8SuzWlhsv-tDpC5F_4Ttqt_x0SSF6XUoMJlUVqTpfc/w150-h90/logocolor-1024x614.png" width="150" /></a></div><br /> Leviticus 25:23-24<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“‘The land must not be sold permanently,
because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and
strangers.</span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> <span class="text"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><sup>24 </sup></b>Throughout the land that you hold as a
possession, you must redeem the land.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">Job 12:7-10</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><b><sup><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">7</span></sup></b></span><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “But ask the animals, and they will teach you,</span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">the birds of the air, and they will tell you;</span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
<span class="text"><b><sup><span style="">8 </span></sup></b><span style="">ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach
you,</span></span><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"><span style=" color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style=" color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">and the fish of the sea will declare to you.</span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
<span class="text"><b><sup><span style="">9 </span></sup></b><span style="">Who among all these does not know</span></span><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"><span style=" color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style=" color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">that the hand of the </span></span><span class="small-caps"><span style=" color: black; font-variant: small-caps; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Lord</span></span><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> has done this?</span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
<span class="text"><b><sup><span style="">10 </span></sup></b><span style="">In his hand is the life of every living thing</span></span><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style=" color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">and the breath of every human being.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Two words from God to you and me this morning: 1. The land is
not yours, and 2. If you want to look for God at play, you better get out and let
the animals and the plants teach you.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Camp Counselor God gives a two sermon series on outdoor
ministry first to the campers at Mount Sinai. This is not <i>your </i>land; you
are foreigners on the land; care for, nay redeem the land. Then, camp counselor
God uses Job to for the second half, which is simply: Look outside. The world out
there will teach you.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Ours is a faith “open to the skies.” It is only because we
live in Iowa and some of you insist on wearing basketball shorts in February that
I am not demanding we do this outdoors. Outside, our senses activate in ways
they cannot within these walls. We hear chirps and creaking trees, and we feel
the razor edge of a blade of grass and seeds rubbing between our fingers; we
spot hawks rising on the thermals and we may wonder, <i>Are they singing the
beauty of the morning, as well? </i>And, then inevitably, we wonder<i>, What is
behind all this?</i> For many of us, for the first time in a long time, we slow
down. We disconnect.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">To linger outdoors is an affront to a busy world. Some of you
are itching right now to get back on your phones. And I’m not going to judge
either; you are captive to those things, so go ahead, check that snapchat right
now. I won’t judge, but you might—I suspect many of you are the very best at
judging yourselves in this indoor world full of pressure. Pressure to check in…
pressure to be better… pressure to do enough… pressure to impress… pressure to
not fall behind.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">You see, when I decided to preach on Leviticus this morning,
I did so very aware that if you know anything about Leviticus it is probably
about all those holiness code rules, and even the hint of me—the
outsider—coming to your place of refuge and preaching on more rules may well
have put your guard up, not because you don’t need rules (some of you could do
with following a few more rules if we are being honest). No, you don’t need the
Bible to beat you up because you are already the best at it. The indoor world
of pressure has turned us in on ourselves and so we live in our own little
caves with the walls pressing in—pressure to conform, pressure to be our own
self. Isn’t it amazing that you can feel both those pressures at once?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><b><sup><span style="olor: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">7</span></sup></b></span><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “But ask the animals, and they will teach you,</span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style=" color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">the birds of the air, and they will tell you;</span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
<span class="text"><b><sup><span style="">8 </span></sup></b><span style="">ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach
you,</span></span><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">and the fish of the sea will declare to you…</span></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The great thing about fish is that they don’t give a
damn about cultivating a brand. Not once have I seen a bass carefully posing
for Instagram.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The great thing about plants is that they have no sense
of who is prettiest. Of course, they are pretty—they just don’t care.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Birds do not care about job opportunities.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Squirrels don’t dress to impress.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But you—you feel that pressure. So, there are two ways
to hear those words from Leviticus—you do not own the land, it is not yours. You
can hear it is as a limitation, as a thing to overcome, as a reminder of what
you still need to achieve. You can march right out of the chapel and think to
yourself, “I better go get that land.” Or you can take it as God meant it—the
context of Leviticus 25 is jubilee. And jubilee is this awesome biblical
concept of debt forgiveness which foreshadows what we come to know as grace.
That the land is not yours? That is grace. Because the only thing ownership has
ever brought you is pressure. Ownership has only ever taught you that you are
not enough.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, I have just one piece of wisdom for you today: In a
world that tells you to own things, be an outsider instead. Stop owning things—owning
your image, owning your work. Instead of owning those things, be stewards.
Plant seeds whose growth does not depend on your righteousness and whose fruits
will appear long after you are gone. Then, go take a walk and learn from the
world around you—a world full of grace for imperfect people you like and me.
God’s grace certainly is about salvation at the end of our lives, but it is
also about what it means to live as if it is true right now. Free from the
indoor world of pressure. Just ask the fish…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Amen. </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-54300960408046002342023-01-14T21:05:00.003-06:002023-01-15T06:41:56.265-06:00On baptism and seeing with the eyes of children<p><i>A sermon for St. Paul Lutheran Church, Monona; January 15, 2023</i></p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=540751319">Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17</a></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Thank you again for having me this
morning and giving me the opportunity to share a little about Ewalu and also in
line with the Gospel text this morning to share a little about baptism. It is a
refreshing scripture for me preach on, because so often I am invited by pastors
to preach when the text is Jesus cursing a fig tree, or separating sheep and
goats, or the binding of Isaac—you know, everybody’s favorite Bible stories. It
is an AMAZING coincidence how often pastors take off those Sundays and call me
to cover for them.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUS6R4fcklzRFciwL2_R0y32y8Z55bCt8wEwp4zdCa7VU_hMR_EixynVGwGBaztz-dIBVXpScmawaBQKUprMCB4KKbfRRXFqLliAot1am4xo8bvLOtzk3xwwkChx8sMI8Tz7gW7rslg1csyHAIjge4cekmVqbPp5wAxSExxI317SqAUgwdICi1byG7/s2048/313431318_10100437186617665_5848438227414361597_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1832" data-original-width="2048" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUS6R4fcklzRFciwL2_R0y32y8Z55bCt8wEwp4zdCa7VU_hMR_EixynVGwGBaztz-dIBVXpScmawaBQKUprMCB4KKbfRRXFqLliAot1am4xo8bvLOtzk3xwwkChx8sMI8Tz7gW7rslg1csyHAIjge4cekmVqbPp5wAxSExxI317SqAUgwdICi1byG7/s320/313431318_10100437186617665_5848438227414361597_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
it is with joy that I will preach today on baptism, a subject that has been on
my mind quite a bit ever since my own son was baptized in November in the
Maquoketa River at Camp Ewalu. My son, Wilder, who is here this morning does
not know what happened that morning, or if he does, he is doing a great job
hiding it behind all the dirty diapers and spit up. He does not remember that
day when we loaded up the cars and drove the gravel road through camp to the
pole bridge—Kate and myself and the kids along with my parents and his new
godparents. He does not remember when we parked by the river, crossed the
bridge, clambered down the bristly bank, and stood on a rocky inlet near the
bubbling water while big, fluffy snowflakes fell, and he does not remember how
we dipped our hands in the river and took turns doing the three parts—his
parents in the name of the father; his siblings in the name of the son; and
godparents in the name of the Holy Spirit. He remembered that cold, spring-fed,
November river water for a moment, but only just a moment. He does not remember
any of that and will not when he is older. But I do. We do. And, more
importantly, God does.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
are parts of the Lutheran tradition I could give or take—I am not the most
traditional Lutheran about plenty of things—but I love this understanding of
baptism that I believe to be rooted in Jesus’ baptism and the other stories around
baptism we have in scripture—from the Ethiopian eunuch to the conversion of Saul
and the theological underpinnings of grace that Paul then writes about
especially in the letter to the church in Rome. I love this baptism of babies
like Wilder because it signifies something critically important, namely that we
do not/cannot/will not ever save ourselves. We are utterly dependent on things
outside of our control—dependent on the God who created and redeems us. We
baptize Wilder as a baby not to save him but because we cannot. We baptize him
so that he may someday learn that it is God who does these things and any
following in the faith that he does happens long after his salvation. It is up
to him if he wants to live into it, but it does not change God’s promise to
him. In a world that tells us it is all about us, baptism tells us something
different: It is only ever about God’s promise to us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
Jesus is baptized by John it changes something fundamental about the universe.
A minute before, John was baptizing people left and right for the forgiveness
of sins. People would come to John once, twice, a hundred times, every time
they felt the need to be forgiven, and he would wash them clean, and they would
come to John because he was a big deal and the bigger and better the baptizer,
the more likely it was to be effective—makes sense in a world full of
competition in which everybody is climbing a spiritual ladder. But when John
baptizes Jesus, we see something extraordinary: the sins are washed away not
for a moment but for an eternity. No longer is it washing at all; it is a
drowning—the old self dies and the new one emerges. And, sure, for those of us
who are not Jesus, we go about our lives dragging that sinful self around for
the rest of our days, and that sinner inside of us is like an anchor
occasionally grabbing onto things, but its time will also come—like the wheat
and the chaff metaphor that I get to preach on when all the pastors take
vacation magically on the same Sunday that old sinful self will one day die in
our physical death, and what remains is only the new self revealed in baptism.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This in turn means something extraordinary for
how we do ministry to children, whether as a camp or as a church. It means that
children are not awaiting the promise; they have it already. They are saved by
the promise already; that work was done, not even on the day they were baptized
but rather thousands of years ago on a cross. If they have been baptized, it is
simply the enacting of a promise already theirs that they will discover one day
in the little death at the end of the lives. This is extraordinary because it
means that at camp (and at church) we treat children not as baby Christians but
as recipients of a promise already, no less ready than you or me to experience
the joy of God’s grace. In fact, if Jesus’ life and ministry is any indication,
children are <i>more </i>ready than we are. The rest of us need to retrain our
eyes to be like the eyes of children; it is kids who already see the beautiful
world we are blinded to.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At
camp, we get the joy of experiencing this every single summer. We come together
thinking we are going to teach children something or other about faith and the
children in turn show us God. We think we need to train them and they retrain
us. They demonstrate capacity for love and compassion that we do not expect,
and they ask questions we never consider, and they experience the world with
new eyes in a way we rarely can. In short, they show us what it looks like to
live as if we have been baptized—as if we are free. Because that’s what baptism
is all about—it is freedom. Not in the shallow sense that it is so often
used—to do what we want without someone else controlling us. Rather, it is
freedom for the sake of love—to love in the same way God loves us with grace
for a gift we can never repay.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
be baptized is to be marked as a follower of Christ who has eyes to see others
only as the beloved children of God that we all are. At our best, camp is a
place where we see with these eyes opened. At our best, church too is a place
where we see with eyes opened. It does not always happen, but hey, it’s the
best we’ve got… and it ain’t bad. Grace allows us a new opportunity every day when
we inevitably fail to see the world with eyes opened in love. In communion, we
celebrate second chances and thirds and one thousand-eighty fifths.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
all, if John did not get it, neither will we. John wanted to be baptized by
Jesus because he believed baptism was temporary and even somewhat dependent on the
righteousness of the baptizer. Jesus knows better. He knows we are all sinners
so he makes us all saints. For a time, we live as both—already saved and not
yet. It takes the eyes of a child to really see it. This is why we have places
like camp where children show the way, while the rest of us who once experienced
it spend our lives looking back and trying to remember what is was like to see
as we did when we were a child. Some days we remember, and those days are good.
But the promise in Jesus Christ is that one day we will remember fully—that big
death in baptism will be concluded with the little death at the end of our
lives—and then we will see once more, as we did in part when we were children. The
promise of salvation is a promise that we will one day see. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
the meantime, together we will do ministry, make mistakes, try new things,
often feel like failures, and never know what on earth we are doing. That is
what it means to be human. Congrats! Because being human is the only thing
required for baptism… is the only thing required for grace… is the only thing
required for God to raise us when all seems lost. So, thanks again for inviting
me to preach on baptism, because it is the meat of our faith—what camp and
church are all about. And I give thanks for being in ministry together, because
I love doing new things and making mistakes with folks like you!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Amen.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-17741472556924670512022-05-08T08:29:00.001-05:002022-05-08T08:29:07.436-05:00Faith beyond fear<p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=519016416"> John 10:22-30</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“If you are the Messiah,
tell us plainly,” the people say. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
know these people—they are all over the place. Just tell us plainly, they say,
until he does. And then they use those words against him, because that’s really
what they want, because they are so afraid of what is possible. In reply, Jesus
goes for the whole hog here and says, A) I have told you already and you don’t
believe, B) the works I do are testimony enough, but also C) The Father and I
are one. Jesus takes the worst of what he is being accused—a false prophet—and
turns it up to 11 here. Not only does he claim to be the messiah, he claims to
be one with God. You can imagine how this goes over.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>About
the same as it goes over whenever anybody speaks truth to power. And Jesus,
bring truth-incarnate, embodies what is good and true in a world that is
fearful and protective of what we have. Jesus breaks us free to what is
possible on the other side of fear, but the problem is: We crucify him first.
We would rather be afraid than chance what might be. It is the universal human
problem—we are afraid, we act out of our fear, and we kill the very thing that
is sent to save us.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjS7uwbpHfwMWzOfo8PIfLR6ysS5HVawtAF2r6T1sZpJ4axtHTUoEejycr6exGcibxkFMnzXJSDQTxyKss3ch7QqyAMRlLTcIPg_YA-OAMF9Prz8eg39Z2C-OyBzWUfwoAoftM8wjiQY07jAHs5DuVVZSHxMn7npR2jK_8TKhvly6ZeBiD6s-sX77D/s960/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjS7uwbpHfwMWzOfo8PIfLR6ysS5HVawtAF2r6T1sZpJ4axtHTUoEejycr6exGcibxkFMnzXJSDQTxyKss3ch7QqyAMRlLTcIPg_YA-OAMF9Prz8eg39Z2C-OyBzWUfwoAoftM8wjiQY07jAHs5DuVVZSHxMn7npR2jK_8TKhvly6ZeBiD6s-sX77D/s320/Picture1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> There
are a hundred reasons why kids come to camp—thousands of stories of lives
changed—and one of the threads that connects so many of those stories is about
conquering fears. Whether it is ascending a climbing tower and jumping off a
zipline, the first nights away from mom and dad, fear of bugs or wild animals,
or even just spending time with so many strange people, camp is a place where
fear is at work. But there is something else as well. In stretching our
boundaries, we inevitably discover the God who was there to catch us all along.
We were created to venture further in, deeper into creation, deeper into our
faith and into our awareness of God’s call for us. We believe all this because
of the radical God who comes not as the leaders of the day expected, not to
ascend on a throne but to ascend on a cross and back again when the stone is
rolled away.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is
easy to stay inside: to stay inside our house and listen to whoever we have
hand-picked to tell us what to believe; to stay inside and carve a god in our
own image; to stay inside and hold our faith so tightly that it oozes out
through our finger tips for the pressure we put on it. Meanwhile, God calls us
out—out to serve our neighbors who are in need; out to experience this big and
beautiful world in all its colors; out to meet Jesus on the way, where he
always seems to be—somewhere we didn’t expect. The temple leaders in our story
assumed everything was black and white and any hint of gray was a scary, scary
thing. Jesus meanwhile turns the paradigm on its head. God is not
black-and-white, but nor is God particularly gray. God is a kaleidoscope of
colors more vibrant than anybody expects, so colorful even that Jesus can turn
around and say something crazy like “The Father and I are one.” That takes a
leap beyond the paradigm. It takes getting out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At
camp, we get out. We test ourselves. We discover the God who once met us in
familiar places now calls us over that next hill—that next challenge—because
that God who we put to death calls sheep like us, and that’s amazing! Because
all of us doubt—all of us have struggles—all of us feel unworthy—and yet, this
God meets us specifically where the stuffy temple leaders would scoff; and
instead, Jesus calls us child of God. So it is at camp. You are a child of God,
now go experience life in the freedom of that reality. Go stomp around in a
creek. Go hoot and holler in the woods. Go sing songs and play games. Go meet
new friends. Go, because Christ compels you outward so that you do not become
the stuffy temple leaders. We have too many of those. Instead, go out! Because
God is waiting out there.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is one of Jesus’ lessons that I believe to be as applicable to camp as it is to
all of our lives. God has freed us from fear, not because bad things cannot
happen to us, but rather because Jesus has gone their first and there is
something waiting on the other side. When we live in fear, we miss the gifts we
are given and the opportunities that arise in a world drenched with grace. We
are called to something better. So often we fail to live up to God’s hopes and
dreams for us, but the great news it that we are a people of resurrection and
God’s mercies are new again every morning. Every day we rise again with Christ.
So, whatever burdens you carry with you today, whatever feelings of failure, or
whenever you suspect you are not enough, God meets you again and again with a
promise that you are enough through Christ who has been there first. And you
need not live in fear or regret any longer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, I want to thank you all
for having me again today. It is my pleasure to help you begin your pastoral
transition, and even as I bring you some news about Ewalu, I also had to preach
a bit as well, because all of us need that reminder to live beyond our fears.
We need Jesus over and over again. And we should take every opportunity to
remind one another of that. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-18088604461073948442022-05-01T06:13:00.002-05:002022-05-01T06:16:41.477-05:00Where we once hoped to walk on water, now we dive in<p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=518403397"> Scripture: John 21:1-19</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">This is one of my
favorite readings in all of scripture for several reasons not least of which is
the fact that Jesus has just appeared to the disciples after the resurrection
while they were locked in a room and immediately after he leaves, Peter looks
around, stretches, and says, “I think I’m going to go fishing.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">That is a vibe I
can get behind. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">But this is more
than an excuse for church folks to head to the lake, though I will certainly
take it. This is a transformational moment in the life of Peter—from the
disciple who denied Jesus three times to the man given a chance to affirm Jesus
three times by the end of the chapter—and so it is also a seminal moment in the
life of all those who follow. After all, Peter is the rock on which the church
is to be built.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">And why not,
Peter? He is the one who leads the disciples out of the house—from the locked
room where they waited in fear, not believing Mary Magdalene until Jesus stood
before them in the flesh, showed them his wounds, and breathed on them with the
Holy Spirit. The scene cuts and it is Peter who leads the disciples out of the
room and on to the fishing boat. Peter takes the first step. Now, he doesn’t
catch anything (which is also relatable), but perhaps he intuits that outside
is where Jesus will meet them. They can no longer stay in a locked room. After
all, the Gospel is written on the trees and on the waters if only they have the
courage to leave the room—to go outside like we live at camp where scripture
was written and meant to be the read, outside like the unroofed book that
reveals Christ to us. Sometimes, Christ comes on the shore telling the
disciples to cast to the other side of the boat, and sometimes Christ comes to
us at camp when our inhibitions are cast aside and we let go of our fears. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">When Peter and the
disciples meet Jesus after that night of fishing, he famously tells them to
throw their nets on the other side of the boat. When they do, according to John,
they catch 153 fish—a very specific and strangely non-round number which has been
theorized to represent all the known species of fish in that time period.
Clearly, the disciples are about to go fishing in a variety of places, casting
nets for people who were once far outside of the tradition. Jesus calls them as
Jews not only to minister to Jews but to Gentiles, to sinners, to Romans, and to
generally smelly people. Peter and the disciples fishing quickly becomes a
parable of evangelism. Jesus shows them that the world is indeed about to
change.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Which leads us to
that splendid scene on the shore of the Sea of Galilee when Jesus pulls Peter
aside after breakfast and asks him three times “Do you love me?” as if to
reverse the curse of Peter’s denial. For every denial there is an affirmation.
Do you love me? Yes? Feed my lambs. Three times. Do you love me? Yes? Tend my
sheep. And once the curse is broken, then Jesus finally leaves Peter with a
brief allegory about what lies ahead. Peter who was once young—Peter who once
tried to walk on water—Peter who just a few minutes ago stopped his naked
fishing, put on clothes, and jumped into the water when Jesus appeared on the
shore (I simply cannot let that detail pass without comment)—that Peter has a
different destiny ahead, one marked by his ultimate obedience to death. Yes,
the path of discipleship leads toward death, because on the other side of the
empty tomb, death has no power any longer.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAD-05IGqom2_ROybKclIEqBUt-1gTKJqZoXd9jFV4kq6M237deveF87KRy-IRMkBBgv2daiCoT60IXzEnh7HtFHTAxMLXX9bG5W4fWMIqm2fvb_6h-3Ue5Ec20aQhtJj4640tO04s3xuX8LqOdWoAhJlPIA9VmQNGgaqKETTfDxzKp9ZqlH-NPC8N/s604/4941_518054573675_3105114_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="604" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAD-05IGqom2_ROybKclIEqBUt-1gTKJqZoXd9jFV4kq6M237deveF87KRy-IRMkBBgv2daiCoT60IXzEnh7HtFHTAxMLXX9bG5W4fWMIqm2fvb_6h-3Ue5Ec20aQhtJj4640tO04s3xuX8LqOdWoAhJlPIA9VmQNGgaqKETTfDxzKp9ZqlH-NPC8N/s320/4941_518054573675_3105114_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><o:p></o:p><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I cannot read the
ending to this passage without thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, <i>The
Cost of Discipleship</i>, in which he says, “When Christ calls a man, he bids
him come and die.” The call of discipleship has been this way for Peter all
along—a call to come and die—but for a long while he was understandably afraid
to follow it. He was willing to follow Christ if it meant he might remember how
to walk on water, but once he began to sink, he doubted that Jesus could
actually be lord over death. So it is with all who try to earn our way into the
faith—trying to walk on water when we should be jumping in. But because of the
resurrection, denial is not the end of the story! None of us follow the road to
the cross—all of us get off somewhere, hedging our bets, afraid to leap, unable
to give away everything, unwilling to turn our backs on our family and those we
love. The Gospel is full of stories of disciples half-discipling, and of course
they do! We all do! Because Jesus Christ doesn’t demand something hard; he
demands something impossible.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">So all of us find
ourselves like Peter, looking at the risen Christ in the clear knowledge that
we have failed to live up to the standard of the faith that Christ demands, but
here is where Peter is remarkable: He accepts that he is not enough, and he
understands that Christ nonetheless makes him enough. And when given the
chance, he begins walking the road of the cross again, this time having met the
risen Lord on a fishing trip. Finally, he stops trying to walk on water and
instead he jumps straight in—it’s the absolute perfect image of baptism. Once
he was trying to avoid getting wet, now he puts on his clothes and dives into
the deep. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. And for Peter, it
takes the crucifixion and the resurrection to get him there. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Peter is a great
reminder that it is never too late to orient ourselves to following after
Christ. In fact, if the one thing Christ is calling us to do is to die, then
all of us are on the right track—some of us will just get there with a little
more kicking and screaming.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">In the meantime,
maybe it would do to spend a little more time fishing. At camp, this is what we
do—not so much fishing fishing—but what is fishing, really? It is plumbing the
depths in search of something hidden, a glistening treasure largely invisible
to us on the surface. It is exploring God’s creation further and deeper in. The
fishing trip is a metaphor for a whole array of activities that invite children
and those with a childlike spirit alike to be curious about the world God has
given us and our place in it, seeking in wonder after all the surprising places
where God might show up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Some of us would
do well to go fishing more often. And for you it might be taking a walk, or
tilling a garden, or sitting on a beach, or riding a bike with your kids. You
know you. One of the spiritual practices that I try to follow is to get outside
for at least an hour every day, and it’s hard—even working in outdoor ministry,
even when I’m kind of the boss and can set my own schedule. It’s hard because
every time I pick up that fishing rod I think about the hundred other things I <i>could</i>
be doing and each seems incredibly important. We define ourselves by our
busy-ness, by our importance, by our need to appear indispensable, and yet,
every time I approach the water, or lace up my shoes and go for a run, I find
that I understand things a little deeper than I did before. God meets me out
there when I drop the need to look important. People who feel important are
tailor-made for the world that defines us by our busy-ness, but those same
folks inevitably lock themselves in a room out of fear when the resurrection is
happening all around them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, here’s my
advice to you, courtesy of Peter: Get out of your head and get outside. God
meets us there—sometimes on the Sea of Galilee, sometimes at Ewalu Bible Camp, sometimes
on the farm, or in the garden, or in a park. God meets us out there because we
are built to live outdoors where we smell whiffs of the garden from which we
are descendants. And when God meets us out there, it is not with the self-help
messaging of the day. God doesn’t make you a better you. Rather, God bids us
come and die. And if we are like Peter, and we have been through fear and grief
and loss, this is the sweetest relief. Because death is the thing we fear most,
so if God invites us in even there, then what more could we possibly fear?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I want to close
today talking a bit about the “meta” (as the kids say) of this scene on the
shore. This is truly an astonishing capstone to the Gospels. There are echoes
here of Jesus’ original calling of the disciples, as well as the feeding of the
five thousand, walking on water, the calming of the storm, and Peter’s three-fold denial; and
this scene also sets the stage for the mission of the early church. And it
accomplishes all this with a silly little story about fish. Don’t undersell the
importance of seemingly mundane joys in life. The kingdom of heaven is built
upon the simplest things—bread and fish, sitting in a boat, talking with
friends, laughing and smiles. This past week I came across a journal I wrote in
2006, which captured a trip with my college choir to Tanzania. The journal concluded
with an entry on the very last page from my first day ever working at Camp
Lutherhaven in June 2006. I read the final entry, and I was a little
disappointed. I had hoped I had written much more about camp 16 years ago—that
I had continued journaling into the summer—but then I realized why I never did:
I simply lived it. With a community of friends doing simple things—often
paddling boats across a lake, meeting Jesus in one another.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The kingdom of God
is not so far ahead of us. It is right there, and occasionally, like Peter, we
need the reminder. Yes, the end of things is coming. Yes, the cross reminds us
we are called to die. But in the meantime, there are fish to catch, simple
pleasures, and friends to share in it all. After I read that journal, I scanned
through my phone for the number of a once-close friend who appeared on many of
the pages and with whom I haven’t talked in years. I texted her a hello, and a
how are you doing, and what followed was a 10-minute conversation that made
both of us smile. Simple things—like water lapping against the boat where we
once hoped to walk on water and now realize that God only wants us to dive in,
waiting for us with a fish on the fire.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-34346856518406709812022-04-24T07:10:00.004-05:002022-04-24T07:10:32.728-05:00Keeping it weird<p> John 20:19-31</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I’m going to
preach to you today on “keeping it weird,” because that is what the Holy
Spirit does. It keeps church weird—it keeps camp weird—it keeps you and me
weird—and this, my friends, is a really good thing, because the
alternative—well—the alternative is to lock ourselves in a room in fear while
resurrection is bursting out all around us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">This begins with
the scene from today’s Gospel. The disciples are huddled in a room afraid
because they didn’t believe the women who told them Jesus had risen from the
dead. Typical. And Jesus comes to them, shows them his hands and side, says
“Peace be with you,” and then he continues with something really neat. He says,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">We would do well
to remember that the Holy Spirit does weird things. We have been largely
desensitized to its work because we have heard the story so often, but
everything that follows the Holy Spirit is really weird, and perhaps the
weirdest thing of all is the primary work that the Spirit does: The Holy Spirit
gives us faith. That’s right, faith doesn’t come from inside you, it comes from
the Spirit through you. Only after they have received the Holy Spirit do the
disciples go off and do disciple-y things. Once they have the Spirit, then they
can fully believe. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">So, what is the
difference between Thomas and the rest of the disciples? Thomas has not met
Jesus and received the Holy Spirit. And for two thousand years of church
history that is how he has earned the label of <i>doubting Thomas</i>—for
responding exactly as the rest of the disciples did a few minutes after they
received the same visual evidence he was asking for.<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyZqdIgJRHAJSjeKNMqQv_VhkpHxpCTGUKqeX4BK7RtHEuy5qOwPl4b5Bhh2fCrPpzGPbuQN4oLhHIZmPg0P3sHGmRVOOTEBMOq8D3avAqxSeorUG2OPStXkvoPJa0z5G0R9ZY7KOqPAsC-xVveeqZ0dLmmSnDSubpv6ZZJRkMMdyyRbvrPtXc4UlO/s302/frank%20idaho.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="226" data-original-width="302" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyZqdIgJRHAJSjeKNMqQv_VhkpHxpCTGUKqeX4BK7RtHEuy5qOwPl4b5Bhh2fCrPpzGPbuQN4oLhHIZmPg0P3sHGmRVOOTEBMOq8D3avAqxSeorUG2OPStXkvoPJa0z5G0R9ZY7KOqPAsC-xVveeqZ0dLmmSnDSubpv6ZZJRkMMdyyRbvrPtXc4UlO/s1600/frank%20idaho.jpg" width="302" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Keeping it weird at camp in Idaho, 2006</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>None of this is a
credit to the disciples. All of it is a credit to the weirdness of the Holy
Spirit. And because of this Holy Spirit’s weirdness, we have some weird stuff
in the Small Catechism as well. Martin Luther wrote the explanation to the 3<sup>rd</sup>
article of the Apostles Creed (which you may have learned in Confirmation), and
we would do well to go back to these words every so often and reflect on how
incredibly counter-cultural and weird they are. Luther says that the 3<sup>rd</sup>
article means this: <a name="_Hlk101356734">“I believe that by my own
understanding or strength I <i>cannot</i> believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or
come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel,
enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the true faith…”</a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The Holy Spirit
does all of that! Not us by our own awesomeness. We do not pick ourselves up by
our bootstraps and believe harder or try to have a little more faith, because
faith is not something we can generate from within. It is not to our credit
when we have it or to our fault when we feel it is lacking. Faith comes only
from the Holy Spirit given to us through Jesus Christ.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The disciples who
get credit for believing did not in fact manage to believe even when Mary
Magdalene told them explicitly of the resurrection… and they did not even
manage to believe at first when Jesus appeared to them and showed them his
hands and feet. That was weird but apparently not weird enough. It was only
when Jesus gave them the Holy Spirit that they managed to believe. So, sure
it’s doubting Thomas but it’s also doubting all-the-disciples. In fact, it’s
pretty much doubting-everybody-in-the-Gospels. Faith apart from the Holy Spirit
is just like that camel and the eye of the needle—a thing that is impossible
without God working on your behalf.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
what’s the good news here?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
fact, it is the very same news that at first feels bad. You can’t believe on
your own, and yet, Christ provides this Holy Spirit that is everything that you
need and more. So, when you are feeling uncertain, when you are doubting, and
when you cannot summon the oomph you need to believe as you feel you should, it
is not because you failed to try hard enough or suck it up enough. Rather, you
need to be reminded that God’s spirit is for the lost and the least, and on
occasion that is all of us. You are free to swim through doubt with the Holy
Spirit anchoring you to a promise you may not always see. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
all, at the end of this episode when Thomas finally does appear, Jesus says
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.” And we so often
take those words as piling on to Thomas. <i>Haha Thomas, you are not blessed
because you had to see me. </i>But that does not make a whole lot of sense in
the context of a story in which nobody believes without seeing—none of the
disciples—well, maybe the women at the tomb… we do seem to forget about the
women… But anyway, Jesus is proclaiming that it is a blessing to be able to
believe without seeing. Those who can feel the effects of the Spirit’s blessing
upon them as surely as they breathe, but not all will. The Spirit moves in ways
that are weird to us; so often electing the least and the last and the littlest
when we spend our lives in search of the best and the boldest. We can hardly
discern the Spirit in ourselves, how can we hope to understand who else the
Spirit might elect?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Camp
is one place that provides the fertile ground for the Spirit to work its
magic—and it does! You know it’s happening because of the weird stuff that
follows—kids and young adults come out of their shells; they find themselves inspired
by things that otherwise would have made them uncomfortable; they feel the dirt
between their toes and the water on their shins and the uncomfortable things
connect them with a God who they knew differently back home. And they come away
better for it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Spirit meets us against what is comfortable and normal. Campers leave their air-conditioned
homes behind and the Spirit blows through the summer heat and amidst the bugs
and the smell of campfire smoke. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit in the least comfortable
of places—when we are baptized into death; when we take our last breath—and in
some ways camp, like so much of our Christian ritual, is a place and time where
we embrace discomfort for the sake of spiritual growth. That is where the
Spirit runs rampant with us, changing us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
have a friend that I first met when I was a camper doing Idaho Servant
Adventures in the mid 2000s. He was the guest musician for the week and his
name is Nate Houge. He was a church musician who now operates a Bread Company. When
he visited churches, Nate had these bumper stickers that said “Keep Church
Weird”—a take-off on the branding used by the city of Portland, Oregon. And I
think we need some of these bumper stickers for every Christian ministry—<i>Keep
church weird</i>—<i>Keep camp weird</i>—because the weirdness is the work of
the Spirit. The weirdness is the counterstroke against the fear of what might
be. It is only when we hold too tightly to what is normal and comfortable that
we may become like the disciples, locked in a room, even after Mary Magdalene
has told them that their Lord has been raised from the dead. The disciples
needed to be opened to what is weird, but it was only the Holy Spirit that was
ever going to get them there.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
surest sign of the Holy Spirit at work is weirdness. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
I make no apologies that camp is a bit of a weird place. We have weird
conventions. At first, it can seem a little intimidating… that is, until you
leave your comfort zones behind and experience it. Then, I have found that very
quickly it doesn’t feel weird at all. What it feels like is freedom—freedom to
explore who you are, freedom to delve deeper into your faith. Best of all, this
is available to us anywhere. After all, that Holy Spirit came even to a group
of faithless followers locked in a room out of fear. They experienced that
freedom first, and the rest of the story is truly weird. Those disciples went
out into the world without fear, telling people about the God who set them
free, and they were arrested for it, and killed for it. It’s super weird that
they who were locked in the room became some of the first preachers (after,
ahem, Mary Magdalene and company), but then again, maybe it isn’t so weird.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
all, Christ comes to us in much the same way. He doesn’t have the courtesy to
knock—he just shows up, shows us himself, and gives us the Spirit. And what
happens next is truly weird… you end up at a church like this one with friends
and neighbors, hearing from a person like me, who has experienced this in much
the same way. And, yes, I am here representing camp where this happens every
single summer and many times in-between, but it is also happening in your
communities and your homes. The weirdness of the Spirit at work drives us
forward. So, keep Decorah weird… keep the church weird… keep camp weird. And
faith will follow. After all, that’s the work that the spirit is always doing. <o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-52954701759483616732022-04-03T08:08:00.005-05:002022-04-03T08:08:41.581-05:00Mary of Bethany, hidden figures, and our desperate need for perspective<p>Scripture: <a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=515990741">John 12:1-8</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> One
of the great benefits of camping ministry is that it takes us outside of our <i>normal</i>.
There are countless benefits to getting out of our routines every once in
awhile, not least that we might see something that we were blind to back home.
This is what we might call <i>perspective</i>, and perspective can only be
gained by stepping back and looking at things from a different angle. Our world
needs more perspective these days. The more perspective we have, the more
deeply God is revealed, and the more we may understand who God is.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> Take
today’s Gospel reading, for example. There is something really obvious about
Jesus’ ministry that we all should have probably noticed the first time we ever
heard the Gospels, but if you are like me, you have been trained by a lifetime
of biases to ignore it—trained by a world that values certain voices over
others and taught to look elsewhere. If you look at this passage from one
perspective, you can reduce the episode of Jesus, Mary and Martha to a moral:
Be a Mary, not a Martha. And we move on.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdbfXqTDNtEY8dHh9YZq_Uet61hUfWIOaUOdYZ8CjiRCKEOHKsi75kVsW5kYgbEXZ-pPq4nNyClMFW8UVeLeC5zOpRsrBBrhXeJkffC_x_7tXW0g20BnqcpbaeB49_jSS3zmxqqX3KeIge1lOGsrKesLtE-wfiO0ca2EEf0OwVbsiZczaw8KadzaZl/s635/4-3.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="635" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdbfXqTDNtEY8dHh9YZq_Uet61hUfWIOaUOdYZ8CjiRCKEOHKsi75kVsW5kYgbEXZ-pPq4nNyClMFW8UVeLeC5zOpRsrBBrhXeJkffC_x_7tXW0g20BnqcpbaeB49_jSS3zmxqqX3KeIge1lOGsrKesLtE-wfiO0ca2EEf0OwVbsiZczaw8KadzaZl/s320/4-3.PNG" width="320" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> But
it struck me as I was reading John 12 this week, especially as I continued past
the end of the appointed reading, that the whole of this chapter and indeed the
lion’s share of the Gospel of John consists of stories of temple priests,
political leaders, and, yes, even disciples of Jesus, who rarely if ever
understand a thing about Jesus. For example, the very next verses in John 12
talk of a plot amongst the priests to kill Lazarus because Jesus is getting too
much support on his account, since—you know—Jesus raised him from the dead. Then,
Jesus follows that up by explaining peoples’ unbelief before we head off to
chapter 13 and the washing of the disciples’ feet, which predictably leads to
some minor outrage on Peter’s part, because even the best of the disciples fail
to grasp who Jesus really is.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> <b>But you know who has a wide enough
perspective? Mary of Bethany, who anoints Jesus’ feet in this story</b>…. Mary,
Jesus’s mother with her Magnificat… the
woman at the well…. the women who appear at the tomb on Easter morning… notice a
trend? Even though the vast majority of characters who appear in the Gospels
are men, they are too locked into viewing the world as they expect it to be.
Meanwhile, the women get it straight-away Now, in the interest of fairness, there
are a few men who get it, too: Lazarus, raised from the dead; a crippled man
who walks; a blind man who receives his sight. Another trend is emerging. The
people who see Jesus for who he is are the ones who are hurt and powerless: Women,
who had no power in ancient Israel; the sick and the dead, too; the unclean;
the rejected. As Robert Farrar Capon put it: Jesus Christ came for the least,
the last, the lost, the lowly, the little, and the dead. If you aren’t one of
those, you aren’t going to get it. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> It’s
easy to think two thousand years later that we get it now. We have the
requisite perspective to understand. But I don’t see a lot of indication that
this is true. We filter Jesus through our own wants and desires just as easily
today as the chief priests did in the Holy Land two millennia ago. We still
make God in our image. You know this is happening when our Jesus loves all the
people we love and hates all the people we hate—when our Jesus judges all the
folks we like to judge and excuses those indiscretions we look past.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Mary shows us a
better way. When she takes the perfume and anoints Jesus’ feet, it upsets the
apple cart. In Matthew’s Gospel, all the disciples are there to rebuke her. In
John, it is just Judas, but the reaction is much the same. How dare she waste valuable
perfume for this strange purpose—anointing Jesus’ feet of all things! Frankly,
it’s weird. The perfume should have been saved for the throne; it should have
been used on his head; or, as Judas points out, it could well have been sold
and given to the poor. That would have been charitable. But this perspective
fails to understand anything about who Jesus actually is. Jesus is not coming
for the throne of the king; he is coming for the throne of the cross. And the
throne of the cross is a throne of death. Whether Mary grasps that or not, her
act of anointing Jesus’ feet marks him as lord over death. This is not a cutesy
story about being a Mary, not a Martha. This is the very moment where Jesus
becomes <i>Christ</i>—the “anointed.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> I
suspect part of the reason Mary is willing to anoint Jesus’ feet is because she
lives in a world where her status is already so maligned that she has no reason
to care if people scoff. Why should it bother her if Judas maligns her? This
grants Mary the freedom to express herself before Jesus as she wishes. The same
is true of the lame and the blind. In a society where they are reduced to being
nothing but beggars what have they to lose? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> When
I was a pastor, we would take our youth on a yearly service trip somewhere around
the country. We would travel sometimes many states away to do the kind of
service that existed much closer to home, and our church members would
occasionally raise concerns about this—justifiably—because there is much
service that can and should be done at home. Why should we take our kids to
Idaho, or Colorado, or Michigan when we had plenty of service opportunities nearby?
Well, there is a good reason after all, but you almost have to go on one of
these trips to understand. The kids would hop off the bus different people than
when they got on, because they had been plunked from their comfort zone—which
is scary!— but out there, they inevitably discovered a strange, unexpected
freedom when they were no longer expected to be the person they were back home.
When they got away from their normal, they no longer felt the pressure to
justify their every action. Instead, they lived into the freedom that flows
from Christ, which inevitably led them to serve generously. Perspective made
them joyful.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> Like
Mary, we are free to give lavishly, but it tends to take everything being
stripped away before we do it, because only then will we stop hedging our bets
and understand that Jesus it not just a nice idea but the very ground of truth
on which we stand. And when Truth stands in front of you, what else can you do
but offer up everything you have in gratitude?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> Camp,
too, breaks us free from our normalcy. Outside of your comfort zone, you may
well discover that God has been there all along just waiting for you to notice.
This happens at camp not because we have some magical formula for preaching or
teaching, and not because our camp counselors are such great theologians—they
aren’t. Rather, camp reveals God to campers when the dominant voices
reverberating around their heads from life back home are stripped away and they
are free to experience God not how they are <i>supposed to</i> but how God actually
meets them.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> Kids
come to Ewalu from home lives that are varied. In that home life, they are
taught who is trustworthy and who is not; what is good and what is bad; and how
to act and how not to act. And, generally, parents do a good job, but we can
never get past our inherent biases to make our kids into our own image. Our
hopes and fears slant our kids’ perspective, and they either fall in line or
they run in the opposite direction. I hate to say it—because I have a camper
myself—but camp frees kids from their parents, and their pastors, and their
churches (if they have one), and whatever news network is on in the car on the
ride home from practice, and whatever their friends tell them is cool or
uncool. Camp strips it all away.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> But
this much can be achieved by going on vacation. More than offering a simple
getaway, camp centers what is essential. At camp, you hear that the love of God
is for you—that Christ came for you—that you are enough through Christ who
redeems you. Each year’s theme is different, but the center holds. This
summer’s theme is Boundless: God’s love beyond measure; and it is about the
height and depth of God’s love for us. Then, loved by God, we are set free in
Christ to respond by sharing that love lavishly with a world that needs it. We
can be Mary unconcerned with the cost of what we are sharing—just doing what is
right when everyone else is looking at us like we are crazy. <o:p></o:p></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> So,
maybe this scripture is about being a Mary after all, but only if we are very
clear about what Mary is doing. Mary is not following the masses; Mary gives
lavishly of what she has; Mary humbles herself to what is true, not what is
popular; and perhaps most importantly, Mary has no agenda but the humility of
walking after Christ on the road to the cross. When Christ is throwing the only
party in town, who cares what the stick-in-the-mud neighbors think?<o:p></o:p></p><p><br /></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-39548398139248861192022-03-27T06:31:00.008-05:002022-03-27T06:38:20.433-05:00Jubilee: The father runs to us<p><a href="https://bit.ly/3tEJBWS">Scripture: Luke 15:11-32</a></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
2008, I was the Offsite Trip Leader for summer camp at Lutherhaven Ministries
in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Midway through the summer, I had a cabin of 7<sup>th</sup>
and 8<sup>th</sup>-grade boys in a program that involved camping out in various
locations over the course of the week. The boys were various levels of
miscreant from your typical just-can’t-stop-bothering-the-girls’-cabins to the
stay-up-all-night and raise hell sort. Two of the boys in particular were the
worst—naturally, they were twins. Each night, I would find one or both of them
up at 2 or 3 in the morning pretending to be an animal in the woods, or
throwing rocks at teepees, or trying to sneak off to Lord knows where. This was
<i>not </i>my favorite week of camp counseling.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Which
brings us to Wednesday night… when we had our central worship for the week—a
meaningful service on the beach with the rest of the campers on site for the
week. It was poignant as always, but I was not engaged. Mostly, I was relieved
that there were other staff around to watch out for my terrible campers. I
decompressed for half an hour around the campfire before it was time to make
our way back up the hill to get ready for another night of poor sleep. As we
walked, one of the twins lingered and fell behind the rest of the group so I
slowed along with him. I wish I could say I was checking in on his emotional or
spiritual wellness, but mostly I suspected he was trying to slip away and I was
going to force him to move his butt up that hill before the rest of the boys
got out of sight.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBKjx3Yjmixup_GZC19dyOV8TMLgxdSNi4WPv8uDqt4Ny2XlGVtdWPybCMYM0xWFbEmkThfOPw9rrvSQqze_UB6IQXRi_llu75OvVXGNKIh0OoeID7jb1Sc3J6hyXEF2AsJTxSUYgqxdTtgSJawHpztq5G9CP1YJ6SkktFjfMTlTaVCFgum42MuYHx/s1080/Where's%20Frank%20graphic%20(1).png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBKjx3Yjmixup_GZC19dyOV8TMLgxdSNi4WPv8uDqt4Ny2XlGVtdWPybCMYM0xWFbEmkThfOPw9rrvSQqze_UB6IQXRi_llu75OvVXGNKIh0OoeID7jb1Sc3J6hyXEF2AsJTxSUYgqxdTtgSJawHpztq5G9CP1YJ6SkktFjfMTlTaVCFgum42MuYHx/s320/Where's%20Frank%20graphic%20(1).png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"> But
as I walked alongside him, he started talking about things that I was not
prepared for. “There’s a reason why I was crying during the service down there,”
he said. I hadn’t noticed… hadn’t even thought to notice. I was looking for
rocks in his hands, not tears in his eyes. He continued, “I was crying because
it made me think of my dad. The last time I saw him he was yelling at my mom,
and then he ran out the door and killed himself.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Have
you ever had that feeling of shock where a thousand thoughts come into your
head but your mouth cannot form any of them into words? Yeah, that’s what I
felt in that moment. All the assumptions I had about this kid—all my petty
grievances with his behavior—even all the legitimate safety things I was
concerned about—it all suddenly felt so trivial. I did not know what this kid
carried—could not know, really—until it burst out and I realized it was never
going to be as simple as telling him to put the rocks away. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
think about that boy and his brother when I read of the prodigal son, because
that kid, too—that grown kid—was a menace. He was. He did nothing right. He set
out on his own without a single bit of smarts in his head and inevitably lost
it all; he wasted what his family had spent a lifetime or even generations to
build. I suspect he was the kid throwing rocks at other kids’ tents—seems like
the type. But nobody knew what he was carrying with him. Yeah, he was a menace,
but he was also just a person. Nobody knew the guilt and the shame. Nobody
knew—even he-himself did not know—could not know the weight of his own feelings
of inadequacy. It is why he so feared coming home to his father. Deep down, he suspected
he was unworthy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
all do. We all have that nagging fear that we are not enough. If we are
successful, we fear we have not truly earned it… if we lose something, we
suspect we are to blame… if we fail in any way, we <i>define</i> ourselves by
that failure. Then, to cope with our own misgivings, we often turn it against
our brothers and sisters. It is why people who have been hurt turn around and hurt
others. Like the brother, we define <i>others</i> by <i>their</i> failures. No
time to worry about how bad I am; that guy is worse! How dare our father kill
the fatted calf! How dare he! I want justice for <i>my brother’s failings!<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of
course, in one sense the prodigal’s brother is right. The prodigal son <i>did </i>fail.
The prodigal son was a poor example of how to live. The prodigal son <i>deserved</i>
to be treated poorly. But the story takes an unexpected turn when we discover
that the father is not in the sin-accounting business. He prepares the best
calf for his return because it was never about the son’s faithfulness—it was
always about the father’s propensity for grace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That’s
the God we’re dealing with here—a God who defines us not by our worst mistakes
but by the child in us who turns home trembling at the enormity of the mistakes
we have made, because if messed-up people look down upon us for our failures
how much more so should the one who gave us good things! And yet! And yet!! God
throws away the ledgers and prepares only the best for us. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
it isn’t fair. My goodness, is it not fair! Fair would be a heavenly ladder
with rungs for different levels of faithfulness. The son who stayed home would get
the best fatted calf; the prodigal son might get a shrimpy little calf; perhaps
another child who left altogether would get nothing. That would be fair. But the
kingdom of God is not about ladders. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The history of the
Bible is littered with stories that defy this deep-seated expectation that we
get what we deserve. The scriptural precedent hearkens back to Leviticus 25 and
this principle called “jubilee,” (which I am very aware is part of the name of this
church). Jubilee is about wiping the balance sheet clean. It is about the
forgiving of debts, erasing the ledger. For Christians, jubilee is a harbinger
of grace. It is this that we proclaim in baptism and what we profess to be true
about faith in Christ, who came to wipe away all the parts of us that are not
enough. The father does not care where the prodigal son has been or what he has
been doing, because his is a house of jubilee. Not only does the father not
account for the son’s debts; they no longer exist. Crazier still, they never
have. The backwards math of the Christian faith is that the further you fall,
the higher you rise, because all of us have fallen deeper than we can ever
climb on our own.<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
I want to take you back to that walk up the hill at Lutherhaven fourteen years
ago. That young man had descended deep into the depths of grief. And Lord knows
I don’t know 1/10<sup>th</sup> of a percent of it. The truth is I have no idea
of the enormity of the burden he was carrying. But I do know this: We have a
God who meets us in despair and raises us to eternity not to equal the playing
field but with the stunning promise that the best is reserved for those who
have fallen the furthest. That kid may well have gone on to be like that
prodigal son—he certainly seemed on that track—and it feels even heavier to me because
he didn’t have a father to come home to… not a father at least on this side of
the veil.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, I also know that God promises us
throughout scripture—and maybe nowhere more than in this story—that this boy <i>did</i>
have a father to come home to, and it isn’t about the son’s faithfulness… and
it isn’t about whether he says all the right words or even really believes any
of this stuff at all—it is God who sees him far off—as it says in Luke 15:20: “But <i>while he was still far off</i>, his father
saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and
kissed him.” </p><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>The father ran to
him! </u> </b> Our God meets us not when we come
back, but when we are still far off, still expecting the worst, and it is there
that God stuns us with grace—this echo of jubilee—a promise that we are not
enough; we never have been; and <i><u>yet, we are</u></i> through the God who
made us and pursues us despite our doubts.
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I want to wrap up with a hard word
followed a good one. First, the hard word: You can never guarantee that a
person who desperately needs to hear about grace will ever get it through their
thick skull. Many of us will spend our entire lives sprinting away from the God
who we fear will judge us for who we are, even though this very God has no
record of the debt we owe. It is often easier to live in a world of ledgers
than it is to imagine that God has set us free.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But here’s the good news: God is not
going to stop pursuing you. Even if you never get it. Even if you are a
lifelong Lutheran—but like so many of us Lutherans you cannot actually believe
that you are worth a darn thing, because we are a people of simple pleasures,
who like sipping on coffee that is just weak enough to leave us wanting, lest we
might enjoy ourselves a bit too much by adding enough grounds to make coffee
properly. It is in our blood to be suspicious of joy. This is how I know that
God is <i>not </i>a Lutheran.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">At the end of the day—at the end of your life—when you
have spent all your precious moments running from grace in search of
self-sufficiency—whatever your personal weakness is: thirsting either for
power, or money, or a legacy, or simply trying to save yourself—when the race
is over and your time on earth is done, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>God
will catch you</u></b>, because—like the prodigal son—none of us ever fully return.
Like that boy who lost his father, none of us behave the way we should. Like
the prodigal’s brother, all of us hold other people up to an impossible standard
that leaves them wanting. All of that is noise. The father is the party
planner, and he has decided exactly who is invited and exactly how lavish the
meal will be, and he has proclaimed that the only requirement for entry is that
you are a child of God. That is it!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Because
children of God are welcomed home—always.
No exceptions. This is why the program director at Lutherhaven that summer,
Rebecca Smith, would give us a simple order again and again that went like
this. “Just love on your campers.” Because you don’t know what they carry. Just
love on your campers. Because some of them get none at home. Just love on your
campers. Because that is what God does for us. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Personally, I think this isn’t a bad maxim for the rest
of our lives as well. The father is throwing the most lavish party for the most
poorly-behaved child. Why? Because he loves him. Sometimes it’s just as simple
as that.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-71199843164736953132021-04-04T07:12:00.001-05:002021-04-04T07:12:02.395-05:00The trees on Easter morning<p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=484538214"> John 20:1-18</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.6pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.4pt;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">Jesus
Christ is risen today! Alleluia!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">And far
be from me to cheapen anything about this day, but there is a little secret you
should be aware of: Jesus Christ is risen every day! This is merely the season
when we feel it most acutely—when we celebrate Easter, and when the green
shoots rise from the earth, and COVID-19 vaccines show us hope for a better
tomorrow, and the long winter (which wasn’t that long this year but it’s North
Dakota, so, hey, it feels that way regardless) gives way to spring, and the
birds fill the skies on their way north, and the ice breaks apart, and the
trees start to show their buds. It is a season of resurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">Now,
about those trees…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">You can
trace trees through all of scripture if you want to. In the beginning, there
was the tree of the life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—one
tree to give life and one that was a harbinger of death. A few chapters later,
there was the ark—God’s salvation in the form of Noah’s advanced woodwork—and
then in the prophets we hear whispers of a root of Jesse—a reference to a royal
“family tree” foreshadowing Jesus. Moses had a staff; Psalm 23 mentions a staff
and a rod; the ark of the covenant was acacia wood; and Jonah hides under a
shrub to protect himself from the elements. There are ships and bows left and
right. You will not get very far in the Old Testament without running into a
tree or the product of a tree, but it is the New Testament where the importance
tree really comes into relief.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpQ0lS0Cm74BZG92H5Ia9-QC8wg0_T7Sv46ePlG9sgn2iUFPprcprK3S7RR9kPIwr8XzMOHcA5SUD4uLEdHaSAvcg00Sn7iwoQCSY3fpQWxehlWAu_eEv0TEi0VM7czw7isgN2NpICTI/s600/red+willow+%25286%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpQ0lS0Cm74BZG92H5Ia9-QC8wg0_T7Sv46ePlG9sgn2iUFPprcprK3S7RR9kPIwr8XzMOHcA5SUD4uLEdHaSAvcg00Sn7iwoQCSY3fpQWxehlWAu_eEv0TEi0VM7czw7isgN2NpICTI/s320/red+willow+%25286%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">Two
days ago, we remembered Jesus crucified on a tree. The cross is the tree that
stands in the gap created by Adam and Eve tasting from that first tree long ago;
it stretches back to the tree of life and the garden where we were created to
roam. And let’s be clear here: it was not just Adam and Eve that put us in this
predicament. Each of us tastes of that fruit—every day—all of us yearn to be
like God, to become God, and that’s why Jesus had to come in the first place.
If not for us, the tree of the cross would be unnecessary. That is the weight
we feel on Good Friday; I suppose it is also the reason so many do not worship
on Friday and skip ahead to Easter. It is much easier to imagine it is all
fluffy bunnies, especially when the world out there is so full of brokenness
and loss and grief. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">But God
knows us better. God knows what is required to bring us to Easter morning with
a heart and a mind open to the resurrection. The only thing in the world
required for resurrection is death; it is the thing we fear, yet the very thing
that gives Easter its power. The cross should be preached not only on Good
Friday but also on Easter morning because on this side of Eden, the bridge to
the tree of life is the tree of the cross.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">There
is a lot of great news for us today. Because the stone is rolled away, you are
free to live without fear of what may come. Today, this feels even more
powerful, because we are living in a moment in history ripe for resurrection.
It might not look like Easter morning, but then again, it might. After all,
Jesus rose on that third day, but it was not apparent to anybody, least of all
the disciples, that this was the case for quite some time. They were living in
a moment drenched in resurrection without even realizing it, expecting that the
dead stay dead and that the cross is an instrument of death, certainly not a
gateway to new life. It takes time for people to risk believing that in
resurrection—that the world we once knew is not in need of healing but rather
it is dead, and the only hope for a dead world is to be raised. We are really
good at trying to rehabilitate dead things when the promise of Easter morning is
that we cannot nurse dead things back to life, dead things must be raised. Only
if we dare to hope in something better will we discover a world absolutely
drenched in resurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">At Red
Willow, we feel this acutely, because last summer was a death for us (though
perhaps less dramatically than it was for many of you)—a death of normal, a
death of expectations, a death of our yearly rhythm and ritual. This year, we look
not for healing but for resurrection. God, who brought us this far by faith,
promises not to bring back what was but to do a completely new thing—like Jesus,
who in Mark’s Gospel admonishes every person he heals, telling them “Say
nothing of this to anybody!” because Jesus did not come to heal, he came to die
and rise. So, we shall too. That is the absurd power of Easter morning—Christ
is risen so we shall, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">There is
no better illustration of this in the natural world than a tree, which gives us
air to breathe in its life but brings new life in its death. I remember
visiting Yellowstone National Park as a child after wildfires had turned entire
mountainsides black, burnt out stalks of pine trees stood as monuments to what
the forest once was. It was sad. Yet, without fire, a forest grows old and
slowly suffocates itself. At the base of those burnt-out trunks were the shoots
of new trees emerging from the ash—not healing but resurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">It is
no accident that Red Willow is named after a tree. Now, it is a tree that looks
nothing like the tree on our logo—it is a shrub you might know as Red Osier
Dogwood—seemingly unimportant, like that tree in the folk tale cut down to make
the cross. Red Willow is little and easily overlooked, like most things that
are holy, but it is always the little things that bear witness to the
resurrection, because we have a God in Jesus Christ who came to rip the
powerful from their thrones and lift up the powerless, a God who comes for the
poor and little and the forgotten and the grieving and the weak.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">Easter
morning is a proclamation that little and overlooked things are the greatest
testimony we have to a world where resurrection is true and it is ours in spite
of what we deserve, in spite of how we are always trying to heal dead things, in
spite of how broken and vulnerable we are. Easter morning is the green shoot we
do not see until it has grown into something worth our interest, but it is
there all along—not as a towering Redwood or a majestic. Rather, the good news
of the resurrection is proclaimed by that one, poor, neglected tree on the edge
of the field, the kind you might find in the ditches along North Dakota’s
gravel roads, the kind that the glyphosate missed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">To see
glimpses of resurrection, we have to be willing to look under what is dead.
Never has that weight felt so heavy for many of us as it does a year into a
pandemic, and that might not feel like good news in the slightest, but that is
only because we often lack the eyes to see resurrection happening right in
front of us. We still cling to the branches of the tree of knowledge, believing
that we know better—that the dead stay dead, that if only we knew a little
more, then we could figure out this life; that only if other people understood
what we understood, then the world would be a better place, but that is not the
promise of Easter morning. Easter morning is an invitation to simply let go, to
wonder, to look for life where death seems to all the world to have won, and to
embrace the littlest and the least because these are the ones through whom God
is showing us resurrection every day of our lives. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">So, if
you are looking for Christ this morning, do not look in the tomb, but do not
look in your Easter basket either, nor in the warmth of your home, nor even in
the church. Yes, we celebrate the resurrection with the bells and whistles, but
Easter is proclaimed by the green shoots rising where death seemed to all the
world to have won. Look there! Find the weakest and least popular, the tree
burnt to a crisp, or the person who nobody values. Seek out something that does
not seem to matter, .and watch what God is doing where we have given up all
hope.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 17.3pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 18.7pt;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ligatures: none;">Christ
is risen!<o:p></o:p></span></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-64328281150865549932021-04-04T07:09:00.000-05:002021-04-04T07:09:47.552-05:00A new covenant: God will show up<p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=483294184"> Jeremiah 31:31-34</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;">“The
days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">not</span></i> be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors… a
covenant that they broke… but instead it will be like this: I will put my law
within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>God goes on to say, “You don’t need
to teach one another about me anymore, because all will know me, from the least
to the greatest.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wow! This is the God we worship—a
God who is always doing new things. When the covenant was once only for those
in power, God came on to the scene and said, “Now, it is for the powerless.”
Later, when the covenant was only for those of pure blood, Jesus came along and
told a story about a Samaritan who showed mercy. And when the covenant was
still only for those who could claim a little Jewish ancestry, God came on to the
scene and said, “Now, it is for Gentiles, too—for all of us here today, I
imagine.” Then, in the centuries since the Bible was written, God seems to be
up to the same business—taking those we believe to be outside the covenant and
welcoming them in, not as subservient but as equals. This is the God we are
dealing with here—a God who makes all things new, who welcomes in the lost and
least and the ones we have rejected.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEins-rH6J0gHQXznHQ3TwEeYlnL6_Tp5OPnh0oS3CbEwKnfooV7v5a92Alz4Z4DjQKHLAS_5UgzjDyadJ4ekJ2Jo9CBV7axqz1Vs3YxzdVuiZUO-o8baC0L3_DJuWSA_H8X9jikEXUj5bk/s1651/162823721_10100828364552995_2789133239466692410_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1651" data-original-width="1189" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEins-rH6J0gHQXznHQ3TwEeYlnL6_Tp5OPnh0oS3CbEwKnfooV7v5a92Alz4Z4DjQKHLAS_5UgzjDyadJ4ekJ2Jo9CBV7axqz1Vs3YxzdVuiZUO-o8baC0L3_DJuWSA_H8X9jikEXUj5bk/s320/162823721_10100828364552995_2789133239466692410_o.jpg" /></a></div><br /><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I come to you this morning
representing Red Willow Ministries, and I can tell you that right now it feels
like a new covenant moment. We spent the better part of a year, alongside
churches like yours, assuring that the least and the last are remembered and
cared for, and it hurt because we have rarely had clear answers, and we are
missing so much of what we feel we once had. At Red Willow, we come back to
camp this coming summer thirsty for what we have been missing, longing for
something familiar but also for something new, because the pandemic has also
revealed many of the ways that things have been broken. God is going to do a
new thing and it always starts now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I love how the new covenant in
Jeremiah is simply a promise about knowing God, because that is exactly what we
are about at camp. Camp cannot be the arbiter of good theology; we are not here
to delve deeper into Luther’s catechism or to spend a lot of time talking about
church practices and rituals. Rather, we are a place where God is made known to
us. We are a place where you go to meet Jesus on the way, and this happens to
the least and the greatest of us, each in our own way. And we have one
tremendous advantage at camp both in the days of COVID-19 and as we seek to be
a place where people meet God: at camp, we spend so much of our time outdoor. Outside,
God’s presence comes alive. The Christian faith is a faith <i>open to the skies</i>
(a “hypaethral” faith). We are a faith that comes alive outdoors where the
miraculous does not seem so miraculous anymore; where the yearly migration patterns
and the green shoots rising, where campfires and songs bear witness to
something magical.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span></span></o:p></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One of the most formative weeks of
my life was spent as a Camp Counselor at Lutherhaven Ministries in Coeur
d’Alene, Idaho. Each week at camp we would be assigned a different role—a
different cabin, different age group, occasionally day camp or a village. One
week, I was assigned to lead Teepee Village at Shoshone Base Camp, which was
about an hour drive from the main camp up the north fork of the Coeur d’Alene
River, basically in the middle of one of the largest areas of forest in the
contiguous United States. Shoshone Base Camp is the launching pad for youth
servant groups and occasionally for summer camps. In our case, we had to walk
one-and-a-half miles, first up a mountainside, then down to reach two teepees
that had been setup on the shores of Shoshone Creek. The handheld radios we
were given were not powerful enough to reach from the teepees to camp, meaning
we were quite literally on our own out there. Just me and a fellow counselor,
Anna, with a dozen 5<sup>th</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup> grade boys and girls. We
were supposed to be teaching them the Bible and leading worship and all of that,
but I am not sure if we opened our Bibles once. Instead, we talked about God
under the open skies. The kids made rock dams in the creek; we came across a
moose cow and calf blocking the trail one day; and we even had a light frost
one morning (in August, mind you), and several of the kids worked with me on
starting a fire to warm us up. I have been to seminary; I have studied Religion
in undergrad; I grew up attending worship most weeks; and I have been a part of
many church trips before, but nothing felt so holy as that week in the woods.
It was God-time, whether we cracked open a Bible or not. God met us under the skies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So often, I think we feel obligated
to do certain tasks to meet God—to really earn it—because we feel like this is
the most important thing, so it makes sense that it would be something we have
to work hard at. We have been conditioned to believe that the most important
things require the most effort. So, we pay our dues. Perhaps this is even the
reason we come together in worship, or why we read from a daily devotional at
home, or even why we read the Bible on our own or with our children or
grandchildren. These are wonderful practices that help create space to meet
God, but they are not work to be done. After all, God is love, and love does
not come to us by the strength of our will power or effort. Love chooses us. God
meets us apart from our work, after we have read scripture when we are out and
about thinking about nothing like the Bible and suddenly something strikes
us—perhaps another person who crosses our path, or a river, or a tree, or that
serene sense of calm that most of us are searching for, especially these days.
God meets us when we stop trying.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So, if you feel yourself going
through the motions, whether out of obligation or habit, I hope you hear today
that the new covenant is for you: God chooses you. And it comes like love, not
because you deserve it, but because you are made in God’s image and nothing can
separate you from him. God’s covenant is not only for the ones who feel on fire
for God, but for the least and the forgotten, and especially for those who put
on a face for the world that they have it all together when they are really,
truly dying inside. God’s promise is for those who feel like they are always
getting it wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is my fervent desire that Red
Willow is a place for folks like that—those who believe they are not enough and
who cannot see God in their daily lives—because I believe that camp is one
place where God meets us in spite of what we carry. This is why our ministry
matters, but for the rest of you, who may never come to camp, the great news is
that camp is far from the only place where God’s presence is made known. God
will meet you anywhere if you are open to it. And all God requires is that we
let go of the story we tell where we can do it ourselves—that we stop holding
on to narratives that control our lives that say we can fix things, or that we will
be fine if only such and such happens. Instead, we invite God in with a word of
confession by saying, “I can’t do it, God.” I just cannot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The reason this works so well at
camp is because there is no temptation to turn on the TV; there is no cell
phone, no constant messaging and advertising, selling you that this one thing
will complete you. We promise something entirely different—that nothing can
complete you but the God who created you. More than that, nobody is outside of
that promise. God’s new covenant is for the least <i>and</i> the greatest—not
for you to lord over your neighbor. I do not care how unholy they are. Jesus
comes for tax collectors and sinners, murderers and adulterers. We spend a lot
of time and energy in the church telling you “Don’t do this” and “don’t do
that,” so we had better spend much more time and energy telling you that Jesus
comes for you regardless; that there is nothing that can separate you from the
love of God. That is the power of this covenant, which is being remade with
every new generation, as we figure out new ways to exclude people. We are
really quite good at excluding people, it turns out! That might be what people
are best at, actually. But you know what? God takes us anyway, because it’s not
about how good we are.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Our mission statement at Red Willow
is this: “Red Willow Ministries is a community for all people to hear God’s
call to live in relationship with God and one another.” When I first heard that
mission statement, I thought, “That sounds more like a church than a camp,” but
of course, it is both. There is really little difference in our ministries,
because all we are doing is providing the fertile ground for God to show up and
grow things. You do it in worship; in social ministries; in Bible studies—we do
it swimming and campfires and blaze orange sunsets—but God shows up all the
same, because there is no right way to do ministry. If you are open to it, God
will show up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That is the new covenant. God will
show up and remember our sin no more. God will proclaim that it does not matter
how we got here; all that matters is that we are home. I suppose, if we are
cynical, we might ask why any of this matters then—if we are saved by a promise
we can do nothing to accept by a God who accepts sinners of all varieties? Well,
I humbly suggest that all that is left to do for us, therefore, is to reflect
that love of God for a world desperate to hear it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That is what we are going to be up
to this summer—it’s what they’ll be doing up the road at Park River—it’s what
you will be doing here in Petersburg/Dahlen. In that way, we will be partners
together, doing much the same ministry, caring for and loving on God’s children—young,
old, and in-between. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-28675734316898472062021-03-07T06:51:00.004-06:002021-03-07T06:54:53.294-06:00There are no un-sacred places--only places where we fail to pay attention<p> A sermon for Atonement Lutheran Church, Jamestown</p><p><a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=482121387">John 2:13-22</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">I got into camping ministry as a 20-year-old college student,
who loved the outdoors and Jesus and finally discovered there is this little
slice of heaven where those two worlds intersect. I worked as a camp counselor
in northern Idaho at Camp Lutherhaven where I found my temple under the
ponderosa pines on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene, and it was a temple,
because it was a holy place and a holy space—like a church but different; like
a pilgrimage site but different. Beautiful, set apart—a place where the holy
intersected the lives of countless individuals who called it <i>camp</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnJZbooGFSa6XSOwfNAswz6BQLR2HbUGvcVM0JdZsHhMm5qdtP2OMNafP181gouAmLzfUWNEkkx0L4c6wLG6zX5RvcHPAuqihskJh8QbLak3CrHg0o-PRUaaWRgM2cgsBMipnOj67zX8/s604/218095_503705374585_7554_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="604" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnJZbooGFSa6XSOwfNAswz6BQLR2HbUGvcVM0JdZsHhMm5qdtP2OMNafP181gouAmLzfUWNEkkx0L4c6wLG6zX5RvcHPAuqihskJh8QbLak3CrHg0o-PRUaaWRgM2cgsBMipnOj67zX8/s320/218095_503705374585_7554_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"><br /> </span>In
some ways, that camp would become my pilgrimage site—the place where I would be
sure to find God—and it still is that way. However, I have also discovered that
camp is all of those places—not just the camp that I am most familiar with but
also Red Willow and all places outdoors and in where we are attentive to God’s
presence. I now firmly believe there are no un-sacred spaces; there are just
places where we are not paying attention. <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jesus
gets at this in a roundabout way in our Gospel reading today. This is the story
of Jesus whipping folks out of the temple for making it a marketplace. The holy
place that was supposed to be set apart had become the local Walmart; it became
impossible to see the holy because of all the boring, normal bustle of daily
life. So, Jesus literally forms a whip and starts whipping the shopkeepers out
of the temple grounds, which is pretty startling if we stop and think about it,
because it’s not like Jesus was the chief priest. To the temple authorities, he
was nobody. This is why they ask what sign he has for acting in this way. <i>Hey
buddy, show us some ID, </i>they are saying. And what ID does Jesus give? A
strange response: “<span style="background: white; color: #010000;">Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”</span> Suddenly, since we know
who Jesus actually is, this scene reveals an amazing truth. It is not the
temple-church that has been profaned. No, that is what the temple elites think;
that is the arena for the debate they want to have, but this is not the temple
Jesus is concerned with. That temple is Jesus’ body, which is to say that the
temple has been profaned because the people are too busy buying stuff to see
Jesus Christ, God-incarnate, standing right there.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is so important for us today because it is tempting to believe our job is to
protect the holiness of church buildings and our camp properties lest they lose
their sense of holiness when they no longer feel set apart. Of course there is
something truth in this; these are places made holy by the intention of our
worship. However, our physical temples only matter if they provide a lens to
see Jesus. The point of the temple is that it is set apart, but since we are
all part of the body of Christ, all of us can follow Jesus toward the cross
wherever we go. Again, there are no un-sacred spaces, just spaces where we fail
to pay attention.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here’s
why I think this matters profoundly for us in the year of our Lord, 2021. Many
of us go to church seeking refuge in a place set apart from what is normal back
home. While we are here, we do not want to be sold something; while we are here,
we do not want to be reminded of all the things that divide us; while we are here,
we want to experience life differently than we do at the grocery store or on
the phone with customer service. Here, we want to experience something holy, but
we make a mistake if we think this holiness will be comfortable. Jesus’
ministry is not about creating comfortable spaces; it is about revealing holy
spaces. The difference between a comfortable space and a holy space is that a
comfortable place provides balm for our wounds, while a holy place puts us to
death and raises us. We think we need healing, but healing is temporary—what we
really need is resurrection.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At
our best, both camp and church seek to be holy places, not merely comfortable
place. Yes, sure, camp is all sorts of fun, but you can have fun at a resort,
or a family cabin, or Disney World. And, yes, camp offers retreats for you to
“get away from it all,” but the backdrop for these experiences is not simply to
pamper you and tell you that you deserve it. Instead, we cultivate a space
where life slows down, reflection is possible, and the awareness of grace can
sweep over you like a wave. We seek after Jesus, who walked the road to the cross
so that those of us who are broken may ultimately find comfort through death
and not apart from it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
year ago, I was pastoring a couple congregations like yours in NW Minnesota
when the repercussions of the pandemic were beginning to come into focus. Suddenly,
our holy places were set apart in a whole different way. There was tension in
coming together and being apart. <i>What was the right thing to do for the sake
of one another?</i> There was no playbook—continues to be no playbook, really.
This is when it is especially important to remember that Jesus comes to us
apart from our expectations. Everybody expected Jesus to show up at the temple
and exhort the importance of the temple. Instead, he said, “Nah, I am the
temple.” Everybody expected Jesus to face off against the political authorities
of the day and attempt to claim his throne as king. Instead, Jesus gave himself
up to death and claimed his throne on a cross. As we reflect on a year of
pandemic, we need to remember this tendency of Jesus to zig when we zag. We
absolutely do not know what Jesus would advocate for in the face of a
pandemic—something brave, perhaps, like keeping the congregations open all
along, or something also brave like keeping the congregations closed until
every last sheep is gathered. We do not know. What we do know is that Jesus
Christ does not come to make us comfortable but to lead us through death into
new life. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">We have had a lot
of deaths in the last year. Actual deaths of loved ones; deaths of
expectations; deaths of imagined futures; even seemingly little things like
deaths of vacations. A year ago, my family was preparing to take our
six-year-old to Disney World when the pandemic ruined it. All of these things
are deaths. Yet, death remains the only thing necessary for resurrection. So,
we will rise again. The church will rise again, because the church is the
people—the body of Christ—who zigs while the world zags and preaches hope especially
when things look hopeless. And at Red Willow we are looking forward to rising
again—yes, to summer camp as you might remember it, but also with the
expectation that God is not going to make this comfortable; instead, God is
going to do a new and better thing. Where there was death, we expect
resurrection. Where we made our temples into idols, Jesus is waiting to say,
“It is not about you.” It was never about stone walls and holy altars and
paraments and organs. It was always about the people, who are living members of
Christ’s body. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You
see, when I was at camp out in Idaho, I was in one of the most beautiful places
on planet earth. Mountains emerged from lake depths, exposing rock faces that
held views for miles of coniferous forests where moose and elk roamed.
Crystalline creeks fed by glaciers somewhere thousands of feet above splashed
over rocks of a thousand different colors and shapes. You know? Just like North
Dakota. It might have been heaven on earth. Yet, as I think back to my time at
camp, I realize that every poignant memory is tied to people, to personal
challenges, and to adversity—to uncomfortable moments, like tending to
children, that I had never experienced before—of challenging conversations and
pushing boundaries, like leaping off a climbing tower on a zipline. Camp is
pregnant with those experiences, but camp is less about the place than we
realize. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At
its best, camp is an attitude that is much the same attitude we bring to
worship. It is not about comfort but about holiness; it is not about healing
but about resurrection. It is not about the temple of stones but about the body
of Christ. Places are meaningful, but there is an awfully good reason why we
remember the people and the experiences the most. It is about the resurrection,
and I am going to preach that even in Lent.<o:p></o:p></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701477786451453190.post-8693611476966484282021-02-07T06:44:00.001-06:002021-02-07T06:44:35.910-06:00It's all about the cross<p><a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=479701538">Mark 1:29-39</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I love preaching on the Gospel of Mark, because the Gospel of Mark
is a lot like camp. It starts with a bang; it moves at a crazy speed; it never
really lets up; and it never loses sight of the point of it all. You may notice
that this is Mark, chapter 1, and already a lot has happened! Jesus has been
born and named and baptized; we’ve met John the Baptist; Jesus has called some
disciples; he has exorcised some demons… and it’s only verse 29. By contrast,
in Luke’s Gospel at this point Mary is just about to hear she is going to have
a baby, and Matthew has barely moved past telling us Jesus’ genealogy. In the
Gospel of John, John the Baptist sees Jesus for the first time in verse 29. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0Iz690AXRzNYb3vIja_zfv_AsRi6eae1HNwEXc8UdfIMbs-Fdd-_lRP-c0gYtYPq8aebLaHf1dQf78-P0gPWfpfQ-jhh6_W2UrlMaPvbcNclSJfYTAuvadBQmr56Bgi_p2j0NaeNmrQ/s1137/thumbnail.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0Iz690AXRzNYb3vIja_zfv_AsRi6eae1HNwEXc8UdfIMbs-Fdd-_lRP-c0gYtYPq8aebLaHf1dQf78-P0gPWfpfQ-jhh6_W2UrlMaPvbcNclSJfYTAuvadBQmr56Bgi_p2j0NaeNmrQ/s320/thumbnail.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mark is like my
six-year-old when she is excited about telling me something that happened at
school that day. <i>I learned to tie my shoes, and then I tripped, and then I had
to tie them again, and then that other girl laughed at me, and then I told her
that wasn’t nice, and then, you’ll never guess what!, she fell, and then I laughed
at her… and then… and then…! </i>Hold up, kid, come up for a breath! But this
is a lot like camp, actually. Kids arrive at camp and we start the ball rolling
and then there are games and singing and dancing and meals and swimming and
Bible reading and how on earth did that week go so fast?! For the counselors,
it is more like “How did summer go that fast?!” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is how most
meaningful things in life go, whether it is a week at camp or raising children,
falling in love or starting work at that dream job. Things move at a breakneck
speed and, yet, we linger in the most meaningful of moments. You see, the
Gospel of Mark does contain within it a multitude of incredibly meaningful
moments, even if Mark himself does not stay there. Jesus is on to the next
thing and the next thing like Santa Claus delivering presents on Christmas Eve.
There is simply not time to stop, but this is not because Mark is a poor writer.
Mark is hurtling us toward the cross; in the Gospel of Mark, it is all about
the cross. And at Red Willow, this is not a bad summation of our ministry
either, because here it is all about the cross; it is all about Jesus meeting
us in the midst of a crazy, fast, exciting camp week in the middle of busy
lives and breaking into our routine to proclaim a new thing that changes us. At
Red Willow, we focus on the essentials, like the fact that because of Christ
dying that death, you who were once outsiders have been brought in by the grace
of God. It is so simple and powerful. Don’t linger on the next most important
thing because you might miss the real bread and butter.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In our Gospel
reading today, Jesus does not allow the demons to speak because they know who
he is. This might seem a strange thing, but it gets even stranger later on when
Jesus starts to tell all the people he is healing to be quiet as well. Surely,
Jesus should want these people to testify to the miracle of healing they have
experienced. Surely, that would be the evidence that he is truly the Son of
God, right? Right? Well, perhaps not. Doctors heal; some magicians give the
appearance of healing; some healing even happens by chance or faith or who
knows? These days we know all too well that healing is not equally apportioned
or fair. Some kids die of cancer; some terrible people live to a ripe old age. In
the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is careful to note that we do not have faith because
of healings, instead we are to put our trust in the big thing—the universal
thing—the cross and the empty tomb. Jesus doesn’t care about anybody testifying
about the healings—it’s all about the cross. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>These healings
are the little miracles. Now, for the people being healed they are
life-changing; but they are also temporary. Every healed person eventually dies.
This is why Mark directs us toward the cross. In fact, the earliest versions of
Mark’s Gospels end exactly there. The stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty,
and the disciples run away terrified and say nothing to anybody. End of Gospel.
The very same folks who spend the entire Gospel of Mark not listening to Jesus
and blabbing their mouths about every little healing fail to tell a soul in the
wake of the big miracle. I love the Gospel of Mark because Jesus clearly
understands we-human beings who love to talk a big game about the little things
but who miss the big, honking point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I say that camp
is a place where we focus on the essentials because we have a couple tremendous
advantages at camp. One is that we break people out of their bubbles. Whether
it is an elementary camper staying away from home for the first time, a high
school camper who gets that rare opportunity to leave their cell phone behind
and all the checking of social media with it, that counselor who does the same,
who has the freedom perhaps for the first time to deepen and widen their faith
in an atmosphere drenched in God’s promises, or even a volunteer or a parent,
who sees it all happening, camp is a place set apart. But camp has another
tremendous advantage: It is not the norm. We break your routine. Therefore,
camp is not just a place but an attitude. We practice our faith at camp by
taking your normal and saying, “Nah, not here.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is something
we all need: to break out of our routine and meet Jesus. Jesus’ ministry is
full of sudden, jarring stops, dramatic changes in peoples’ lives and all of it
comes unexpectedly. When people expect Jesus to zig, he zags. When they try to
paint him into a corner, he turns it around on them. Jesus doesn’t fit into the
boxes we make for him, because God is bigger than our expectations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Everyone is
searching for you,” Simon says to Jesus in the reading. But here is the
problem: They are looking for him where they expect. They expect Jesus to stay
put, build up a following, be the big fish in the small pond, cultivate power,
assume political authority, and eventually step on to the throne as king. They
expect that because that is what they would do. Instead, Jesus picks up his cross.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jesus meets
people in their discomfort. This is great news, because <i>that </i>is
precisely when we need him, not in the comfort of what is normal but in our
most desperate need. So, if your world feels like it is on fire, Jesus meets
you there. If things feel overwhelming, Jesus meets you there. When you are
hurting or dying, Jesus meets you there. And, conversely, if things are normal
and fine, then Jesus tends to feel distant, because Jesus is in the business of
healing, not staying. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, he is there in times of
desperate need but never lingering lest we confuse the little healing with what
really matters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is still about
the cross, which is exactly the philosophy we bring to camp and exactly the
philosophy I believe Jesus would have us take into our lives. Don’t bother with
the healings; don’t proclaim the Jesus who makes us feel better for a time; rather,
preach the Jesus who dies and rises. Don’t stress all the little things,
because we have a God who takes care of the biggest things. We have a God who
heals but so much more. We are given grace upon grace. And this is where our
true freedom lies, not in the so-called <i>liberty</i> that we are forever
chasing in this “land of the free.” True freedom is the sweeping awareness of
salvation that comes to us apart from what we deserve—grace upon grace—which
frees us to live and love as we choose, caring for others because that is what
people saved by grace do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At our best, this
is what it means to follow Christ—to shift our focus from the next most
important things—whether that be healings or politics or the Super Bowl or even
our families—shift our sight from the next most important thing to the most
important thing—the cross and the tomb, death and resurrection. And then, to be
a Christian is to reflect that love that God has for us back at our neighbors,
to be little Christs for a world that desperately needs us. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Frank Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847376017438742371noreply@blogger.com0