Category: Faith

I just came home from an evening out with the misses where we saw the wonderful Buyer & Celler staring Michael Urie. I can’t say enough good things about this show. Michael is fantastic in this one-man show that’s a fictional take on the mall that exists in Barbra Streisand’s basement. The show asks what it would be like to be the employee that worked there – a wonderful premise that’s hilarious. I loved seeing it and I can’t recommend it enough.

There’s a part in the story where Michael (who plays a character named Alex) talks about the concept of utopias and how, maybe, that’s part of what actors, directors, producers, and people-in-general try to do: they try to create these perfect little worlds, letting the right people in, and setting the place just right, so that the world we live in is a world of our own creation. It’s an interesting scene and an interesting view on how people interact and build their own worlds. And as the words were coming out of Michael’s mouth, I couldn’t help but think about ministry (I know, I know) and how that…that just doesn’t work. The problem with ministry, from my limited experience at least, is that the most effective and functional ministry work is done when the people we don’t expect show up into the room. And I’m not just talking about the drunks, or homeless, or poor, or whatnot – the groups of people that my previous comment typically brings to mind. No, the most effective ministry happens when the difference walks through the door. That means a church full of the unchurched is going to have a heck of a problem when someone’s middle age dad or young family walks into the door. The church that ministers to the poor and homeless is going to struggle to integrate the upper middle class empty nesters that want to join. And the church that is upper middle class is going to struggle when the projects behind the church building starts to enter the church. That’s the problem with the Holy Spirit – it keeps shoving difference into our midst. And that’s really hard to deal with, plan for, or facilitate. It’s kinda like parenting, to some degree. Once you get a routine, everything changes. Ministry keeps feeling like that to me – and is probably why I’m having so much fun, and being so exhausted, while being a part of it.

So here’s some Good Friday learning for ya.

After the noon service, I noticed that the paschal candle was melting; melting too much. I needed to move the candle to help setup the 3 pm service – and I didn’t want to keep burning myself on the hot wax (which, well, I did – a lot). Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. I took the follower – the crystal thing that goes on top of the candle to keep the candle looking flat, pretty, and not-too-melted – and put it on the candle. A colleague of mine agreed that this should work. I squished it on, avoided lighting my jacket on fire, and it worked. Success! I patted myself on the back for a job well done.

Two hours later, in the middle of our 3pm Stations of the Cross service, the follower exploded. Literally, exploded. Pieces covered the entire front of the sanctuary. The heat and melted wax overheated the crystal. Everyone heard it but the service kept going – because we’re hardcore like that.

So, for future reference, when using a follower on a paschal candle, put it on an unlit and well cleaned candle. Don’t do what I did – and destroy the only follower we have the day before the new candle, for 2013, needs it. Vicar fail 🙁

Worship as Repentance: Lutheran Liturgical Tradition and Catholic Consensus

That’s a great title, isn’t it?

I finished the book a week ago, returned it to General’s library, and I’m not sure how much sticking power this book has. The introduction, and conclusion, are mostly screens against the author, Walter Sundberg’s, view of eucharistic piety as practiced in the ELCA. He blames the 20th century liturgical movement as turning the worship service into a ritual centered on mysticism. The Lord’s table is where one is invited to “participate” in the divine. There is no need for self-reflection, self-examination, repentance, or any individual’s need to seek forgiveness. Rather, the Lord’s Table is treated as a dispensary of little bits of Godliness – like some kind of giant holy pez dispenser. Show up, hit the right button, and POOF, you get your little bit of God. There’s no need for personal change.

I get what Sundberg is trying to do. He’s trying to reconcile a couple of traditions in the Lutheran church with the problem of what a Christian looks like, how they behave, etc. Throughout The Book of Concord, there are many passages describing the Lord’s supper and what happens when the “unworthy” receive it. It’s not just a means of grace – for those who are unworthy to receive the bread and the wine, the Lord’s supper is actually dangerous. The Lord’s Supper might be the focus of a worship service, but the worship service has a wider purpose. It isn’t merely to meet people where they are at and keep them there. Rather, through worship, Word, and Sacrament, individuals are actually changed by the Spirit to go out and serve their neighbors. So, the question remains, how that change is manifest. And if the life of a Christian is to be one of continual worship (in a sense), how does that change manifest in a life beyond Sunday mornings. That’s where confession, forgiveness, and the “office of the keys” come in.

I actually think Sundberg does a great job tracing the use of Confession & Forgiveness since the Reformation. He traces its history through American Lutheranism as well – but his love of the 1917 Service Book and Hymnal leaves me wanting. I know what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to combat the churches who don’t include Confession & Forgiveness in their services every week. He’s trying to raise up that the Word, and the need for daily repentance, is worth something. He’s trying to point out that inclusion of others doesn’t mean we believe that everyone who comes to the Table is left in the same place as when they came. I get it, and I buy some of it. But Sundberg comes off as an angry old man while doing it because he relies on outdated data to make his point. He’s advocating the point of view that sociologist Rodney Stark has made that religious groups grow when they require, and give, individuals something tangible for their membership. But Sundberg, while relying on current data for the decline in ELCA churches, uses old data pointing to the continued rise in membership in Evangelical/Pentecostal churches (pre-2000 shows growth; post-2000 shows decline). Sundberg is advocating some form of “rigorousness” to ELCA membership and worship life. He’s trying, in his way, to say that worship matters and that this is serious business. But he does it in a way that comes off as…stuffy, old fashioned, and cranky. And, even though I don’t wholly disagree with his premise and ideas – his approach towards worship, I believe, wouldn’t allow me into it. I can’t really say why I think that, but I do. I, who grew up non-Lutheran, border atheist, and Latino – well – I wouldn’t be welcomed in his worship space. And I can’t advocate an approach to worship that wouldn’t let me into it.

Yesterday, I finished conducting my first type teaching a First Communion course. The ages of students ranged from 6 to 13. We used an old First Communion course but out by the ELCA in 1989. The pictures of students were…well… denim jackets were very popular back then. I’m amazed we, as a people, survived most of the eighties. But I was impressed with the engagement of the kids. Unlike me, they think much more concretely. They aren’t lost in an abstract point of view and they don’t see symbols, metaphors, or patterns like I do. They are, well, themselves. And all of them seemed to inherently put a form of rigorousness towards their approach to the Lord’s Table. They just got that it was the body and blood of Christ. They weren’t afraid of our conversations about death, forgiveness, and new life. And they saw, in the eucharist, not a ritual or any kind of mysticism. They know they need to believe it what is being offered there. There is a strictness inherent in their understanding of the Lord’s Supper. And I get that. It’s not merely a ritual participation in the divine and it’s no magic pez dispenser. There’s a wider perspective that’s required – a perspective that is self-reflective, includes self-examination, and sees, through the entire church service, including the Lord’s Supper, a give-and-take; a movement. It’s fluid. There is a fluidness towards worship, and faith, that shouldn’t be lost. In fact, it should be highlighted as a big part of the Lutheran tradition. I don’t think Sundberg, in his book, is pointing out what I’m noticing – but maybe his book is helping to frame my look at it. So, I’ll give him a thanks for that.

On Friday evening, I led my first funeral. I planned, organized, met with the family, and preached the entire thing. It was a funeral for a woman who was 73 years old. She died while at home, surrounded by her family, and sitting in her favorite chair. She was a member of the church but had not appeared at worship for a little bit. She didn’t grow up Lutheran but she ended up at our church because she liked it. After planning the service with her daughter, we ended up with a Lutheran liturgy with Baptist trimmings. It opened with a Spirit Dance, included liturgical responses that the gathered community didn’t do, and hymns that only I and the musician sung. It included an open coffin through the entire service with a final viewing during the closing hymn. We never got to the dismissal and the body left the church with “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston playing through the sound system.

I spoke the following homily. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I’m not sure what’s bugging me about it. Is it because spoke like I knew her well – even though I didn’t? Did the Gospel not come across as I would have liked? Am I just feeling strange about it because it was my first funeral homily? I dunno.

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The problem with being relatively new to a church community, is that you don’t always get to live alongside with everyone in it. I haven’t been at Advent very long ‚Äì but Delores ‚Äì she was one of those people I just wish I had lived alongside with ‚Äì just a bit longer. When I met her, and talked to her about her family ‚Äì and talked to her family about who Delores is ‚Äì she always seemed to me like a woman who lived. She didn’t ever stop living out her life. It didn’t matter her situation. It didn’t matter that, when I visited her last fall at the rehab center ‚Äì where the building was nice, the staff professional, and where they did good work there ‚Äì but everything around her was a shade of blue. Blue walls. Blue sheets. Blue curtains. Everything was just blue. But not Delores. When I saw her, she popped with color. Her shirts were pink and red and orange. It didn’t matter how she felt ‚Äì she was not going to let the blue in the room change who she is. She was going to be a person who lived her life ‚Äì no mater how blue her life got.

She was color. She seemed to me a person who loved the light ‚Äì who loved being bright ‚Äì and above all, she loved. When we talked, and when we shared scripture and holy communion together ‚Äì I got a sense that she loved ‚Äì that she wasn’t afraid of love ‚Äì and when I went to her apartment for the first time, and saw the pictures of her family hanging on the wall…. she’s the type of person who is hard to describe ‚Äì but she struck me as a bit of color in a gray world. And she lived out being that bit of color ‚Äì till the end.

And that’s what our Gospel reading is about today ‚Äì about that bit of color ‚Äì about that light that enters the world ‚Äì about that pink, red, and orange, in a world of gray, black, and blue. Our gospel is about that bit of color that you just can’t help and notice. We might not see it always. We might do are hardest to ignore it. We might try, like the poor human beings that we are, to think we don’t need it ‚Äì but that little bit of color actually changes things. It changes things because it’s here. That bit of color that’s a gift from God; a true gift from God ‚Äì a gift that’s given to all of us ‚Äì because that’s what Delores was ‚Äì a gift to us ‚Äì a bit of color in our world ‚Äì a bit of color that we’re all richer for.

But being richer doesn’t mean we’re never poorer. It doesn’t mean we’ll never hurt, suffer, or feel pain. Because, we’re mourning; we’re in grief; ‚Äì and even though we’re gathered here to celebrate her life ‚Äì to celebrate all the lives she touched ‚Äì we’re mourning. We are feeling loss. Some of us are struggling to figure out how we’re going to go about our day. Delores was an anchor ‚Äì a friend ‚Äì someone that we could trust would be there ‚Äì and now ‚Äì we’re closing a chapter. We’re closing a chapter in our relationship with her ‚Äì and this is a closing that some of us don’t wish we had to live through.

But the Christian story is never just about the loss. It’s never just about trying to figure out how to go on ‚Äì how to move on ‚Äì how to live another day without Delores active in it ‚Äì that’s not the Christian story; that’s not Delores’ story; that’s not why she came to this church, lived with its people, and heard the story of Jesus told every Sunday ‚Äì of how God’s only Son came into the world ‚Äì came into the world to live a human life ‚Äì to experience it ‚Äì all of it ‚Äì from joys to sorrows, happiness to pain, death to life. There’s a reason why the shortest verse in our english translation of the bible is about what Jesus did when he went to Lazarus’ tomb. He wept. Jesus didn’t come to pretend that pain didn’t happen. Jesus didn’t come to say that the grief we feel, or the sorrow that causes tears in our eyes, or the fear and anxiety and countless emotions that Delores’ death causes us, is something to be ignored. No, Jesus didn’t come to say that the human life isn’t worth living. Jesus came to transform it ‚Äì all of it ‚Äì including death.

Saint Paul writes, in his letter to the Philippians, that he presses on ‚Äì that he presses on to make his life like Christ not because Paul was worth anything ‚Äì but because Christ made Paul his own. Christ is Paul’s bit of color in the world ‚Äì that bit of color that he saw, witnessed, that reached out to him, reached out and loved him ‚Äì wrapped itself around him ‚Äì and he could do nothing else but live out that life in the world around him. And once that bit of color was in his life ‚Äì there was no looking back ‚Äì there was no dwelling in what’s behind ‚Äì instead there’s a striving forward ‚Äì a movement forward ‚Äì a movement towards that which Delores was given in her baptism ‚Äì that God loved her ‚Äì that Christ loved her ‚Äì that she was sealed in her faith with Christ’s own death and resurrection. Because death isn’t the final answer to who Delores Jones is. All of us who are gathered here together right now ‚Äì we’re witnesses to that fact; we’re witnesses that you can’t take that bit of color out of this world and think that death will be the end of it. Because those of us who interacted with her, who saw her, who were in relationship with her ‚Äì we couldn’t help but see that light that she shined ‚Äì the light that came from the one who is Eternal ‚Äì that light that, even now, in this period of darkness, this period of closure ‚Äì as we send Delores on her way ‚Äì her light that has infected our lives and Christ’s light that continues to come into our world, right now, through people like Delores ‚Äì that darkness can never be overcome.

Amen.

Delievered at Advent Lutheran Church, March 13, 2013, 7pm.

Scripture lessons: 1 Kings 16:31-17:16 & Luke 1:39-56
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Two weeks ago ‚Äì Pastor Brown brought some of the scripture stories that our Lenten bible studies are looking at. We’re participating in a pilot program of the wider church to help congregations be intentional about finding their story and their story in scripture. Last time, we heard a part of Jonah’s experience ‚Äì his song in the belly of the whale ‚Äì and we heard about Peter’s experience with the picnic blanket that came down from the sky. We heard stories of grace ‚Äì stories of God breaking through the barriers we set up ‚Äì and God not letting our ideas of partiality interfere with the abundance and reality of God’s grace.

So, tonight, I’m going to continue that trend of bringing, into worship, stories our studies are looking at ‚Äì and I’m bringing you a prophet, a widow, and two pregnant cousins.

It sounds like maybe the beginning of a joke right? I mean, we’re taking two scripture stories and completely removing them not only from their context in the Bible ‚Äì but also from their context with our wider cycle of worship. Mary’s song is from, well, that’s read during Advent and is about Christmas ‚Äì and the widow of Zarepeth, we read in the fall, at the end of the church year ‚Äì not right now, before Easter. We’re engaged with a…well, with a mashup of sort. By having these two stories side by side, we’re forced to experience scripture differently. We see Ahab, and Jezebel ‚Äì the king and queen that the writer of Kings loves to hate ‚Äì in conflict with Elijah ‚Äì the prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel ‚Äì who runs away after he confronts Ahab. And he runs into the desert where he’s fed by ravens ‚Äì like he’s Amy Adams in Enchanted ‚Äì and then he’s told by God to go into the heartland of the enemy ‚Äì to go to Jezebel’s home country ‚Äì and, there, show the power of God ‚Äì show God’s global and universal reach ‚Äì in the smallest of events ‚Äì in the simple sharing of a meal ‚Äì a meal that does not go out.

And the visit of Mary and Elizabeth ‚Äì two pregnant cousins of very different ages ‚Äì they are brought together in a common experience ‚Äì the experience of carrying a child. And in their meeting, they are caught up in the Holy Spirit and they praise God. They praise God in awesome ways ‚Äì a God who raises up the lowly and brings down the mighty from their thrones ‚Äì when Mary’s voice is held up to Elijah’s actions ‚Äì what we get is kinda like a God spirit rally. Like, we’re on some sports team ‚Äì and this is the message we share to pump us up ‚Äì to get us excited about God. God’s power ‚Äì God’s awesomeness ‚Äì God’s amazing gifts and God’s amazing story ‚Äì this is a scripture mashup that ends up not sounding very Lenten to me.

Because ‚Äì where’s the self-reflection ‚Äì the confession ‚Äì the temptation? Where’s the call for my need to repent ‚Äì to change ‚Äì to be brought back to God? Because it looks like these stories are about people caught up in the act of living out their faith. They’re living out what it means to know God, to be in relationship to God, to listen to God. And in that living out ‚Äì they do. The widow of Zarepth isn’t a member of the chosen people ‚Äì she shouldn’t be able to recognize that Elijah is a prophet from God ‚Äì but she does ‚Äì and she never doubts what he says. She just…she just does. And Elijah just goes. He goes where God tells him to go. And when Mary speaks, the boy in Elizabeth’s belly jumps ‚Äì and they can do nothing but sing God’s praise. I don’t see the call for my personal repentance here ‚Äì when these stories are mashed together, I see a lived out faith that can’t do anything but listen and praise God. But maybe the content of these stories aren’t our Lenten mirror ‚Äì maybe seeing these characters live out their faith is ‚Äì because when we hold these stories up to our faces ‚Äì we end up seeing not only ourselves, but these characters staring back at us. It’s like a reflection in the widow on the side of a bus as it goes by. Standing on the sidewalk, the traffic zooming by, the bus comes near and we see ourselves looking back ‚Äì but we can see the people inside the bus looking back at us. Instead of seeing a reflection for just a moment ‚Äì we’re caught hearing and absorbing these stories ‚Äì these stories are spoken and they linger ‚Äì linger in the air ‚Äì and what they reflect isn’t just our good looks or what we’re wearing today ‚Äì they reflect our stories. In the mashup of scripture with us, we meet God’s story with our story.

Each of us are going to have a different experience when these stories meet our story. Each of us are going to have a personal moment ‚Äì a moment that belongs only to us ‚Äì because our stories are personal stories; stories of reflection; loss; pain; love; doubt; confusion; and hope. The stories that scripture shares are stories between people ‚Äì between people caught in the act of sharing their story with us. In a way, living out faith is living out stories ‚Äì and not being afraid to tell our story ‚Äì not being afraid to see an invitation in God’s Word that our story is worth being known. In a moment, we’re going to gather around the altar. We’re going to gather together and share communion with each other. We’ll hear part of Jesus’ story ‚Äì of Jesus’ welcoming of other people to his table, to break bread with him, to drink with him ‚Äì to be caught in the act of intimacy that meals can bring ‚Äì because this is the place where stories are shared, known, and told. As we gather together at the Lord’s table ‚Äì and then, later, at the table on the side for cookies and refreshments ‚Äì know that your story is worth telling; that your story is worth knowing; and that God is in the constant creative act of knowing us ‚Äì and being made known to us. It is in the act of gathering that leads to the sharing of our stories, of God’s stories, and the story of Jesus on the Cross, who came not to hide our stories ‚Äì but to open our personal, private, public, and intimate stories to God’s eternal story ‚Äì a story of love.

Amen.