Save the Wild Things…

Hi everybody,

It’s a beautiful sunny 14 degrees here at Spring Lake Minnesota, and I’m itchin’ to get outside and see what critters have been leaving tracks around the parsonage and church property.  I’m slowly working through Martin Luther’s commentary on the Magnificat, and it’s wonderful reading… any time of the year, not just when the text is coming up on Sunday.

Saoirse and I spent the day together yesterday while Momma was in St. Paul chislin’ away at the last few days before her well-earned Christmas break.  We’re lucky to have a 2-year old that seems to love being outside regardless of the conditions (although, like her folks, she’s not all that keen on 40 degrees and pouring rain!).  Krista and I got new XC ski setups from her folks this year for Christmas gifts, and I think we might give ‘em a try tonight or tomorrow in the moonlight (just like old times at 471 Jefferson St in Mondovi).  We even found a set of plastic step-ins for Saoirse, and I’m looking forward to teaching her how to ski like my folks taught me.

I hope you’re all getting some good opportunities to be outside during this time of the year.  I love it when all the swamps freeze over and open up to some pretty decent exploring where they’d be near impassable but for the sub-zero temps.

Bristol Bay, Alaska was home for about five months for me during the summer and fall of 1997.  Lots of what Dillingham had to offer had to do with some of the stuff we all enjoy about being outside, but on a scale unimaginable here in the “lower 48″ (I hardly believed most of the stories I heard about AK ’til I lived there).  I watched executive “sportsmen” fly in and out of the bush on these wonderful Grumman seaplanes parked next to the hangar I worked in at the airport.  They’d fly in carrying all the latest high-tech equipment, most of which they’d just leave behind at the outfitter (saw an Orvis flyrod that went for about $1500 just sitting in the office there that some guy had left as a gratuity).  Many of the folks who grew up there made their living on salmon fishing the way my people back in Mondovi made theirs on dairy farming, trapping, raising crops, or working in the countless industries that surrounded those trades.  I was having beers one night with a 22 year-old fisherman-captain who offered to buy, and when he opened up his wallet he discovered a tattered check for what looked like around $200K.  He owned two commercial boats and had forgotten to cash his biggest check.  …Never knew if it was another gag though, and most of you know how gullible I can be!

I just got wind of a decision made by the BLM in Alaska that will affect Bristol Bay and its fisheries forever.  If you haven’t heard about the Pebble Mine operation, it’s something that’s been in the works for a while.  But this particular decision to open certain river systems right around Dillingham to exploration for minerals and gas and oil really struck me.  I think it’s one of the wildest places (with certainly some of the most memorable characters) I’ve ever lived in.  Many of the most important things I’ve learned have come in the times and places when I’ve felt very far away from what I’m accustomed to… and that was certainly available in Dillingham!

Please have a look at this link if you’d like to know more about the story I’m referring to:

http://www.adn.com/money/story/592844.html

Krista, Saoirse, and I, (and ???… due June, 2009) wish you all the best.

“… We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

- From The Sound of Mountain Water, Wallace Stegner, 1969.

Ready to wrench!

The garage has rapidly taken shape over the past week and I’m getting ready to take it to the first level of “completion”.  (I know better than to believe I’ll ever have a home shop set up exactly as I want it… there’s always something more to modify, purchase, make space for, wire up, insulate, or plug in; but that’s part of the beauty no?).

Tomorrow, Krista will begin the commute to St. Paul with Saoirse as they’ll both be spending most of their weekday hours “down south” at Linwood Elementary and the Thomsen household respectively.  After I’m finished with my daily appointments, hopefully around noon, I’ll be heading over to “the Parsonage at Spring Lake” to power up the drill, find some good hook placements, build up a couple more utility shelves, and finally sort out my roll-around toolbox and Gorilla Rack workbench.  There’s wheels to be sorted out, tubes and tires running loose all over, and a couple of stray frames awaiting inspiriation that need better homes.

Of course along with all of this comes the task of figuring out good spots for all of the “boxed gear” we have stored in those ubiquitous (I think they actually breed prolifically) plastic containers.  With the new decking that Dad and I put up in the garage rafters, there’s plenty of space to put stuff like that up there, but it’s all got to be VERY resistant to extreme temperatures.  I can’t see a space that might get up to 150 degrees in summer and 20 below in winter being a good environment for dive gear… stuff that you really don’t want to deal with failing because it’s been temp-weakened!  So I’ll have to go through a few bins, and most of the space will be taken up with the more “rugged” items in our arsenal of fun tools.  Definitely no white gas!

The utility room will need some attention too, but with the garage coming into focus it’s a lot easier to address the issue.

So come one come all, bring me your squeaks, your creaks, your broken brakes and noisy derailleurs, I’ll build you some new wheels, change out your cables, tune up your ride, get a little messy, douse my thirst for a spendy beer, and gain some points toward stress relief while I’m at it.

Upcoming texts for 8/24

Here’s a look at the scripture passages coming up for 8/24:

I recommend that you read the passages in your own copy, and then consider some of the comments I’ve put up alongside the listing.  Please send some comments and let me know if this is helpful for you as you read.

Isaiah 51:1-6  The passage begins in a lot of calls from the LORD to “you that PURSUE righteousness” [the same word in Ps 23:6 for "...surely goodness and mercy shall FOLLOW me..."], and images those who are SEEKING the Lord to “…LOOK TO the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.”  Then the verbs move from sight to hearing in vs. 4.  The speaker asks for those within sight and sound of his voice to “LOOK HERE” and “LISTEN UP” before unloading a truckload of promises.  “I WILL…” action is cited in the near future for God’s people, who, like the coastlands, “wait for me,” and live in hope for God’s action.  A foreboding conclusion comes for all the heavens and earth visible to those of us here who are told that “the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats;” [OOOF!]  But even after all of that happens, the Lord says his salvation will continue… another instance where God claims authority beyond the limits of what this world can dish out.

Psalm 138  [Antiphon verse 8: "...your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever..."]  Another instance of recognizing God’s ability and authority to act in an ETERNAL fashion.  Verse 7 of the psalm recalls a familiar phrase from Ps 23: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies…”  It’s the “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” language of faith.  Other notable places in 138 to my ear are in verse 1: “…before the gods I sing your praise…” a statement of defiance and sedition in many of the cultures of pagan worship and the civic law of religious worship [literally called "pietas" or "piety"] expected of all who lived under the rule of Rome after Alexander.  Verse 3 also recalls the relationship upon which all theology (worth a hoot) is based: God who acts to save (or “make right,” or “justify”), and a sinner in need of salvation: “On the day I called, you answered me [ANSWERING is a common act of the LORD in the Bible, distinguishing between the living God and idols who cannot answer], you increased my strength of soul.”  And verse 6 treats us to that portrait of the Lord as a wholly different kind of king: “for though the LORD is high [mighty, all-powerful, etc... insert appropriate "omni-" here], he regards [literally "heeds, hearkens to, is active in the direction of, is beneficial to] the lowly; but the haughty he perceives from far away.”  Gives new insight into that song “From a distance…” that might be sung from the perspective of the haughty.

Romans 12:1-8  Paul distinguishes between the sacrifice to idols and the “living sacrifice” of one’s own body as a “spiritual worship” of God.  He encourages the very abstentions that got early Christians in trouble with the horrible emperors of Rome: to refrain from the idol worship that the empire made compulsory and instead offer themselves as living sacrifices to God.  One can imagine what this kind of talk meant during a time when the persecution of Christians in Rome became a popular pastime and spectator sport.  I wonder if they consoled one another with these words and assurances in the waiting cells under the colliseum.  “Do not be CONFORMED to this world,” he continues… a non-conformist religion?  Count me in!  “…but be TRANSFORMED by the renewing of your minds” [both verbs are in the passive tense, btw, noting that this action happens TO US, not BY US].  This passage we’ll hear ends in another familiar train of thought commonly heard from 1Cor ch 12 on the many and varied gifts of the spirit to the entire body of the Church.

Matthew 16:13-20  A passage titled “Peter’s declaration about Jesus” but probably would be better called “the revelation of the Father through Peter” as Jesus notes the origin of Peter’s confession in his answer in verse 17: “…for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”  Heaven is always revealing itself to earth in these actions of the LORD.  It can become easy to believe that we can pry open the secrets of heaven from where we live on earth, and I can find no such statement in scripture [though I really wish it could be this way].  Perhaps this is what it means to live, as Isaiah’s prophecy notes, “on the coastlands,” waiting for God’s promises to be revealed in God’s own time and not ours.  Lastly in the passage, we hear the promise of “the office of the keys” in Jesus gift of the absolution: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven [is this where the whole "giving the key to the city" ceremony comes from in civic life?], and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  Check your copy of the Small Catechism in the section on Confession and Absolution, as well as articles XI, XII, and XXIV of the Augsburg Confession for some great reflections on this promise.

Initial responses: When we are speaking the absolution of sin, we are actually witnessing the work of the eternal LORD in the finite world captive to sin, death, and the power of the devil.  God is using ordinary things which will eventually pass away (breath, air, words, preachers) to bestow the goods of eternal salvation on those whom he has chosen in faith.  I hear afresh Jesus’ answer to Peter’s confession, and I again come to know that any confession of Jesus as LORD is, and remains, the work of the Holy Spirit, and not something that we are capable of.  My daughter is all of two years old, and fully enveloped in the “I do it by myself” phase of relationship.  It’s something that never really stops pressing us toward more and more vivid acts of self-definition, of assertions of self-sufficiency, even as we grow old and dependent upon others in our lives for all sorts of things we can’t do for ourselves.  But we’re again brought to the simple understanding of faith as something that only happens in relationship with the living God, who refuses to allow us to act on our own apart from his grace.

Upcoming texts for 8/10/2008

Here’s the list of texts we’ll be hearing this coming Sunday:

1Kings 19:9-18 At Mount Horeb, where God had appeared to Moses by way of the typical demonstrations of God’s presence – earthquake, wind, and fire [sounds like a good name for a soul band doesn't it?] – Elijah now experiences God in a particular kind of silence. I’m fond of a translation that calls the silence “crushing,” evoking vivid images of how certain kinds of quiet can make us feel puny. God assures Elijah that he is not the only faithful believer… he is on the run from Queen Jezebel, who has just threatened him with death because he had all of her prophets (of Baal) seized and killed in the Wadi Kishon after the “prophet showdown” at Mount Carmel. God tells Elijah that seven thousand Israelites are still loyal, and Elijah is instructed to anoint Hazael as king over Aram and Jehu as king over Israel, and Elisha the farmboy as his own successor.

Psalm 85:8-13 Antiphonal verse 8: “I will listen to what the LORD God is saying.” A prophetic reading of what is to come when God speaks peace to his people. The verses before this recollect the favor and forgiveness that God had shown in the past, with vv 4-7 making a transition from past to future through the present situation of praying for restoration. I like the tone of vv 5&6 especially, and though they’re not part of the reading I might just mention them because they echo so many of the good honest prayers I hear people telling me about when they pray in the midst of turmoil or seemingly endless strings of unfortunate events… it’s that tone of voice we use when we fear we’re talking to ourselves when we’re asking for help: “Hello, anybody listening??” or that awful feeling comics must have when they tap the mic and say “is this thing on?” Here’s what they say: 5. “Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? 6. Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?” I’ll leave it to you to read the rest, but these verses are priceless to those who’ve ever wondered “hey God, ARE you listening?”

Romans 10:5-15 Paul gets into what true evangelical Christians hold very close: proclamation. Faith comes not by our achieving it through heroic effort, but instead by way of the preached Word… the living and breathing “New Testament” of the entire Bible: Jesus Christ. This proclamation is sent by way of a preacher, and the Holy Spirit uses it as he will to create faith. The proclamation of Christ crucified and risen FOR YOU is the essence of the church, many acclaimed “experts” making plenty of money today by way of “mission consultations” and seminars seem to omit this from an otherwise intellectually stimulating and spiritually uplifting rhetoric. The “snausage” in this week’s bulletin will contain the text of Augsburg Confession article V, which also deals with this issue of how faith comes about in sinners.

Matthew 14:22-33 After dismissing the thousands of people on the lakeshore who have been fed, Jesus instructs the disciples to get aboard a boat while he withdraws to pray. Early the next morning, the boat has drifted out into open waters, exposing the group aboard to the waves and wind, but they see Jesus coming toward them, walking on the water. This passage is one of many foreshadowing the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, where he shows up in an impossible way (i.e. in a room where the door was locked, on the road to Emmaus, coming to Mary Magdalene and telling her to go ahead and let the other disciples know, etc…) in a very frightening moment and issues words of peace and comfort. Much has been made of Peter’s walking on water, and I’ve never known quite what to make of the scenario except for identifying with the words he speaks before getting out of the boat (“call me to you…”) and as he is having a “Wyle E. Coyote” moment, realizing he’s put himself in an absolutely irreversible position of complete vulnerability before the LORD Almighty (“LORD save me!”). It’s a prayer I have often uttered in one bind or another.

The whole notion of being told to get in a boat, falling asleep, and coming to in the middle of a storm on open water seems to have some echoes with my own sense of life’s trajectory. Regardless of how careful we are, how vigilant about our surroundings and associations, or how protective of our health and possessions, everything we are gets put on the line when the LORD finds us and chooses to dwell with us. There’s a line from one of my favorite westerns (“Silverado”) where a couple of the main characters are out on a goodwill mission to retrieve a community lockbox from some thieves who are holed up in a box canyon. The few men who’ve gone out peer carefully over the ledge of the canyon, getting the first glimpse of the terrible odds they’re up against, and the guy who’s just kind of “along for the ride” (Paden) says to the main hero (Emmett), “you know, hangin’ around you is no picnic.” That seems to be appropriate to these situations we find ourselves in when Jesus gets ahold of us and works Gods good on the world. Sometimes I pray that way: “you know Jesus, hangin’ around with you is no picnic.” Perhaps a more adequate church analogy is “…hangin’ around with you is no potluck.”

I’m reminded of Bonhoeffer’s book regarding “the Cost of Discipleship,” in which he sets up definitions of “costly grace” and “cheap grace” for the purpose of a bigger thesis, summed up in the statement that when Jesus calls disciples he does so by saying “…come and die.” It’s quite a grave thing to say, by someone who participated in quite serious and weighty expressions of religious conviction. I’m much more drawn to Forde who says of this dichotomy that “grace isn’t cheap or costly, it’s just… grace.”

I think I might try and stick with what Jesus says in the passage to the disciples, because those words can also be given out to those of us facing storms and tenuous situations of our own: “take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Jesus is quoted using the same Greek phrase (“ehgo eimi”) that in John is translated “I am,” referencing one of the oldest authority references God makes in the Bible (see anything with “I am” or “I am the LORD your God” in it). And then he issues the prophetic words of comfort that order horrified hearts to become still, “do not be afraid.” How many other places do we read that statement being said to people in very scary encounters with the Almighty?

I wonder what Isaac Newton did with this passage…

Sermon Manuscript Aug 3

Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”  They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”  And he said, “Bring them here to me.”

Sisters and brothers, you who have been brought here now among this gathering of believers, grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from the LORD our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

He has sent his Holy Spirit far and wide, to gather you from the dark corners and back alleys of this world in order that you might hear a word from your LORD that you can trust.  “HO!” he has cried from his font, “everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;” and again from his table he rings his dinner bell and yells out across the earth, “and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”  This LORD of yours gives you everything from his endless stores, at NO COST to you… now that’s what I call “SAVINGS”!

Savings… and not earnings.  Nothing that we have will do in the exchange.  Christ’s merit alone earns back what we have rung up in our sin, our death, and our nightmarish “buy now, pay later” cooked-books scheming with the devil.  And Christ, the anointed messiah of the LORD’s chosen nation Israel, the actual, living, breathing New Testament of the entire scriptures, born in the city of God’s chosen king David, Christ himself and alone is here, passing all… ALL the savings along to you, in his word of forgiveness of sins, given in water, wine, and bread.  FREE OF CHARGE!

In the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of eternity impinging itself at this very moment upon this finite world in faith alone, by God’s grace alone, Christ has compassion on us who twitch and curl in thirst for mercy, this weary gaggle of thousands, so caught up in the moment that we’ve stranded ourselves in a wilderness without bread.  Instead of sending us away to fend for ourselves (he’s seen how that goes… and it ain’t pretty), rather than finding a quiet place to hunker down and shake off the rejection he’s just had in his own hometown, not stopping even for a day to lock himself away in a room somewhere to grieve his beloved cousin John who had just been beheaded at the whims of ignorant paper royalty, instead Jesus is moved to compassion for the multitudes… the very crowds who in only a short while will cheer as he rides into Jerusalem as David did on a colt; the same people who will spit and curse as he drags his sorry carcass through town to the hill outside the city, to give himself totally for them, for us, for you.

“They need not go away,” he says, cutting the disciples short in their attempt at protecting Jesus from further abuse at the hands of strangers.  “Don’t you dare tell them to leave, you tell them to stay here… and YOU give them something to eat.  The shopkeepers, merchants, and innkeepers around here will only charge them money they don’t have for their bread, water, and pillow; I have something different in mind.  So just you fellas hold yer horses and ring the dinner bell.”

An ancient and joyful prayer, offering praise and recognition to God for his abundance and mercy, Psalm 145 contains words that we often recite together around our own tables as we sit down for supper and a review of the day with the ones who love us.  “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.”  Such were the eyes of these many people gathered on that sad day from area towns, following Jesus on foot where he went by boat to try and withdraw.  “You open your hand,” sings the psalm, bringing to mind this classic posture of invitation that we even see today in our worship services, this gesture embodied in carvings of St. Francis statues we put in our gardens, and in those lovely animated maidens welcoming birds and cute little creatures to sing with them in Disney adaptations of fairy tales.  Every time I do this gesture up here, singing like some happy goofball to you in our liturgy, I feel like we’re in one of those musicals that we all watch when we want to feel good again.  “You open wide your hand,” some translations have it read, emphasizing the sheer giddy eagerness God has in feeding his creatures, “satisfying the desire of every living thing.”  Not just families gathered around a table, huddled over a woven mat in a one-room hut, or trailing after a rapidly-emptying relief truck, but every living thing has satisfaction coming in Christ.  He is the one to whom all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hid, and he is capable of dizzying compassion when all of us can only wonder, “how does he do it?”

So we can understand the sentiment behind the disciples comments: wanting to give their rabbi some breathing room, acting on to preserve his public image, trying to take care of his flock for him just this once the only way they know how… by sending them away to fend for themselves.  But as David, the shepherd boy who was anointed king of Israel, once looked over his family’s sheep in the fields, protecting them from lions and wolves with a sling and a spear, so too does Jesus look over his very own flock… moved to compassion by their great need.  And though we might make sense of the thought process of the disciples, we will only perceive by faith what it was that followed.

“NO ONE GOES AWAY HUNGRY!” booms the voice of the LORD.  “ALL WILL EAT TO THEIR HEART’S DELIGHT AND ALL WILL DRINK THEIR FILL.”  “But how can this be?” asked the disciples, “there’s nothing here but a little bread and fish… barely enough for us!”  And that’s where we find ourselves caught with them: in the arms of an abundantly rich LORD, heads shaking in bewilderment as he goes about the business of feeding the world, of opening wide his hand and satisfying the desires of every living thing, leaving us to only recognize it by the work of the Holy Spirit, who leads us in prayer: bless us O LORD, and these thy gifts, which we receive from thy bounty in Jesus name, Amen.  Come LORD Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed.

And he is here, for you in his Word, given and shed for you at his table, poured over you in his baptism.  “How can this be?” you wonder, “Bring them here to me,” comes the order.

Our first houseguests!

We’ve had overnight visitors at “the Parsonage at Spring Lake”!  Joe and Autumn, friends from the crew at County Cycles in Roseville (check out their store website I’ve got linked on the blog), rode their bikes (the kind with pedals and no exhaust pipes) up from St Paul on Saturday and tented out in our yard.  It sounded like a fun ride for them until they started following the directions they got to the Kozy Oaks campground which they’d gotten from MapQuest.  Of course, the internet directions were pretty hard to decipher, and they were led on a wild chase on gravel/sand backroads until they were forced to admit that this was no fun.  So, they turned around and headed to the Pizza Pub in N.B. for some food and beers before pulling the 4-mile stretch of hwy 95 out to the parsonage… in the darkness.

One thing this community of bikers has going for us though is that we’re all used to riding in traffic, in less-than-desireable highway conditions, all kinds of weather, and darkness.  Neither Joe nor Autumn even own cars!  So they’re pretty well equipped for whatever a ride like this one will have for them in terms of hazards and challenges.  Both of these folks have made the insane “Duluth ride” (something I’ll probably write about in another post) to completion… I’m pretty sure Joe’s done it several times.  320 miles on a single-speed bike, overnight, 27 hours in the saddle; a straight shot to Duluth and back on the Sunrise Prairie Trail, old hwy 61 (hwy 30), and the mind-numbing round trip of Hinckley-Duluth-Hinckley on the great Willard Munger Trail (it’s an awesome trail through some beautiful natural scenery, but its 75 miles one way, and taking in 150 miles of it can be a bit much in one ride).  So Joe and Autumn were all set for riding at night on 95.  Joe was showing me his new lighting system (he’s getting ready for a 24-hour mountain bike race at Afton Alps that he’ll probably use this for) at the house, and its almost as bright as the security lighting on the parsonage garage!

They joined us at the 10am worship service on Sunday, and I couldn’t resist sharing an inside joke w/Joe that we used to go back and forth with at the bike shop.  So I hope it wasn’t too much of an embarrassment when I piped up right in the beginning of the service and said “Hey Joe!  ‘I have got some tasty snaaaacks!’”  Fun stuff!

So, we got to share the parsonage space with friends, hung out a bit on Sunday, and now our biker buddies from the Cities have a little better idea about how to make it up to the house safely.  All that remains is to get the bike shop set up in the garage, construct the fire ring/gathering space in the yard, set out a few choice tent sites a little further away from the highway noise, and we’ll probably have an extra six or eight folks sitting in worship with us on random Sundays.  This is by far my favorite community of friends that I’ve gotten to know at work, and by far the best hourly-wage job I’ve ever had.  Everything I ever valued in a work culture I had right there at County Cycles, and it was the best thing to be doing before coming to work at Spring Lake because it’s all fresh in my head to perpetuate in my work here.

Krista and I both appreciate the clear understanding among members at SLLC with regard to our privacy and personal space at the parsonage: that it’s our house, that we are the only ones with keys, etc.  But at the same time one of the dynamics that Krista says she really misses from her life in Madagascar in the PeaceCorps is the idea of people just stopping in to chat.  I grew up with the same dynamic in my family as well as the farming culture that surrounded my childhood.  We’ve had so much fun with people stopping by when they see us out in the yard to welcome us, and random buckets of berries and vegetables “showing up” on the front steps, that we hope everyone will soon feel welcome to come and see us while “using their best judgment” when we’re wrapped up in other things.  We’re so excited to have a place to live like this one, where our friends can come and spend a few hours with us with their kids, where we can have people over to tell stories and chew the fat around a big fire ring, or come and fix some bikes with me or see what Saoirse’s up to now!

Sermon manuscript from 7/13

To you who have been planted here, in this place, now, in this time, in the bottomlands, the sandy loams and clay, in the fertile places and those choked by noxious interlopers, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from the LORD Jesus Christ, our sower and Savior.  Amen.

Sometimes, the Word of the LORD comes so softly as to evade even the most attentive listeners among us.  In a wisp of air, a whisper as immaterial as a cottonwood puff lilting along over a meadow, a word is spoken to us beyond our capacities to take it in, to grasp it, treasure it, and say for sure that it happened.  Other times, life just gets too plain noisy to hear anything clearly, and in a vigorous clamor we are lost to any sensible state of mind, only dealing with what comes up in front of us, only able to respond to the clashes and crashes of wave upon wave of interference, static, tumult, and upheaval as we fight for balance, for solid footing and an easy breath of air.  We get turned around in a wall of sound of competing voices… this one calling forth desire from us, that one inflaming our scorn and wrath.  We become deaf, left in dire straits without a word from our LORD, drifting haplessly from one gaping mouth to the next, hoping in vain that the honey or bile that drips and spills from them will sustain us completely.  So many voices calling for our ears, which is the one we long to hear?

And again there are those times when the Word catches us squarely in the eardrum.  It reverberates through us, we feel its echo from the soles of our feet through to the tops of our heads and we cannot resist this word as it enters our hearts to change us again and again and again.  Finally, this Word works its way out of our own mouths, parting our lips and drawing our breath to speak its way into the ears of another sinner, to kill and make alive in Christ as it has killed us and made us alive.  It’s as if we were made to hear this Word, to receive this very gift, as though there were some acreage in us all just waiting for the sound of this voice.

Like seeds and soil, like earth and the rain that falls upon it, like sun and heat and air and space, the Word of the LORD and the heart of a sinner are made for each other.  When we feel the ancient sting of conscience in us, when we wilt under the blaze of our tormentors in this life, when we lose all hope for the good ground, the Word that God has unleashed upon the world falls like a welcome soaker on a hot July day: feeding us, cooling us down, bringing a reprieve from the pinch and poke of sin.  And though this Word falls wherever the sower has passed with his satchel of seed — on barren lands, on rocky ground, among the thistle and thorn or in the sweet bottom lands where the black dirt smolders in sunlight after a warm rain — it WILL NOT RETURN TO THE ONE WHO SPEAKS IT EMPTY.  It will NEVER FAIL to accomplish its purpose.  Whether it brings down to death, feeds, gives comfort and assurance, or brings about new life where there was none before, this Word can be trusted… not because we are good at trusting or because it satisfies our endless testing of it on the basis of our logic, our emotional responses to it, or our consensus about it, but because the One who speaks this Word is eminently trustworthy.

So many types of soil, and yet the same seed falls on them all.  It can become easy to let ourselves believe that we are one or another type, while our neighbor falls into a different classification according to our assessments.  We can get too busy decoding this story about a sower and his seed and find ourselves lost in a game that only pins labels that we invent on people.

Is that really what we’re after?  Is that what we want?  Is that what Christ calls us to when he comes and tells these parables to us?  No.  Surely this is loss and nothing else but the folly that we all invent when we’re all sitting around waiting for the rain to stop.

God’s Word remains — it has taken up residence… dwelling in us — this isn’t a “one-shot deal” here, as so many false preachers and tormentors of conscience like to present it.  God is so generous, so loving, and so abundantly gracious, that in Christ Jesus we will never cease to receive the gifts of his righteousness, his innocence, his blessedness as long as we shall live.  No, this LORD of yours has decided that you will not go one second without having his Word spoken to you.  So all creation preaches his Word to you: birds sing, owls hoot and coyotes howl at night, the wind blasts the leaves and rushes past your drapes to scatter your paperwork so neatly arranged on the table, horses stomp and whinny and fart in the pastures, and the bustle of an entire metropolis interrupts you to place you completely at the mercy of God who has chosen to speak to you and never shut up, never give up, and never give in.

The sower sows with glee, with wild and reckless abandon, slinging seed wherever it falls from his hand, to do what seed and soil do when they are placed together.  The Holy Spirit in the same way calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the entire world by way of Christ’s body the Church; keeping it in the one true faith in him by way of nothing more permanent than a drawn breath and a spoken word.  As good farmers, we would think that such a waste of good seed deserves scornful reproach and swift correction lest this maniac exhaust the supply.  But there’s where the LORD’s work differs from our own: he never runs out of seed, he never comes up short on resources, and his stores of treasure never run dry.

We are each of us subject to all of the experiences Jesus describes in this parable.  Sometimes we’re the hardpan ground of the path, and the seed never has a chance to even sprout before becoming bird food.  Other times we’re full of rocks (I keep all of mine in my head), lending nary enough space for a tender sprout to sink roots and grow strong.  We get lost sometimes among the “itchy pokies,” the thorns and briars, brambles and nettles, having so many other voices draw us away that they simply choke out any chance of a healthy plant producing fruit.  And other times we are that ground where everything has come together: nutrients and rain, tillage and drainage, sun and wind and space.  So the seed falls on us, sprouts, takes root, and grows strong to produce so much fruit as to overwhelm the harvest.

You are the LORD’s treasured home; your heart has always been his one and only destination and deepest desire.  That you receive his grace, his mercy, his steadfast and unfailing love for you defines the joy in his constant work in the Spirit, who keeps you in the knowledge that there is therefore no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus.  For that is exactly where you find yourself today: fed, watered, weeded, harvested, and flung again as his own beloved child… forgiven for Christ’s sake and given in Christ’s faith to those whose ears have not yet heard.  Go, the rain has stopped, and his reign has begun.  You are a worker of joy in a kingdom of overflowing plenty.  And may the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.

Texts for 7/20

Here’s what we’ll hear from the scriptures this Sunday:

Isaiah 44:6-8  A short and brash prophetic voicing of God’s challenge to any other that would make the same claim of identity as God does.  I like it when God’s speech gets “chesty” like this… issuing challenges and put downs to any other who would dare refer to themselves by the same deeds and power.  The “snub” I especially like is in vs 7: “Who is like me? Let them PROCLAIM it” because it reminds me of the psalm that refers to little idols and carvings that people bow down to that cannot talk.  SPEECH distinguishes a living, real, and completely free God from a dead, fake, and completely bound one.

Psalm 86:12-25  Antiphonal verse 11: “Teach me your way, O LORD, that i may walk in your truth: give me and undivided heart to revere your name.”  Lots of talk in the Older Testament hands over rich imagery: faces (like when Moses walks off the mountain and has to wear a veil), hands (like God’s hand holding up the sun in its course so that a battle could continue in favor of the Israelites), feet (“how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news…” from Isaiah 52).  And “heart talk” is always poignant.  Here the Psalmist asks God for “an undivided heart” calling to mind the reality that the heart of a needful sinner remains divided and subject to the winds and whims of temptation, weakness, and evil.  Remember the part of Ps 51 that we sing after offering?  It’s very similar language coming from a writer (most likely King David after being convicted by Nathan for the death of Uriah) who also knows a reality different from the one requested: “create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me…”  Powerful stuff.

Romans 8:12-25  Our tour through Paul’s apostolic tour de force continues in one of this letter’s most vital chapters.  He refers to people who have received the Gospel of Christ by a title often employed explicitly and implicitly in images by Peter in his letters: heirs.  in vs 17 of this passage, concluding a meditation on the flesh and its limits coupled with a reflection of the power of the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit), Paul writes that we who have received a “spirit of adoption” become children of God, “and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…”  Lovely words in the ears of anyone who feels or has ever felt put beyond God’s reach.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43  The missing verses contain other parables: the Mustard Seed, the Yeast, and a reflection by the writer of this gospel account on Jesus’ use of parables to speak to the crowds in order to fulfill a prophecy contained in Psalm 78 verse 2: “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old…”  As I hear Jesus tell the parable about weeds being planted among wheat, and then explain privately (in a house) to his disciples the meaning of the parable, the explanation of Article VIII of the Augsburg Confession came to mind.  In defining what “the Church” is, the confessors observed that, for the present time, weeds are mixed in (latin: “per mixta”) with the wheat, as hypocrites and evil persons are also mixed in with those who truly believe the Gospel.  Articles 17 and 19 also come to mind… I’ll leave that to you to explore.

I don’t know yet what direction the texts are taking me, what they are reading in me this week, how they are working on the community in and around SLLC, but it’s still early.  With the monotony of moving, the physical strain and the mental fatigue that comes along with a job that to me always feels like some sort of weird and ineffective penitence (does effective penitence truly exist?… yes, see CA XI, XII, and XXIV) for my consumerist iniquity, I’m feeling a bit (more than usually) out of sorts going into this Sunday.  I side emphatically with my dad when he observes that his own preaching tends to suffer in proportion to the amount of pastoral visiting he can do during a particular week.

When “my stuff” becomes “all this cr@#!”

We’re nearing the tail end of what I’ve taken to calling “The Big Movement” from our townhouse in St. Paul to the Parsonage at Spring Lake (kind of makes me think of those houses in Door County we saw with signs in front of them).  Going from about 1200 sq. ft. to probably near 3000 is a big relief for us, and the congregation has been incredibly supportive with the financial resources and labor to complete a major remodeling project to the house by this time.  Of course for me, the garage is the vital area, and with my tools scattered all over the place in bins, the benches and workspaces all torn down and stacked hinder and yon, I’m a wreck.  There are boxes upon boxes of our stuff in the house awaiting unpacking, and carefully rendered placements (we’ve got a great plan for the main floor).  But we’ve got our bedroom and Saoirse’s room pretty much put together, and the three of us enjoyed a good sleep last night on our first stay.

Saoirse loves to play out in the yard, she’s already got a stack of balls and some toys spread out here and there.  The first time in my life I’d ever seen her plum tuckered out was a little over a month ago when Krista brought her up to join in on some of the work on the house with the crew that was here.  It was pretty funny… she looked like I do most days lately, especially this week.

The basement of this place is gonna be awesome!  We’ve taken to calling it “the man lair” (me with affection, and Krista with ambivalence at best) and it’s getting carpet today.  A walk out with a wet bar and space for a ‘fridge, plenty of windows for natural lighting, and a great new suspended ceiling.  One end of the room will serve as our library/reading area, and the other will start to take on what I hope will be a theme somewhat like a blending of “Hemingway meets 21st Century audio-visual tech”.  I’ve got a decent vision taking up residence in my dreams that present snapshots of family coming in and out to relax during a big reunion, my good pals from County Cycles hanging out to drink expensive beer and tell cheap tales of adventure after riding up from the Cities, and the generic cacophony of movie nights and video game marathons with the folks (of all ages) from SLLC.

The basement also includes a substantial guest bedroom that will suit long stays from both sets of grandparents and accommodate a desk and chair for me to do a lot of work from home (I can cyber-commute from across the creek!).  And there’s a decent-sized bathroom with a good shower down there for those “de-grubbing” washes after a long bike ride or a day of piling through the woods.  The utility room is big enough to house the winter bike training equipment and exercise space (though I think we’re getting a Wii-fit outfit before too long).

Of course, I’m happy writing about the basement right now because none of it needs to be moved in! Sometimes dreams are much lighter: a comfy space to read, exercise, hang out with friends, put up welcome visits from relatives, and watch NASCAR on a big screen in surround sound while sipping a cold beer in an obnoxiously large piece of leather furniture… that’s the kind of thing I have to keep thinking about these days when my gumption starts to poop out with the next piece of this-or-that needs to be moved, put back together, or opened up, sorted out, and given a proper home.

When you’re living with it at arms length, just sitting there for the taking, it’s “my stuff.”  When it comes time to move it all, find new places for it, and pick it up and put it down again and again and again, it definitely takes on a different identity in the mind as one faces yet another day of “moving in.”

WELCA Sunday

June 29th will see both of our worship services led by SLLC members of WELCA (Women of the ELCA).  Krista, Saoirse, and I have taken the opportunity for some time over in Marinette, WI at Krista’s parents’ house on the Menominee River.  Yesterday and today, I got up early, put on my impressive collection of flyfishing gear… all newly given to me by my parents-in-law, and waded into the river for some comical mayhem!

I don’t know how the fish feel, but I’ve got to be absolutely terrifying to the equipment!  In only an hour of messing around yesterday morning, I managed to liberate four flies from my arsenal before giving up and coming in to review how to tie-on.  After figuring out how that’s done, I decided I needed to add some leader material to my fly line, so that took up about an hour last night of fumbling with the tiny, nearly invisible strands of fishing line.  This stuff is not easy!  I guess that’s one of the reasons I’ll keep it up… because today I was able to claim marked improvements over yesterday’s performance as I was in the water for almost two hours and I didn’t lose a single piece of tackle to the river.

Sometimes, I like to do things that are completely foreign to me, just to experience again the beginning of something that will take some time and effort to master.  Rock climbing was that way (even though I’m not able to crank on hard routes, I know how to stay safe, rig a solid anchor, and keep everyone around me safe), and if I remember way back to when I was a kid I recall snowshoeing being quite difficult before I figured out how to keep from getting tangled up every other step and ending up on my face.  My bicycling friends like to have me with them when we go mountain biking, because I’m not exactly the smoothest rider out there… I enjoy approaching the bike and the terrain like John Henry might have approached a hammer and drill steel, but that’s probably not a good comparison because John Henry made that look easy.  I don’t always end up “hitting it square” when I’m on the bike.

This is not unlike the experience of becoming pastor at Spring Lake.  Preaching, leading worship, and getting to know what the likes and dislikes are of the regular Sunday congregation are activities that leave me feeling very new, somewhat self-conscious, and off-balance.  But this also heightens the experience of feeling like I’ve gotten a little further each time… kind of like having a couple hours of throwing fly line in the river without losing any tackle or snarling up the leader on the tip of the rod.

The congregation will have a young preacher on its hands this weekend: Ashley Mages volunteered to give the sermon.  She’s already sent me a preliminary copy of what she has prepared, and I’m very impressed with her discipline and attentiveness to the text.  If I know anything about the folks at SLLC, everyone will be cheering for her to do a good job, and she’ll receive plenty of pats on the back after she’s done, thanking her for standing up and preaching to them.

One key practice I use when I’m just getting into something for the first time is to find someone who shows mastery, and someone who’s also just getting to know the ropes.  This way, I’ve got someone to “watch and learn” and someone to give and receive support during those times when I feel like the material got away from me.  This is the kind of community and hospitality I feel reflect the best sides of a congregation like SLLC, a community of faithful service, hospitality that genuinely welcomes people and encourages them when they feel lost or left out.

Have a great weekend everyone!  Krista and I are going camping in Door County, and on Sunday we’ll be riding in the Menominee River Century… I’m doing the 180K ride on my single speed, and Krista is going 25 or 50 miles on her new touring bike.  Oh what fun!