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.”