Remember

 How many times a day do you think that you are called upon to remember something? You sit down at your desk to do your homework, and you remember what the expectations are that the syllabus articulates. You pick up in the middle of a work project with an impending deadline, and you remember what you have done so that you will know what you need to finish. You run into someone you know, whether by happenstance or expectation, and you remember that person’s name and enough other information about that person to strike up a conversation.

Remembering - we do it all the time. Some remembering is rather second nature. We remember where we put the car keys. Well, sometimes we do! We remember what day it is, how to get to class or work, and that it is a good idea to eat three healthy meals a day.

Other acts of remembering are more existential. We remember who we are and what we are up to on this ride through life. We remember our plans, hopes, dreams. We remember our missteps and our failures. We remember significant chapters in our personal backstory that inform and shape us today.

Still other acts of remembering require a specific, meditative intentionality. We collectively remember events from history, lest we forget and and repeat the same ugly atrocities again. We remember what we never knew - re-examining both familial and cultural myths, peeling back the layers to uncover that which the myth has distorted or rewritten with a deceptively creative pen. We remember what we have intentionally forgotten from our own stories, perhaps out of self-protection and for the sake of survival, but by remembering, we regain the authority to “re-story” our lives. We remember those we have loved and lost.

Remembering - we do it all time, and by remembering we live into a richer depth of our humanity.

This year at Candlelight, our Sunday night worship at 10:00 p.m., we are engaging in an intentional journey of remembering. We are looking again and anew at God’s stories of old, recorded in the Christian scriptures, and finding God’s truth for our lives as it is woven through this holy storytelling. We are remembering who God has been and what God has done so that we can remember who we are and what God is doing in our own lives.

Last night, we gathered under Merlin with stars hanging from its old, gnarled branches, tea lights in the grass and a fire burning brightly on Resurrection Meadow. We lit our candles against the dark night sky, and we remembered God’s promise to Abram and Sarai that their descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens. We remembered that God spoke this promise into a confusing and dark time for Abram and Sarai: they were old. She was barren. There were no children. It seemed impossible. All hope seemed lost.

And yet God said, look to heavens at what will be, and they remembered, and so did we. They remembered that God is God and we are not, and we remembered, too. They remembered that God can be trusted - even when all seems lost, and we claimed anew that promise for ourselves.

In her book, “The Spiritual Practice of Remembering,” Margaret Bendroth says that “remembering is an act with spiritual meaning, pushing us against the unknown.” To remember, as people of faith, pushes us against all of the unknowns of our lives that threaten to overwhelm and overtake us. To remember that God is God pushes against the unknowns of this present age. To remember that God is God pushes against our personal uncertainties and inadequacies. To remember that God is God is to claim with certainty and a holy hope that I can trust God, even when all seems lost.

So, wherever you find yourself today, I invite you to join with the Candlelight community as we joined with Abram and Sarai in the mystical collapse of time and space, and look to the heavens. See the stars - even when they hide behind the bright light of day - see the stars and remember that God was, is and forever will be - God.

May this holy remembering bless you on your journey,

Grace you with goodness,

And fill you with peace.

+Pr. Char

I Saw Jesus

I saw Jesus the other day. She was walking down Calumet Avenue. I was stopped at the stoplight by AutoZone. She was crossing the street in the crosswalk. It was a hot, humid, sticky day. She was wearing a stocking cap. A coat. Maybe layers underneath. The shopping cart she pushed was full, its contents covered with a tarp. Her navy blue polyester pants were long, ragged. Her shoes did not match.

What would it have been like for her if I had carried her cross? What would it have been like for me?

I saw Jesus the other day. When I first saw him he was in his wheelchair in the Walgreens’ parking lot. He wore a baseball cap. His shirt was light yellow, short-sleeved, button down. His pants were brown. His face drooped on the right side, muscles slack, and his right arm sat limp in his lap. He was foot walking his wheelchair across the parking lot. Inch by inch. When I came out of Walgreens, he had just barely made it across the street to the CVS parking lot. About two hours later, I saw him at the front of Town and Country. The sun was scorching hot. The air was thick. A half a block. Two hours.

What would it have been like for him if I had carried his cross? What would it have been like for me?

I saw Jesus the other day night. It was 11:09 p.m. I was on my way home from the first Candlelight of the year, filled with deep joy, profound peace. She was stumbling down Campbell Street. She lurched into the brick retaining wall just past the Boys’ and Girls’ Club. She over corrected and almost fell into the street. She feebly tried to right herself, all the while not losing her grip on the brown paper bag in her hand.

What would it have been like for her if I had carried her cross? What would it have been like for me?

I saw Jesus the other day when I was scrolling through my newsfeed on social media. He was holding tightly to a small child with one hand, and clinging to the edge of a dinghy in the midst of the Mediterranean with the other. Fleeing war. Fearing for their lives. Seeking safety.

She was standing with dignity at the graveside of her murdered son.

They were seven and nine years-old, sitting in a detention center for undocumented immigrants. No one to be their advocates. Expected to navigate an immigration hearing on their own.

What would it have been like for them if I had carried their cross? What would it have been like for me?

In the Gospel of Luke, the first words of public proclamation that Jesus makes in his ministry are these:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor,

To proclaim release to the captives

To give recovery of sight to the blind,

To let the oppressed go free.

Everything that Jesus does flows from those words. Everything that Jesus says is a deepening of those words. Everything that Jesus is is a fulfillment of those words.

Later on in Luke’s telling of the Jesus story, Jesus tells his would-be-followers what they can do to be a part of that continued fulfillment. Hate father, mother, sister brother. Weigh the cost. Give away all your possessions. Carry the cross.

For centuries the church has theologized those words away. Hate doesn’t really mean hate, we have said. Jesus is simply telling us that we need to like everything or everyone else a little less than him, we have suggested. Give everything away - that’s just Jesus using the rhetorical tool of hyperbole, we have rationalized. And carry the cross, well that is merely a metaphor for discipleship.

But none of that is what the people who heard Jesus say those words would have thought. These words of Jesus were some of the most radical, offensive  words that he ever spoke. After all, family was everything - identity, security, community. Possessions - they were the means by which one made one’s way in the world. And crosses - they meant one thing, and one thing only: a torturous, shameful brutal death at the hands of Rome, just because Rome could.

So, what does Jesus mean? Well, I’m with Richard Swanson who, in his blog, Provoking the Gospel, says unashamedly, “I don’t know.” But then he goes on to say, but let’s imagine that I do know, and he points us toward a real life cross-bearer in the Gospels. Not Jesus, but someone else.

Fast forward in the Jesus story, and when Jesus is weighed down beneath the weight of his own, physical, deathly real cross, we meet Simon. Simon of Cyrene, the North African, freshly into the city from the countryside. Simon is grabbed by the Roman authorities and compelled to carry Jesus’ cross. In those moments, Simon could have only thought one thing: he was going to die, and his family would never know what happened to him.

When Jesus’ cross shifted to Simon, nearly everything about what would happen next was uncertain. Unknown. Everything, that is, but one thing: Simon’s future was inextricably linked, bound up with the poor, unfortunate soul for whom the cross had become too heavy. Simon’s future was bound up with Jesus, and Jesus’ future was bound up with Simon’s.

That is after all, what Jesus’ whole life, death, resurrection, and even ascension are all about. When the weight of creation’s frailty, brokenness, condemnation, when creation’s cross became too heavy to bear, Jesus took that weight fully and completely upon himself. Henceforth, Jesus’ future was bound up with creation’s, and creation's future was bound up with Jesus.

It is true for you too, you know. Jesus has taken the weight of your frailty, your brokenness, your condemnation, the weight of your cross upon himself too. Amid whatever unkowing you live, this much you do know: Jesus’ future is bound up with you. Your future is bound up with Jesus.

That is why, week after week, as often as we are able, we gather around the table. There we feast upon cross-bearer fare. Bread and wine - cross-bearer food. Bread and wine - where cross-bearing becomes life-giving.

There, week after week, as often as we are able, looking out around the table, I see Jesus. I see Jesus in all of you and each of you, cross-bearers every one. Claimed. Called. Named. Cross-marked. Filled with the Holy Spirit

To preach good news to the poor,

To proclaim release to the captives

To give recovery of sight to the blind,

To let the oppressed go free.

AMEN

+Pr. Char

#lightsonforjacob

         

     It was 8:25 on Saturday morning. I was startled by a “ping” on my phone indicating that I had received an incoming message from someone on Facebook. The circular image on the upper right hand corner of my screen let me know that the incoming message was from a woman who had been a confirmation student in the first parish I served as a pastor, 25 years ago. Though we have stayed in touch over the years, our contact has been sporadic and brief. When I tapped her image to open the message, I found these words, “they found Jacob.”

            I knew instantly what she meant: Jacob Wetterling had been found.

In the fall of 1989, 18 months before I was called to serve as a pastor in Brooten, Minnesota, Jacob, an 11 year-old boy was kidnapped at gunpoint on a rural Minnesota road while riding his bike home with his brother and a friend. He disappeared without a trace. The community in which Jacob lived was 50 miles away from my first call. The kids from my parish had been in St. Joseph, Jacob’s hometown, for a band competition on the day that Jacob was kidnapped. It could have been any one of them. It could have been any one of thousands of children for whom the open country was a place of joy, freedom, unrestrained play, and safety.

But all that changed when Jacob disappeared. An innocence was lost. A sense of dis-ease caused parents, and kids alike, to rethink the freedom with which children lived and explored - especially in the country. During the time that I served in Brooten, Jacob’s disappearance - and an enduring hope for his return - was a regular topic of conversation.

            That was true for communities all over Minnesota. Jacob’s kidnapping sent shock waves through an entire state, and thousands upon thousands of people, year after year kept hoping and praying that somehow he would be found and safely returned to his family.

            On Saturday the world learned that such was not to be. Jacob’s body was found buried in a pasture about 25 miles away from where he was taken, 25 miles away from that first place I served as a pastor, 25 miles away from where those kids-now-adults talked in confirmation class about the way that Jacob’s kidnapping had changed their lives.

            We all have stories in our lives that mark us, shape us, change us, stories written with on indelible ink on the fabric of who we are. The kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling is one such story for me. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the fear still present in that first community I served as they wondered about the safety and the security of their own children. I remember thinking with thousands upon thousands of others that somebody knows something, and all it would take would be one person to speak up and speak out.

            But amid all of the disbelief, fear, and other complicated emotions that surrounded the hearts of so many with Jacob’s kidnapping, there is something else I remember as well: Jacob’s mother, Patty Wetterling.

Almost immediately after Jacob was kidnapped, Patty became the face of an enduring hope. Patty and the rest of her family urged people in Minnesota everywhere to turn their porch lights on so that Jacob - and any other missing children - would be able to find their way home. Patty chose hope over despair, hope over bitterness, light over darkness.

            People responded by the thousands. Porch lights went on everywhere. People rolled up their sleeves and not only continued to search for Jacob but began to work to both enact and change laws for the protection of children. Because of Patty’s work and those who joined her, sex offender registries are now common realities in communities everywhere. Cases of missing children are treated completely differently by law enforcement than they were before Jacob. Parents of missing children have resources that they never before had, and because of Patty’s tireless work and those who picked up Jacob’s cause, most missing children are returned safely home.

            Out of the Wetterling’s darkest hours, light has shined brightly for countless others.

Hope over despair. Hope over bitterness. Light over darkness.

In the Christian faith we declare with conviction and with certainty that through Jesus, the light shines in the darkness. Because of Jesus, the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome the light.

Whatever darkness we face, whatever darkness you face, the light of Jesus will shine into that darkness and transform it with God’s enduring grace, God’s enduring love.

Since Jacob’s body was found on the weekend, thousands upon thousands have once again joined together. Porch lights have been turned on in his memory and in solidarity with his family. In the freshly raw experience of grief, light shines in the darkness. #lightsonforjacob

My own reflections upon Jacob Wetterling and his family have stirred in me anew a renewed passion to seek ways to be the light in someone else’s darkness, a renewed passion to bring hope where there is despair, a renewed passion to choose hope over bitterness.

If we all chose to do that, what difference might it make? How might our corner of the world become a more humane place? How might individual lives become indelibly marked not by sorrow, but by love and light?

Hope over despair. Hope over bitterness. Light over darkness. #lightsonforjacob 

Won’t you join me?

Many Blessings,

+Pr. Char

Home on Holy Ground

When my colleagues and friends ask me what I enjoy most about serving as a pastor amid an academic community, there are many things that come to mind. Students, of course, are at the top of the list. I truly love walking with emerging adults at this critical time in life.

But I also enjoy the atmosphere, the environment of a community committed to learning, growing, becoming. I especially love being a part of an academic community that thrives at the nexus of faith and reason, wrestling with how we live faithfully as people endowed with the capacity to think and also endowed with the gift of faith.

Out of this nexus grows my passion for seeing things from a new perspective, a different angle, an orientation that I had not previously considered. How can my own thinking and believing be enriched by ideas that grow out of reflections different from my own? I find such questions energizing and life-giving.

Last week, as I was preparing for the first Candlelight of this academic year, I came across a perspective on an biblical story that not only changed what I thought about that story but opened up a whole new level of understanding.

The story is the call of Moses in the book of Exodus. Let me remind you of the back story. God’s people ended up in Egypt during a famine. They became enslaved and suffered under terribly harsh treatment, including the slaughter of children. Moses, however, as the story goes, was saved as a baby when his mother put him in a basket and floated him down the river to hide him from the death squads. The Pharaoh's daughter found him, kept him, and raised him in her own household. When he grew up, he killed an Egyptian whom he saw beating one of the Hebrew people. Fearing for his life, Moses fled to the land of Midian. There he settled and married.

Through all of this, Moses lost all sense of home. He was not welcome among his own people. The household in which he was raised put a price on his head, and the people with whom he settled considered him a foreigner.

Then one day, God appeared in a fire amid a bush. God told Moses to take off his shoes, as he was standing on holy ground. I have always thought that God’s word to Moses to remove his shoes was all about being in the presence of holy. Moses was asked to take off his shoes out of reverence for the divine.

Then I read an essay by Dennis Olson, the Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton. Olson suggest this. “Taking off one’s sandals is a gesture of many traditional cultures that is associated with entering not only a worship space but also a home. Thus, here at the foot of the mountain of God, Moses...has at last found a true home.” Moses was at home on holy ground.

Reading that new perspective from Olson immediately brought to mind for me a wall hanging that I saw in the home of friends years ago. Their names were Ed and Helen. Ed was a retired air force pilot, and because of that, they traveled the world over many, many times. In their travels, they met countless people and formed countless friendships. Through these meetings, they invited people from all over the world to stay in their house. They even provided them a map of their garage to show them where the key to the back door was kept, just in case they were gone when people needed a place to stay.

I had not thought of Ed and Helen for years, but Olson’s reflections on the Moses story brought them - and the wall hanging by their front door - to mind. I do not remember it exactly, but it read something like this:

Come on in.

Take off your shoes

Sit

Eat. Drink.

Stay awhile.

Rest.

Make yourself at home.

When you are here -

You are home.

Take off your shoes-

You are home.

Take off your shoes your are on holy ground. Take off your shoes, you are home. As we settle into the rhythm of this academic year, I invite you to consider anew the wide variety of opportunities for worship that we provide at the Chapel of the Resurrection - opportunities to experience the presence of God, opportunities to pause for a moment on holy ground.

Eight times a week - Sunday through Friday at 10:00 a.m., and Sunday and Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. you are invited to come to the Chapel, to find respite amid the journey of your life, to hear God’s promises for you, to join in praise, to be reminded of the beloved child of God that you are, and then to go back out into your work and into your play - renewed and refreshed for the tasks ahead.

So, come. Sit. Eat. Drink. Stay awhile. Rest. Make yourself at home. When you are here - you are home. The Chapel of the Resurrection - Home on Holy Ground. See you soon.

Many Blessings

+Pr. Char

Home on Holy Ground

When my colleagues and friends ask me what I enjoy most about serving as a pastor amid an academic community, there are many things that come to mind. Students, of course, are at the top of the list. I truly love walking with emerging adults at this critical time in life.

But I also enjoy the atmosphere, the environment of a community committed to learning, growing, becoming. I especially love being a part of an academic community that thrives at the nexus of faith and reason, wrestling with how we live faithfully as people endowed with the capacity to think and also endowed with the gift of faith.

Out of this nexus grows my passion for seeing things from a new perspective, a different angle, an orientation that I had not previously considered. How can my own thinking and believing be enriched by ideas that grow out of reflections different from my own? I find such questions energizing and life-giving.

Last week, as I was preparing for the first Candlelight of this academic year, I came across a perspective on an biblical story that not only changed what I thought about that story but opened up a whole new level of understanding.

The story is the call of Moses in the book of Exodus. Let me remind you of the back story. God’s people ended up in Egypt during a famine. They became enslaved and suffered under terribly harsh treatment, including the slaughter of children. Moses, however, as the story goes, was saved as a baby when his mother put him in a basket and floated him down the river to hide him from the death squads. The Pharaoh's daughter found him, kept him, and raised him in her own household. When he grew up, he killed an Egyptian whom he saw beating one of the Hebrew people. Fearing for his life, Moses fled to the land of Midian. There he settled and married.

Through all of this, Moses lost all sense of home. He was not welcome among his own people. The household in which he was raised put a price on his head, and the people with whom he settled considered him a foreigner.

Then one day, God appeared in a fire amid a bush. God told Moses to take off his shoes, as he was standing on holy ground. I have always thought that God’s word to Moses to remove his shoes was all about being in the presence of holy. Moses was asked to take off his shoes out of reverence for the divine.

Then I read an essay by Dennis Olson, the Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton. Olson suggest this. “Taking off one’s sandals is a gesture of many traditional cultures that is associated with entering not only a worship space but also a home. Thus, here at the foot of the mountain of God, Moses...has at last found a true home.” Moses was at home on holy ground.

Reading that new perspective from Olson immediately brought to mind for me a wall hanging that I saw in the home of friends years ago. Their names were Ed and Helen. Ed was a retired air force pilot, and because of that, they traveled the world over many, many times. In their travels, they met countless people and formed countless friendships. Through these meetings, they invited people from all over the world to stay in their house. They even provided them a map of their garage to show them where the key to the back door was kept, just in case they were gone when people needed a place to stay.

I had not thought of Ed and Helen for years, but Olson’s reflections on the Moses story brought them - and the wall hanging by their front door - to mind. I do not remember it exactly, but it read something like this:

Come on in.

Take off your shoes
Sit
Eat. Drink.
Stay awhile.
Rest.
Make yourself at home.
When you are here -
You are home.
Take off your shoes-
You are home.
Take off your shoes your are on holy ground. Take off your shoes, you are home. As we settle into the rhythm of this academic year, I invite you to consider anew the wide variety of opportunities for worship that we provide at the Chapel of the Resurrection - opportunities to experience the presence of God, opportunities to pause for a moment on holy ground.

Eight times a week - Sunday through Friday at 10:00 a.m., and Sunday and Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. you are invited to come to the Chapel, to find respite amid the journey of your life, to hear God’s promises for you, to join in praise, to be reminded of the beloved child of God that you are, and then to go back out into your work and into your play - renewed and refreshed for the tasks ahead.

So, come. Sit. Eat. Drink. Stay awhile. Rest. Make yourself at home. When you are here - you are home. The Chapel of the Resurrection - Home on Holy Ground. See you soon.

Many Blessings

+Pr. Char

The Answer is "Jesus"

             Ever since the advent of the Reformation, churches in the reforming traditions have sought to be contextual in their expressions of worship. Attempts have been made to consider the particular needs of particular times and places, and create worship experiences that are attentive to those particulars. This has resulted in attention to space, aesthetics, music, and language, among other things.

            In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, mindful of cultural changes in family structure, community life, and church attendance patterns, worshiping communities often added something to their collective worship life – the children’s sermon. As regular Sunday School participation began to wane, the logic went, it was good and right to have a message within the whole of the worship experience that was specifically for children.

            Over time, various patterns emerged and developed for the children’s message. Some seized the opportunity to tell Bible stories, to either enhance or create a biblical literacy. Others have used the occasion to provide moral lessons, and still others, often have focused on a “question of the day” to drive home a point.

            Among my colleagues and friends, over the years we have enjoyed a standing bit of humor regarding the “question and answer” method of the children’s sermon. What is the correct answer to every children’s sermon question? “Jesus.”

            How do we know God loves us? Jesus!

            How do we know that our sins are forgiven? Jesus!

            Who promises to never leave or forsake us? Jesus!

            Who will be with us in the good times and the bad? Jesus!

            Who helps us love our neighbor? Jesus!

            Who shows us what God is like? Jesus!

            Who do we follow? Jesus!

            Who feeds us in church? Jesus!

            Whose light do we carry out into the world? Jesus’!

            My friends and I have often laughed about this, asking among ourselves, “what’s the point? If every answer is ‘Jesus,’ well, why have a children’s sermon at all?”

            But why not? What better answer could there possibly be around which to gather week after week? Isn’t that what worship is all about, to be drawn into the presence of God, to be reminded of God’s love poured out in Jesus, to be immersed in the promise of grace – in Jesus, to be fed by Jesus at Jesus’ own table, and to be sent out in Jesus’ name for the sake of the world?

            In the letter to the Colossians in the Christian Scriptures, we find these words “he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation.” The letter goes on to say that Jesus is before all things, holding all things together, the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, the one through whom God reconciled all things.

            When we dig around a little bit into the history of the people of Colossae, we learn that they were living in a time when they believed in Jesus, but they thought that Jesus was just one among many. They thought that Jesus was a revealer of God, among many revealers of God. They thought that Jesus was one mediator between heaven and earth, in a long line of mediators, and they thought that Jesus was merely part of making everything whole, one link in a long chain.

            The writer of the letter, however, wants to make it clear that Jesus is not one among many. Jesus is the revealer of God. Jesus is the mediator between heaven and earth. Jesus is the one who has reconciled everything in all creation.

            Jesus is the answer to every question.

            Sometimes these days, I find the news of our world downright terrifying. Gun violence. Otherizing. Fear. Division. Racism. Sexism. Name calling. Public rhetoric that is beneath our human dignity. Violence. International strife. Terror. I look at my newsfeed on social media and read the headlines on various news outlets, and it is often more than I can take.

            How are we ever going to “turn the temperature down?”

            How are we ever going to put on the brakes, take a deep breath, and see our common humanity?

            How is it all going to end – the violence, the hatred, the pain that we seem destined to inflict upon one another, with ever increasing speed?

            Abel’s blood is crying out from the ground day after day after day. How is it ever going to stop?

            And then I am reminded that the answer to every single question has already been given: Jesus.

            Jesus has already claimed it all.

            Jesus has already born it all.

            Jesus has already carried it all. Buried it all. Defeated it all, and risen - the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation, and the firstborn of the dead.

            Jesus – who did not meet violence with violence, but met violence with love, Jesus is the answer to our despair.

            Jesus – who tore down every single dividing wall he encountered – Jesus is the answer to how we live together as neighbors, brothers and sisters, friends in our common human family.

            Jesus – who washed feet instead of throwing stones, Jesus who told Peter to put away his sword, Jesus – the leper-healing, sight-restoring, other-loving, dead-raising image of the invisible God – is the answer to every human question.

            And so, we gather week after week to be reminded that in the river that flows from his side, we have been washed and made new. We gather week after week to be fed at his table. We gather week after week to be reminded that we are his body now – his flesh and blood in the world to bring his healing, hope and life.

            Jesus is the answer. We are part of Jesus’ own body. Go be Jesus for the world.

A Little Girl in Church

It was a moving day in worship. The music was lovely. The leadership was gracious. The sermon was relevant, poignant, and powerful. The community was warm. The bread and the wine were a taste of the goodness of God. But those things will not be what I remember. As time will pass, I expect that most of the particulars from this worship will bend and weave their way together with the thousands of other worship experiences from my life. It will, for the most part, become indistinct. I do expect, however, that one thing will remain in my memory to mark this worship as different.

That one thing is a little girl’s question.

Within my half century of life, there have been several events within the public sphere that have been demarcations on the signposts of time. There have been those moments that still now, many years later, I can recall the place where I was and my own visceral response  to the news of the day.

I know where I was when the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster happened. I can still feel the unexpected shock, and the almost tangible “punch in my gut” as I watched the unfolding story on live television. The images of the explosion are seared in my memory.

I know where I was and the feelings that came over me when the Berlin wall came tumbling down. I can still feel the energy conveyed through the airwaves as I, along with the rest of the world, watched this crack in history as it unfolded.

I know where I was on 911, and any recollection of that day brings back the horror and helplessness that descended like a cloud.

Then there is last week. A busy time in the height of summer. One teenager away at camp. Another teenager energized by her job. Me - living the routine of parenthood and middle age. And then came the news. A black man shot and killed by police - again. And then, within a day - another one. And then a city on edge amid the assassination of police officers. Social media filled with both cries of enough, and “what do you mean there is a race problem in this country?”

Calls for prayer and peace. Calls for calm. Politicians being politicians. Theologians weighing in.

And I wondered, knowing that the Sunday reading would be the familiar story that is known to many as “The Good Samaritan” - I wondered - what would the preacher preach on Sunday? What would we hear in worship?

The preacher did not disappoint. He named the names of those who had been slain. He named our own fallibility to see and be the neighbor that God calls us to be, and he called us to tangible, real action

All good.

But what I expect I will remember is the hushed question of a little girl - maybe five or six years-old - sitting with her mother in the row to my right, and one row behind.

As the pastor was naming the tragedies of the recent days past, recounting the lives lost by the shootings, the little girl asked, “why is he talking about shootings in church?”

Why is he talking about shootings in church

I could not hear how her mother responded, but her question, though spoken in a whisper, resounded loud and clear. Why is he talking about shootings in church

I suspect that there may have been many across this country who wondered the same thing as pastors sought to speak the Gospel amid our own particular broken times. It seems that we have become accustomed to a detached Gospel - one that keeps anything that might be considered controversial or political at arms length, one that tells us all about “Bible land,” but struggles often to be the prophetic and redemptive voice amid our own lived and broken lives.

But what better place to speak of such things, such horrors, such tragedy? What better place to name the particular sorrows of our world? Because you see, Jesus dealt in particulars. He met the needs of the people in front of him. He responded to the crises that were present around him. He spoke in the language and the images not from another time and place, but from his own time and place.

In words and deeds, Jesus was immersed in the particular brokenness of those he encountered. Lepers. Blind. Diseased. Women. Children. Samartians. Syrophenicians. Tax Collectors. Sinners.

And to those particular people, and amid each particular experience of brokenness, Jesus spoke truth to power. Jesus named the brokenness. Jesus brought new life.

Why is he talking about shootings in church? Because this is the brokenness of this time and place. This is the particular pain of this moment. This is the sorrow of this season of our lives. And we are called to speak truth to power - now. We are called to name the brokenness - now. We are called to bring new life - now.

Why, oh little girl, is he talking about shootings in church? Because in so doing, he is saying the words, naming the sorrows, speaking the truths that God wants him to speak so that we - you and me, all of us - can be filled with the Holy Spirit to bind up the wounds of our broken country, to name - and repent from - the sins that bind us, and to embrace one another as the neighbors God has made us to be.

Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of my ordination to Word and Sacrament Ministry

            Today is the 25^th anniversary of my ordination into Word and Sacrament Ministry. I am therefore, writing this reflection as a letter to my 26 year-old self for my ordination day.

            Dear Charlene,

            Today, you will be ordained into the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. Today, you will be surrounded by family and friends. Today, hands of those who love you and who have gone before you will be laid upon you. Today, prayers will be prayed for you and over you. Today, you will be filled with hope. That is as it should be. You have answered the call of the Holy Spirit through the church to preach and teach, to administer the sacraments, to care for God’s people in word and deed, and to speak for justice and mercy in the world.

            Today, you will hear words of grace, and you will speak words of covenantal commitment. Today, you will take a yoke upon you. Today, you join a long line of God’s apostles called to be ministers of grace. Today, you will join the growing numbers of women who have heard and answered this call.

            There is much joy that you will know in this life to which you have been called. It is a profound and holy calling to walk with people through birth and death. It is a profound and holy calling to be trusted with people’s most sacred stories. It is a profound and holy calling to speak truth to power. It is a profound and holy calling to speak words of forgiveness, wash people in God’s life-giving stream, and feed God’s people at the table that stretches all the way to heaven and back.

            You will make a difference in people’s lives. Others will know Jesus’ love because of you. You will lead worship that draws people into experiences of the presence of God. You will preach with power, and through your words, you will reach into the tombs where people have buried their lives, and God will raise people to new life.

            The Incarnation in John 1, the Road to Emmaus in Luke 24, and the Woman at the Well in John 4 will all become defining stories for you.

            You will fall in love with campus ministry. You will teach people to preach. Catherine of Sienna will become a spiritual guide. You will become passionate about vocation. You will be humbled by the immense trust that people will place in you. You will rejoice that so many you have accompanied will answer the call to a life of public ministry. You will be filled with the joy of accompaniment amid spiritual discernment. You will be a holy presence of care and a voice for women. You will be surprised by the places you will get to serve.

            But you will also be refined by fire. This is a hard and holy calling. You will experience the body of Christ in all of its frail brokenness. There will be those who will be unkind – outright mean at times, even vile. There will be those who do not want to hear words of grace from you. There will be those who will treat you as less than human because you are a woman. There will be those who reject you because of their understandings of what the Bible says. You will experience things that you will have a hard time believing capable from the people of God. You will be hurt. You will experience the unimaginable. Your heart will break.

            But you are called to Word and Sacrament Ministry.

            For this you were created.

            Through that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds you, you will never be alone. The Holy Spirit will be a mantle around your shoulders. The Gospel will be a seal upon your heart. God will bring good out of the evil intentions of others. That is not a platitude: it is a promise. There will be many times when you will have had enough and want to quit. Others have felt the same for centuries, but God is bigger than all of it. Remember that. God will sustain you. Return to your baptism daily. Feast often upon God’s holy food. Trust the companions God will give you for your journey. Do not lose heart, and do not be afraid.

            I wish I could tell you that there will come a time in your lifetime when the church will no longer be a place of sexism and bigotry, and become a place where words – and deeds – are no longer used to inflict violence. But you’re smarter than that. You know that where there are people, there will be pain. Where there are people, there will be abuses of power. Words will often wound you, and the wounds will always hurt. I wish that wounding words worked like immunizations, but they do not. They will hurt as much 25 years from now as they do today, but you will be a different person then. You will be smarter than you are today. Trust that.

You will come to know the importance of the exits. Know where the doors are in every place you serve, every place you learn, every place you are. You do not have to be a punching bag. You do not have to simply take the arrows that will come your way. You do not have to stand there and take it. You do not have to be “Minnesota nice” when the words are hurled like weapons to silence you.

You can speak truth to power by walking out the door. You can say “no” when others abuse you by witnessing with your feet. You can empower someone else to leave the playground when there is a bully afoot by leaving yourself. Don’t be afraid to do it. You will embody the Gospel for yourself and for others when you claim that the church is a place of safety by using the door when you have to. So know where the exits are.

But today, on this your ordination day, it’s not about exits: it’s about a door opened to you, inviting you in, calling to you, and sending you out. Today, the door opens to your life of ministry. Walk through it. Know that you have been crucified with Christ, and “it is no longer you who lives, but Christ who lives in you.”

 “Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving and God’s courts with praise.” And then go, feed God’s sheep. Tend God’s lambs.

“Set your face toward Zion’s Hill, the city of your God. Look not to the left or right, but where your Master trod.”

“Take the yoke of Jesus upon you, learn from him, for his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.”

God bless your journey. I’ll see you in 25 years.

Charlene