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.