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