Paul Olsen

On Giving

I’m a terrible packer.
I never know for sure what I should bring,
so I bring everything I can think of
and generally way more than I need.
I come home with clean socks and underwear
in suitcases that scrape by just under the 50-pound limit.

Which is why interim ministry has been good for me.
In the last ten years,
this work has never taken me less than 500 miles from home.
I can squeeze a lot of stuff into Mazda sedan,
but it has its limits.
I’m always missing something:
a big enough pot,
a warmer blanket,
something I should have brought more of,
like socks and underwear.

I live in rented space with borrowed stuff
you found in your closets and garages
and didn’t need anymore
(I depend on the kindness of strangers).
I’ve often made do with the bare minimum.

I’m finding that enough
is just that:  enough.

In fact, when I make the occasional trip back home,
and discover chores undone and repairs needed
and all the demands of homeownership and lots of stuff,
I start looking forward to getting back to a simpler interim lifestyle.
And invariably when an interim ends and I get back home
I start to sort out the things I don’t need from the things I’ve collected
and give it away.

Which means,
I’m very lucky and very rich by the world’s standards
to have enough and more than I need,
to be able to make the choice
of living simply,
of letting go.

Why do all the great religions
and Christianity most especially
laud poverty as a virtue
and letting go of stuff as a spiritual discipline?

They universally think that less is more,
and giving away can’t be overdone.
And Jesus more than anyone
spoke directly to the lucky and the rich
about what a burden they bore
and how much they could do
to relieve the burdens of others.

And what a joy it is to do so.
Just consider this, from Jesus:

Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.
A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over,
will be put into your lap;
for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.  (Luke 6:37-38)

Letting go.
It is an act of trust
that there is, there will be,
enough,
enough to share.
Indeed,
that somehow,
there will be more when it is shared.

So I keep unpacking,
letting go a little bit more,
praying
to not be bound by things,
not consumed by being a consumer;
to discover that less is more,
and enough is enough;
to travel lightly through this world,
fifty pounds lighter on the way home;
to understand how lucky I am,
my measure pressed down, shaken together, running over,
and all so I may be generous in return;
to learn that a burden really is a burden,
and a gift given really is a joy.

On Service

After seven days
He was quite tired so God said:
“Let there be a day
Just for picnics, with wine and bread”
He gathered up some people he had made
Created blankets and laid back in the shade

The people sipped their wine
And what with God there, they asked him questions
Like: do you have to eat
Or get your hair cut in heaven?
And if your eye got poked out in this life
Would it be waiting up in heaven with your wife?

God shuffled his feet and glanced around at them;
The people cleared their throats and stared right back at him
                                     (song by Brad Roberts, of the band, Crash Test Dummies)

What if the world was made for the joy of it?

What if, as Robert Farrar Capon said, you find God in heaven,
sitting on the front porch, like a watchful parent,
and you show up after curfew,
knowing you ought to be in big trouble,
prepared to catch hell for it,
and instead your every-loving God says,
“Did you have a good time?”

That seems more like the story of creation in Genesis 1 to me.
It’s clear God is having a good time.
What a marvelous delightful time God is having of it,
creating a world of order and beauty
out of the chaos all around us!
God delights to do this!
Because it is good to do this.

Being the Creator is wonderful fun,
but in the end, you want to share it
with someone who gets it,
who could maybe enjoy it as much as you.

So humanity is God’s crowning touch … yes.
And we are given dominion, power,
and awesome freedom to look around, enjoy,
use whatever we want, whatever we need.

But with power and dominion and freedom comes,
not license,
but responsibility.

hat’s the biblical concept of kings and queens:
they are to be shepherds of the people,
and, as Jesus says, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

So it is really a charge of great responsibility;
though not a weight of responsibility,
a gift of responsibility.

May it be a delight for you
to be a steward of the earth and all its creatures and life forms!

To care for a child is to love that child;
for most of us, it couldn’t be any other way.

To care for the earth is to love the earth.
It is an intimate, loving, mutual, reciprocal relationship:
the earth gives us what we need for food and clothing and shelter.
In return, we give back to the earth,
we care for it,
take only what we need,
restore what we have broken,
we share with each other,
we share with all God’s creatures.

We clean up our mess when we make one
(and that means we have a lot of work to do).

We learn love by showing love to others and to the earth.
We give back,
and become transformed;
we learn kindness, generosity, grace, mercy…
in a word, we learn to become human, truly human.

We serve one another, for the fun of it.

That, I think, is the proper way to think of stewardship:
Stewardship is a delight.
It’s a joy to have the power to care for others,
whether that be the garden of delight
the earth is meant to be,
with all its wondrous plants and animals.
Or whether that be the love and care of children,
family, community, friend or stranger.

We become human
not by taking everything we can,
or using up whatever we can get,
but by learning to care for others.

That’s stewardship—learning to be human,
learning to use our power and freedom
to care for others.

It’s like Jesus said,
and what we have so often said during these past years of pandemic.
When others have claimed a twisted freedom,
insisting you can’t make me do anything,
we have said,
knowing we are loved and forgiven,
cared for by a generous and gracious God,
that we are set free for a purpose:
to love and forgive and care for one another,
to love God and love our neighbor;
to embrace and share the work of God—
to be stewards of the earth,
and of one another.

November 14, 2021
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Boise, ID
2 Corinthians 5:14-20; Mark 12:28-34

CALL TO WORSHIP

Sometimes churches can be invisible.
You get used to them being there,
we’re just a part of the scenery.
People go in and go out,
but if you’re not one of them,
you might hardly notice.

So when our Mission and Life Committee
was studying our neighborhood,
asking our neighbors
what they thought of us
and what they thought we could contribute—
one of my favorite responses
was the person who said that Immanuel
was a thing of beauty in the community.
Just the property—the courtyard, the old Augustana chapel,
the well-maintained grounds and gardens—
provide beauty to the area.

And it’s true;
sometimes I see people wandering by
who come to sit in the courtyard and rest a while,
or get out of the heat
to sit down on the cool stone steps of Augustana.

But you have to come to us to experience that.

And so ever since I have wondered,
what would it take for Immanuel to become
a thing of beauty out there in the community?

To become known as people
who bring beauty to others?

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Wouldn’t that be an awesome thing to be known for:

To be a thing of beauty in a pandemic world?
To be known as a place of respite
for the weary and impatient?
To be a place to rest safely
when others tell you to move on?
To bring beauty where there is dissention and conflict?
To be tender when others are rough?
To be welcoming when others are polarized?
To be color in an otherwise gray world?

To love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength,
and to love our neighbors as ourselves?

Urged on by the love of Christ
to be a thing of beauty in the world—
what might that look like?

SERMON

Almost two years ago,
when the pandemic struck
and the realization began to hit us
that we had to close our churches
and shut down our worship services;
and this wasn’t just a momentary thing
that would be over in a week or a month,
maybe not even over in a year—
I distinctly remember sitting in my office,
starring at the wall,
and thinking,
“I should have gotten out while the getting was good.”

I could have left;
I could have found something else to do;
I could have retired;
I could be on a beach right now!

I should have gotten out while the getting was good.

I was serving as interim pastor
at King of Glory Lutheran Church across town,
and we had just gotten into the last stretch of the call process.

They were interviewing candidates
and everything looked good;
we’d wrap this up in a month or two
and I’d go home.

The COVID hit and everything began to bog down.

I was five hundred miles from home,
travel restrictions were starting to be applied;
I wouldn’t get home for another six months,
and it would be almost another year
before we wrapped it all up.

Candidates who were very interested
suddenly didn’t want to travel for interviews.

They had their own mess to deal with in churches back home,
and they couldn’t abandon their congregations now.
Zoom was a tool only a few knew how to use.

We’d never done it this way before;
we’d have to reinvent the whole call process.

We all had to do that, didn’t we?

We had to reinvent our lives.

We had to reinvent church.

I had decades of pastoral experience.

But everything I knew how to do
I had to figure out how to do differently.

We had to experiment with everything.

For months I preached to no one there—
just me and a camera on a tripod and a big empty church,
pretending you were right there listening to every word,
never knowing if you tuned in at all.

I remember a disillusioned pastor friend, saying,
“This isn’t what I signed up for;
this doesn’t feel like being a pastor.”

A lot of pastors felt that way.

They couldn’t visit the sick,
they couldn’t sit down with you over a cup of coffee
and hear how things were going.

They regularly dealt with difficult people
and their disregard for the safety of others,

their impatience, their panic of loneliness and isolation,
and the political football it all turned into.

Over the last two years,
a lot of them did get out of the ministry.
We have a lot of vacant pulpits right now
and a lot of churches looking for a pastor.

And we all began to wonder, when will things get back to normal?

And then we began to realize we’d never get back to normal,
and started to hope for at least a relatively familiar
‘new normal.’

Until we reluctantly came to the realization
that there was no normal anymore,
and we wouldn’t ever get back to it, not really;
we had entered a whole new world,
and our lives—and church as we knew it—
would never be the same again.

Truth is,

we still don’t know what to expect;

we still don’t know where we are going.

So it’s good to know we aren’t the only ones;
this isn’t the first time.

Remember last week,
when we read from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians?

We pretty much skipped over the most difficult lines,
where the apostle Paul says,

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 
For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake,
so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 
So death is at work in us, but life in you. 

That’s not a success story.

The apostle is confessing his failures.

He’s struggling under intense persecution
and he doesn’t know what to do.

Everything he tries goes wrong;
every experiment ends in failure;
nothing works the way he wants it to.

His life is in constant danger.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing,
he’s just trying whatever looks like it might work,
hoping to God the Spirit will lead him somewhere.

He feels like a clay jar – inadequate to the task.

The only way he can describe it, is it feels like death.

The old normal has died;
his life would never be the same again;
it’s like we are always being given up to death.

He makes it sound like we’re lucky, it’s only a pandemic for us.

But he has not lost hope; far from it:
we are not crushed, we are not driven to despair,
we are not forsaken, we are destroyed;
in fact, we feel more alive than ever,
alive with the life of Jesus.

There’s a new creation going on,
God is doing new things,
and it is awesome to be a part of it!

And you know, awesome things have happened.

We have learned to be the church in new ways.

We have learned to worship online.

Some of us hate it, and worship reluctantly if at all.

Some of us love it, and never want to give it up;
some of us want it both ways—
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard,
“When we get back to normal, I hope we still do online services.”

Or, “I’ve been sick, I can’t drive anymore, I can’t get out,
but I’m so glad I can worship with my friends online.”

Or even, “I watch two or three services every Sunday;
oh, but don’t worry, pastor, I listen to you, too.”

We’ve gotten creative and learned some new things.

We Zoom everything now, just like you do.

Recording worship has given us new ways to be creative,
and we’re working on a major project
that will allow us to livestream worship
and improve our online communications.

We’ve learned to put the safety of others first,
and our own satisfaction last.

We have learned that faith isn’t about getting our needs met;
it’s about caring for strangers and meeting the needs of others.

You should know that King of Glory got creative:
They interviewed candidates online,
gave them virtual tours of the church and the city,
and eventually called a wonderful new pastor
who accepted the call without ever setting foot in Boise.

Today we install our Call Committee,
who will do the same thing.

They’ll get creative,
they’ll look for the new thing God is doing among us,
they’ll figure out how we can be a part of it;
and somewhere out there,
there are pastoral candidates looking for a church
that’s ready to embrace a new world
and do a new thing;
a congregation that is not crushed, not in despair,
knows it is not forsaken or destroyed;
a congregation that is more alive than ever.

And some new pastor who is alive with the life of Jesus
and ready to share it
will come here and lead you into God’s new future.

What sustains a pastor like that?

Why would anyone stay in the ministry
and not get out when the getting is good?

Why are you still here,
why did you seek us out,
what is it that drives you
to want to be a part of what God is doing;
and what’s got you thinking that God might be doing it here,
at Immanuel Lutheran Church?

What sustains us,
when we know full well it’s not over yet?

For the love of Christ urges us on,
Saint Paul says,
because we are convinced that one has died for all;
therefore all have died, and he died for all,
so that those who live might live no longer for themselves,
but for him who died and was raised for them.

For the love of Christ urges us on…

so that those who live might live no longer for themselves!

So that we might live for something bigger than ourselves.

Or as Jesus says in our gospel reading,
you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,
and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is nothing you can do with your life that is greater than that.

In these pandemic times,
we had an opportunity to get reacquainted
with some of the greatest resources
Lutherans bring to the issues before us.

Maybe you know that Martin Luther
endured a pandemic of his own.

Back in 1527, when the plague was ravaging Europe,
a pastor wrote Martin Luther
asking if it was permissible for a pastor
to flee from the plague.

Would it be okay for a pastor to get out while the getting was good?

And Luther said, Yes!
If you get away and avoid all this death and despair,
go! for heaven’s sake, get out of Doge while you can,
and save your own skin.

But, if on your way out of Dodge,
you happen to come across a neighbor,
a stranger who needs your help,
stop—and take care of your neighbor.

It all boils down to this, Luther said:

“If someone is sufficiently bold and strong in his faith,
 let him stay in God’s name; that is certainly no sin.
 If someone is weak and fearful, let him flee in God’s name
 as long as he does not neglect his duty toward his neighbor
but has made adequate provision for others to provide nursing care.”

Or to put it another way:
Love God;
love yourself as God loves you;
love your neighbor whom God loves as yourself—
we can’t get through this alone,
we get through this together.

Let the thing that binds you, directs you and controls you
be the love of God and the love of your neighbor first,
and your own safety—the love of your own life—second.

Let love always be the thing that urges you on.

That’s the freedom of a Christian:

Christians—and especially Lutherans—
have a little different idea of what freedom is all about.

We know that the astonishing grace of God has set us free.

Like St. Paul says,
the love of Christ urges us on,
because we are convinced that one has died for all;
therefore all have died, and he died for all,
so that those who live might live no longer for themselves,
but for him who died and was raised for them.

No longer living for yourself;
living for something bigger than yourself;
boldly alive with the life of Jesus.

The freedom of a Christian is not a private
“I can do anything I want and you can’t stop me.’

This pandemic should make it clear that
life, liberty, and happiness are not private possessions;
they are marks of the community
—the world-wide community—we build together.

Love of neighbor isn’t just a pleasant sentiment for Sunday morning;
it is the practical, even life-saving principle for the entire week.

In fact, “individual liberty”
is something of a contradiction in terms for a Christian,
because Christian freedom is always the freedom to serve others.

As the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Galatians,
the only thing that counts is faith working through love (5:6).

And, he says, for you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters,
only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,
but through love become slaves to one another.
For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  (5:6, 13-14)

That would be a whole new world, wouldn’t it?

Imagine living such fearless love!

In the midst of his own chaotic times,
the apostle Paul saw an ever-creative God
doing new things:
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!

The old normal has died;
life may never be the same again;
but The New Is already Here!

And it is time to live into something bigger than ourselves.

Is there really any other faithful response
than the response of the scribe in today’s gospel,
who tells Jesus,
You are right, Teacher!
there is nothing more important,
nothing more righteous and true,
nothing bigger to be a part of than this:

To be unafraid to care for strangers,

to let go of seeking the best I can get for myself,
and do what’s best for others;

the joy of meeting needs
rather than the fear
of not getting my own needs met;

to love God,
and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Amen.

CALL TO LIFE

I confessed to you last week
that I never wanted to be a pastor.
I’ve always thought I find something else to do,
some way to get out of it.

Well, about two years ago,
I think I had the perfect excuse.

Everything I knew would have to be reinvented.
And I thought,
now’s the time to get out while the getting is good.

But almost immediately I had a second thought:
No!
Everything I know is out the window,
the church is going to have to reinvent itself;
this could be the thing that finally forces us
to reexamine everything,
reexamine even our faith,
figure out what our purpose is,
figure out what in the world the world needs us to be.

This could be a new creation;
and we just might be right where God wants us.

No way—I’ve waited all my life for this!
The New Is Here!
How could I miss it?

I hope you feel the same way.
I hope you want to be a part of what God is doing,
and I hope you want to be a part of what God is doing among us,
here at Immanuel Lutheran Church.

We’ve had to experiment,
and we don’t always know what we’re doing.

Sometimes, we’re just trying whatever looks like it might work,
hoping to God the Spirit will lead us somewhere.

Sometimes we feel inadequate to the task.

We don’t know where we are going,
we just keep praying,
O God, you have called your servants
to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love supporting us.

And on this Commitment Sunday,
I hope you will pray for God to guide you
to commit to being a part of something bigger than yourself.

May the love of Christ urge you on.

© Paul R. Olsen

TEXTS:

Mark 12:28-34
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?
Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  After that no one dared to ask him any question.

2 Corinthians 5:14-20
For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.  And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,,, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

All Saints’ Day – November 7, 2021
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Boise, Idaho
2 Corinthians 4:5-15; Mark 12:38-44

CALL TO WORSHIP

In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, the writer says,
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things not seen.

Faith is the boldness
to step across the threshold, face an unknown future.

As one our prayers says,
O God, give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us.

And then the writer says, all our ancestors in faith,
all the great saints we honor on this day—
their good deeds and accomplishments
aren’t worth a dime.

It was their simple trust when they didn’t know where to go,
it was by faith our ancestors received approval.

And then the writer lists example after example:
by faith Abel…
by faith Enoch…
by faith Noah…
by faith Abraham and Sarah…
by faith Isaac…
by faith Jacob…
by faith Joseph…
by faith Moses…
—and I could go on, he says.

And we could go on,
and name a few of the saints we have known,
and today we will:
Judy, and Leona,
Sue, Larry,
David, Florence,
Patty, June and Elwyn,
Don, Mary, Kathyn,
Peg and Wally, Todd.

Hold them in your everlasting arms, O God.

Faith, in the end, was all they had.
And faith was enough.
And faith was not enough.
Because even in faith they did not receive what was promised.
Not yet.
The things they hoped for, the things they could not see.
The things we all hope for.
There was more.
By the grace of God,
there was yet the promise of more to come,
more to be.
The promise and the call
to something bigger than ourselves
to believe in.

SERMON

About forty years ago, I graduated from seminary,
approved and certified for call as a pastor
to some unsuspecting Lutheran congregation.

But I didn’t do it; I didn’t become a pastor.

Instead, for a variety of reasons
ranging from love to bureaucracy,
I dallied for two years,
two enjoyable years,
of being an actor, which surprised everybody,
and being in love, which surprised me,
and earning next to nothing
working in a warehouse.

I was having fun not being a pastor.

But if I didn’t take a call soon,
I knew they’d forget all about me.

So in 1983, I finally accepted a call
to Immanuel Lutheran Church in Harlan, Iowa.

Acting went out the window; so did love.

For my ordination service,
I chose the words of the apostle Paul we read today from 2 Corinthians.

I thought it would be a perfect theme for my life and ministry.

For we do not proclaim ourselves;
we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord
and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.

That, I thought, was my call in a nutshell.

I read those words today and I wonder what I was thinking.

Your slave?

I assure you, I have no interest in being your slave.

Even though Jesus talks about it all the time,
seems to think serving others is the best you could do,
even says he came not to be served but to serve,
even if it costs him his life,
and rather pointedly makes it clear we should do the same.

So,servanthood?  Well, maybe.

Maybe that’s what I was thinking.

I did want my life to serve some purpose
bigger than myself.

I wanted my life to mean something,
and I knew if that was going to happen
it couldn’t be all about me.

I had to serve something bigger than me,
and it doesn’t get much bigger than GOD.

So yes, I can agree with the apostle:
everything is for your sake,
so that grace, as it extends to more and more people,
may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

And really, don’t you want the same thing?

Serving yourself,
being your own god,
isn’t that too small a thing?

Or, as our gospel test for today says,
all those successful people,
walking around in the finest clothes and latest fashions,
greeted with respect in the marketplaces,
getting the best seats and
the places of honor at banquets—
you want that, don’t you?

You’d love to be drinking better wine
in a finer house
with the car of your dreams
in the 3-car garage.

You do not want to be anybody’s servant,
let alone a slave, not even for the sake of Jesus.

But you do want your life to mean something, don’t you?

You do want—you need—a purpose bigger than yourself.

You actually need to serve something;
you need a God
bigger than you.

And you know you have gifts,
you know you have something to bring to this world,
you know you there’s a little bit of glory in you,
and, you don’t need your name in lights or anything,
you don’t need be famous, maybe not even rich,
you just want to be appreciated
for who you are and what you can do;
you just want a little love for it all.

And that’s probably all what I wanted, too.

But my Ordinator—
the guy who presided at my ordination as a pastor,
who led the service and preached the sermon,
ignored my choice of St. Paul’s words,
and chose some words of Jesus instead.

I was a little disappointed;
I mean, I had it printed right there on the front of the bulletin
and all the announcements and invitations I sent out to people—
I thought it was pretty obvious.

But what he chose instead was this:

You did not choose me, but I chose you.
And I appointed you to go and bear fruit,
fruit that will last,
so that the Father will give you
whatever you ask in my name.
I am giving you these commands
so that you may love one another.

You did not choose me, but I chose you.

Which is to say, this isn’t about you;
I’ve got this one;
if you amount to anything as a pastor
it will be because I called you.

I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.

In the years ahead,
you’re going to look back and think
it all amounted to some pretty slim pickings,
but there will be some lasting fruit,
and it will all be worthwhile.

The Father will give you whatever you ask in my name—
which is not say everything is going to go your way
and you’re not going to get whatever you want;
oh, Lord, no, that has most definitely not been the case.

But it does mean you are not alone;
you will have what you need;
God goes with you.

Little did I know how much more important
his words of promise would be to me
than my words of high calling.

But I’ll tell you something:  I never wanted to do this.

A week ago I was looking for some new glasses,
and the optician helping me asked me what I did for a living,
and I told her, and she exclaimed, “Oh, that’s wonderful!”

She was a Christian, and she was so glad to meet me,
and she thought what I did was such important work,
and she so respected that.

And she asked me,
“What made you decide you wanted to be a pastor?”

And I said—for some reason I answered honestly,
“I never wanted to be a pastor; still don’t.”

I never wanted to live up to everybody else’s expectations;
I never wanted to try to fit myself
into those narrow, black-and-white,
restrictive, three-sizes-too-small,
pinch your toes and cramp your lifestyle
shoes.

I always thought I’d find a way out of it.
I’d do it for a while, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do,
but sooner or later I find something else to do.

I think she was bit disappointed;
I think she was hoping for a call story
that was just a little more glorious,
something with angels, or bright lights,
or voices from heaven,
or at least a little more conviction.

I’m still looking for something else to do.

It’s not going well.

I’m still here.

I just can’t get out of it.

And I think that sometimes that’s what a call is;
You did not choose me, I chose you—
get used to it;
you might start to like it,
you might start to realize
you’ve stumbled on to something bigger than yourself.

Maybe you can relate to that; maybe that’s you.

Maybe you never wanted to be here.

Maybe you think you’re not religious,
and you have a hard time believing this stuff,
and you have a hard enough time living up
to your own expectations, let alone anyone else’s,
and you want to have more fun
than you think you can have in church.

Well, I’m with you.

Maybe you’ve been around churches long enough to know
they’re not exactly filled with saints and angels.

There’s a hell of a lot of difficult people around here,
they can fight and argue and gossip
as much as pray and worship and speak kindly,
and it’s sometimes hard to believe
you’re going to have to spend the rest of eternity with them.

It can be a constant struggle getting anything done,
when we do do some good
it’s often as not with some collateral damage,
and we tend to do it as much for what we get out of it
as we do for what somebody else might get out of it.

Spend a few of your years around a church,
and you might look back and think
it all amounted to some pretty slim pickings,
and you wonder if any of the good you tried to do
with amount to some lasting fruit.

Truth be told, if you want to meet some sinners
a church is as good a place as any low-dive bar you can name.

So you want to light some candles to some saints today?

And so we did—about 15 of them;
fifteen of the saints we’ve known and loved;
we miss them and we always will.

We remember them for best they have been,
and we forget the worst we saw in them.

We tell jokes and funny stories about them,
and list the good things they did for us and did for others;
and we bury the hatchet and lose the list
of all the ways they hurt us
or disappointed us
or didn’t live up to our expectations.

We call them saints instead of sinners,
even though we know better.

And we cross our fingers
and pray to God
that one day
others will do the same for us.

Because the truth is,
none of us are very good
at living up to expectations,
our own or yours.

We’ve done our best, maybe,
but we’ve also done our worst,
and it hasn’t always been pretty.

We’ve messed up,
and hurt some people,
and run away from what we’ve done,
and faced up to failure as often as success.

We are not the important ones in fine suits;
if we earned your respect or gained some honor
we also filled some closets with ghosts and secrets.

We are the sinners, not the righteous,
and we’ve left a trail of tears behind us
nobody can find or see,
both theirs and ours.

As St. Paul says,
we have this treasure in clay jars;
we’re just ordinary, everyday vessels,
and you might find it a wonder that God can somehow use us.

But somehow God does:
We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us …

so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So, being a pastor—I’m not sure what I was thinking.

Was I thinking it would be glorious?

Was I expecting the automatic, unearned, but graciously given
respect and admiration that woman gave me,
the way some people will, just because you’re a pastor?

Or was I thinking I was called to be your servant for Jesus’ sake?

Well, either way, it’s been a privilege.

I’m always surprised by the respect I’ve never felt I earned.

But I have never felt like the all-star player of the game.

I mostly have felt like the water boy:
I get to run out on the field once in awhile with my clay jar,
and squirt what little refreshment I can onto your lips
while you play the game.

And then
I have the best seat in the house,
right on the fifty-yard line, where everything happens.

Being a pastor just means I have a front-row seat
on what God is doing in your lives.

I get to see God at work in you,
even when you can’t see it,
even when can’t believe it’s true,
even when it doesn’t fulfill your expectations.

I see God at work in you
even when you’re being difficult (or I am),
whether you’re fighting or arguing or gossiping,
or praying for each other,
worshiping together,
or doing your feeble best to love God and love your neighbors.

It is awesome to be on the sidelines.

So, what do you think, Immanuel Lutheran Church?

What’s your calling?

We’ve asked you to think about that;
to think about the stewardship of your life
and your spiritual growth;
to consider where you are and where you want to be
in your prayer life, your worship life,
your personal encounter with the Word of God,
your service to others,
your giving to the work of God in this place.

We hope you come back next week
with some decisions about that.

And what is our calling, together, as the people of God in this place?

We are focusing on the future,
on the new pastor who will serve you,
on the new thing God is doing among us.

We’ve been through so many changes
in the past couple of years.

Who ever thought we’d all sit together in church
like bank robbers wearing masks?

Who ever thought there would be as many of you
sitting at home, worshiping with us online?

And who knows what the next year will bring?

All we know is there is no going back.

The new is already here,
and we are trying to figure out how to live into it.

But God is still out there,
doing what God does–
bringing light into our darkness,
creating order and beauty out of our chaos and despair.

And God is calling us out.

God is calling us to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

The God who at the dawn of creation said,
Let light shine out of darkness,
is an ever-creative God,
always creating something new
out of the chaos of our lives.

Calling us to bear fruit,

promising that even sinners can amount to something.

Calling you to a servanthood you maybe never wanted,
to do your feeble best to love God and love your neighbors.

And if not everything goes your way,
or you don’t get whatever you want,
that does mean you are not alone.

You will have what you need;
God goes with you.

Immanuel, these are words of high calling;
and words of great promise.

Answer that call,
and you might start to realize
you’ve stumbled on to something bigger than yourself.

Amen.

CALL TO LIFE

After remembering, after listing,
all our ancestors in faith,
how they pressed on toward what they could not see,
how they continued to hope
for the promise of more to come,
more to be—

the writer of Hebrews
issues a call to the rest of us,
a call to believe
in something bigger than ourselves,
to be a part of what God is doing in our world,
the new thing God is still creating.

Therefore, the writer says,
since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,
and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
who for the sake of the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, disregarding its shame,
and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

God calling us to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

The ever-creative God,
always creating something new
out of the chaos of our times.

When we cannot see, when it’s hard to hope,
God still calling out,
let light shine out of our darkness.

O God, give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us.

God is out there, and The New Is Here—
go out and find a way to be a part of it.

TEXTS:

Mark 12:38-44
As [Jesus] taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!  They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.  A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 
Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.  For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

2 Corinthians 4:5-15
For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.  For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.  For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.  So death is at work in us, but life in you. 
But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke” —we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.  Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

On Worship

Here we are all in one place
The wants and wounds of the human race
Despair and hope sit face to face
When you come in from the cold
Let her fill your cup with something kind
Eggs and toast like bread and wine
She’s heard it all so she don’t mind
                 (Betty’s Diner, Carrie Newcomer)

“Church is boring,” a confirmation class sometimes will tell me.
“Yes,” I like to answer, “it’s supposed to be.”

Where else in life do you put the phone on do not disturb,
sit for an hour without a screen or a commercial in front of you,
sing without the radio on,
and accept, even welcome, the challenge
of quieting your heart and your mind,
and just be still?

Now, trust me, nobody hates bad worship like a pastor.
boring is one thing; stinking awful is another.
Unprepared, stumbling, reading scripture like it wasn’t something precious to you,
off-key and unrehearsed—we get it.
And no one is harder on a preacher than a preacher.

Although…
some of the most worshipful moments I’ve had
were in a small country church,
simple furnishings and nothing fancy,
without a pianist or a choir,
singing hymns to a pre-recorded sound track,
sometimes only twelve or six or three of us in the room,
stumbling off-key through music they didn’t know,
but every one of them earnest, honest,
participating, involved, absolutely present,
and unmistakably
there to worship.

There are moments as a preacher
when you look out on the congregation
and you see the look on someone’s face
that tells you they are really listening.
It can be unsettling and frightening to realize
someone thinks what you say counts, and is counting on it.

In that little church,
I never doubted that they heard every word,
and it mattered to them
(whether they agreed with me or not, and they didn’t always).

To worship is to say there is something more important in my life than me.
There is a Word worth being quiet enough long enough to hear,
worth the risk of boredom and stumbling preachers.
There is food that cannot possibly be enough,
just a bit of bread and a sip of wine,
perhaps stuck together like two tiny plastic creamers,
yet it carries a promise that can fill you
and carry you through the week.

Lutherans, at least, believe that and wait for it.
Baptism and Holy Communion, from our perspective,
aren’t things Christians do;
those are things God does to us.
God baptizes,
God is present for you in bread and wine.

When you can’t perceive the presence of God anywhere in your life,
including even here at church,
the promise of worship is not that you come to God
but that here God comes to you in ways you can not know,
and in ways you can know;
in things you can touch and feel
when you can’t feel anything like faith within you;
in a word of promise spoken to you by another’s voice,
when you can’t believe
in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, or life everlasting.

Because worship is something God commanded—
not demanded, but commanded,
so that you need have no doubt that here God is for you,
regardless of what you have done,
however unworthy you feel,
however unchristian you have acted,
however filled with doubt or anything like faith you may be,
however empty and poor and worthless you may know yourself to be.

Here somebody will tell you it isn’t so.
Here somebody will tell you that,
despite whatever you think or feel
or are unable to think or feel or believe,
the truth is you are beloved,
you are a gift of God in this world,
you are forgiven,
you are loved and set free to love your neighbor as yourself.
Go in peace; serve the Lord.

On the Word

Ever searched for just the right word?
You know what it is,
it’s on the tip of your tongue,
you’ll think of it in a minute,
but you need it right now.

Because the right word can make all the difference,
it can communicate what you’re trying to say
to all those faces around you with quizzical looks
that can’t figure out what you’re getting at.

Words have that power,
that oh-I-get-it-now way
of creating what you want to communicate,
connecting your thought to another’s understanding.

You are finally known, if you are speaking.
Or if you’re listening,
a new world could open for you,
a relationship could expand,
a connection be created.

Communication can be difficult,
you struggle to be heard,
you can work so hard to be understood.
And it can be so worth it.

For Lutherans, the Word is central.
We talk about the Word of God in different ways.

First of all, the Word of God is a person:
Jesus Christ is God’s greatest communication,
God finally finding the right way to get across to us
the gracious love that forgives us and claims us.

The Word of God is also living and active,
convicting us of our brokenness and sin
while creating the new within us.

And the Word of God is just that—words on a page,
the particular pages of a particular book,
the Bible.

Through the words of scripture, we say,
“God’s Spirit speaks to us to create and sustain
Christian faith and fellowship for service in the world.”

In a word, the Word does something to you;
it is not static print on paper;
it is the way the Spirit of God
does to you what it says.

Sometimes a person will come out of worship and tell me,
“You were speaking right to me today; that was exactly what I needed to hear.”
Which is always a mystery to me,
and more often than not,
it happens when I think the sermon actually stunk today.

And maybe it did,
and maybe you walked out of the same service
still arguing inside with whatever was said,
not sure you believe it or want to.
Either way, you know you’re not in control,
and if it means anything or does anything,
it’s the Spirit that does the work.

Odd how that can happen … even in church.

If you can read scripture, or listen to it,
and not find yourself wrestling with it,
you probably didn’t get it.

The Bible can be a hard book to read,
not for the obscure parts you don’t understand,
but for the all too clear parts you do.

But stick with it, and something happens, God happens.

One of the foundational writings of the Lutheran reformation,
the Augsburg Confession,
says that you’ll know the church when you find it
because there the Word of God
is preached and the sacraments rightly administered.
That’s it, that’s the church in a nutshell:
a Word proclaimed with the power to shape you,

Because the Word isn’t something
we do or learn or memorize or follow or apply to our lives
(although it might also be all those things).

The Word is primarily something God does to us.
To read and study and listen to and come to know the scriptures
is to open oneself to an ever-active, God
and whatever God might do to you and for you and in you
an ever-creative God who with a word spoke the world into being,
who has never ceased to be an ever-creative God,
and who is not finished with you yet.

October 29 2021

Eternal Spirit of the living Christ
I know not how to ask or what to say
I only know my need as deep as life,
and only you can teach me how to pray.
Come, pray in me the prayer I need this day…
(ELW #402)

Pray without ceasing, the apostle Paul told the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:17),
or as other translations have it, Pray constantly.

What in the world was he thinking?

That can’t mean walking around with your eyes closed,
bumping into things all the time.
It can’t mean muttering some petition
over and over under your breath.
Prayer can’t be that crazy.

Although there are some excellent spiritual practices that do just that—repeating throughout the day, as often as is possible the same short phrase, a phrase that keeps you centered on the presence of God in your life and in the world around you (like the ancient Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”; or centering prayer, which encourages the use of just one word that clears every distraction and brings your heart and mind back to focus on God).

But what if prayer never ceased for you?

What if prayer wasn’t just asking God for stuff?
What if prayer was the way you kept a relationship alive,
like the way you maintain your best relationships,
making time to talk about important things
or nothing at all in particular?

The way lovers do,
the sometimes quiet, sometime silent communication,
the shared presence of one another,
the comfort of being together?

The words you say, and the words you don’t say?
The way knowing you are there,
or will be, when we both get back home,
makes me less alone,
stronger somehow?

What if prayer was remembering
who you are and whose you are?

What if you got nothing out of prayer,
but you could give to it everything you’ve got,
every weight and every blessing?

What would it mean to live a life of prayer?

What would your like look like if your ‘prayer life’
wasn’t just relegated to a corner of your schedule
(on the days when it gets in there at all)?

What if everything you do was a prayer,
or formed by prayer,
addressed to God, consulted God,
lifted up to God, given to God …
before you ever did it, and while you’re doing it, and after it’s done?

What if every person you met became a prayer you offered?
What if you became the prayer someone else had been asking for?

What if prayer was just
thank you,
over and over again,
come what may,
thanks and thanks and thanks again,
for the good and for the bad,
because God must be in it somewhere,
and what good couldn’t come out of that?

What if prayer was the constant in your life,
in the midst of every inconstant thing?
The normal,
when you’ve lost the old normal,
and don’t yet know what the new normal will be?

What if prayer wasn’t something you did at all,
just the recognition of God praying in you,
the very Spirit of God
bearing witness with our spirit
that we are children of God (Romans 8:16)?

October 22 2021

Would you give your church away?  I believe I have a taker if you will.  The Immanuel you know and love—what would you take in trade?  Could you part with it?

Because in many ways, you have, haven’t you?  If you were here in 2019, or even if you weren’t, nothing is quite the same anymore.  You worship online, or you worship in person, but either way, it’s different, not quite the same anymore, and church is not likely to ever be quite the same again.

But then, that’s true about just about everything in your life in these pandemic times.  You work at home, you wear a mask; you’re fully vaccinated (I hope) and yet wonder if you should get a booster; you gather, if you gather with others at all, cautiously. 

We live leery, cautious, testing the waters, wondering when it will be safe to go back in.  We grieve the loss of the normal, not quite sure what the new normal will be.  2020 was different, and 2021 different from 2020, and 2022 is unknown territory.

Yet in the midst of all this, dear Immanuel, others have wandered to your doorstep and found you.  Your Mission & Life Committee has found a community around you that is looking—longing—for a church that will be relevant to their needs and hopes.

They’d like a church perhaps like this one … if you are willing to give it away, they’d take you up on it.  They would love to be the new Immanuel.  It could be something you could build together; if you are willing to part with it, you might discover it anew.

When the pandemic chaos of these past couple of years begins to wear on me, I often think of the creation story in Genesis 1:  In the beginning, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters….

It is an ancient picture of chaos—that’s how creation begins.  A formless void—indistinct, uncertain, what-is-this-mess?  Darkness—with lights shining on everything, we forget how terrifying complete darkness is.  The face of the deep—whenever you read of the deep, the sea, the waters in scripture, there is danger: boats were small and flimsy, the sea was wild and unpredictable.

Creation begins with chaos.

I love the idea of God, brooding over this hopeless mess of things, and thinking, “Hmmm.  I could make something out of this!”  And God takes our chaos and begins to form order and beauty.

God creates a thing of beauty, and then calls us to be stewards of it—to enjoy it, first of all, and to love it and care for it, first of all.  And to share it, first of all. 

Imagine God,  brooding over this pandemic chaos, pondering the disruptions in your life and mine, picking up the pieces of our scattered normal, finding a church called Immanuel (which means, of course, ‘God with us’) that will never be the same again, and thinking what many of us find impossible to imagine:  “Hmmm…I could make something out of this!”

And then, creating something new out of us, something we have not yet imagined, something unexpected and maybe a little disturbing, even disruptive, maybe not what we wanted, something we cannot recognize—except as a thing of beauty.

The Mission and Life Committee has completed its work and is ready to report back on what they discovered.  A new Call Committee has been appointed by the Council.  This weekend, all three—Mission & Life, Call Committee, and Council—will spend Saturday morning workshoping together, trying to imagine what God could be doing among us.

No one knows what the new will be, but one thing is for sure:  The New Is Here!

“The New is Here!”

Immanuel’s Fall Emphasis
on Stewardship
and Spiritual Growth

In the midst of his own chaotic times, the apostle Paul saw an ever-creative God doing new things:

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:

everything old has passed away;

see, everything has become new!

(2 Corinthians 5:17)

In these times, believing God is doing a new thing with us, Immanuel is re-imagining its future, calling a new pastor, and calling its members to renew their commitment to their own spiritual growth and to the mission we share as God’s people in this time, in this place.

We invite you to be a part of The New Is Here!

our fall stewardship emphasis: 

a call to prayer, worship, the Word of God, financial giving, and service to others.

The New Is Here! Sunday Series:

Join us for worship, in person or online.

Sunday, November 7—Light Out of Darkness

Sunday, November 14—Love Urges Us On

Inside Immanuel Weekly Series:

October 22—Becoming a New Church

October 29—Prayer: Come Pray in Me

November 5—Word: And God Said

November 12—Worship: Beyond Boring

November 19—Service: For the Fun of It

November 25—Giving: When Less