I Am Serious...

I’ve served on two different call committees, and listening to each candidate’s story taught me something about how people respond to God’s call to serve in ministry.  Being on the nominating committee this year, however, has allowed me to see the call process from a different perspective.

A new year at church typically means committees need new members and councils need new officers.  But here’s the thing: we can only pick from who’s available.  This is not to say that there isn't an abundance of wonderfully gifted people in our congregation.  We are blessed with folks with a wide variety of gifts.  We have builders, farmers, cooks, teachers, doctors, accountants, scientists, nurses, pharmacists, custodians, secretaries, musicians, writers, speakers, just to name a few.  The list goes on.

The nominating committee doesn’t assign people to open positions.  We ask.  And that is where I’ve gained a new appreciation, because sometimes they say no.  It surprises me, but it really shouldn’t. 

Why do people refuse? Sometimes they believe they aren’t qualified.  They think that there has to be someone else who could do a better job than they could do.  They decide what they have to offer isn’t good enough.  But we can’t put someone on the ballot who doesn’t say “yes,” no matter how highly regarded they are by the nominating committee.

This is going to seem like quite a stretch at first, but bear with me.  Remember the scene from the 1980 movie Airplane when Ted Striker is summoned to the cockpit because both of the pilots have become incapacitated? 

Rumack : “Can you fly this plane, and land it?” 

Striker: “Surely you can’t be serious.”

Rumack: “I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley.”

Striker tries to give some excuses about not having the right kind of experience to fly this type of aircraft, but the reality is there isn’t anyone else on that plane at that time that is better qualified.

What has that got to do with the church? When God wants something done, God calls someone in that place at that time to do it.  The bible is full of people who don’t appear to be the best candidates, but are called for a specific purpose in spite of (or maybe precisely because of) their apparent shortcomings. 

I’m not going to outline all the examples, but Mary has got to be at the top of the list. 

If God can use a teenage virgin to bear the Savior of the world, God can use you.

It's My Life. Now Let Me Be

One of our council members recently shared with the congregation how difficult it was for him to sing Here I Am, Lord and I’ll gladly second his motion.  That hymn certainly falls into the choker category for me as well, so you can be sure I didn’t include it on my list of favorites that our pastor asked us to submit.

The same goes for Take My Life and Let It Be by Frances Havergal.  I have my own version that goes more like, It’s My Life. Now Let Me Be.  Oh, sure, I have sung, “take my will and make it Thine,” plenty of times, but I knew full well that it wasn’t what I meant.  God can “take my moments and my days” when I haven’t got my own plans already.  It doesn’t matter if all I wanted to do was lie on the couch and watch Little House on the Prairie reruns; the important thing is that it was my idea.  If God had something else in mind for me, I did not want to hear it.

Dear God, I so much want to be in control. I want to be the master of my own destiny. Still I know that you are saying: “Let me take you by the hand and lead you.  Accept my love and trust that where I will bring you, the deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled.”  Lord, open my hands to receive your gift of love. Amen.  (Nouwen 2006, 61)

So for me at least, this relationship between heart and hands is why giving is so important, not simply for the church to meet its budget, but for my own spiritual life.  An offering is only part of a larger spiritual discipline.  Each time I open my hands to release those material things (which God has given me in the first place), I practice for the more difficult task of letting go of myself.

Holding on isn’t only about maintaining control.  It's also about fear.  Henri Nouwen tells the story of an elderly woman being placed in a residential care facility.  All that she had left of her own was one coin, which she held onto it so tightly that it took two staff members to pry it out of her hand.   This woman had lost all that she felt identified who she was and feared giving up that final thing would mean the loss of herself.   While it may sound like an extreme example, it helps us to think about what we have to be afraid of.  Can there be anything that we cannot entrust to God? 

Trust was the focus of our pastor's recent stewardship article and it shows up also in Nouwen’s prayer.  When I can open my hands to God in trust, letting go of the need to control everything, I am in a position to receive and to be led.  Receive what?  Go where? How important is it to know? 

Worship is one of the ways we can practice and experience this.  Opening our hands, we receive the gift of Christ’s body and blood, strengthening our relationship with God. Opening our hands to share the peace of Christ, we strengthen relationships with each other.  Opening our hands, we offer our possessions and ourselves to be used in the service of God’s kingdom.   We pray God’s will be done.  It will be done… through our hands.

Join me in asking God to help us to trust, to open our hands and hearts to do what God has called us to do, not only as individuals, but also as Christ’s living body, the church.

___________________________________

 

Nouwen, Henri J.M. With Open Hands. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2006.

Thinking of You

Sometimes when looking back on something I’ve written long ago, I think, “How incredibly awful!”  This time, I actually hope that eventually this will be one of those pieces because that will mean that I have become so much wiser than I am now.  Wiser about things I don’t have sufficient answers for now.

It’s a subject I’ve thought of many times, but hesitated to write about; one that most of us would probably rather not think about.  We might even be afraid to admit that, as faithful Christians, we have such thoughts sometimes.  But somewhere along the way, we are bound to encounter the What if?.

Oh, we try our best to always think positively.  We send cheerful “Thinking of You” cards out to those who are facing difficulties, we even promise to pray for them, either personally or as a congregation.  We form prayer chains in the hope that more prayer is better.

But, if we’re honest, sometimes in the back of our minds, fear and doubt have at least a toe, if not a whole foot in the door.  And we hear the raspy whisper, What if?

Although memorization was never a big priority for me as a Sunday School teacher, for some reason I made my 5^th and 6^th graders learn Romans 8:28 one year.  We recited the verse over and over, in lots of different ways, even shouting by the end of class, We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. I must have reasoned that somewhere in their lives, those words might prove to be helpful. Maybe what I was really trying to do was to convince myself that they were true.  I knew that whisper, What if?

Now, I’m not sure if that was a worthwhile exercise; because I would never try to use those words with a boy whose father is dying of cancer, despite the radiation and the chemo, the prayers of the congregation, and the visits from the pastor.  How can you possibly believe them when you’re with a father of three small children whose wife is mysteriously stricken with a rare, sometimes fatal illness?  And are they at all reassuring to a worried parent, when you know that every year some teenagers succeed in committing suicide even though everyone concerned has done their best to prevent it?  How do they sound to the lonely elderly woman who wonders why her husband and only granddaughter both had to die within a few months of one another?

That episode of Little House on the Prairie in which the children are caught in a blizzard leaving school early on Christmas Eve has one scene I've always found particularly heart wrenching.  Everyone rejoices when Mr. Edwards bursts in the door of the schoolhouse after spending the night out alone searching for his children in the blizzard.  Everyone, that is, but the wife and son of the man whose body Charles Ingalls had found earlier, frozen to death. 

Those are the people who came to my mind when a Christian radio station recently played a message from a listener, thanking God for his hand of protection over her husband, who had just narrowly missed being killed in a car accident.  My thoughts went to the listeners who were not so fortunate.  How do they react upon hearing that woman’s story?  Do they wonder why their loved one was apparently lower on God’s priority list?  Do they feel somehow to blame for not asking God’s protection beforehand?  Are they wondering if they’re being punished for something? 

No, that Romans verse isn’t what I’ve turned to when I’ve found myself within earshot of the What if?  Experience has instead taught me a little more about why Psalm 23 provides comfort to so many; because sooner or later, in one way or another, the What if? will happen.  And when it does, there is no way to reason any goodness into the situation, no matter how you frame it.

As much as we would like to fix it, or at least package it more attractively, it doesn’t work.  Muster up all the positive thinking you can, but it won’t change the facts when What if? arrives.  I think that’s why the psalmist calls it the “darkest valley;” it is a place where no light exists, and it sucks in any light in its reach.  All the encouraging platitudes that come drifting through are drowned in its depth.

We cannot avoid going through the dark valley of What if? but hope comes from the presence of the One who is with us through it.  For you are with me (23:4b) are the most powerful words I’ve found in confronting the whisper. 

Because we have a God who is not sitting around somewhere up above waiting for us to get our acts together, to become better, more deserving people.  We have a God who came down to us, here on the earth where we live, as a human like us.  His death and resurrection defeated the darkest valley so that, while we will not avoid it, it does not have the final say.  It does not have the power to consume us.

If you’ve heard me talk about communion before, you know it generates a game-show/infomercial kind of excitement for me. And so, I feel compelled to add, But wait, that’s not all! We have a God who continues to come to us in the sacraments.  Maybe we don’t remember our baptism if we were infants, but in communion we (hopefully, frequently) have that opportunity to experience Christ in both a physical and spiritual way, through our senses of hearing, sight, touch, and taste.  Given for us and remaining with us and in us, communion is at the same time personal as well as shared.

So while it isn’t a celestial slot machine that I can share with you, one that gives you a payoff if only you will just feed it the proper type and amount of currency, there is this, if we go a little farther in Romans:

³⁸ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹ No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.(Romans 8:38-39 NLT)

Faith is Made For Walkin'

It always bothers me when I see people in town stopping their cars at their mailboxes.  For the most part, the lots around here are not that deep, so it’s only a matter of walking a few yards to the end of the driveway.  How lazy can we get?  I try to grant a mental exception to those whose ability to walk may be limited, but that probably applies to a small minority of the offenders.

Driving down a rural Iowa highway this past week, I saw an elderly man walking back up his lane with mail in one hand, a cane in the other.   He had a pretty good way left to go, too, the farmhouse being set back from the road at least the length of a football field.  It must have been something of a challenge for him, his legs not all that strong anymore, balance not what it used to be.  To keep steady on the uneven, unpaved surface probably required a fair amount of effort.  It took some time, too, I’m sure, but on he went, slowly and purposefully.

Had I not been driving, I would have applauded him for his courage and his perseverance.  How much more difficult it was for him to retrieve his mail this way than for the people in town who stop at the end of the driveway and reach through the car window before pulling into their garages.

I could go on to talk about how we take our transportation for granted here, after witnessing in Guatemala that vehicle ownership is far less common and how those who are fortunate enough to have a running set of wheels often use them to carry many more passengers than we typically do here.  But this is really about more than making us feel guilty for taking unnecessary trips in the car.  Though stewardship of our resources is important, what I saw in that man was more about the stewardship of self.

For me, at least, this man became a symbol of using our very selves to the fullest potential.  And while I can pat myself on the back for walking out to my mailbox every day on my own two legs, can I say the same thing for my walk of faith?  Have I given my faith feet to step forward or does it ride around comfortably seated inside, looking out the window, only occasionally reaching into the world around me?

The old man with the cane could certainly have used his mobility problems as an excuse.  In choosing to walk, though, he risked falling.  He risked being hurt.  It would not be unreasonable to assume, too, that using his legs involved some level of discomfort.   But what might he have missed had he not taken that walk? He breathed the fresh June air, felt the warm sun on his face.  Perhaps that day he even spotted an eagle flying overhead or heard the wind rustling through the tall grass along the ditch.  He inspired reflection in someone he didn’t know who happened to drive by.

Whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask both that God’s kingdom come and will be done, but to what extent do we really expect to participate as instruments of God’s work toward accomplishing those things?  What changes would come about in the world if we all offered ourselves unreservedly, strengths and weaknesses both, to the ministry and mission of Christ’s Church?  What if we got out of our personal spiritual cars that we drive around, buckled securely inside?

Stuck in my head along with that image of the man in the lane is that Nancy Sinatra hit from 1966, These Boots.  But I think this time the message I hear is about our faith; it’s made for walkin’.

Peace and Carrots

Our pastor asked us to reflect on when we realized we were Lutheran, so here’s my way of explaining. 

Religion, it seemed to me, was like chasing a carrot at the end of a stick.  You could run as hard as you wanted, but you would never reach that carrot.  It was an elaborate and confusing point system that never quite allowed you to accumulate enough credit to reach your goal. 

What do you do when you realize you’re playing a game you can’t possibly win?  You quit and that’s pretty much what I did.  Oh, I would still pretend from time to time like I was still a part of the game, but I knew when it was all over, I was going to end up the loser, just like everyone else, except they didn’t know it yet. 

I played along so well that I was given a Sunday School class to teach.  We decided to do a skit, so I looked online for one with the right number of parts that wasn’t too long.  The format was a game show in which the contestants competed with one another by taking turns naming all the good things they had done.  This made perfect sense to me, until the game came to an end.  The winner wasn’t the obviously better competitor.  Something wasn’t right.

I re-read the script.  It referenced Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The “carrot” was already mine.  It had been mine all along. And what a wonderful, life-changing, precious carrot it is.  

Eventually, I realized that there was a limitless supply of carrots.  In fact, I started finding carrots in a lot more places than I ever would have guessed, even in some strange places. Sometimes they snuck up and surprised me, in places like a cowboy movie or an Andy Griffith episode. 

When you have all the carrots you could ever want or need, you can afford to be exorbitantly generous.  There is no more reason to be stingy with or protective of carrots. You no longer have to worry about whether the other person has more carrots than you do.  You don’t have to try to figure out whether they deserve any carrots because there are more than enough for everyone. 

The carrots are free, but they don’t belong to us.  We can’t hoard the carrots for ourselves and dole them out to only the people we think should have them.  The carrots are for everyone, no exceptions.

But what about the good works?  What about going to church?  What happens when there is no longer an obligation to perform a list of items on an endless checklist? 

Freedom happens.  And out of that freedom comes a joyful desire to respond in whatever way the Spirit leads.  Worship still happens, but instead of something we have to do it becomes something we can’t not  do.  Service to others happens, too, but instead of doing it in order to gain something, we do it because we are already filled and can’t help but share from that abundance.

Peace and carrots be with you all. 

Such a Good Boy

Once there was a Good little boy.  People often told his mother, “What a Good little boy you have!” and it made her smile.  When the mother took the little boy to the grocery store, he would sit nicely in the cart.  The Good little boy did not try to climb out.  He did not reach for things on the shelves and he did not scream.  The cashier would say, “Your little boy is so Good!”

When he was in church, the little boy sat still in his seat.  He was so quiet that the people in church would say, “That is such a Good little boy!”  His mother and father both smiled. 

Everywhere he went, the little boy was Good.

Sometimes, the mother took the Good little boy to the playground.  The other children were noisy as they climbed and ran and jumped, but the Good little boy sat quietly on his mother’s lap and watched.

The little boy grew and went to school.  He was a Good boy in school, too.  He was so Good that the teacher called the boy’s mother. The teacher said, “I am worried about your boy.  He does not talk.”  The mother was sad then, because she knew the little boy talked very well at home.

Spring came and the little boy joined a soccer team.  He was a Good boy at soccer practice.  He listened carefully to his coach and tried to follow the coach’s directions.  In the soccer games, the Good boy did not kick the ball very much.  The other boys kicked the ball most of the time. 

At the end of the season, the soccer coach brought trophies for the boys.  While the other boys jumped around and shouted and tried to grab the trophies from the coach’s box, the Good boy stood quietly and waited.  When the coach had only one trophy left to hand out, he said, “All the boys are not here.  One boy must be gone today.”  But he was wrong.  The Good little boy had been standing right next to the coach the whole time.

In the summer, the little boy played T-ball.  When their team was up to bat, the other boys ran around in the dugout and tried to climb up the fence.  The coach said, “Sit down and wait for your turn.”  The Good little boy sat quietly and waited, but the other boys did not.  They ran out of the dugout to bat when it was not their turn.  The coach did not notice, so the Good little boy just kept waiting.

What a Good boy he was!

Wish You Were Here

A Reflection on John 20:19-30

Maybe you’re not like me.  Maybe you are and you just don’t want to admit that you secretly hate those spring break postcards that people send to you, the person who is stuck back at home, slogging through snow that long ago lost its appeal or staring out the window at depressing brownness. That card that comes in the mail (or, more likely now, it appears on Facebook or Twitter) with a picture of that intensely blue water, pure white sand and lush green palm trees honestly makes you seethe.

Look at that picture long enough and you can almost hear the soothing sound of ocean waves, feel the warm sun on your face, the gentle breeze carrying the smell of suntan lotion and taste that sweet pina colada.  Be honest, it’s enough to make you sick, isn’t it? The tweet or the status or the card usually says something to the effect, “Having a great time, wish you were here.” 

Oh yeah.  Thanks a lot.  Thanks for reminding me I am not enjoying spring break where you are.  Thanks for pointing that out for me. Can you hear my sarcasm? 

But once I get past that bitterness, I can appreciate that someone was thinking of me.  I can appreciate that they were experiencing something so good that they wanted to share it with me.  It’s just that a picture doesn’t quite do the job. When that person returns home and tells me more about their trip, it gives me a better impression of what it was really like to be there, but there’s still something lacking. 

That’s how I imagine Thomas felt when the other disciples told him “We have seen the Lord.”   When he responds, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” I don’t hear him calling his friends liars.  What I hear is his frustration at not getting to have the same direct experience that they did.  Sort of like those T-shirts that say something like, “My parents went to Hawaii and all I got was this stupid shirt.” Thomas is not satisfied with getting the secondhand version of the story.  Thomas wants the real thing, which I think is why he is explicit to the point it almost makes us uncomfortable. 

I think Thomas is all of us, to some degree, but maybe not.  Maybe you haven’t experienced that feeling that you’re missing out.  Maybe you have grown up satisfied with hearing about Jesus from your parents, your grandparents, your pastor or someone else important in your life.  You are truly one of those who are blessed because you “have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 

If that is the case, I envied you, because it wasn’t enough for me.  I grew up going to church, but it just didn’t work. ‘Say this, do that’ all seemed to me a pointless endeavor, like playing one of those arcade games that is rigged so you can’t possibly win the big prize.  Watch the episode of Andy Griffith where Opie tries to win the shaver as a gift for his dad and you’ll see what I mean.

But God is not a crooked carnie and we see in this gospel text that locked doors and even disbelief will not stop Jesus.  Jesus finds a way through our barriers into our lives, sooner or later.  He will seek us out wherever we are hiding.  And when he does find us, we can’t help but want to share that experience.   

When we enjoy a wonderful vacation, we try to capture and preserve it.  We take pictures and pick up souvenirs in the hope that we can hold on to or re-create that time.  And so it is with our faith experiences; we have those memories, whether they are the sounds of a choir, the organ or the words of a hymn.  It may be the sight of the cross above the altar or the smell of Easter lilies.  We long for those things that mean for us Jesus is there.  They evoke some powerful emotions.

Each of us experiences Jesus in different ways, which leads us to argue among ourselves over what is the best way to share Jesus. Some of us are touched through music and others through liturgy.  Even the position of our bodies can play a part.  Kneeling does something important for some people while raising open hands fills that need for others.

For me, communion is especially meaningful.  Here and now, as it was then and there in that room, we have an opportunity to meet Jesus in a most personal and intimate way.  Through communion, we may see and touch and taste wafers and wine, but it is Jesus who is present in a very real sense, not simply a remembrance or a ritual re-enactment. 

Christ is alive.  Looking at beautiful photos won’t make it real for you and I am at a loss to express adequately with words how I know that is so.  All I can do is tell you that I am having a great time and I wish you were here so you could, too.  Come to church and see.

But I Don't Wanna!

Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want. (Mark 14:36).

Have you ever had to do something you really didn’t want to do?  In Jesus’ case, you could argue that he knew what was coming and what the outcome would be, so that made it somehow easier for him to be obedient to God.  But even with the benefit of that divine perspective, Jesus in his humanity seems to feel some hesitation.  Can you blame him?  Suffering and dying on a cross certainly tops anything I’ve had to endure in my life so far.

Certainly we’ve all had to go through some extremely difficult circumstances; sometimes we see them coming but many times they are unexpected.  Sometimes we have a choice and sometimes we don’t.  Have you noticed, though, that it is often the most challenging situations that teach you the most?

 

Several years ago, just about the time our new pastor was arriving, our church secretary was offered a new job that was too good to turn down.  I volunteered to fill in until a replacement could be found.  Had I ever anticipated that I would be working in a church office? Not in a million years.  Was I prepared for the job?  No.  I had no secretarial training and no office experience of any kind.  I had never even used a copy machine.

As it turned out, people weren’t exactly beating at the door to get that job, so eventually it was suggested that maybe I could just stay on.  A dear friend of mine had been a church secretary, so I asked for her advice.  She told me to “run away as fast as you can.”  But I didn’t run.  Something told me I should stay (and it wasn’t just the pastor), so I did.  Was it difficult?  Yes, but I learned more through that experience than I ever could have anywhere else outside of a seminary.  And I learned some valuable lessons they don’t teach there, too.

Maybe it’s blasphemous to even consider, but what if Jesus had said that he’d given the matter careful and prayerful consideration, but decided this just wasn’t something he was equipped to do?  Thanks, but no thanks.  Without getting into too much of the various atonement theories, I think we can safely say that without the crucifixion, there is no resurrection, no Easter without Good Friday.  By passing on the cup that is before us, we may be able to avoid some pain, but what might we miss out on in the process?

Sometimes we don’t have any choice but to face the challenges put before us.  Cancer, depression or other illness, death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, tornados and floods are all ‘cups’ we would rather pass on if we could.  Yet, I have found that it is when I have been confronted with the worst, I have learned the most about faith. 

Things must have seemed awfully dark for the disciples, too.  Their beloved Jesus was dead; hung on a cross right along with the other criminals.  It wasn’t at all what they expected.  It wasn’t right.  It wasn’t fair.  Jesus didn’t deserve that.  What happened to all the good times they thought the Messiah would bring them?  Their plans, their hopes, were ruined.

In a crazy way, the cross, a symbol of suffering, pain and death, becomes for us a symbol of hope.  Hang on to it, because the story isn’t over yet.  It wasn’t for Jesus and it isn’t for us. 

This is part of a hymn that provided great comfort to me at one of those dark times.  It speaks of God’s presence throughout all of our struggles and a hope we can find only in the cross.

       

                    I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless; 

                    ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.

                    Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory? 

                    I triumph still, if thou abide with me. 

                    Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;

                    shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.

                    Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;

                    in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

                                        (from Abide With Me, lyrics by Henry F. Lyte)

Pastor, Forgive Us

Pastor/Priest  \PA – stuhr/ preest\ n.

A sinner who is so aware of the power of sin in his or her own life that he or she feels called by the Holy Spirit to announce that God loves sinners. 

(From Crazy Talk: A Not So Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms, Rolf A. Jacobson, Editor)

As our congregation enters the interview phase of the call process, it is easy for us to fall into a messianic type of thinking.  If we just get the right pastor, all of our problems will be solved.  The choir will always wear robes and fill the choir loft every Sunday.  We will have a permanent organist who plays the liturgy.  We will sing only our most favorite hymns.

The confirmation classes will be large and they will memorize the catechism, reciting it in front of us all.  And no more drive-thru communion; everyone will kneel to receive the sacrament.   Sermons will be short, reminding us frequently of our failure to follow the Ten Commandments.  The pews will be full of familiar faces that come every week and always sit in the same place. 

Maybe that doesn’t match your vision at all and I have gone to one extreme in my portrayal to make a point.  But my point is this: we all have our own individual ideas of what the church should be and what a pastor should be.  And that’s a problem, because it interferes with our receptiveness to God’s vision.  We are blinded by our past because that’s all we know and we are afraid of what we cannot see.

Our romantic ideal of a wonderful new pastor needs to be tempered by the reality that pastors are people, too.  When we forget that, unrealistic expectations are followed by disappointment and discouragement on our part; disillusionment and even despair for the pastors.

So, I want to apologize to pastors for the expectations that we place on you (and your families) that are impossible to meet.  We want you to be something that we ourselves cannot be.

 

We think pastors should really be better than us, but if you think about it, what we need is a sinner, because a sinner can relate to us.  A sinner can relate to the struggles we have.  We need a sinner because we can relate to someone who makes mistakes like we do. 

So maybe we should stop and do a little self-examination before we criticize what our next pastor does or doesn’t do. 

Here are some ideas that may or may not apply:

We confess that we cling to a glorified image of what a pastor should be, setting you up for certain failure because you can never be all those things to all of us.

We confess that instead of being gracious and forgiving, we remember every mistake you have ever made, like the time you called the dearly departed by the wrong name or the time you didn’t wave back when we saw you up town. 

We confess to acting hurt when you don’t come visit us in the hospital, even though we didn’t let the church know we were admitted and we were discharged on the same day.

We confess to making our own wants more important than the needs of our congregation, community and world.

We confess to dropping in on you unannounced just to shoot the breeze when you have a funeral, a baptism and a wedding and regular worship to prepare for all in the same week. 

We confess to scrutinizing your personal appearance and commenting to the people around us on your shoes or your clothes or your hair or your weight. 

We confess to arguing theology with you based on our eighth or ninth grade 

understanding. 

We confess to discussing our concerns about the church and your ministry 

with everyone but you.

For all/any of these things and for those we have not named, we are sorry and ask your forgiveness.  Help us to work with you so that we may together envision and carry out the mission God calls us to.

Lord, deliver us from our self-centeredness and our fear.  Give us the hope, the courage and the faith to look to you in trust.  May your will be done in us and through us, in the coming weeks and always.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

               

               

A Voice From Above

Before he became a truck driver, my dad flew a spray plane.  Most people called him a “crop duster,” but he preferred “aerial applicator.”  

Back in those days before GPS, someone would have to drive to the field where the job was to be done to assist him in lining up correctly for each pass through the field.  

If the terrain was flat enough, as most of it was, each swath was measured by counting off the correct number of “dings” in the special hubcap he had fitted on the pickup.  A large day-glo orange flag was mounted behind the cab. Occasionally, a hilly field would require a flagger at both ends; one of us (me) on foot, stepping off each swath as he flew overhead.

The girl he’d hired to drive the truck was a few years older.  I didn’t have my driver’s license yet, so it was my job to help her navigate to the fields using the plat books we carried with us as well as to be the on-foot flagger when necessary. 

We were both pretty good at reading maps, but once in a while we would get lost on our way to the field.  That is when Dad would come on over the CB radio and yell at us to get our asses over to the right place.  Spray planes use a lot of fuel when they’re fully loaded, so it made him mad to waste it flying around while we drove around the wrong section like a couple of idiots.  He got paid so much per acre, so that fuel cost came out of his pocket, not the farmer’s.

You might think we would be glad to get directions from Dad; after all, he had the best view from the air.  I can tell you that this was definitely not the case, though, because we had so much trouble understanding him.  The noise from the airplane combined with the static of those radios made it nearly impossible to figure out what he was saying.  If we asked him to repeat too many times, he would yell at us to “listen the first time, dammit!”  If we took a guess and then drove in the wrong direction, he would yell at us to “pay attention!”  So, you can see why we girls would argue with one another over who had to answer the radio.  I usually lost that “because he’s your dad.”

Contrast that image with our reading from 1 Samuel 3 last week. The Lord is calling Samuel’s name.  It never occurs to Samuel that the Lord would be calling him. Since it’s his job to assist old Eli, who is sleeping nearby, Samuel makes a logical assumption that it’s Eli who is calling and responds accordingly.

Now, another thing that would raise my dad’s ire, besides wasting fuel, was being awakened from a nap.  Unless it was a windy day, he was flying by the time the sun was rising, so after-lunch naps were part of his daily routine.  And you did not want to be the one who had to wake him up if someone was there to see him or he had a phone call.  I avoided that like I did answering the radio.

So, I am especially impressed with Eli’s patience as Samuel wakes him up not once, but three times.  The first two times, Eli gently tells the boy to go back and lie down.  The third time this happens, it dawns on Eli that the voice Samuel is hearing must be the Lord’s. 

Notice it isn’t just Eli who is patient in this story, either.  There’s nothing to indicate that God is frustrated or angry with either of these guys.  God simply repeats, “Samuel, Samuel.”  This is another good place to play that little game I like to call, ‘Things God Does Not Say.’  God doesn’t say, “Whatsa matter, you got somethin in yer ears?”  God doesn’t say, “Well, if you had just listened to me the first time…”  God doesn’t say, “Read my lips…” God doesn't say "I'm not going to tell you again..."

With gentle, patient persistence, God eventually gets the message across.  Even today, through all the noise and static of our lives God still speaks.  Sometimes, like Samuel, we just don’t recognize the voice and we need someone else, like Eli, to help us to hear.  That’s one of the reasons we need to be in community with other Christians, so that we aren’t misled by what we think we hear on our own. 

Selective hearing is another story.  We all know how people will tune out what they don’t want to hear.  Spouses accuse one another of it all the time and parents of teenagers are well-acquainted with it.  Caller ID is a form of that.  I like it because it allows me to refuse to answer a call if I don’t recognize the number displayed…or if it’s someone I simply don’t want to talk to.

God’s way of dealing with people who hear but refuse to listen is different.  One case involves a really big fish, but I'll save that one for another day.

Toward Better Vision in 2012

Not my house, but it's similar.  More old houses.

You can’t see it, but I can.  When you pull into the driveway, there’s a big, white two-story house on the left.  Tall trees form a border to the west and the north.  To the right of the house is the chicken house.  It has a little square door on the front for just the chickens to use with a ramp leading up to it.  East of the driveway is a smaller, one-story house.  No one lives in it, but for some reason there’s one old doll that someone left just lying in the middle of the hard, linoleum floor.

To the east of the smaller house is the corn crib, where the diesel John Deere tractor is parked.  It’s louder than the other tractor when it runs. Beyond the corn crib is the hog shed, where the pink baby pigs live. They squeal if you pick them up. Nearby is the long cattle shed. The cattle are standing in a row next to the wooden feed bunks, waiting for their silage. There’s another small shed where a cow with an eye infection is being kept by herself. 

Back further in the trees to the north of the chicken house is a rusty old wagon that’s fun to climb around on, but some of the jagged metal edges are sharp.  Squirrels run around, on the ground and in the branches up above.  If you piled some acorns up at the base of one of the trees and came back the next day, they would be gone.

Coming home from Decorah this past summer with my daughter, we stopped at that driveway.  I could see all those things, but she could see none of them, because they aren’t there anymore.  I saw them with my 3 and 4 year-old eyes, on the farm where we lived before I was old enough to go to school.  But sitting in the car at that empty place that day, it was almost hard to believe those things had been real. 

For you or my daughter to believe that they were real requires faith.  Hopefully you both know me well enough that you aren’t suspicious of what I say.  Our relationship enables you to trust that I wouldn’t try to trick you or deceive you.  You also have to trust that I’m not hallucinating or under the influence of mind-altering drugs.  I could see where you might be tempted to think that if I said in my story that I became a chicken and flew over the trees, because everyone knows chickens can’t fly that high. 

5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Revelation 21.5

I’ll be the first to admit, that’s not always a statement I find easy to believe when I hear it.   “See” he says, but often I don’t.  Only with faith and trust is it possible.  Unlike my farm memories, what Jesus is talking about is yet to come, not the past.  He must have known how hard it would be for us; otherwise there would be no need to say anything about the trustworthiness of his words.  Isn’t that what we do if we sense skepticism in a listener?  “Trust me!” we urge them.  I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to trust what I can’t see.

We sang “Be Thou My Vision” in worship on New Year’s Day.  I am amazed that, as many times as I have sung or listened to this favorite hymn, I can still hear it in a different way (aside from the lyrics changes made in the ELW’s version).  In this hymn, I think we pray, not for our vision to be improved or made clearer and not for the fulfillment of our vision.  Rather, we pray that Christ BE our vision, because on our own, we can’t see what God has in mind.  Without the light of Christ for illumination, we see only what we want to see.

(v.1) Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; 

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night, 

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

(v. 5) High King of Heaven, my victory won, 

May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, 

Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

It may never be more important to see through God’s eyes rather than our own as it is at this time in our congregation, as we prepare to call a new pastor.  We each have our own preconceived notions of what a pastor should be, of what the church should be.  But we are challenged to look not with our own eyes, but in prayer to trust in God’s vision, even if it doesn’t quite match up with what we were expecting ourselves.

As I will readily confess, the greatest challenge for me is to apply that to my own life; to trust what I cannot see is always a struggle, but I find encouragement in these words from Paul:

As it is written ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
          nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared 

for those who love him’—  1 Cor 2:9