Trinity over Tragedy

It seems like it only takes a couple of weeks before we face another tragedy. Many questions lay on our hearts:  Why is this happening?  Sure, the tragedies are different from bombings and shootings, to abortions, and natural disasters.  Yet, one cannot help ask the question, Why not me?  What makes St. Louis safer than Oklahoma?  The answers and motives for any of these events are hard to find.  Yet, with unanswered motives from the humans, it leaves us to wonder how God plays a part in all of this.  Why does He allow things to happen in one place but not another?

            In this week’s Gospel reading the Jews are questioning Jesus, asking Him who His Father is.  Jesus explains that those who know His Father would know who He is.  The Jews go on to claim they are children of Abraham.  Jesus responds that if they were children of Abraham they would believe in His Word like Abraham did.  The Jews proceed to call Jesus an illegitimate child.  It goes without being said that this is not a nice thing.  Jesus proceeds by telling them if they loved God they would love Him.   If not, they are children of the devil.

            It seems like a harsh exchange, but reality lies in the fact that sin is constantly in this world.  Whether it is people who reject Jesus, or just the pain of sin of this life.  Every time we face a tragedy it is a great reminder to put our trust in the Trinity.  Jesus is the only one who could redeem this world.  So often people, like the Jews, want to blame God, but in a moment when we encounter mortality we are reminded of the One who gave us immortality.  The pain of death is not always an easy one to swallow, but especially when it is connected to tragedy.  We take a minute to not let the father of lies, the devil, be the focus in tragedy.  Instead, it is a great moment to share with people the deep love Jesus has for them--that He would suffer the greatest tragedy for us.

            Over the past six months God has brought us back to Restore Mt. Calvary. Years ago Mt. Calvary members marched down the street to find what they believed to be a mission field in Brentwood.  People questioned those early members, and doubted the wisdom of buying a restaurant with all this land.  God gave us a blessing at that time.  Now throughout the years we have faced some difficulties and tragedies: whether it is holes in our roof, some foundation issues, a broken up parking lot, or neighbors who sometimes present us with unreasonable complaints.  While these events may not compare to Oklahoma, every tragedy, whether a car accident in St. Louis, or one of the greatest tornadoes the United States has ever seen, it is hard to face the pains of sin in this life.  Yet, through the restoration of Jesus, He continues to give us the Great Commission to uplift the Trinity and to trust in our God’s restoring power.

            God has brought us as a family to restore this wonderful blessing.  He has allowed us to put some of the natural tragedies to this building behind us.  Now it is time to get prepared for the future.  As we seek to carry out the Gospel, in light of a Sunday without our worship facility open, we had choices.  Some choices are easier than others, but with every tragedy or challenge comes a moment to grasp opportunity.  The opportunity is that as a worshiping community, we often don’t get to observe other churches with a specific task in mind.  On Sunday June 2^nd, through approval of the Board of Directors, and input from the Ministry Council, we will be taking that Sunday to visit other churches in our community.  There will be a specific list of questions to give you an idea of things to look for as you visit another church.  I recently had a newer young adult member of our church tell me Mt. Calvary was almost too welcoming, and she felt overwhelmed and almost quit worshiping with us.  While I remind you that I feel our biggest strength is our welcoming nature, this evaluation will give you the opportunity to observe welcoming procedures in another church.  Having specific guidelines will help you share your opinion in a constructive way.  If we believe restoring our building was important, then we also have a great opportunity to restore the same spirit of mission that inspired men and women of Mt. Calvary to walk down the street to this property.   These evaluations can provide us with new ways to share the Great Commission with the Brentwood community and to all the people that enter our doors. This weekend you will have a chance to pick up an evaluation form. At the bottom you will find suggestions of some churches you might try, or feel free to pick another one. But be prepared to share your experience with us. I will compile all the feedback and share it with you. This will prepare us to be Extraordinary Servants to the people who come in our doors.

Distribution

It is amazing to me that now you can watch the step-by-step journey of a package that is sent to you.  It doesn’t matter if it is Fed Ex or UPS or USPS-- they all feature this option.  Distribution has changed in the last several years.  Our delivery expectations have increased, and therefore the services have responded.  But recently the USPS was considering eliminating Saturdays from its current mail delivery schedule.  This would go along with the trend that email and other technology has eliminated some of the need for continuous mail delivery.

            Our world has an interesting way of things constantly changing.  Stable things in our world soon become obsolete or passing trends.  Distribution is one of those things.  We went from the pony express to email, texting, and Skype.  As a human culture we declare what we find important to be distributed.  Years ago people would have been skeptical if typed messages on a phone would be something that caught on.  People also would have questioned whether the idea of broadcasting family information and happenings in an open forum like Facebook would have been a good thing.  Yet, we as a culture define what is necessary to be distributed.

            I heard a joke once from a comedian who said, “I love when people hand me flyers; it is like them telling me, ‘Hey man throw this away for me.’”  We can be like that with something we term junk mail--a definition that comes from what we find to be junk and not useful.  

            I found it interesting in this week’s reading from Acts 2:1-21, that one of the translations for that reading is that the tongues of fire, implying the Holy Spirit, were distributed.  I rarely think of the Holy Spirit as being distributed.  While we use distribution to describe the Lord’s Supper, for us to distribute the Holy Spirit seems weird at first, but once I wrapped my mind around it, I loved it.

            What if we were looking at the Holy Spirit like it was something we wanted to make sure everyone had?  What if we perceived it to be necessary mail that we would send out to promote our company?  What if we took the time to track how the Holy Spirit was passed on?  Sure, we can never really know, but what if we were able to observe how people came to faith?  I think we would find it would come a lot more from the people, rather than from pastors.

            This weekend we celebrate Pentecost.  We mark the event when Jesus left us, but also sent the Holy Spirit to sanctify us, and walk with us in our discipleship with God.  It is the moment He distributed the Holy Spirit on the disciples, and then sent the disciples to distribute it to all of God’s people.  This weekend God gives us the same charge.  He sends us out with the passion of understanding just what a blessing the Holy Spirit is; how God has distributed it to you and me; and then sends us out to distribute the Holy Spirit through the power of Baptism and the Word of God that changes lives.  

Mother's Day

Speaking of Bunny (chocolate powder for milk), one of my favorite mom stories ever, is hearing how my mom was in the kitchen, but stepped away for a minute only to find a chocolate-powder-covered kitchen.  Every mom knows what that feels like.  Wait!  Every parent knows what that feels like.  Wait!  Anyone who has ever watched any kid knows what that feels like.

            Some people are afraid to talk about Mother’s Day because of the offense it could cause with those who don’t have kids, or those who have never been married. We like to make Mother’s Day out to be this beautiful pastel day where we give our mothers really great gifts.

            I remember Mother’s Day involving last minute shopping, and a day when my mom didn’t cook.  This meant we ate at a restaurant, or had food delivered because my dad was trying to give my mom a break.  This resulted in disheveled looking kids, who were encouraged to leave mom alone on this special day.  But I also remember different Mother’s Days when all of my brothers and sisters showed how much they loved my mom by the true depth of their intentions and actions.  One thing that Mother’s Day permits is that it allows us to recognize the scope of the work involved by the people who took care of us. 

            Every person was once a baby:  Barack Obama, David Freese, Harrison Ford, and even the oldest members of our church.  God created us as babies who grew into little children, and from the very beginning, with every step of life, we needed someone to guide and direct us.

            Mother’s Day is the celebration of the vocation, the job of caring for those who need our care.  God provides us with different gifts, and we all have different techniques for caring for others.  Today’s celebration is all about the unique gifts of caring for our loved ones.  As believers we stand, appreciating the depth of that commitment and responsibility.  God calls us into action to care for those He has given us.

            He also wants us to acknowledge and thank those who cared for us.  One of the ways God provides for us daily is that He allows those people to be in our lives.  It is always hard to believe that we go from needing someone to take care of our needs in the beginning of life, to often having that happen at the end of life.  It is one of the hardest things for people to accept.  As a pastor I see it all the time, but yet in the true understanding of the Body of Christ, it means that our roles change often. We go from needing someone to care for us, to caring for others, to going back to needing someone to care for us.  It is a wonderful thing that reminds us of the vocation or calling God gives us during certain seasons of life.  It also helps us recognize how much Jesus loves us; not only would He come to rescue us, but He also would provide people to continue that care in our lives.

            On Mother’s Day we explore the various levels of vocation, care, concern, and love for others.  We all can thank God for our mothers, and ask God how those experiences taught us about our care and concern for others.  And we pray that God would continue to guide us in our extraordinary servant love for those in our lives.

Write Your Life Story

           

In 1995 I stood with 51 other youth confirming my faith.  We had written faith papers to declare our faith.  I remember I wrote one with a key line in my head: If you are going to remember anything tonight remember this . . ..  I couldn’t tell you what I wrote after that, but I remember one thing--that line was crossed out by my pastor.  It was disappointing when it happened, but I was beginning to realize the humble, intense walk of a Christian.  But there is something to be said about boldness of faith.   Already at that age I was sure I was going to be a pastor, and I also felt like I wanted to share my faith with everyone.  I was prepared to sum up what they needed to know in one line.

            The world has changed, and unfortunately the majority of my confirmation classmates do not find themselves in pews today; and honestly, good portions of them were rarely seen again in our church after they were confirmed.  The Lutheran Church, as well as the Church at Large, is trying to address this problem.  How do we keep our kids in church?  How do we teach them why faith is important?  During my work as a youth pastor, I have seen an ongoing trend in this direction, and I continue to watch the Church address this.

            This weekend I stopped in to talk to our Confirmands during their class, which is led by two great guys who teach in our seminary throughout the week.  One of them pointed out how far they had gotten through the book.  This year we took a new approach.  We read this really cool action Bible for youth.  It is formatted like a comic, along with the words of Scripture.  As the Confirmands read the action Bible, they could connect how the catechism helps to interpret the theology which is found in Scripture.  This helps our kids to understand that we are not just memorizing this other book (the catechism), but this procedure allows us to see the depth and power of Scripture.  And standing in the Lutheran Church we confirm our faith and make this our confession.  I was thrilled during a time of questioning with our Confirmands to find their depth in understanding Scripture.  I think they both have a boldness of faith that is refreshing, and my prayer for them is to remain in that.

            As a five-year youth pastor, this question bothered me:  What is the one thing they need to hear?  Now I would say I am not sure there is only one thing to remember tonight.  Each story is different and each youth is different.  The important role of the Church is to help our youth see the power of the Scriptures, and that our theology helps us understand who and what Jesus came to do in our lives.  Each person in the Bible had a story.  When we look into the biblical narratives, we discover people like you and me working to understand how sin affected their lives and how Jesus (the promise) was the only answer and the cure.  I believe it is so important for our youth to realize that they are a key part of our Church.  They have a voice and a story that is important, and like them, the adults are writing their own stories.  We all are walking through life seeing the pains of sin in our lives, and praying for the forgiveness of God to guide and direct our stories.  Our youth may only be 14 and 15, but their lives are beginning to be defined.  And like Scripture, their narrative is unfolding. They may not be building an Ark, leading people out of Egypt, or sitting in prison writing letters about their faith, but in a world with all kinds of new technology they are the ones who are charged to carry out the Great Commission in their circles and in this world.

            Mt. Calvary comes together this weekend to celebrate with Sam and Angela as they confirm the very Sacrament that happened at their Baptism.  They want to follow Jesus and write their life story with Him in it.  As fellow believers we stand by as encouragers of the stories they are writing, and prayerfully we ask God to help them write their Life Story rooted in Jesus.

In a little while

Parenting has taken on a new thinking, so it seems.  I am not an expert on parenting, but I am aware that the American culture takes on a great new focus on the topic of expert parenting.  We seem to have more information on what to feed our kids, how to educate, and how to discipline them.  That discipline has been transformed from the soap my grandma stuck into my mouth to timeouts, and now to a reward based scenario for honoring what you say as a parent.  I find that Mindy and I bring our historic views of parenting, and blend them into the new way.  Recently, the bedtime routine has been rough.  Some of you know that my kids call chocolate milk, ‘Bunny’.  They are allowed one cup at bedtime.  Yes, the dentists in my life do not agree with me, but trust me, it used to be much worse.  We got it to one cup!  Just a reminder that pastors are not perfect--they need God’s forgiveness also.  Anyway, as the bedtime routine has been a challenge, I have started to make Jacob and Gavin wait for their one cup of ‘Bunny’.  Some days this goes over well with the desired effect.  At other times it goes over with crying fits and all kinds of other craziness.  Jacob started asking after we read our books, the Bible, and say our prayers, “Do I have to earn ‘Bunny’ tonight?”  Then he would say, “How many minutes do I have to wait?”  The other night he told Mindy, “I am waiting so patiently, but Dad has not brought me ‘Bunny’.”  Now, of course, there is a debate on what he considers waiting patiently; but regardless, I see something funny in those moments.  I see his adult language emerge, but I also see how we as humans revert back to being kids.

            Do you ever feel like you are asking God a similar question?  “God I am waiting so patiently for . . ..” (You fill in the blank.)  “How many minutes do I have to wait on God for . . .?”  This weekend the readings in our worship speak about when the waiting is over.  They discuss what it will be like to be restored by Jesus.  They offer us a glimpse of our journey to heaven.  They begin with this unique line, “In a little while . . ..”  In our fast paced culture “In a little while . . .” doesn’t sit well.  The disciples who were walking with Jesus everyday heard, “In a little while . . .” and it was confusing to them.  They began asking Jesus what this phrase meant.

            For years Christians have looked at this life and also wondered what Jesus meant by “In a little while . . ..”  What does waiting patiently for His kingdom to be restored mean?  How long do we watch the tragedies of this world and wait?  How many more minutes?

            This weekend we take a deeper look into the words, “In a little while . . ..”  As the disciples were waiting and listening to what Jesus was saying, and then heard him explain, “In a little while you will see me no longer.”  What did that do to them? How hard was it?  What does that mean for us today?  How is “In a little while . . .” a good thing?  We take time to look into that, as we continue to celebrate Easter.  With the tragedies of life and the challenges of sin still among us, we focus on the celebration of what is to come and what we can do while we wait.  

Strong

In high school I was so skinny that my basketball coach kept telling me to bulk up.  So I began lifting, but I refused to use any muscle gainers.  I remember one day I asked a teacher to spot me.  I put the weight I thought I could lift up on the bar. He came to spot me, and as I lifted, the bar slammed into my chest.  The problem was that this teacher was almost as skinny as me.  I was in throbbing pain, but I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t do it so I kept lifting.  I finished the set and put the bar on the rack.  He asked if I wanted to do another set, and I, in pain answered, “No, I am good.”  He asked if I lifted this weight before and I was like, “Yeah, all the time.”  I wanted to be strong, and I had every intention of getting stronger, but I was just thin.

            This word strong is used in our culture often.  Live Strong became something so well known in our culture by yellow bracelets.  I thought this idea of Strong might die after Lance Armstrong, who was the main spokesmen for it, admitted he had used enhancement drugs to make him strong.  Yet, this word seems to be a culturally vogue way of talking about how to make it through tough times.  It was originally coined after Lance made it through cancer.  Now this focus on Strong comes into play when we face tragedy.

            This week, Boston Strong was used by many baseball players and other people to talk about how the city fought through their most recent tragedy with the bombings that occurred during the Boston Marathon.  Every tragedy brings people together and strengthens relationships.  As people not living in Boston, it brought many of us together to thank God for our relationships and family.  But it struck me that while these people are still strong and getting stronger, they still hurt.  The dad who lost the son who was watching him race is pained.  I also thought about runners who were about to complete 26 miles with fully abled bodies, now might never run again.  Tragedy strikes and it hurts.  We want to respond and find out who is responsible, but it brings about a feeling of uneasiness about the safety of our country.  No matter how strong we are, we need to be stronger to handle days like that.  And honestly, it seems that nobody has answers or understands why these tragedies happen.  In a moment when a city celebrated a holiday and hosted a marathon, it became a moment when America felt its safety and enjoyment was stolen.

            This weekend our two scripture passages, Acts 20:17-35 and John 10:22-30, talk about this.  They focus on the true foundation of strength that can be found in Jesus--that no one can snatch us from His hands.  In Acts we learn about days similar to the Boston Marathon; that, as then, others will come and try to steal us away.  But no one can steal us from the hands of Jesus, our God and King.  As the world mourned on Monday, I thought about the opportunities for people trying to be strong, and how we could share the message of true strength found in our Savior.  I thought about how our Savior endured the great tragedy of taking on all the sin in our world.  Days like Monday are tough, but remind us of the great strength of Jesus our King!  We will talk about that this weekend and pray for the people in Boston. 

CCLS Sunday - One Teacher

When I switched to Lutheran High I wondered what God had in store for me. All I knew was that I wanted to play basketball and this gave me a shot.  I also knew that since I was headed in the direction to become a pastor, this gave me a good base to study God’s Word in school.  I brought my 4.0 into a school with much more challenging teachers.  I quickly learned that my usual techniques for getting good grades weren’t going to work here.  One particular teacher gave me C’s in his class.  I hated getting C’s, so to remedy this, I took a ton of notes in his class in order to better prep for tests, but it was still extremely hard.

            My relationship with him took a new dimension when I started playing basketball.  Having him as my coach made this my favorite year.  I played JV and was one of our main shooters.  He knew he could count on me to shoot the ball for him.  Even though I felt that I was a mediocre student in his class, I believed that I excelled for him on the basketball court.  It was a unique balance of Law and Gospel.  I never felt like he looked down on me, and at the end of high school, I knew that my grades did not separate me from who I was as a Christian.

            He always walked around the classroom with chalk in his pocket.  He would take it out and shake it in his hand.  He’d sometimes pull up his pants and we could see his penny loafers and his white socks.  He almost always wore khakis, not dress pants.  He taught history and religion, and was one of the most challenging teachers I have ever had.   After I got to college I told him that I never felt like I made good enough grades in his class.  But I let him know that he had prepared me well for college, which made many of my student days easier.  I’m not sure if he knew how to take that, but for me it was one of the highest compliments I could pay him.  School was challenging for me at times, but his tough requirements made higher education a lot easier.

The biggest lesson I learned from him was never in any classroom or on any basketball court.  The biggest lesson I learned from him was how he acted as a Christian man.  His sons went to college with me, and during that period of time, his wife left him.  I won’t discuss the particulars because they don’t matter.  We are all flawed people, and whenever two broken people marry (and we are all broken people), there are always sins to be dealt with.  I heard story after story about how he was struggling; I heard him confess his flaws, but most of all, I heard that he loved his wife and wanted her back.  He waited years for her to return.  He never ever wanted to get a divorce.  He fought the battle to keep her.  You see, he became not just a teacher of history, or religion; he taught me a life lesson about how to be a Christian man.  He taught me that Christian men repent because we are all sinners; that Christian men stay faithful to their wives even in the most intense and extreme situations; that Christian men honor their promises and commitments made at the altar.

            I know my teacher learned all of this from the greatest teacher of all, Jesus. This weekend we take time to celebrate our association school, and be thankful to God that He has blessed us with faithful Christian teachers who share their God-given gifts with us.  These teachers can make a lifetime impact, because they are not just teaching subjects in a class; they are teaching the living words of Jesus.  They are also setting examples that our kids need, because this world is full of people who teach us all kinds of other things, like giving up on marriage, or lying, or whatever else.  But Christian teachers set examples that will stick with our kids forever.  I pray that we celebrate that this Sunday.  But most importantly, we will celebrate the greatest teacher who ever lived, and that is our Risen Jesus.