A Light Shines in the Darkness

Advent is my favorite season at LSTC. Mainly because we get to sing all of those wonderful much-neglected Advent hymns. Don’t get me wrong; I love Christmas music as much as the next guy, but Christmas hymns seem deeper and truer for having spent December with the hauntingly beautiful “Each Winter As the Year Grows Colder” or eager “All Earth Is Hopeful.”

More than the hymnody, I love the simplicity of the season, the somber blues, the flickering candles, the flash of an evergreen wreath in the midst of the bare winter branches. Advent just seems to fit the mood of the seminary in December. Two weeks left in the semester, it is a stressful time. And then here comes Advent, like “communal deep breathing.” Advent is somber, but not penitential like Lent. Instead, it is hopeful waiting. A deep pause that assures you that even in the midst of chaos everything will be, in the end, all right. This year, the Advent wreath in the chapel is an “eternal flame.” This small, constant flickering candle reminds us that one small light shines through the deepest darkness and the Light of the World is on the way.

Embracing the Questions

It is that point in the semester where everything is busy. Busy with papers, with reading, with translations. In the midst of the academic stress sits another big hurdle. First call paperwork. Those of us entering the Spring Assignment process have to have all of our forms in by December 1st. As the rush of the end of the semester wraps around me, I find it difficult to live in the tension between these two deadlines. How am I so much still a student, and yet somehow also almost a pastor and seeking a call? It is a complicated juxtaposition of emotions and demands.

Tonight, I had dinner with a group of friends. We have met for dinner every Sunday night since our first year. It began as a Greek study group, morphed into a Hebrew study group when we became middlers, and has now come back together to work through the Greek translations for those in advanced exegesis together or “parallel play” (other homework) for those of us who do not have Greek. Though the language and work change, the format remained the same: dinner, translation, and then frequently a glass of wine. All of it steeped in talking and laughter. It is a place where I know I am safe, where my questions are honored, whether they are “I have no idea what this Greek tense means” or “I have no idea where my life is headed.”

This deep and wonderful community is what seminary has given me. More than any language or exegetical tool, what I know I will take into my ministry is the knowledge that there are people who love me. Who believe in me, who value my thoughts, and who challenge those thoughts. Who will not let me settle to be anything less than who God has created me to be. Seminary is by nature an in-between time. As I sit in this time, I am grateful to do it with these people. With faculty who challenge me, with colleagues who question me, and with friends who believe in me. These are good questions to be asking.

Here and There

Yesterday was my first day of class for this semester. I spent the day reading course syllabuses, planning assignments, and feeling behind on reading. It is exciting to be back at LSTC, exciting to think of all the semester has in store. Most of all, it is great to be back among friends. Tuesday night several friends came over for a “last first day of school” party. We laughed and joked, and I remembered the joy of community.

Yesterday was also the first night of Wednesday Church Night at my internship congregation. On internship, the Wednesday Church Night community was one of my primary responsibilities. They were the community I got to know first, the first ones for whom I understood what it meant to be pastor. Wednesday nights were the most intense part of my internship experience. My highest highs and my lowest lows happened on Wednesdays.

So it is a weird feeling to be here and not there. I’m excited for my classes, excited for the learning and the discussions. But I miss the community who became my own. I miss the faces and the stories, the people I came to love, who came to love me. I find I want to be here and there. I want my friends and my congregation. And so I find that this experience of internship still has more to teach me. I am still learning the process of how to say good-bye.

Summer Fun

The Lutheran Book of Worship Occasional Services book offers helpful worship advice for a variety of situations. Check out pg. 260 for useful advice when you reach your next destination. Note: these tips are for educational purposes only. Please do not practice your new-found wisdom. :)

Page 260, in case you don’t have the LBW Occasional Services book handy, is Guidelines for Ringing Church Bells.

I spent the beginning of the week putting together a scavenger hunt for Confirmation Camp. The theme this year is parables, and I am responsible for the teaching portion for Luke 15, the parables of the lost and found. To help the kids grasp the idea of losing something and having to stay focused to find it, we’re going to “lose” my co-leader, and the kids will have to follow the clues to “find” him. He is already at camp, so I drew the job of putting the hunt together. It was great fun.

Each season of the church year has had a different focus and pace. Summer continues the trend. It has been no less busy, but a very different sort of busy, requiring much more of my creativity and inventiveness. Summer events are more laid back and casual, which I’ve learned takes much more planning and behind-the-scenes work than the more formal and formulaic programs of the academic year. But it’s fun. It’s fun to play with the congregation. To plan goofy activities and have folks open to go ahead with them. To take risks, because people are open for anything once the sun comes out. To play Bible Jeopardy with the seniors Bible study, wire the fellowship hall with surround sound for a Panda-based dance party, and teach nine upper elementary kids a song about a Hippopotamus. Here’s to summer.


By the way, the scavenger hunt clue should lead the kids to the camp’s emergency bell. Hoping nobody rings it…

Learning to Speak "New York"

It is torrentially downpouring. I woke up to rain pounding my ceiling at about 5:30 this morning, and it has been pretty much constant since then. This rain in the summer thing is still a new concept to me. Where I grew up, rain is a winter activity. It patters down gently at various intervals in January and March, turning the hills a rich green. Summers, on the other hand, are hot and dry. I thought this was normal. But when I expressed my displeasure to the parish administrator this morning (“Why is it raining? Doesn’t it know yesterday was the first day of summer?”), she looked at me like I was from the moon. “We need it,” she replied, “it’s been so dry.” To this, I looked at her like she was from the moon. Dry is not how I would describe the lush, green New York forests or the moss collecting on the roof out my office window.

Miscommunications and misunderstandings like this are familiar to me at this point in my internship, but they still catch me off-guard. I am constantly amazed how things that I take for granted as “normal”, that it doesn’t rain in the summer, for example, are completely foreign here. Sometimes it feels like I’m speaking in a foreign tongue, some alternate form of English that involves such words as “snow-blower” and “dollrags.” Days like today remind me that while this place has become familiar, I am not yet bilingual.

Plumbing Adventures

Saturday morning, the bobber on my toilet tank broke. The shut-off valve had corroded open and I couldn’t turn it, so the only way to stop the rush of water from overflowing the tank was to physically hold the bobber arm up. I was kind of in a rush, I was supposed to be picking up someone from the hospital, but instead I knelt on the bathroom floor, up to my elbows in the toilet tank, thinking, “which day did they teach us how to fix this in seminary…”

The fact is, they didn’t. No theologian that I have yet read had anything useful to say on how to solve a plumbing crisis. Home (parsonage, building) repair is not covered in seminary. Nor is pancake making for fifteen, how to get wax out of the carpet, or writing a personnel manual. Ministry, as it turns out, is 5% things they taught you in seminary, and 95% think-on-your-feet.

That is what internship is for, to teach you that you have no idea what you’re doing, and to give you the tools to work through it anyway. That morning, upset and out of options that didn’t involve my arm, I called the associate pastor, who explained how to tie a mug to a string to hold the bobber arm up. This did not solve the problem, but it gave me enough time and space to think through an actual solution. More importantly, it reminded me that I was not alone. What had felt like me and the bobber arm, was suddenly me, her, and the bobber arm. Her advice broke through my focus and allowed me to move beyond the immediacy of the crisis to see the wider picture. I found and adjusted a tiny screw, and the bobber now works better than ever. Thanks be to God for colleagues who move us beyond ourselves, indoor plumbing, and sermon illustrations in unexpected places.

Sign Me Up

The summer before I left for seminary I played guitar for vacation bible school at my friend’s church. I remember sitting barefoot in the sticky church basement with a felt hat shaped like a crab on my head, beating out a rhythm for “Jesus’ Love is Bubblin’ Over” on the body of the guitar, thinking if this is what ministry is like, sign me up.

I had a similar moment last weekend at our spring lock-in. We took the kids cosmic bowling (I am an atrocious bowler), and around midnight, we discovered the bowling alley clocked mileage on the balls. One of our youth decided to see how fast he could bowl. Turns out a brawny 16-year-old can throw a bowling ball down the lane at over 21 mph. There I stood, in too large bowling shoes, utterly exhausted in the middle of the night, high-fiving a kid whose bowling technique leaves you afraid that at any moment he might lose control and send a bowling ball at you at 21 mph, but who is totally delighted at his accomplishment. Being pastor in that role, in that place, is pretty great. I could make a career out of this.

Final Intern Cluster

Just got back from two days in beautiful western Massachusetts for my last ever intern cluster meeting. One of the requirements of internship is to meet occasionally with other interns from the area. As there are only a couple of interns in upstate New York we are lucky enough to join the cluster from the New England Synod, which is a fantastic group of people. We meet quarterly, and our gatherings always include a program of some sort as well as excellent worship and great conversation. The best part of cluster is peer groups, where interns and supervisors meet separately to allow space for open conversation. We share concerns, lift up joys, ask one another hard questions, pray together, and genuinely try and support one another. I am the only intern in my conference and while I have great pastor colleagues, as an intern my joys and struggles are by nature different than theirs. So it is such a blessing to be around people who are in the same space I am. Who are also living the tension of the role, share my anxiety around transitions, and are even familiar with the mounds of paperwork. Who can challenge my understandings because they first understand my challenges. Thank God for colleagues!

Daniel and the Lion Peeps

Best part of my job: You never know what you will get to do on any given day.

Holy Humor

How do we know that God has a sense of humor?
Because he can take a rib.

Last Wednesday we celebrated Holy Humor night at Atonement. Holy Humor night is a modern version of the ancient tradition of “Bright Sunday,” a day of parties and laughter to celebrate the resurrection as “God’s supreme joke on death.” At Atonement, we celebrated with terrible puns, upbeat music, and Peep dioramas. It was great fun.

Seems weird to be writing about something as trivial as peeps and bad jokes, given the events of the last few weeks. Tornadoes in the south, flooding in the northeast and Midwest, revolutions and military states and whether or not to celebrate death, even the death of one who caused so much pain and suffering and death. But as I reflect back on this odd juxtaposition, I find I am even more grateful for the opportunity to find joy in the midst of confusion.

Christ died, and when the women showed up at the tomb it must have seemed like the end, must have felt like all hope was lost. And then, unexpectedly, but with perfect comedic timing, he arrives again, and is mistaken for the gardener. I can’t always see through the complicated mess we make of this world. But I know that no matter how dark things get, silly things like Peep dioramas and bad jokes always make me smile. And smiling always seems to bring light. And I believe that in the midst of it all, God’s final word is resurrection.

Unexpected Savior

Below is the sermon I preached for the Easter Vigil service. Text was John 20:1-18.

Earlier this year, one of the musicians took it upon himself to teach me to project my voice. I don’t remember why this conversation came about, what prompted it. What I remember is standing in the entryway of the church with the musician, and him directing me to shout something. I shouted the first thing which came to mind, which was, oddly enough, “Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!” Then he stepped back, and instructed me to shout again. And again I shouted, “Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!” He kept walking backwards across the entryway, and I kept yelling. It was a Sunday morning in like November, right after the 10:45 service. Some of you may well have been there that day, may have heard me yelling. I felt more than a little ridiculous.

Our Gospel reading for this Easter evening starts not with shouting, but with darkness. This has been a theme throughout our Lenten journey, this movement from darkness into light. From Nicodemus coming to Jesus in darkness to the woman at the well at noon, from granting sight to the blind man to calling Lazarus from the darkness of the tomb, we have been moving from the darkness of not-knowing to the light of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Yet here it is, Easter vigil, and we are in the dark again.

Mary came to the tomb in the inky blackness of the pre-dawn morning, the darkest part of the night. She came alone, like Nicodemus had come, but with very different intentions. Nicodemus came to talk, to question, to debate. Mary came to grieve. Then to her surprise, the stone was rolled away! She rushed to get Peter and John, and from here the story reads almost like a Scooby Doo cartoon. John the Beloved and Peter the ringleader, take off running to the tomb. John is faster, he gets there first, but Peter is more curious I suppose, or braver, he is the first to actually enter the tomb. They look around for a minute, access the situation, yep, the tomb is open, the body is gone, and then they leave. Just like that, they go home.

But Mary stays. Why isn’t clear. She’s weeping, she cannot yet see the good news, cannot yet see that He who once was dead, has risen indeed. The sun has not yet risen, she is still in the dark. But she stays. Angels appear, clothed in white, one at where Jesus’ head should have been, and one where his feet should have been. But so deep is the darkness of Mary’s grief that even the appearance of angels cannot shed light on the situation. Even with angels, Mary still cannot see.

And then comes the best part of the story. Mary hears or feels something behind her and turns around to see Jesus standing beside her. Only she doesn’t know it is Jesus, she thinks it is the gardener. This is a fitting mix-up I suppose, for our unexpected savior. The one who came first as a baby in a manager, then a barefoot prophet in backwoods Galilee. Who rode into Jerusalem not on warhorse, but on a humble donkey. The Messiah of inglorious origin, the king who died on a cross, finally comes in power and glory, risen from the dead and accompanied by angels, and is mistaken for the gardener. In the pre-dawn darkness, Mary still could not see clearly enough to recognize her Lord and Savior.

Then Jesus says her name, “Mary.” Just her name. And suddenly, her eyes are opened, the dawn light rushes into the darkness of the tomb, and she can see Jesus.

Where he was least expected, Jesus showed up. In the darkness of the night, in the sadness of the tomb, mistaken for the gardener, Jesus showed up. When the journey felt like it was over, and Mary could see no other ending, Jesus showed up to say that the journey was only beginning. What had looked like the end was not the end, what had looked like death was in fact new life.

In Florida there is a little fern that grows along the side of trees. It’s an air plant, which means it attaches itself to other plants and gets its nutrients from the air and water along the bark of its host tree. Living in the air as it does, it has no resources outside of what is immediately available to it. It cannot store its needs in soil or within itself like a succulent. During droughts, when water is not collected on its host plant, it curls up upon itself and dies.

Or at least, it appears dead. Because as soon as the plant gets water again a surprising thing occurs. The tiny little plant, twig-thin and no longer than my finger, uncurls itself. Like magic, deep green leaves appear along the sides. This tiny little plant can go months without water; it has even traveled on the space shuttle to be “resurrected” in space. The smallest amount of water rushes shoots of green in the midst of a dry forest, new life where there once was death.

Tonight we celebrated the baptisms of four members of our congregation. We celebrate the miracle that is Christ’s presence in this simple element of water poured over their heads. It’s just water in this font, water that came from the faucet in the sacristy, through a garden hose, to reach this barrel here. It’s just Syracuse city water, the same water we drink, wash dishes with, wash clothes with. But the miracle of baptism is that it is in something as simple as this water that Jesus Christ shows up. The one who came as an infant in a manger, came and died like a criminal on a cross, came and was mistaken for the gardener, comes in the simplicity of this water.

As we celebrate their baptism, we also remember tonight our own baptisms. We remember that as we come under these waters we die with Christ. We are buried with Christ so that we may come out of these waters alive in Christ. Resurrected into God’s family and free to live again as sisters and brothers of Christ. We remember that we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. In the simplicity of water and Word, the risen Christ meets us and calls us his own. Baptism is not the end of our journey into God’s family, baptism is only the beginning. The future brings incredible highs and unspeakable lows. We will witness Christ’s glorious ascension; we will suffer in a jail cell with Paul. There will be days filled with laughter and joy, and periods where it is a struggle to even get out of bed in the morning. But the promise we have is that our unexpected Savior shows up in all those places. In the highs and in the lows, Jesus shows up. In nurseries and hospice nurses, the resurrected Christ shows up. In the waters of baptism and the prayers of commendation at the graveside, the resurrected Christ shows up. In promotions and pink slips, in hotels and hospitals, in churches and schools and street corners, the resurrected Christ shows up. Shows up where we least expect him, where it seems the least likely he would be, calls our name, and promises the journey is not yet over, in fact the journey is only beginning.

We have been journeying together throughout these forty days of Lent. Journeying together to the cross. Last night we reached what seemed like the end of our journey, last night we reached the tomb. We extinguished all the candles; we left in darkness and silence. But in the pre-dawn darkness of this night we too discover the miracle, the journey has not ended, it has in fact only just begun. The unexpected Jesus shows up tonight in our lives. Shows up in the simple elements of water and word, in bread and wine. Shows up when things are at their darkest, maybe looking a bit like the gardener, but shows up and points the way forward into the future.

In the darkness of death, the morning light rushes in to reveal an empty tomb. He who once was dead has been raised again! Go now and spread the good news! Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, alleluia! Amen.

Leaving Well

Last week I wrote about registration day, and the odd tension of having one foot in this place and the other foot firmly re-planting itself in Chicago. I wrote about it knowing I was living with this tension, but assuming my congregation had not yet become aware of the looming reality. I was wrong.

On Sunday amid the joyful chaos of palm processions, the children’s pageant, and the questions about Holy Week schedules, I also fielded one very unexpected question. “When do you head back to Chicago?” The question was honest, well-meaning, asked with a tinge of sadness even. It sent me reeling.

“I’m here through the summer,” I stumbled blankly. “I don’t leave until August, lots of time yet.”

The truth is while I was dealing with the tension I blogged about last week, I was relying on their lack of knowledge to buy me some time. To allow me to ignore a little bit longer the harsh reality that I need to start thinking about leaving this place. But May is just around the corner. And after May comes summer, and Confirmation Camp and Vacation Church School and cook-outs, and before I know it, it will be August and I will be packing my car. If I intend to leave well, it's time to start thinking about what that means. Internship is about learning, and the last great lesson is how to say good-bye.

Registration Day

I register for classes tonight. Well, technically I register tomorrow (1 am), but as I won’t go to bed between then and now, it’s basically tonight.

Registering for classes seems like such a foreign concept right now, a thousand miles from campus and in the middle of Lent. Tomorrow morning I’ll hit the snooze too many times on my alarm, just like every other morning in Syracuse. A little groggier from being up late registering, but otherwise the same. I will stumble into the living room, turn up the heat on the thermostat, and turn on the coffee pot. I will get dressed; pour myself a cup of coffee and head to church.

Tomorrow’s a Wednesday, which are always busy days. I will be on my feet from the time I get in the door. We have two worship services on Wednesdays, I preach and lead both of them. We’re reconfiguring the sanctuary for Palm Sunday tomorrow also. And there’s the midday luncheon with the seniors, adult bible class, and some prep work for Holy Week bulletins if I can fit it in. It will be a busy day, but a fun day of ministry. Filled with all of my favorite parts of the job.

But tonight I register. So tomorrow, as I’m going through this busy day of worship and ministry, a computer in Chicago will know the truth. I don’t really belong here. Despite having been here seven months, having fallen in love with this place and these people, this is not my home. I am a student at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. I am here only temporarily, to learn, to be a student. This is the odd tension of internship. Even as I immerse myself in the life of a pastor, there is this lingering reality that I don’t belong in this role, not yet anyway. Tonight I make the first steps out of this place and back to Chicago. It is a strange feeling.

Called out of the Tomb

This is the sermon I preached today for the fifth Sunday in Lent. The text was John 11:1-45.

A Sunday school teacher sat in her classroom, surrounded by her students. She had just finished sharing the story of how Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb, when one of the boy’s hands shot up in the air.

“Can he come to class,” the boy asked excitedly. “I want to meet him, hear was Jesus was like!” The teacher looked at him confused. “Meet who?” she asked. “Lazarus,” the boy responded, “Lazarus, can we invite him to come to our class.”

“Honey, this story happed a long time ago,” the teacher replied, “Lazarus is long dead by now.” The boy’s face fell, “you mean Jesus’ miracle didn’t last.”

That is the strange tension in this story. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, from a tomb no less, a tomb just like where Jesus himself would soon be raised. The resurrection of Lazarus functions as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ eventual resurrection. But Lazarus’s resurrection is only partial. After all, as the Sunday school student pointed out, Jesus’ miraculous raising of Lazarus was only temporary. Lazarus eventually does die. We don’t know the situation surrounding Lazarus’ second death. Whether he lived to a ripe old age and died peacefully in his sleep, or if he contracted another illness, not uncommon in ancient times, and died young, if he died in battle, or was arrested and killed by the Romans for being a follower of Jesus. We don’t know, the scriptures don’t tell us. All we know for certain is he is not alive today, so at some point, Lazarus died.

Another story about someone hearing this text. A hospice chaplain related an experience of sharing this story with one of his patients. The man, once strong and healthy, lay frail in his bed, as disease wracked his body. Hearing how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the man shuttered. “Hope that doesn’t happen to me,” he muttered. Seeing the chaplain’s confused face, the man went on, “dying is exhausting, I would hate to have to go through all this again.”

The stories this Lent have all been about healing, about shining light into dark places, and in some way about raising people from the dead. Nicodemus comes to understand what it means to be born again, and is raised to new life as a follower of Christ. Jesus crosses the Samaritan/Jewish boundary that kept the woman at the well “dead” to the good news of Christ and offered her living water. The man born blind, unable to work to support himself and forced to beg, was in some ways dead to the economic life in his community, and by healing him, Jesus brought him back into the fold. All of these people experienced little resurrections, ways in which they were “dead” and were raised to new life.

As you may have guessed from the fact that I have it memorized, this is one of my favorite Bible stories. This story was given to me almost as a gift at a time when I was in the middle of a metaphorical death. The end of a serious relationship, a family health crisis that reminded me of the fragility of our lives, and the uncertainty of what my future held, had left me reeling. Things had calmed down, but I still couldn’t find my way out of the hurt these events had left me with. In the middle of this darkness, a friend offered me this story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the tomb. “Imagine what it must have been like to be Lazarus,” she said. “Waking up in a dark, cold, tomb, your face wrapped in a cloth, your hands and feet bound. Jesus doesn’t tell the people to unbind him until after he gets out of the tomb, Lazarus may have been raised, but he had to stumble out of that tomb on his own.” There is some historical evidence that the tomb may have even been sort of s-shaped, requiring Lazarus to pull himself up a ledge and crawl on his hands and knees through a narrow opening. How frightening to wake up and find yourself literally buried alive. But through the fear and the darkness, Lazarus can hear the voice of his Lord calling him to safety, calling him to the light. Even in the darkness, the voice of Jesus Christ promises Lazarus that he is not alone.

We face a million little deaths in our lives. Deaths of relationships, deaths of financial security, deaths of abilities we once had, deaths of the idea that we are invincible, deaths of the idea that our parents will live forever. We die over and over and over again. And like the hospice patient expressed, dying is exhausting. If you have ever been with someone who was dying, you know. Even these little deaths drain our energy, our focus. But the resounding theme throughout these Lenten texts is that Jesus raises us to new life. As many ways as we can find to die, Jesus can find to raise us. And sometimes yes, in the midst of these resurrections it can feel an awful lot like we are stumbling around in a tomb with our hands and feet bound, but Jesus is still there calling us out of our tombs. Calling us to healing, calling us to new life, calling us to the promise that there is life after death.

We die and are raised to new life a million times over the course of our lifetime. While these miracles may not be as obvious as returning sight to the blind or raising the dead, they are no less miraculous in our own lives.

The resurrection of Lazarus in John’s Gospel is foreshadowing another resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus himself. With the raising of Lazarus, we have reached the end of our Lenten journey. Next week is Palm Sunday. Next week we will hear the long story of the Passion, of Jesus’ last days. We will hear of his triumphant arrival in Jerusalem, the last supper with his disciples, the betrayal by Judas in the garden, and finally his death on a cross. It is an old, old story, we have heard it a hundred times, it is imprinted on our hearts. Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, the King of the Jews, the Savior of the nations, dies on a cross. And like Lazarus, he is raised again. But unlike Lazarus, his resurrection is not a temporary one. Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, and is there now preparing a place for us.

John’s Gospel, and especially this Lazarus story, finds us in this uneasy tension of already and not yet. Already the miracle has occurred; we are joined to Christ through his death and resurrection. We don’t have to wait to live our lives with Christ, we don’t have to wait for Christ to call us to new life, that promise has already taken place. Like Lazarus called out of the tomb, we are called out of our tombs of sin and death, called to live free as children of God. Like Lazarus we are alive in Christ.

But there is also this element of not yet. The world is still broken; our pain is still real. These little resurrections that we experience throughout our lives are foretastes of the resurrection on the last day that Martha alludes too, when scriptures tell us that “sorrow and weeping will be no more.” We go through the painful experience of dying over and over again in this life, with the promise that death is not the final goal. Life is. Through the waters of baptism we die with Christ so that we might be raised with Christ in this life and in the life to come, forever. In the end, in the cosmic battle between good and evil, good wins, love wins, life wins. Jesus calls us out of our tombs and raises us to new life. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Grey's Anatomy and the Problem of Suffering

My favorite thing about last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was how the cast suddenly realized they were actually characters in a soap opera. First there was Alex Karev’s reflection on dating:

“She works here at Seattle Grace Mercy Death, so I'm sure she’s pretty much gonna go crazy or get cancer or shot by a gunman or hit by a truck, so don’t get your hopes up for Karev’s big happily-ever-after.” A good observation, especially since that is only the tragedies that have happened to women Alex Karev dated. Other members of the cast have been bludgeoned by an icicle, blown up by a homemade explosive, drug under a bus, killed in an attempt to jump to the top of the donor list (only to reappear for an extended run as a ghost/hallucination) or drown.

Karev’s comment is flippant, but Meredith Grey gets to the heart of the matter:

“The universe says, ‘Screw you, Meredith,’ and gives Callie a kid... and then puts Callie through a windshield. I mean, what the hell is going on? What’s the point? I mean, is there a reason for this? Because if you can think of a reason—any reason at all—why the universe is so screwed up and random and mean, now would be an amazingly good time to tell me because I really need some answers.”

Meredith’s elevator lament was possibly the most profound line of television I have heard. That is the ultimate question, why do bad things happen? In the real world, people get cancer, shot by gunmen, hit by trucks. Being bludgeoned by an icicle is less common, but I suppose that can happen too. The point is, bad things happen, and they don’t make any sense.

There are no answers for Meredith (except that Shonda Rimes says so), and there are even less answers for us as we are not characters in a TV drama. But as we journey through this fourth week of Lent we can cling to the fact that ours is a God who understands pain, fear, and the seeming randomness of life. A God who weeps at his friend’s death, and then raises that friend to life. Sometimes resurrection is tangible, like Lazarus in the tomb. And sometimes it is just a feeling of peace in the midst of crisis. Grace isn’t always an answer, but it is a promise. Thanks be to God.

Done

Done is better than good.

This was my mantra all through the first two years of seminary. I repeated it with great faithfulness, especially toward the end of the semester when papers and deadlines started to pile up. Done is better than good. Did I believe it? Absolutely not. I am an insatiable perfectionist. I think pretty highly of myself, which leads to having pretty high standards for my work. Done is better than good was my mantra, but it was not one I followed with any regularity.

Then I went on internship. And Lent happened. And people took vacations. And suddenly I was preaching twice a week, teaching a lot of adult ed, behind on visits, daunted by seminary paperwork. Suddenly I was very, very busy. And done seemed like an impossibility, good was even further off.

“This isn’t fair,” I told my supervisor frustratedly one afternoon. “The congregation deserves better than I can give them. This isn’t my best work, I just don’t have the time.” My supervisor looked at me, calmly.

“Sometimes finishing is accomplishment enough.”

The thing about done as opposed to good is done allows space for the Holy Spirit to work. If I stand in the pulpit and finish an acceptable sermon on a Sunday morning, it has more chance to hit someone’s heart than if I preach the first half of an amazing sermon, and never get to the part about grace. Done acknowledges that I am not perfect. That I am a sinner in need of God’s grace, that I am not up to the task set before me, that I need God’s help to get me through. Done keeps who is human and who is God in perspective. Done can be pretty amazing.

Names

My name is Kjersten, pronounced sure-sten. It’s weird, I know. How “Kj” makes a “sh” sound is beyond me. It’s old Swedish, but such old Swedish that the one time I was in Sweden I got funny looks. Minnesotans, however, find it to be the most normal thing in the world. Best I can tell Kjersten was a common, or at least known, name during the height of Swedish immigration in the 1800s. The Swedish language in Sweden continued to evolve, while the Swedish of the immigrants was frozen in time. Thus you get someone like me, a third generation American, a second generation Californian, with a name that looks like I just got off the boat clutching an armload of lutefisk, sure ya bet’cha.

I’ve always been fairly sensitive about my name. Because it is such a mouthful, I value people who actually take the time to learn it. While I’ll respond to pretty much anything, it grates on me a bit when people repeatedly pronounce it wrong. I had a co-worker once who recommended I go by Kristen, “because it would be easier for customers.” I was offended. Kristen is a fine name, it’s a lovely name, I know many wonderful Kristens, but it’s not my name.

I’ve been reflecting on this because it turns out I’m horrible with names. This is becoming a problem six months into my internship. It is as if my brain shuts off when a name is said. I can remember detailed facts about the person, but the name itself is gone. Especially if the name is not one I’m used to. One of the youth I keep accidentally calling a roofing material, because that word is more familiar to me than his name.

So I am learning to be more gracious with people who stumble over my name. Maybe they are trying. Maybe it’s not that they don’t care, but that they’ve never seen a silent j before (because really, unless you’re blessed with my parents’ creative spelling efforts, who has), and they just can’t get their mouth around it. It's a mouthful, but it's mine, and I'm proud of it.

Spring is Here!

Spring is here! How do I know? It’s not the plants; nothing is poking out under the foot and a half of snow on the ground. It’s not the weather report; more snow is forecast for tonight and again this weekend. It’s not the temperature; bone-chilling cold and damp. No, I know spring is here, because the ice cream place is open again.

Gannon’s Isle is the local ice cream place in south Syracuse, maybe even in all of Syracuse. There’s one up the street from my house, and fall evenings I used to head up there for a scoop of whatever their current seasonal flavor was. I was devastated one evening when I arrived to a “Closed for the Season” sign. I could not imagine such a thing. Since when does ice cream have a season! The main store near the church stayed open for another month or so, but eventually even it gave in to the realities of a Syracuse winter. So for three months I have been without ice cream. Oh sure, I could buy Dreyers or something from the grocery store, but it’s just not the same. Then recently the marquee announced the glorious news: “Opening in 14 days!” I patiently watched as the days ticked off, until last week when the marquee read: “Gannon’s Now Open!” Spring has come. Gannon’s knows it, even if the weatherman does not.

The office manager and I went out for ice cream yesterday to celebrate the arrival of spring. I had crème brulee, she had Oreo cheesecake. It was delicious. Here’s to you, Spring. Welcome back!

Livin' on a Prayer

A classmate offered this Bon Jovi video to all of us who have now completed six months of internship. I’m sure six month evals was not what Bon Jovi had in mind with this particular song, but it feels strangely fitting for how I feel at the halfway point. “A prayer” is pretty much what I’ve been livin’ on.

I’ve been tired recently. Not physically tired, but mentally. Things just seem to be taking a lot of effort. I was talking to my co-worker about this the other day; she seemed not at all surprised.

“You’ve hit the Atonement wall,” she explained. “You’re six months in, bogged down with Lent planning, and you haven’t seen the sun in three months. Don’t worry, this is totally normal, it will pass.”

One of the greatest gifts I think we offer to one another as people in ministry, or maybe just as people, is the gift of perspective. “Yes, this is hard. Yes, you’re right to be tired. No, this is completely normal.” As Alison so eloquently pointed out last week, we’re not superheroes. We’re people, and people get tired. So “take my hand, we’ll make it, I swear.”

Spring

Spring is in the air.

Of course, I write this in the middle of a whiteout snowstorm that is threatening to dump as much as a foot of snow on the beleaguered upstate NY region. My co-workers find my optimism cute and amusing. ‘I think the poor Californian vicar has finally lost it….’ But I stand by my pronouncement. Spring is in the air; you can feel it. There’s a difference in the air now. The bitter suffocating cold that blanketed the area for the past two months is loosening its grip. In the icy wind, there is a subtle hint of warmth. Once a week now, the temperatures even lean towards forty before quickly plummeting back to the teens.

The past couple weeks have been busy with planning for Lent. I’ve always loved Lent, and one of my favorite things about it is the contrasts it involves. As we march towards the cross, the texts become more optimistic. Nicodemus approaches Jesus at night; then Jesus meets the woman at the well in the middle of the day. Jesus brings sight to a blind man; Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. We’re moving to the somberness of Good Friday, but the texts steadily remind us that there is life after the cross. The weather always seems to mirror the texts. In the depths of the darkness of this season, a brilliant spring day reminds me that the grave is not the end. The empty tomb follows the cross, spring follows winter, Easter follows Lent. There is a pattern to this world, and that pattern leans towards life.

Practical Theology

And then internship throws something at you that no amount of theology lectures can possibly prepare you for…

Sitting in church on Wednesday night as my supervisor leads the Eucharistic prayer. I have my normal horde of six-year-old boys around me. N is on one side, L and Z on the other. N, who appears to be making up a song on his bulletin-turned-horn is apparently paying more attention than I realized, as he suddenly turns to me, points at the chalice, and says, “is that blood in there?” His tone is surprisingly matter-of-fact for a six-year-old asking a question about a goblet full of blood. I don’t know how to answer.

“Um,” I stutter weakly, “yes, we believe that is Jesus’ blood…” Not sure how to explain this at six-year-old level and worried that I might frighten him, I follow up with, “and also grape juice.” A comment I instantly regret as one, it’s not grape juice at all, but wine, and two, not exactly the most theologically honest answer to the question. As I am struggling with where to go from here, my attention is drawn to my right, as Z has apparently stuck his finger in L’s ear. By the time I get that sorted out and turn back to N, the service has moved on and he is contentedly bellowing the Lord’s Prayer at the top of his lungs. Now is not the time to continue our conversation.

The service continues. We finish with communion and I am once again seated amongst the six-year-olds. N points to the now empty chalice.

“Was there blood in that cup?” he asks again. I turn to answer but once again, Z sticks his finger in L’s ear and the conversation is diverted. When I get back to N, the service has again moved on and he is now inventing his own tune for the closing hymn. Once again, I missed my chance.

I can wax poetic on Lutheran Eucharistic theology for a long time. I have written pages on the subject for various seminary courses. But how to condense all that knowledge to honor a six-year-old’s question in the middle of a worship service while simultaneously keeping his colleagues from sticking their fingers in one another’s ears is the true balancing act of ministry.

Trusting the Slide

This weekend I went to the movies in a snowstorm. By the time the movie ended there was four inches of new snow on the roof of my car so it was a pretty sizeable storm, but it didn’t change my decision to go out at all. In Syracuse if I waited for the weather to be good I’d never go anywhere.

I was thinking as I was driving how much my perception of weather has changed. In December I absolutely would not have gone out on a night like last Saturday. I would have sat alone in my living room watching the snow pile up and feeling trapped. Over the last two months I have grown increasingly confident as a snow driver. Mainly because I know now what it feels like to slide and to correct. The roads are slick, but I know what it feels like to lose control and I trust my car and myself enough to be able to regain control again.

I have developed a similar calm about internship. When I first came I was terrified I was going to make a mistake. I was just waiting for that trip or slip that would spell disaster. What I have come to learn is I will screw up sometimes. But what matters is not that I don’t make mistakes, but how I respond once I do. I have to trust myself, the relationships I’ve built, and the grace of this community, to embrace me through whatever slip-up I may cause. But I cannot let the fear of slipping prevent me from trying. Worse than making a mistake is not to do anything at all.

Sisters and Tomato Plants

Below is the sermon I preached on Sunday. The text was Matthew 4:12-23, Jesus calling his first disciples. This is, for those of you who follow me on Facebook, the sermon that crashed my computer multiple times and killed three printers before I finally managed to print a draft of it.

This past weekend I went home to California for a few days. It was a perfect weekend in California. Highs were in the high 70s to 80s, with the temperature never dipping below 60 the whole time I was there. I must admit it was with a tinge of sadness that I dug out my coat, hat, and scarf to leave on Tuesday. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to come back to Syracuse; it was that I didn’t really want to come back to winter. Could I have found some way to return to Syracuse in, say, May, I would have been all for it.

Even nicer than the weather was the chance to be with friends and family. I caught up with some friends from high school, had lunch with my pastor, looked at pictures with my grandmother, went to church on Sunday in the place I was baptized, and played endless games of croquet with my parents and cousins. It was nice to be for a while in a place where I did not have to explain who I am and where I come from, because people already know. In California I am not Vicar Kjersten or even adult Kjersten, I am Nancy and Glen’s daughter, Ralph and Charlotte’s granddaughter. It is nice to be surrounded by people who knew me before I reached my current height, and who in some ways know me better than I know myself, having seen all my quirks and foibles before in my parents and grandparents.

In the last ten years, I have lived in five different states. The transient nature of being a young adult has stretched my understanding of what it means to be “home.” Home, I have discovered, is not so much about a place as it is about a feeling. So California for me is home, but so is my best friend’s couch in DC. Home has been an apartment in Chicago, a dorm room in Spokane, and even, for one amazing summer, a mattress in a church basement three blocks from the beach in San Diego. Home, more than a location, is a feeling. A knowledge that one is in a place that is safe and with people who love you. Home is not necessarily in one’s house then, or with one’s family. The families we create can be just as much or even more home as the one into which we were born.

Whatever expression “home” takes for us, leaving home can be hard. It is difficult and painful to let go of the places and things we love and move on to something new. Even positive changes bring stress and uncertainty. What will this new phase in my life look like, how will I settle into this new home? Whether the new home is literally a new house, or a new job, or a new life circumstance, leaving a place we are comfortable and settling into a new one is challenging.

In today’s Gospel reading, we learn that Jesus has left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum. In the five weeks since Christmas, this is maybe the fifth home Jesus has had. First, we heard of the Word who was with God since the beginning of time. Then the Word was born in Bethlehem, and had to figure out how to make a life for himself as a human being. But before he even had a chance to settle in, the infant Jesus found himself in exile in Egypt. After a few years, Jesus and his family are able to return to Israel and they settle in the Galilee region, in Nazareth. And for the first time since his birth, Jesus is able to settle in for a while, to put down roots, to discover what it means to be home. But now Jesus is all grown up. We heard of his baptism a few weeks ago, how the spirit descended like a dove, and a voice from heaven claimed him as God’s own son. So Jesus finds himself doing what many of us do when God calls and our life circumstances change, he moved. He left Nazareth, left Mary and Joseph and the rest of his family, maybe left childhood friends, and he went in Capernaum, where he had to make a new life for himself, build a new network of relationships.

So Jesus settles into Capernaum, and as he’s walking along the beach at his new home, he comes across four fishermen, Simon and his brother Andrew, and James and John, sons of Zebedee. Jesus calls to them and says, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And the text says that immediately, they left their nets and followed him. Jesus, who is no stranger to moving, no stranger to how hard it is to make a home for oneself, calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, to give up everything they know, everything they find familiar, and follow him. And immediately, they do it? I have to wonder if the text is leaving something out here. I don’t know if some stranger approached me on the street and said, hey, leave everything you know, if I would jump at the opportunity…

But this stranger on the seashore isn’t any ordinary stranger, this stranger who calls to the fishermen is the Word made flesh. And I think it’s important to note that Jesus does not tell the fishermen, leave everything you know and make a new life for yourselves, Jesus says, leave everything you know and follow me. Make your life with me, and I will lead you, and I will be with you, and I will guide, forever. Jesus does not call the fishermen to travel to new places alone; Jesus calls them to travel with him. To make their homes with him.

And then Jesus says, and I will make you fish for people. Fish for people, the fishermen must have thought, what does that mean? We know how to fish for fish; we are pretty good at fishing for fish. But fish for people? How does one do that? Our nets, and boats, and tools, will not work in this new occupation.

There is a phrase that gets thrown around in vocational conversation a lot, God does not call the equipped, but God equips the called. God does not call the equipped, but God equips the called. Jesus sees in the fishermen a penchant for catching things, and the potential for catching people. And Jesus sees in us skills and gifts that we did not know we had, or maybe did not know how to apply, and calls us into situations where we can use these gifts.

One of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, writes about moving as a young adult from her childhood home in rural Kentucky across the country to Tucson, Arizona. Kingsolver writes: “If someone had told me what I was headed for in that little Renault—that I was stowing away in a shell, bound to wake up to an alien life on a persistently foreign shore—I surely would not have done it.” But reflecting further, she goes on, “But I can’t be sorry I made the trip. Most of what I learned in the old place seems to suffice for the new: if the seasons like Chicago tides come at ridiculous times and I have to plant in September instead of May, and if I have to make up family from scratch, what matters is that I do have sisters and tomato plants, the essential things.”

Jesus comes into our lives and he calls us to pick up and move. Sometimes literally, to a new town or job or school, and sometimes figuratively, to a new position, a new relationship, a new place in life, a new outlook, or a new dream for the future. Jesus calls us to move, and those moves can be painful and frightening. But remember that Jesus does not call us to move alone. Rather he says, follow me. Come with me, and I will lead you. And like the fishermen, Jesus calls us to places where our skills can be used, even if we don’t recognize those skills in their current form.

Jesus, who knows what it is to be a stranger, calls us to move. But in these moves and changes, Jesus promises to be with us. Things may look different on these new shores, the skills we have may be used in different ways, but Jesus promises that we do have the skills and that we will not be alone, but that he will be with us. May we, like the disciples, put down our nets and follow him. Amen.

Placement Day

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11

A year ago today I nervously awaited the email that would tell me where I would spend the next year of my life. January 11, 2010 was placement day for the ELCA Horizon program. Representatives from all eight seminaries got together to decide which twelve lucky seminarians would get to take one of the Horizon internship sites.

I remember opening the email and scanning quickly for the indented line in the middle of the page that said the congregation and city. I found it, and my first thought was, “Syracuse, where’s that?” In the Horizon program, you list five potential sites you would be interested in going to. Atonement had made my list because of its reputation for excellent urban ministry, a diversity of worship experiences, the opportunity to work part-time with a Presbyterian congregation, and a supervisor who believed in hands-on ministry education. But the experience of listing five places you might want to move to and trying to actually imagine yourself in one of those places could not be more different. Just because I had listed Atonement on my list of potential placements did not mean I had any idea what I was getting myself into.

A year later, and I cannot imagine a place where I would have learned and grown and changed as much as I have in just four months in this place. I absolutely believe that, as arbitrary as it can feel at times, God truly does have a hand in the internship placement process. Is Atonement perfect? No. Is it difficult? Yes, absolutely, every day is a challenge. Many days I wish I was anywhere but Syracuse, NY in the middle of winter. But there is something in this place that I am meant to learn, and there is something in me that I am supposed to offer to this place. It is hard, but it is a good hard, a growing hard.

Mud

The snow is pretty much gone now. It doesn’t seem possible, but a couple of warm days and five and a half feet of snow is just gone. It its place is not the bright, fresh grass I remember from the fall. No, in its place is mud, dirty, sticky, slimy, gray mud. The upstaters, ever the weather optimists, are fine with this change.

“All we need now,” they tell me, “is a couple of inches of fresh snow to cover up all this mud. Make everything look clean again.”

Snow is this great disguise of the winter grays. It blankets the cold dead of winter, making everything look bright. And here in upstate New York, where an inch of new snow a day is normal, it continually refreshes itself. Snow hides the winter mud until the new growths of spring are ready to burst forth from the earth.

On internship I have adopted a policy of “fake it ‘til you make it.” On any given day, at any given task, I have no idea what I am doing. Even if I know what I’m doing, I frequently lack the confidence I need to do what is asked of me. So I fake it. I walk through the doors of the hospital like I’ve been there a million times, not like I just got lost in the parking lot. I plan worship like I wrote the ELW. I preach like I have something to say. And somehow, in the mud below all of the bravado, the Holy Spirit shows up. Shows up and grows a pastor out of this seminary intern. I hide behind a mask of self-confidence, trusting that it is not my confidence that matters, but God’s confidence. That God is doing a new thing in the winter of this strange experience. And I just need to keep showing up, and bring enough mud for something to take root.

The Word Became Flesh

Wordle image from this weekend's sermon on John 1:1-18.

Last weekend I skyped Christmas morning with my family back in California. Skype is a computer program that offers free computer-to-computer video conferencing. All you have to do is download the free software to your computer and you can see and talk in real time to anyone with skype and a web cam. My parents discovered skype while my brother was living in England last year, and my mom loved it. She likes being able to see us when we talk, to see our faces, to see where we are. It makes her feel much more connected to us, that we are less far away.

So this year for Christmas I sat in my living room in Syracuse with a cup of coffee, and my family sat in my parents’ living room in California with their cups of coffee, and we opened presents together, just like we do every year. 3,000 miles and three time zones away I still got to be part of the festivities. Granted, they frequently forgot about the computer and would leave me staring at the tree for long periods of time, but given the circumstances, pretty good.

Modern communication technology is amazing. You may not be familiar with skype, but I think email and even the telephone is pretty equally amazing. Pick up the phone and you can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world, instantly. With cell phones, you can even talk to someone now in the middle of the woods, or the grocery store, or from your car.

We have cousins in Sweden that my great grandmother used to communicate with by mail. She would write a letter in California, and it would travel by train across the United States to the east coast, and then take a boat to Stockholm, and then a truck to their apartment in the north part of the city. Now my cousin and I communicate instantaneously over email, sharing pictures, jokes, and quips in real time. A relationship that was built over a hundred years ago through bi-annual letters continues at a speed that my great-grandmother could not have even dreamed about.

The relationship continues, but it is not deep. My great-grandmother wrote careful, pages long letters, to send to this family. My cousin and I shoot back jokes, pictures, not insights into one another’s lives, we don’t really know one another. When I was a kid, we traveled to Sweden to meet these relatives. We sat on their sofa and looked at old family photos. We discussed just how it was that we were related, their plans for the future, our plans for the future, our respective lives. We drank thick Scandinavian coffee and ate ham sandwiches on rye bread and got to know one another. It was in seeing one another, in being in one another’s presence and sharing in one another’s stories that our relationship was formed, not so much in a series of emails with funny pictures of cats.

Skype, whose virtues I was extolling earlier, is really similarly limited. Skype is nice, email is nice, the phone is nice, but it does not replace being in the presence of another person. Technology is not a substitute for face-to-face community. I want more than a glimpse into someone's life. I want to sit and linger over a cup of coffee, or share a meal. I want to see them when they talk about challenges, hear the intonation in their voice, watch their facial expressions, and I want to be seen. I want to be a presence, not a voice or a phrase or an email address. We are social beings, we are relational beings, we were created to be in relationship with one another.

Today’s text from John is one of the earliest and most complete theological treatises of the Christian faith. In it we can hear Christology, theology, creationism, eschatology, ecclesiology, and a whole host of other theological doctrine. But holding together all of these various –ologies, is one of the central tenants of the Christian faith, the incarnation. The Word became flesh and lived among us. God loved us so much and wanted to be in relationship with us so much that God sent Jesus Christ to become one of us. To walk among us as fully human, to hear our stories, to know our lives, to experience our joys and our struggles. Jesus Christ did not come as a virtual human, a skyped God, looking real but not really being real. No, Jesus Christ came in the flesh, to be with us.

John’s Gospel first introduces us to Jesus Christ as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Entire theological libraries have been written trying to explain precisely what is meant by those little words “with” and “was.” But even after two millenniums, numerous theologians, and countless pages, our language always falls short.

Instead of trying to understand or explain what exactly this means, I think it is enough to marvel in the relationship between God and the Word. A relationship that is intimate, mutual, co-creational. One being is not greater or more powerful than the other, rather they exist together, supporting and explaining one another. The whole of creation is born out of this relationship of love and trust.

And then the Word, who was with God at creation, through whom all creation came into being, left God to take on human flesh and live among us. This word “lived” dates back to a time and culture where people were nomadic and moved from place to place, setting up tents as they traveled. Rather than simply “lived” it really means “set up a tent among us.” This isn’t a “Christ is born in our hearts” idea; it has more flesh to it than that. It is a communal experience. In the middle of our human community, Christ came to dwell with us. Not in some ethereal, spiritual, way, but in the flesh. Jesus Christ, who was in intimate relationship with God, came down to be in intimate relationship with us. Jesus Christ came to sit and share a meal at table with us. To see us when we talk about our challenges and be seen. To be in relationship with us, just as he is in relationship with God. And through that, to bring us into relationship with one another, with creation, and with the creator.

The Christ event, the incarnation, that time that we celebrate in this season of Christmas, has been described as being like dropping a stone into the pond of the timeline of history. We know it is true today not because we can see and touch Christ in the flesh, but because the event that was the Word became flesh created ripples back and forth in the pond of time, and those ripples wash up upon us still today. We see the ripples backwards in our reading from Jeremiah this morning, where God promised to gather God’s people as a shepherd gathers his flock. A people who once were scattered, will be brought together into relationship under the watchful care of a God who knows them intimately. And we see the ripples forward in the promises of baptism and in the faces of one another as we gather around the table to share the meal that is Christ’s body broken and blood shed for us.

The one who was with God at the very creation of the universe came to this earth in the flesh, still comes today in the promises of the sacraments, and promises to come once again to bring the whole creation into fulfillment. This is the promise of the incarnation, this is the miracle of Christmas, this is the dance of relationship which Christ invites us into. A relationship which John describes as the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. A relationship through which we are promised grace upon grace. Amen.