Alleluia, Voices Raise

Quickly, before we begin a season of fasting, repentance and prayer on Ash Wednesday this week, and bury the Alleluias until Easter morning, let me say, "Alleluia!" for rich and varied voices from the pulpit.

While I wasn't on the regular preaching schedule in January at my internship site, I preached at a chapel service and a funeral before traveling to St. Paul Minnesota for my final 2-week learning intensive on campus at Luther Seminary, and then resumed preaching with another chapel service before the month was finished. The sermon below was my first in St. Mark's since Christmas Eve when I told the story of The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell.

February 3, 2013
4th Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C)
Jeremiah 1:4-10Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

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Having been welcomed so graciously into the pulpit at my home congregation, at the retirement community and again during internship, I am grateful for the opportunities I've been given to proclaim the Gospel in different settings and to different audiences. I'm also delighted when someone else is preaching because I get to hear their voices and interpretations of the text, and hear how they heard God's word for us. Throughout Lent and this 90th anniversary year for St. Mark's we are inviting former pastors and sons and daughters of the congregation to return to St. Mark's to preach - what a joy it will be to hear the Gospel from so many different voices. Recordings from St. Mark's are on the church's website.

What’s your next Good Read?

Newspapers deliver news, and at least the hard news stories give us the facts that will become the stuff of history. Magazines tell us something about a subject we want to explore in more depth. Stories open our imagination to an alternate world. Poetry helps us engage all our senses. Nonfiction, like biographies and Wikis, teach us who people were and how things came to be, and what makes them work, answering the questions of “Who?”, “Why?” and “How?” that lay behind what we see happening in the world around us. The written word in its many different genres and forms shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

But, when we talk about reading the Bible, suddenly the written Word becomes more intimidating. We imagine that there is a “right” way, and consequently, a “Wrong” way, to read the Bible because its text is, after all, the Holy Scripture of Christianity. It stares at us weightily from our bookshelf, like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Shakespeare’s Collected Works, or Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln’s War Years (which is actually 4 tomes). Challenging and intellectual and unfamiliar. And, there’s so much of it – 66 books, in fact! Or perhaps, someone has given us their version and their interpretation does nothing to recommend it to us. But suppose we do open it, or download and open a Bible app, depending on where is falls open or which translation we read, the language sounds awkward, repetitive and formal. And if we stay in the text, we run headlong into stories of deception, like the king killing the husband of the woman he lusted for, or violence, like the rape of the king’s daughter. With the number of heartbreaking and terrorizing stories in our neighborhoods and cities, why would you invite more? Why read the Bible?

The Bible tells us who God is. If you are curious about a culture or a language or a people, you go to Fodor’s or Lonely Planet and you read about it. So engage your curiosity, learn the language of God as it’s expressed in the Bible, discover the less known God than the one that you may have heard shouted through a bullhorn, and meet God. God is a creator, an active, vibrant, attentive God who gets angry, who grieves, and who rejoices. God’s character is expressed in many names for God that identify particular aspects, or point us to specific promises that God has made. In the same way that a biography might give you glimpses into a person, the stories of the Bible reveal God’s character.

The Bible describes the covenant or relationship that God made and what promises are part of that. God designs us to be in relationship with each other and with God’s own self. This relationship is the ground for our understanding of who we are as community and what it means to be called into life together. Learning the promises of God helps us know how we can live into the hope of those promises and how one faithful response to those promises is to be in relationship with our neighbors and the world around us.

The Bible tells us how ancient Israel - the ancestors of Christian faith - understood God and what was important to shaping their tradition. Jesus was born in Israel and practiced Judaism. The stories he was taught and the instruction or Torah he was given are the foundation for his own teaching and ministry in the world where he lived. Reading the Bible opens his world to us and connects us to a story that is thousands of years old.

The Bible shows us what a follower of Jesus looks like.  It doesn’t prescribe what Jesus’ followers look like, and it doesn’t issue a secret handshake, or uniforms or nametags, but it talks about the people who traveled with Jesus during his ministry and those who witnessed his teaching and his miracles, his death and his resurrection. While we don’t always resemble followers of Jesus too closely, these stories provide us with a plumb line, so we know what true discipleship looks like.

The Bible is not an archival document that serves us better by kept under glass or locked away in pristine condition; neither is it written to sit unopened and gathering dust. It is a Living Word that invites us into its stories, asks us to listen to the stories of the arrogant little brother whose siblings trade him in, the man who wrestles God in the desert, the stories of betrayal and injustice righted. It invites us to walk alongside the Psalm writer who cries out in pain and provides us for a place to go when we are worn out, too. It invites us into the anticipation in the air at Elizabeth’s house when Mary, mother of Jesus, comes to see her during her pregnancy. It invites us into the courtyard where the disciple Peter lives out the struggle to tell people about Jesus and filled with fear and shame, denies him three times. It invites us to see how God uses unexpected people in unexpected places and in unexpected ways to share the Word of God’s love and forgiveness with the world.

When we read or listen to the stories we can begin to recognize God’s activity in each one, and we can begin to imagine how those stories from thousands of years ago are played out in our lives, and then, we can begin to see how our lives and stories connect and intersect with the biblical narrative, the story told through the texts of the books of the Bible. Like any good story, whether it’s your favorite movie or t.v. show, every new hearing, or reading, opens your eyes to see new details and prompts you to ask new questions.

As you read, or listen to it, the stories become more familiar until you can begin to complete the narrative from memory and the language seeps into your own vocabulary. And you learn how the books were written and why some were chosen to be held together in one collection as the canon; what is factual and what is allegorical; what is narrative and what is poetry; how a temple would have been constructed and what a Passover Seder meal may have looked like; you discover who the kings were, and what role the judges played, and you meet the men and women who were leaders in the early Christian church. And through all these different genres and forms, the Bible shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. So perhaps it doesn’t need to be so unfamiliar or challenging, but instead inviting.

Pick one up and read!

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Resolutions - Tasks or Relationships?

Have you begun thinking about New Year Resolutions?

I used to resolve to remember better my family's birthdays, but with my aunt, my grandmother, my father-in-law and my step-father all having birthdays in the first three weeks of the year, I always failed miserably. After all, I'm one of the the people who have trouble remembering to take down the Christmas tree even as its needles lay a fir carpet in our living room. How was I going to remember to do something in January when I was still thinking it was December? I was sunk before I ever began!

So, these days, I don't think too much about making resolutions; after all, most resolutions get broken before January ends - why invite disappointment?

But I admit, I am intrigued by a thesis made by Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Duhigg's book is the first of several on my reading list for JTerm classes that I'll travel to Luther Seminary for next month. He argues that habits consist of a loop that begin with a cue, a routine and a reward. He suggests that habits can be created by creating new cues or rewards, and changed by inserting different routines into the loop. Eventually, when a habit is formed, the cue triggers a routine and delivers a reward semi-automatically.

What intrigues me though is how his presentation parallels a way of thinking about discipleship that is promoted by Mike Breen of 3DM. Breen acknowledges borrowing this form from the business world thirty years ago, but it is durable. Using the shape of a square,Breen suggests that discipleship involves 4 movements that begin with teaching people in safe spaces where they can watch how things are done (1), and then, they can help (2). Eventually, being coached, they take a leadership role (3), and finally, fully equipped, they lead (4).

Correlating the square and the habit loop helps me understand that short-term bursts of activity are likely less to create or change habits than sustained relationships.  I'll have to think about what that means in practice, but maybe it changes the ways I resolve to live differently in 2013.

What about you?

Conspiracy in the Preacher's Corner

Conspiring to hold Jesus at the center of all of our Christmas preparation and expectation, St. Mark's joined neighborhood churches in participating in the Advent Conspiracy [AC] for Advent. Four churches, four preachers, four worship styles but united as one Body of Christ around the table and the Word - pretty extraordinary.

On Sundays at St. Mark's, we returned to the prophets' words and heard the promise of a Messiah.  I preached the first and last Sundays of Advent.

December 2, 2012
1st Sunday in Advent (Year C)
Jeremiah 33:14-16   
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
 

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December 23, 2012
4th Sunday in Advent (Year C)
Micah 5:2-5a
Psalm 80:1-7
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

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Stories that Matter

What is your favorite story? And who told it to you?

When I began my studies at Luther Seminary, I was surprised to discover the first preaching course was actually called, “Telling the Story.” As a little girl, my daddy told us Uncle Remus stories which were tales about the shenanigans of Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox. That was my introduction to storytelling, a traditional art with a rich history that happens to be woven into western North Carolina's own traditions.

At seminary, the focus is on God’s story, which we hear and read in the Bible. If you grew up in church, you may have learned many of the most well-known Bible stories as a child, and you know the major characters. But many people, including me, didn’t learn them in childhood, so I wondered how people can learn who the characters are, what their stories say and why their stories are important to us, two-thousand years later. Why does what we believe matter? With all the stories we hear through advertising, popular culture, television and the internet, how does Christianity help us make sense of the world around us?

I think we can begin to answer those questions by discovering that God’s story is not only an ancient text that we read, but a story that continues to be shaped by God’s activity in our world and lives today.  And hopefully, as we explore how we can connect with God, with each other and with the world around us through God’s story, we also can learn to tell our own stories of where God touches our lives in ways other people can hear them.

I have created an internship project, “Stories that Matter” that is rooted in these two ideas: that people want to learn God’s story in ways that make sense, and want to find language to talk about how God shows up in our lives.  Working with tellers who are members of the Asheville Storytelling Circle and other storytellers, I hope to introduce storytelling into people's lives in ways that help them learn God's story and identify their own stories, too.

From the Preacher's Corner, here are my most recent sermons at St. Mark's which both include story elements:

October 28, 2012
Reformation Day (Year B)
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

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November 11, 2012
24th Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
1 Kings 17:8-16
Psalm 146   
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44


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Ordinary Time in the Preacher's Corner

I once heard a preacher say he appreciated this long, green season after Pentecost, called "Ordinary Time" because when you come down to it, most of us live in "ordinary" times.  While festivals are wonderful, rich celebrations, for much of the year we are learning to find ways to connect to God, to each other and to the world around us in our "ordinary" day-to-day lives.

In this Preacher's Corner, I post recordings of the sermons I've preached.I am a candidate for rostered ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America  (ELCA) and a full-time intern at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Asheville, NC. St. Mark's follows the Revised Common Lectionary for the lessons. The sermon text is in bold.

While I've been taught to preach for a particular people at a particular time and in a particular place, I hope that in these recordings you will hear God's promise of relationship, grace and forgiveness and God's call for you in your life wherever you are.

I welcome your comments. Thanks for listening.

September 30, 2012
18th Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

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September 2, 2012
14th Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
Psalm 15
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

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August 12, 2012
11th Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51 
(Audio has been archived. Post a comment if you want to listen.)

Listen to earlier sermons.

Asking

Friday’s Five at RevGalBlogPals asked us to  list four ways you have been helped when you didn't want to ask for it and one way you had a chance to help that meant a lot to you.

Only Four? I really hate admitting I cannot do everything on my own, or even my husband and I cannot do everything on our own, and I probably hate the phone, almost as much, so asking for help is a struggle. But without people willing to share their lives with ours, even for a short while, we wouldn’t be the people and family we are today.

I easily can rattle off a half-dozen times when other moms and dads have pitched in to help my husband and me because we haven’t mastered the art of being in more than two places at one time, and with a family of four, often that means being in four places simultaneously.

• three moms who rotated driving my daughters to children’s choir and Wednesday night fellowship because I was embedded in my teaching parish at another congregation;
• another mom (whose own child was not in tae kwon do) who took my daughter to and from her tae kwon do class because I was away at seminary for a winter intensive;
• another dad who brought my daughter home in a downpour because her bus lets her off at his family’s driveway, a mile from our house;
• another mom who took my older daughter to her gymnastic competition and texted me her scores because I was away at winter intensive;
• yet another mom took my oldest daughter home to their house between school and practice, giving her a break from walking in the heat;
• dear friends with grandchildren of their own drove my daughters to my internship congregation to hear me preach...

I thank God that we are not alone…we are part of the Body of Christ, joined together inextricably.

While these recent examples of help received are those times when people stood in for one or both my husband and me, other times help was provided in crisis and we are grateful for the people who made those experiences more bearable.

More than fifteen years ago, at 26, I was diagnosed with cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment. No one knew what to say. You’re not supposed to be sick that young, and you’re certainly not supposed to be bald! But people overcame their uneasiness and poured out love and support on our family, even though we’d lived in the town just two months.

One of the more enduring memories is of the women who drove me to and from radiation treatments. A similarly strong image remains of the women who would babysit my daughter so that I could sleep when the chemo hit my system about 36 hours after treatments. And the third powerful memory of those months is of the oncology nurse whose college-age daughter babysat my daughter overnight when she had a cold so that my immune system wasn’t compromised and I could stay on schedule. Angels among us, or as someone has taught me recently, “love with skin on it.” 

After I was in remission, the nurses invited me to speak on a survivors’ panel. Then, a few years later, a colleague’s sister was diagnosed with the same cancer, and I discovered I could answer some of her questions. Almost ten years after my cancer went into remission, a colleague and peer was diagnosed with a  much more aggressive cancer, and during his illness, he recorded posts on Live Journal, which allowed us to hear his experiences in his own voice. I transcribed the audio files into text, giving me a way to support him from three thousand miles away.

We can never know what experiences we have and share with others, and how our presence, as well as our help and our prayers, support them. My prayer is that we will be open enough to people around us to see when they are hurting and be present for them, even as we are vulnerable enough ourselves to accept their loved pour out on us.