Pastors’ Blog

On Sunday in my All Saints sermon I said, “God, on earth in human form, weeps for his friend.  God is not unmoved by death and suffering in this world”. Theologian and activist Carlos A. Rodriguez, takes it one step further. Not only does God weeping show us the humanity of God, it also allows us to see ourselves as made in the image of God, even in our moments of grief and sorrow. 

We can have hope in the resurrection and feel our feelings, these are not mutually exclusive actions. Consider the 13th Psalm:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

    How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I bear pain in my soul,

    and have sorrow in my heart all day long?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!

    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,

and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;

    my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

But I trusted in your steadfast love;

    my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

    because [the Lord] has dealt bountifully with me.

The psalmist is simultaneously longing for the presence of the Lord, and singing praise to the Lord. We are complex creatures, in a complex world, able to carry complex emotions, and God has walked this earth and understands our struggle. God has given us faith communities to walk alongside us as we navigate this life, and has promised to be with us in eternal life. 

Gracious God, draw near to us. Fill us with your Holy Spirit as we navigate the complexities of our world. Remind us of your love and remind us we are never alone, in Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

By Intern Pr. Jon

God will cover you with his pinions, 

Under God’s wings you will find refuge;

Psalm 91:4

In a class on spiritual care in disaster response this question was posed:  “What two groups of people need disaster spiritual care?”  

The first one seems obvious to me.  

It is the impacted persons. We are poised to look for them, to help as we can. We seek to train our eyes to recognize them. We are ready and mobilized for them.

The second one is less obvious for many of us, it is the responders. Those who come and listen. Those who have sought to take the burden of support for those in need. Are we aware of the second need?  In the midst of this slow pandemic disaster, have you been taking care of yourself?  

As we seek to reach out to those in need, I am reminded of how important it is for self care and for an eye for others who are fighting the good fight. Those who are out there for others.  If you want to be out there for others, you must take care of yourself.

Each of us simultaneously are saint and sinner.  Supporter and in need of support.  A crucial link for others and a spirit needing to be free.  Be mindful of these needs in yourself and others.

Pastor Michael

Is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?

This is a picture of our Thursday Morning Bible Study this fall.  We find a way to be together, but it isn’t how we want to be together. Someone asked me where the line is of masks or no masks and I said, “I’m not sure, but I know what side of the line we are on right now.”  In late August, CSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital lent ventilators to UC Health.  This week, we have children from our church with the virus.  Children that can’t yet be vaccinated. 

Wednesday, I will head down to Texas to be with my friend who was unvaccinated and has COVID.  He’s my age with no underlying conditions except weight.  He’s home now from the hospital after a two week stay.  Sadly, his girlfriend Megan just died from the virus.  It’s tragic, it’s frustrating, and it’s real.  

I must admit I’m feeling a lot of feelings.  Regret. Megan was special to Keith and I never met her.  Anger. Please get vaccinated! Sadness, Fear, Frustration. You name it, I have felt it.  In all these things, I cannot live up to the Grace that has been bestowed upon me through Jesus.

Jeremiah’s words are difficult to hear on the best of days, but now they sound hopeless, and they are hitting too close to home.  

There is an African Spiritual that I was reminded of this week in our bible study that brings me hope.  It brings me hope, not because it wipes away the pain, but it reminds me that this depth of pain is not unique to God’s people. It is powerful when you are feeling the pain and discouragement like Jeremiah, because when you are in that place it reminds you that you are not beyond God’s Grace.

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole;

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul.

Pastor Michael

Today I want to share with you a version of the Lord’s prayer shared by the group Lutherans Restoring Creation. This prayer was adapted from the New Zealand Book of Prayer influenced by Maori theologians. 

We pray our common prayer that Christ taught us.

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life giver,

Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and 

Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echoes through the 

universe! The way of your justice be followed by the

peoples of the world! Your heavenly will be done by

all created beings! Your beloved community of

peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on

earth. With the bread we need for today, feed us. In

the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us. 

From trials too great to endure, spare us. From the 

grip of all that is evil, free us. For you reign in the

glory of the power that is love, now and forever.

Amen.

In the sixth chapter of Matthew Jesus tells the disciples to “pray in this way” or in another translation “pray like this”. Jesus doesn’t say you must use these same words, he gives us a suggestion on how to pray. I love the version of the Lord’s Prayer that we typically use in worship, but it’s also nice to switch things up on occasion and hear the words anew. 

In this version adapted from the New Zealand Book of Prayer the line “With the bread we need for today, feed us” stands out to me. We can both be talking about the physical food that feeds us on a daily basis, but we are also asking God to feed us spiritually through the presence of Christ in the Sacrament of Communion. 

What line stands out to you today? What did you hear differently in this prayer today?

Intern Pr. Jon

Our Wednesday devotions will follow a series featuring different women who were mystics, visionaries, and prophets. Some will be from the ancient world and some from our world. Yes, I said ancient world. Sometimes the lack of attention and information available on the women of faith leads us to believe that there weren’t any, that they were silent, that they were uneducated, or that what they had to say was not worth preserving. These things are not true. It is true that some (men) decided they were not worth saving, that some were uneducated, and that many were silenced over and over again. However, women of ancient faith are a part of our herstory and a part of how what we know today in spiritual practices took on life and passed from the generations. 

Today’s woman is Perpetua. She is a martyr of the third century from Carthage, a North African city. She lived during a time where dying for one’s faith was seen as a must if one was faced with confessing a faith in the triune God. Perpetua was a woman who was born into wealth and was martyred when her child was young. Her story is unique, scholars believe, because of her circumstances to care for herself and her child as well as the existence of the writings that have survived centuries. We know of her from her diary and from other witness accounts such as this statement she made when going to her death:

 “Stand fast in the faith, and love one another, all of you, and be not offended at my sufferings.

(Last words of Saint Perpetua, as testified to by the eyewitness to her martyrdom, as preserved by Tertullian in The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity.)”― St. Perpetua

These words bring meaning today- to stand fast and hold on to the faith that finds us grounded in love. There are many sufferings in the world. Many of which are deeply personal and heart-breaking. There are the sufferings of people that we don’t know, but we know of their suffering and struggle. There are immigrants trying to make their way out of Haiti for a new life, Afghan women fighting for their rights over their own personhood and body, COVID causing illness and death again and again, and war torn Ethiopia where today, literally today, people are dying of starvation at the hands of the warriors and their own government. Countless atrocities to the earth and the seas and the sky continue each and every day. There are plenty of reasons to give up hope and to see the suffering and drop faith in the promise of the God of love and grace and forgiveness. And yet, Perpetua begs us to not be offended- to not allow the suffering of the world to turn us inward and away from the love and hope of Jesus but instead to turn us towards the freedom and the striving of the Holy Spirit. 

We are not asked to die for our faith in the way Perpetua was persecuted and killed. We are today asked to keep living in love and hope. To keep allowing the spirit to guide our minds and touch our hearts. To live in this world as people of faith with our voices, our actions, our decisions, and most of all our love for others. 

A blessing for today: 

May you know the open love of God moving through you. 

May you know the firmness of faith as Perpetua lived. 

May you be soft enough to know the world’s suffering and strong enough to stand steadfast in hope. 

Amen

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

In 2020 my guess is a few of you had passports that were supposed to be used, but were not because of Covid 19.  Perhaps this year another trip has been canceled too.  It’s frustrating when we prepare for something and don’t receive the expected outcome.  Faith can be like that too.  Have you ever had the proverbial rug swept out from your feet in terms of your relationship with God.  It can feel like a cancellation of sorts.  How do we look forward to our future faith journey when our current journey looks different from what we expected?  The answer isn’t easy, but it is at least as old as the first century when we see this text and if we read a little further into the Old Testament we know that it’s much older than that.

You see our plans, our journeys, the world around us all have one constant… Change.  The good news is that we don’t worship a stagnant idol that can’t adapt to change, but a living God who challenges us to begin anew.  When we live for the future this can be troubling.  You can expect more issues to challenge our best laid plans whether in terms of faith or otherwise.  But when we live in the present we realize that whatever we face God is with us.  It doesn’t mean that there won’t be some hard journeys.  It doesn’t mean that plans won’t change.  It means that in whatever we face God is there.  

Gracious God help me to see how you are at work in my life and others this day. 
Amen

Matthew 6:25-26 – 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[a] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly [Parent] feeds them.”

I stumbled across this photo on social media the other day, and it felt so timely. Most days I feel like I’m at the same time overreacting to the world around me and also not doing enough, I feel like I’m feeling the pain of the world and also not caring enough about my neighbor, and I feel like I’m well informed and missing so many important things. Maybe you can relate? 

The endless streams of news that we can easily access from all our electronic devices encourage us to overreact and get worked up, so that we continue consuming the product being marketed to us. There is a lot of injustice in the world that we can be rightfully upset about, and sometimes we need to take a moment to breathe and step away. 

This passage from Matthew’s Gospel has always been a tough one, for me. I worry a lot about the future and the world around me, and yet there is trust in God who provides for us and is present in our times of need. God isn’t saying there won’t be reason to worry and God isn’t saying that everything will work out the way we hope, but through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we can trust in the eternal promise that God will be with us until the end. 

Intern Pr. Jon

John 8:21-38 

In this scripture from John (click above to read it), Jesus tells us he is truth and he is freedom. These two words about following Jesus can open up whole new worlds of what we understand being followers of Jesus to be. We are connected to truth and we are free. Free for living and loving. This is good news and it is difficult news. Sometimes freedom makes life harder to navigate, however, in the end it makes spiritual connection even more possible. 

This passaged reminded me of a book I just finished reading:  Wild Woman: A Footnote, the Desert, and My Quest for An Elusive Saint by Amy Frykholm. The memoir is about the search for signs of Mary of Egypt, a woman of self described sin who has an encounter with God and makes her way into the desert to be an amma– a desert mother of wilderness faith. Her freedom was wild, literally, as she found herself in the desert wilderness. She lived solely on what God provided and become an adored spiritual guru to the local community. She came to know God in a way that I doubt I ever will, and yet, her freedom from the world is an inspiration and hope-how can we live as followers of Jesus who are freed in the truth? What does that look today? 

The author came upon this obscure story in a footnote while doing research on another topic and that footnote sent her on a quest of her own. This story of three women, two living today and one from ancient times, wrapped itself in a wild and free way that lit up the idea that Jesus brings to the gospel text. Being wild and free can look so many different ways and isn’t that the point of the Holy Spirit? That we each are unique and beloved and that the truth of freedom is that we are changed and made new each day in different ways. The story of this woman also reminds us that there are so many stories of women that we may not know or ever find AND yet, their stories still shaped how we know God as we know her today. 

May your days be filled with Wild Freedom that catches you up into the Spirit.

Pastor Leta

The hippo is perfect for its environment.  It has almost no predators.  It sleeps and stays cool during the day in the water.  Amazingly, the crocodiles found in the same waters do not even bother the young hippos.   It is thus least vulnerable in the water and the herd stays cool and sleeps in this environment.  At night it takes advantage of the cool air to forage and because of its size and powerful jaws, fears no animals.  

I sometimes wonder about how all of the animals of our world have found such a balance in creation.  God’s hand rests upon this wondrous creation.

We came upon this baby Thompson Gazelle on Safari in Kenya this summer.  As you can see, it is freshly born.  I was overwhelmed by its vulnerability in its environment.  They are born to be able to stand and walk, but as a newborn and sensing danger (you’ll note it’s literally on the dirt road), all it could do was lie in place and hope that no predator saw it.  We had just seen cheetahs and no doubt other predators of all shapes and sizes were around.

In one way we are born into this world even more vulnerable than this gazelle,  We are fully reliant on others to care for and protect us for years.  We survive not because of our own skill set, but because of family and community.  As I think of our journey as individuals, versus as a community, I am humbled to realize how vulnerable the strongest of us are in our lives.

It is my understanding of grace that I cannot add an ounce of direction to my own salvation through my actions, but I can do a tremendous amount for others.  As we face a time where we are once again wearing masks, I know that I wear a mask again less for me and more for others.  I am still vulnerable, but I direct my anxiety to a world that needs me working for others.  Join me in casting our eye out for the vulnerable.  Let’s consider how we can be a gift to our neighbor.

Psalm 100 says…

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.

Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name.

For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

This is the psalm reading for a wedding I am preaching at this weekend. It’s the perfect psalm for a beautiful occasion and I am grateful that the couple picked it. I have been walking with this psalm for a few days now. Reading it when I get up and at different points throughout the day. And I haven’t ‘felt’ it yet. What do I mean by that? Well, I have not really felt a joyful noise rise up, but more of a wimpy try at alleluia. I haven’t been able to sing anything but the sad songs and feeling the happy has been a struggle. So when I was leading chapel today, I was singing and the children were dancing, which made me dance, which made me feel this inkling, this sprinkle, of what the psalm asks us to do. And now I remember that joy isn’t a happy feeling, joy is nothing the love and presence of God beyond the desire for the feeling of it. Joy is moving my hips a little to join in dance with a preschooler.

Joy is also remembering that God gave us all the feelings and that most of the time we are not experiencing just one. Like at my own wedding- happy, excited, and also scared of stepping into full on adulthood! Or the mix of feelings this morning of  relief and sorrow as my daughter’s covid test came back negative- relief, because of course no desire for covid, sorrow because I can’t just go bring her healing tea or kiss her forehead to see if she still has a fever, and then deep joy again because of all the precious memories and times I have gotten to express mother love in that way. God gave us feelings to feel them, to be human persons, who even in times of grief (which is the collective experience of the pandemic at the moment, more on that another day) can know that our feelings tell us things, give us information. We can move in and out of them and we can let them teach us about ourselves and our God. As you ponder the joint feelings you may be experiencing, let them tell you more about yourself and then also let them tell you of God’s presence in all of them. And then let them help you move your hips a little to the music of joy found in God’s profound promise of love– For the Lord is good, God’s steadfast love endures forever!

~Pastor Leta