Easter Pre-Dawn: 2024

 Easter Sunday:  soon we will go to the car and head over the mountains to Bristol, Tennessee, where I will preach and preside at Faith Lutheran.  I've preached many sermons before, but never the Easter sermon.  We are doing the passage from Mark, the last part of Mark, without the verses tacked on in the second century.  The women run away, amazed and terrified.

But that's O.K.  They are going to Galilee, where they will tell the men what they have heard.  They are going to Galilee, where Jesus will meet them.  Jesus has gone ahead.  Jesus has also gone back to the place where it all began.  From there, the next phase of ministry will launch.

Time is short.  Time to put on my Easter socks to hide my Maundy Thursday feet (such mangled toenails!) and white sandals.  Time to print the sermon.  Time to go, to proclaim the good news that the brutal forces of empire and hate do not have the final word.

Empire is so much more fragile than it seems.  Chaos always lurks at the margins.  But God has a larger vision and invites us to be part of it.

Today and every day, I hope we say yes.

Four Years of Morning Watch

Four years ago, a core group of us gathered at church to do the livestreaming of the service when we could no longer gather as a large group--that was how we began doing it.  It was a small group, and we were spread out.  We also brainstormed other things we could do, like a Compline service.  I volunteered to do something in the morning.  One of the brainstorming group suggested that in addition to some sort of reading, that we have time for something creative.

At first I thought about choosing the readings, and then I thought, why do this?  I have Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours; she's done this work for me.  I did the readings for the day, took a five-seven minute pause to do meditation, writing, sketching, yoga, whatever gets us grounded for the day.  And then we came back for closing prayer, also from The Divine Hours, and I gave some closing thoughts, a benediction of sorts.

It hasn't changed much.  I do show the sketch I'm working on; my dad made a comment that he wanted to see what I was working on, so I started holding the sketch close to the camera. 

I've continued to do morning watch, and it's interesting to scroll back through a selection of posts that Facebook gave me when I did a search.  Here I am with much longer hair.  Here I am in a variety of rooms (the house near the beach, the downtown condo, our Lutheridge house, my seminary apartment, vacation/travel destinations).  Here I am with Christmas lights in the back, and here I am almost always with construction happening in the background.  I won't link to all those posts, as I'm almost sure it's only interesting to me.

This blog post tells a more complete story of the early days.  It also contains this link to the first day when I used Phyllis Tickle's work--on March 30, I had technical difficulties, so I didn't post that broadcast.  It's gotten 187 views.  Later broadcasts get much fewer views.  But I hear from people who find it meaningful, so I'll keep doing it.  Here's a link to this morning's broadcast.

To be honest, even if I didn't get encouragement, I'd probably still do it.  It helps me to stay faithful to this method of formation.

My Good Friday Sermon

When I was a child, I loved the Good Friday service. Along with Christmas Eve, it was one of my favorites. I went to a church that did a Tenebrae service, and I loved the lights dimming down until we sat in total darkness. With a huge boom, the pastor closed the big Bible, and we filed out in silence. I loved the service because it was so different than what we did every Sunday.

In my adult years, I’ve grown frustrated with Good Friday for many reasons. Often the church service makes me yearn for more: more drama, more sadness, more shock at the horror of the story. Often the theology makes me queasy as well, with all that focus on sin and worthlessness; Jesus as blameless, God as stern, and we are at fault. Parts of that theology ring true, but there are so many ways that the theology of substitutionary atonement can go wrong that I hesitate to preach from that position.

Many of the earliest Christians, who were still Jewish after all, saw Jesus as both Messiah and prophet, one who came to announce the inbreaking Kingdom of God, but also one who came to let society know where God saw that the community had gone astray. Old Testament prophets spoke of the sins of society as a whole, not individual sins; for example, an Old Testament prophet would criticize policies that left citizens without enough food, and worry less about whether or not I ate every scrap of food on my plate. Many church denominations through the ages have been much more focused on individual sin, not societal sin, like injustice. Did Jesus really have to die on a cross because I would be mean to my baby sister two thousand years after his death? My fifth grade Sunday School teacher told me he did, and even at the time, I thought this idea was much too simplistic.

When I discovered the theologians who focused on crucifixion as capital punishment, I felt like I had discovered a way that the story made more sense to me. Jesus was crucified; he wasn’t stoned to death or beheaded with a sword or thrown to lions (or other cruelty in the Coliseum). Crucifixion was a Roman punishment reserved for enemies of the empire: revolutionaries, insurrectionists, and runaway slaves and those who would upset the social order. Christ crucified meant that he had so upset the social order that he needed to be dispatched in this public way that would also serve as deterrent to others who might be considering similar actions.

With crucifixion in mind, does the story of Jesus’ life make sense to us? Is his message that revolutionary that Rome would step in and kill him? But the more important question to me now: why do so many denominations focus more on the Crucifixion than on other elements of the story? I’ve been to more than one Easter service that seems stuck in Good Friday with lots of talk of sin and worthlessness than the amazing act that God performs.

These days, I approach the Good Friday story by seeing lots of people in the grip of something they don't understand, working within power structures they can't control, power structures that are spiraling away from what people thought they understood towards chaos and pandemonium. I see people with great disappointment that Jesus was not like Barabbas, the insurrectionist.

Once we might have thought of the chief priests and Pilate as the ones having the power. Now I think about the larger sweep of history, and even Rome's power seems fleeting. These actors have political power, true. But political power can be so precarious. The last few months and years have reminded us of that fact over and over again.

The story of the Crucifixion reminds us that we all suffer--even God who comes to be human with us suffers. There are some Christians out there who would tell us that if we just pray hard enough, we can avoid the sadness that's out there: our illnesses will go away, wealth will fall into our laps, prosperity of all kinds await us if we just trust in God enough. While these things can happen, they are not promised. More than once, Jesus seems to say that followers can expect to suffer just as he did.

The Good Friday story tells us what is at stake. Even God must suffer in the most horrible ways. God comes to earth to show us a better way of living our human lives, and in return, the most powerful earthly empire at the time arrests him, spits on him, presses a crown of thorns into his flesh, tortures him in other ways, and crucifies him, making sure that he is dead.

It's good to remember on Good Friday, and during all of our Good Friday times, that God can make beauty out of the most profound ugliness, wholeness out of the most shattered brokenness. We will explore that idea more on Easter and the weeks following Easter.

Good Friday reminds us of all the ways our hopes can be dashed, of all the ways that we can be betrayed and abandoned, of all the ways that it can all go so terribly wrong. N. T. Wright says, "The greatest religion the world had ever known and the finest system of justice the world had ever known came together to put Jesus on the cross" (How God Became King, page 208). It’s no wonder that we’ve spent so much time and energy trying to figure out what it all meant.

For today, let us sit with Good Friday: the sadness, the horror, the wishing that our salvation did not have to look this way. Let us remember how much our societies want to break anyone who offers a different vision of a more just world. Let us stand in solidarity with those who are shattered by our societies. Let us trust in a God who gives us free will to make disastrous decisions, but who will also show us in spectacular ways that the forces of death and destruction will not have the final word.

Quick Maundy Thursday Post

 Another Maundy Thursday, and I am writing later than I usually would.  I was finishing both my Maundy Thursday and Good Friday sermons, trying to connect the printer, getting ready to drive down the mountain to teach at Spartanburg Methodist College.

After I am done teaching, I will drive back up the mountain, stop at my Lutheridge house, and then my spouse and I will drive to Bristol, Tennessee, so that I can lead Maundy Thursday service at Faith Lutheran.  There have been many moments this morning when I wondered why I didn't just move my classes online.  Today will be more driving than many Maundy Thursdays in the past.

I am used to working my way through Holy Week, and I am glad that my seminary doesn't have classes--one of the benefits of a theological education, as opposed to other types of school I could be doing.

Still, my writing time today is short, so let me end with a good quote.  In her book An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor comments on the Last Supper: "With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, he [Jesus] did not give something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do--specific ways of being together in their bodies--that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself" (43).  Jesus gave us all "embodied sacraments of bread, wine, water, and feet" (44).

Meditation on Holy Week and Easter and the Gospel for This Sunday

 The readings for Sunday, March 31, 2024:

First Reading: Acts 10:34-43

First Reading (Alt.): Isaiah 25:6-9

Psalm: Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Second Reading (Alt.): Acts 10:34-43

Gospel: Mark 16:1-8

Gospel (Alt.): John 20:1-18

Finally we move through Holy Week to Easter Sunday. At last, our Lenten pilgrimage draws to a close. It's strange to write about Easter when we have yet to move through all of Holy Week. But the Christian life invites us to live in this strangeness, the coming of God existing in various planes of time: the past, the present, and the not yet.

It's interesting how our emotional lives aren't always in sync with the liturgical seasons or the Lectionary.  Perhaps you still linger back at Ash Wednesday. Perhaps you find the Good Friday texts more evocative than the Easter texts. Maybe you're in a state of joy, back with the shepherds hearing the angel choir. Maybe, like Mary, you prefer silence and pondering the mystery. 

Maybe this year we can approach the Holy Week stories differently. Maundy Thursday gives us a view of how to love each other. Notice that it's about what we do: we eat together, we wash each other's feet, we anoint with oil. It's not about an emotion--it's about an action. It's not a theory of love, but a concrete way of showing that we love each other.

We are called to break bread together, to drink wine together. We are called to invite the outcast to supper with us. We are called to care for each other's bodies--not to sexualize them or mock them or brutalize them, but to wash them tenderly. Thus fortified, we are called to announce that the Kingdom of God is breaking out among us in the world in which we live, and we are called to demand justice for the oppressed.

Perhaps we find ourselves more like the disciples who would transform the loving act of anointing with oil into a way to help the poor by selling that oil and giving the money to the poor. It seems a good way to show love. Jesus rebukes this way of thinking. We will always have the poor; we won't always have the ones we love. 

Good Friday gives us a way to think about betrayal and how we can respond. The Good Friday message is that we will all betray God. But some of us will try again, while others will give up in abject despair. Some of us will apologize and try to do better, while others will choose death.

I also find myself thinking about the tree that must wish for a great destiny, but is transformed into the cross, an instrument of torture. Likewise, Jesus, who has been in some amount of control of his own actions, but finds himself handed over to others. In these past years when I've watched so many friends and colleagues battle cancer--handed over to the medical-industrial complex--the idea of the Passion takes on an excruciating hue.  

Holy Week takes on an even more poignant tone, as we consider the pandemic time we're still living through, along with a variety of social justice movements that remind us that we still have work to do to make our societies better for all.

Easter promises us that our efforts will not be in vain. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says forcefully, " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (208). We may not understand how God will transform the world. We may not be able to believe that bleakness will be defeated. But Easter shows us God's promise that death is not the final answer.

Spring reminds us that nature commits to resurrection. Easter reminds us of God's promise of resurrection. Now is the time for us to rekindle our resurrection selves.

The Feast Day of the Annunciation

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, the feast day which celebrates the appearance of the angel Gabriel, who tells Mary of her opportunity to be part of God's mission of redemption. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary and says, in the older wording that I still like best, "Hail, oh blessed one! The Lord is with you!" Mary asks some questions, and Gabriel says, "For nothing will be impossible with God" (Luke 1: 37). And Mary says, ". . . let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1: 38).

That means only 9 months until Christmas. If I wrote a different kind of blog, I'd fill the rest of this post with witty ways to make your shopping easier. But instead of spending the next nine months strategically getting our gifts bought, maybe we should think about the next nine months in terms of waiting for God, watching for God, incubating the Divine.

I find Mary an interesting model for modern spirituality. Notice what is required of Mary. She must wait.

Mary is not required to enter into a spiritual boot camp to get herself ready for this great honor. No, she must be present to God and be willing to have a daily relationship, an intimacy that most of us would never make time for. She doesn't have to travel or make a pilgrimage to a different land. She doesn't have to go to school to work on a Ph.D. She isn't even required to go to the Temple any extra amount. She must simply slow down and be present. And of course, she must be willing to be pregnant, which requires more of her than most of us will offer up to God. And there's the later part of the story, where she must watch her son die an agonizing death.

But before she is called upon to these greater tasks, first she must slow down enough to hear God. I've often thought that if the angel Gabriel came looking for any one of us, we'd be difficult to find. Gabriel would need to make an appointment months in advance!

In our society, it's interesting to me to wonder what God would have to do to get our attention. I once wrote these lines in a poem:

I don’t want God to have to fling
frogs at me to get my attention. I want
to be so in touch that I hear the still,
small voice crying in this wilderness of American life.
I don’t want God to set fire to the shrubbery to get my notice.

We might think about how we can listen for God's call. Most of us live noisy lives: we're always on our cell phones, we've often got several televisions blaring in the house at once, we're surrounded by traffic (and their loud stereos), we've got people who want to talk, talk, talk. Maybe today would be a good day to take a vow of silence, inasmuch as we can, to listen for God.

If we can't take a vow of silence, we could look for ways to have some silence in our days. We could start with five minutes and build up from there.

Maybe we can't be silent, but there are other ways to tune in to God. Maybe we want to keep a dream journal to see if God tries to break through to us in that way. Maybe we want to keep a prayer journal, so that we have a record of our prayer life--and maybe we want to revisit that journal periodically to see how God answers our prayers.

Let us celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation by thinking about our own lives. What does God call us to do? How will we answer that call?

(And yes, I realize the feast day might be moved because we're in Holy Week, but I'm writing about it today, before heading off to 9 a.m. Mass at Saint Barnabas for a Worship Immersion paper).

Hearing the Holy Week Story Anew

Today is Palm Sunday, or for some of us Passion Sunday.  Some of us will hear the whole Holy week story today, and some of us will hear it throughout the week, and some of us will do both--the whole story today and then returning to church and/or devotional time that returns us to the story.

Today in my sermon, I'll suggest that we approach this repetition as a lectio divina.  As we hear the story again and again, what word or phrase lodges within us?

We will be hearing stories that many of us have heard many times before. How can we hear them with fresh ears?  One way is to use the Ignatian discipline of trying to imagine ourselves as part of the story.

One year I was startled to realize how much I identified with Pontius Pilate as an administrator. That year, I saw the Good Friday story in a different light. One year I read Mary Oliver's "The Poet Thinks about the Donkey" (you can read it here: https://predmore.blogspot.com/2016/03/poem-poet-thinks-about-donkey-by-mary.html). I hadn't thought much about the donkey that carries Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and my perspective shifted.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking. Tell the story from the perspective of:

--the person who cleans up after the last supper

--the towels used by Jesus to wash the feet of the disciples

--the cross itself

--an indifferent observer on Palm Sunday

--the sibling of Jesus who had always seen this day (Good Friday? Palm Sunday?) coming

--the disciple we don't usually hear about

--the rooster that crows three times

Here's hoping for a creative week-end, in all the ways our creativity can manifest itself!

Theologian to the Algorithm: Inspirations from Quilt Camp

On Wednesday morning, I had 15 squares that needed finishing.  This morning, I have 8.  In some ways, I thought I was making more progress.  I thought I might be able to sew the whole top together, but I don't think that will happen this week.  I am fine with that.

I've gotten a chance to connect with old friends.  I've taken a look at their projects and heard about their lives.  That aspect is one of the most important parts of a retreat for me.

I've gotten a lot of sewing done, and a lot of sorting of scraps.  I have an idea for a next project, one that will be easier to pick up and put down as I keep my spouse company while he watches T.V.

I've gotten other work done too, seminary work and teaching work, done with scraps of time here or there.  It's a valuable lesson, and I'm glad that I learned it early--one can accomplish a lot, even if one only has 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there.

I've remembered other truths too, like the calming effect of stitching straight lines by hand.  In our devotional time on Wednesday night, we took a deep breath in and a deep breath out.  We did it a few more times.  I thought, I know the power of deep breathing--why do I always forget to do it?

I've heard from several people who tune in to morning watch, the short devotional that I do each morning.  It's housed on my Florida church's Facebook page, and I link to it on my Facebook page each day.  I started doing it 4 years ago, as various church members were trying to keep our community sane and grounded and connected.  It's good for me, so I keep doing it.  I hear from a few people who leave comments, but there's no way for me to know the ultimate numbers of who views it.  I have never been able to decipher Facebook's metrics, and I'm sure that's by design.  Right now, it's free, so why not continue?

I say free, and I do realize that Facebook gets something out of it, or we wouldn't be able to use the site the way we do.  It's hard for me to imagine that my 12 minutes of devotional time is very useful to the algorithm creators who vacuum up all our data and content, but who knows.

Now I have a vision of generative AI learning by using my morning devotional time, which uses Phyllis Tickle's work in The Divine Hours, which uses an ancient lectionary.  That's me, theologian to AI and the algorithm!

I love retreats for the wide ranging inspirations they provide.  Happily, this one is no different.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel: Palm Sunday

 The readings for Sunday, March 24, 2024:

First Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm: Psalm 31:9-16

Second Reading: Philippians 2:5-11

Gospel: Mark 14:1--15:47

Gospel (Alt.): Mark 15:1-39 [40-47]


Palm Sunday has become a busy Sunday. Somewhere in the past twenty years, we've gone from hearing just the story of Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem to hearing the whole Passion story--on Palm Sunday many Christians leave the church with Jesus dead and buried. If we return to church for the rest of Holy Week, we hear the same stories on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. It makes for a long, Sunday Gospel reading--and reinforces one of the paradoxes of the Passion story: how can people shout acclaim for Jesus in one day, and within the week demand his Crucifixion? Maybe it's good to hear the whole sad story in one long sitting, good to be reminded of the fickleness of the crowd.

It's one of the central questions of Christian life: how can we celebrate Palm Sunday, knowing the goriness of Good Friday to come? How can we celebrate Easter with the taste of ashes still in our mouth?

Palm Sunday reminds us of the cyclical nature of the world we live in. The palms we wave this morning traditionally would be burned to make the ashes that will be smudged on our foreheads in 10 months for Ash Wednesday. The baby that brings joy at Christmas will suffer the most horrible death--and then rise from the dead. The sadnesses we suffer will be mitigated by tomorrow's joy. Tomorrow's joy will lead to future sadness. That's the truth of the broken world we live in. Depending on where we are in the cycle, we may find that knowledge either a comfort or fear inducing.

Palm Sunday offers us some serious reminders. If we put our faith in the world, we're doomed. If we get our glory from the acclaim of the secular world, we'll find ourselves rejected sooner, rather than later.

Right now, we live in a larger culture that prefers crucifixion to redemption. For some of us, we see a brutal world that embraces crucifixion: no second chances, perhaps no first chances.

It's at times like these where the scriptures offer comforts that the world cannot. Look at the message from Isaiah: "The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. . . . For the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near" (Isaiah 50, first part of verse 4, verse 7, and first part of verse 8).

God promises resurrection. We don't just hope for resurrection. God promises resurrection.

God calls us to live like the redeemed people that we are. Set your sights on resurrection. We are already redeemed--it's up to us to fold the grave clothes of our lives and leave the tomb. Turn away from the cultures of evil and death that surround us.

Now more than ever, it's important that people of faith commit to redemption and new life. From the ashes, let us build the community that God wants for us.

The Feast Day of Saint Joseph

Today is the feast day of St. Joseph, Mary's husband, the earthly father of Jesus. Here are the readings for today:

2 Samuel 7:4, 8-16
Psalm 89:1-29 (2)
Romans 4:13-18
Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a

I have done some thinking of Joseph, as many of us do, in the Advent season, when occasionally, we get to hear about Joseph. He thinks of quietly unweaving himself from Mary, who is pregnant. This behavior is our first indication of his character. Under ancient law, he could have had Mary stoned to death, but he takes a gentler path.

And then, he follows the instructions of the angel who tells him of God's plan. He could have turned away. He could have said, "I did not sign up for this!" He could have said, "No thanks. I want a normal wife and a regular life."

Instead, he turned towards Mary and accepted God's vision. He's there when the family needs to flee to Egypt. He's there when the older Jesus is lost and found in the temple. We assume that he has died by the time Christ is crucified, since he's not at the cross.

Some of us today will spend the day celebrating fathers, which is a great way to celebrate the feast day of St. Joseph. Lately, I've been thinking of his feast day and what it means for administrators and others who are not the stars, but who make it possible for stars to step into the spotlight.

Let us today praise the support teams, the people in the background, the people who step back to allow others to shine. Let us praise the people who do the drudgery work which makes it possible for others to succeed.

For example, I am not the kind of person who immediately decides what to do with each piece of e-mail. Consequently, once every few weeks, or more often, I need to go hunting for a particular e-mail. I am amazed at how many e-mails I send and receive in any given day. And yes, much of it is not that important.

But occasionally, an e-mail exchange can quickly settle a problem. Some times, it's good to have an e-mail chain for reference.

Many of us grow up internalizing the message that if we're not changing the world in some sort of spectacular way, we're failures. Those of us who are Christians may have those early disciples as our role models, those hard-core believers who brought the Good News to the ancient world by going out in pairs.

But Joseph shows us a different reality. It's quite enough to be a good parent. It's quite enough to have an ordinary job. It's quite enough to show up, day after day, dealing with both the crises and the opportunities.

Joseph reminds us that even the ones born into the spotlight need people in the background who are tending to the details. When we think about those early disciples and apostles, we often forget that they stayed in people's houses, people who fed them and arranged speaking opportunities for them, people who gave them encouragement when their task seemed too huge.

I imagine Joseph doing much the same thing, as he helped Jesus become a man. I imagine the life lessons that Joseph administered as he gave Jesus carpentry lessons. I imagine that he helped Jesus understand human nature, in all the ways that parents have helped their offspring understand human nature throughout history.

Let us not be so quick to discount this kind of work. Let us praise the support teams that make the way possible for the people who will change the world.


Here is a prayer that I wrote for today:

Creator God, thank you for your servant Joseph. Help us to remember his lessons for us. Help us look for ways to shepherd your Good News into the world in ways that only we can.

Looking Ahead to Fall Seminary Classes

When we get to reading week, I start to check to see if the schedule of classes for the following term has been released yet.  Even in the week or two before reading week, I check, although I know that the schedule isn't likely to be released.  Yesterday, I checked to see if the Fall schedule was there, even though it was Sunday.  There it was.

I must have missed the late afternoon posting of the schedule, because when I checked late Friday morning, it wasn't there.  I can't actually register for classes until March 25, so I haven't lost out.  More exciting, there are plenty of classes that will work for me.

In the past year, I haven't had as many classes that I could take.  That's partly a function of having been in the MDiv program for awhile:  a lot of the courses offered are ones I've already taken.  But I've also felt a bit fretful as I've seen fewer classes that are offered for students who have to take classes from a distance.

This fall, I'll be taking a variety of classes:  one is completely online, one meets by way of Zoom Mondays from 6:30 to 9:30, and two meet in person on campus for one week, October 14-18, with the rest of the work online.

If I take one more class, I could be done with the MDiv by December.  But do I want to do that?  Hmm.  One of my favorite professors is teaching a class on the Gospel of Mark, so it's tempting.  That class meets by way of Zoom once a month, and the rest is online.  It could be doable.

You may be saying, "Wait, aren't you about to start a full-time job in the Fall?"  Yes.  Could I handle a heavy teaching load and a heavy seminary class load at the same time?  Yes.  

I will take the four classes regardless, unless something changes radically.  It gets my requirements done, and the classes that I need for the certificate in Theology and the Arts done.  I want to take the classes while they are offered and in a format that works for me.  I can't be sure that it will happen term after term.  Let me seize this opportunity while it's here!

The Seeds of Saint Patrick's Day

I have never done much celebrating of St. Patrick's Day. I don't drink green beer, and if someone else served me corned beef, I'd eat it, but I don't love it enough to make it for my own homestead. Occasionally I make Irish soda bread, and I wonder why it isn't tastier. I've made a cake with Guinness beer occasionally, and here, too, I wonder why it isn't more delicious. I'm not braving the crowds to go to an Irish pub--I like my pubs deserted.

I may spend some time contemplating Celtic aspects of Christianity, but I might do that any day, whether it's a day that celebrates the life of a famous Irish saint or not.

I am intrigued by the crowds of people who have no connection to Ireland or Christianity or any of the reasons we celebrate today. But I'm not critical. I believe in injecting festivity into daily life in whatever way we can.

Today I will go to church, people may wear green. That's fine.  I am preaching a sermon that thinks about Saint Patrick, the Oscars, the U.S. presidential race, and today's Lectionary text: John 12:  20-33, a text about seeds and the necessity to die so that we may live again.  Many would preach this text as an eternal life text, but I'm encouraging us to look at our current lives.  What bulbs do we need to be planting?  Where are we stuck in the mud of life?

Saint Patrick, before he was a saint, surely felt stuck in the mud, sent to a distant outpost to help solidify Christianity in Ireland in the 500's, when Ireland was a wild and wooly place, when the empire of Rome was in a state of slow collapse.  Yet he used his gifts to transform the community of faith--and one of those gifts was the 6-7 years he spent as a teen enslaved in Ireland before he escaped.

Here's how today's sermon ends:

Our sprouting and blooming will almost surely not look like the success that our larger culture has trained us to value. We’re not likely to win an Oscar or to be a presidential nominee. Even though I’d vote for just about any of you, our system isn’t set up that way. But the life of Saint Patrick reminds us to be of good cheer. Even if we feel like we’re stranded in a distant outpost, we are making a difference just by living our lives in an authentic way, the way that God calls us to live. Even if we feel like we’re stuck in the mud, in truth, we are bulbs in the process of transformation to blooms.

Intensifying Lent in the Last Week of Lent

It is easy to lose sight of where we are in the liturgical calendar.  We've had a time change, we've had changes in weather, some of us are watching trees and flowers blooming earlier than we're used to.  It's easy to forget that we're about to enter the last week of Lent.

A week from tomorrow we will celebrate Palm Sunday, and Holy Week will begin.  That means that this week is the last week of Lent.

During Advent, I often wish that Advent lasted six weeks, like Lent.  During Lent, I often lose focus and wish that Lent could be more like Advent, no more than four weeks.

This morning, I thought about this last week of Lent.  Unlike many believers, I did not adopt a Lenten discipline.  When we get to the last days of Lent, I often wish I had done more.  This morning, it occurred to me that we could have a last week of intensity.  Whatever we wish we had spent the last five weeks doing, we could do every day.  If we're already doing a Lenten discipline every day, we could still schedule a week of intensity.  What would it happen to do our Lenten discipline twice a day?

It's easy enough if we've resolved to pray daily or to practice a creative discipline.    I say "easy," even as I realize that it's plenty difficult to schedule one daily session, much less two.

If we have been working our way through a daily devotional, we might need to be more creative.  If it's a book written by a single author, we could add more readings.  Or we could go back to the beginning of the book and read the first week of devotions for Lent along with the last week.  It might lead to interesting connections!

I write this post realizing that I'm unlikely to adopt a new Lenten discipline at this point.  But I am going to Quilt Camp, scheduled back in November, not scheduled as a Lenten discipline.  Perhaps I will add some Lenten focus to each day, as I go up the hill to the Faith Center to work on quilts.  Perhaps I will also add some non-fabric quilting focus to some days.  Hmm.  Let me see what happens!

More on Infographics

I don't have much writing time this morning.  I need to leave even earlier than usual for a morning of meetings in Spartanburg.  Let me return to the idea of infographics, which I first wrote about in this blog post.  Now that my baptism infographic has been graded, I can share it:

As I was looking at my pictures, I came across the black and white version, which I took in case I messed up the infographic when I added color.  I wouldn't have had a way to undo the color, but I could have turned in the black and white version.  Happily, I liked the color version better.

I still find this concept of an infographic intriguing.  I'm still looking for ways to incorporate it into my writing classes.  Of course, this is the time of year when I find myself yearning for a different way to do the research paper.  Or wishing that I didn't have to do a research paper at all.  

Let me record this here:  as much as I'm enjoying teaching, I do find myself yearning to do more creative things in class and not having to do some of the traditional stuff, like the research essay.  I find myself wishing I could teach less English writing classes and more creativity class.  Not so much creative writing, but a class exploring creativity.

Maybe I just want to play with art supplies.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 17, 2024:

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 51:1-13 (Psalm 51:1-12 NRSV)

or Psalm 119:9-16

Hebrews 5:5-10

John 12:20-33


This verse is my favorite from the Gospel for this week: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (verse 24). I have a vision of a seed who desperately resists change, who wants life to continue as normal. "Let me have the familiar. Don't force me to change."

But that seed doesn't see that it lives alone in the dark, damp earth. It thinks life is fine, because it has never known anything else. It thinks life is fine, because it doesn't have a vision of anything else. How can it? It lives all alone in the dark, damp earth.

Only by letting go (however painful that might be) of its current life, will that little seed find itself transformed. That seed, in its current form, must die, so that it can be reborn into a much more glorious life. That seed, once it lets go, once it faces death, will break through into a life of sunshine and fresh air and water and smiling faces. That seed, once it lets go, will find much company. It will bear fruit, which means it has fulfilled its biological imperative--it has gotten its genes into the next generation.

The most obvious way of interpreting this passage is to see it as being about death and Heaven. Eventually, we die and break out of our existential loneliness by joining our loved ones in Heaven.

But perhaps this passage gives us a deeper insight.

Certainly, we see a vision of Christ, who is troubled (according to traditional interpretation) by his impending death. That seed represents Christ's death as well as our own. If Christ had just lived quietly into old age, preaching and teaching, it's a pretty safe bet that you and I wouldn't be Christians. It is only by Jesus' death and rebirth that Christianity can flourish.

We might also think about how that seed could represent our current lives. What part of your life do you need to let die, so that you can be transformed into something glorious? Past visions of Christianity stressed the glories we could look forward to in the afterlife, yet Christ comes to live with us to show us how we can live now, how we can make the Kingdom manifest on earth now.

We spend much of our lives in the dark, damp earth--and that earth can be a metaphor for many things--what imprisons us? Is it our tendency towards anger? despair? Does the earth stand for the substances we abuse? Does the dirt represent the behaviors that keep us from fulfilling our true potential as Christians?

Before you plunge into sadness about all the ways you've fallen short, take heart. Remember that the dirt is also a nourishing medium. Seeds won't grow without dirt. All that dirt has gone a long way to protecting you for that time when you're ready to bloom.

God's vision for us is not one that keeps us muffled and buried and alone in the mud. All we have to do is to die to our current lives.

That sounds so harsh. And yet, it is what is required of us. Much of our New Testament stresses that fact. Being a Christian requires that our old life dies. Otherwise, we won't flower and flourish like we should.

In keeping with the seed metaphor, all we have to do is shuck off the husk of our former lives. All we have to do is to have the faith to face transformation. All we have to do is sprout.

International Women's Day and the Church

March is the month designated to celebrate women's history; March 8 is International Women's Day. We might ask ourselves why we still need to set time apart to pay attention to women. Haven't we enacted laws so that women are equal and now we can just go on with our lives?

Sadly, no, that is not the case. If we look at basic statistics, like how much women earn compared to men in the very same jobs, we see that the U.S. has still not achieved equality. Although the Lutheran church has been ordaining women since the 70's, although we have a female bishop in the top position, our local churches are still likely to be led by white men. If we look at violent crime rates across the past 100 years, we discover that most violent crime rates have fallen--except for rape. If we look at representation in local, state, and federal levels, we see that members of government are still mostly white and male.

And that's in a first world country. The picture for women in developing nations is bleak.  And these past few years have reminded us that legal protections can be stripped away, in every country.

Most of us understand why a world where more women have access to equal resources would be a better world for all of us. Many of us have spent years and decades working to make that world a reality. Some of us are lucky enough to have a church that supports the vision of equality that God offers to us as what the Kingdom of God looks like.

Not everyone has that experience. And sadly, many people have experienced discrimination against women coming at them through their churches. That damage may have happened years ago, in churches that no longer resemble the ones we have now--but the damage is done, for those people.

We know that the world can change very quickly, and God calls us to be part of the movement to change the world in ways that are better for all--and particularly for the vulnerable and powerless. We have made great progress on that front. But there is still more to do.

So, today, let us get started, let us continue, let us make progress. And let us pray for all who are with us on the journey.  And let us pray for all of those who need us to make progress at a faster rate for their very lives and the lives of their daughters are at stake.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 10, 2024:

First Reading: Numbers 21:4-9

Psalm: Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Second Reading: Ephesians 2:1-10

Gospel: John 3:14-21

There are some Bible texts that are so prominent that it's hard to imagine that we could find something new to say about them. This week's Gospel includes one of them, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

I spent my childhood and adolescent years in a variety of small, Southern towns, and this text was often used as one to exclude people. Most responses to the text that I've seen zero in on the idea that we must believe in Jesus to have eternal life, and I'm certain that I don't want to wander into that theological muck. I used to be able to spend many hours deliberating whether or not a Hindu could go to Heaven, or an atheist or your beloved pet.

Now I'm much more interested in how we live our lives here--not so that we get into Heaven, but so that we participate in God's visions for us and for the larger world.

Today, let us focus on the text that reminds us that God doesn't enter the world to condemn us--many pop culture preachers forget that. But almost every verse of this week's Gospel reminds us that God comes to us out of love, not judgment. God comes, not to cast us away into the shadows. Most of us spend many hours dwelling in murkiness. God comes to lead us into the light.

Many of us have come from Christian traditions which would find this theology strange. Many of us have been scarred by a theology of a divine judge who finds us wanting. Many of us fear hell.

Many of us have been taught that the purpose of religion is to save us so that we get to go to Heaven not Hell. But the message that Jesus delivers again and again is that God is interested in the life we're living right now, not just the life we'll have or not have after we die. Jesus comes to announce to us that the frayed piece of cloth that we clutch is not the quilt of life that God intends for us to have. Jesus comes to show us new fabrics, new patterns, stronger stitches to hold all the pieces together.

Our world is desperately in need of the message that Christians can tell. We live in a world of rampant Capitalism, which is doing a wide range of harm. The world needs our message of something that is more vital, something that is more important than making money and buying more stuff.

We can be the lighthouses that lead people to safer shores--not the shores of Heaven or Hell, but the shore of a transformed life. We can be part of God's quilting team, reminding people that life is more than the threadbare scraps they see before them. We can be the ones who offer new fabrics and the knowledge of how to stitch the small pieces together into glorious new patterns, a quilt that will keep us all.

Hearing "Beth" (Yes, that Song by KISS) in a New Context

It has been a strange week-end, a week-end where I've tried to work ahead on the writing that I do for my minister job at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee, while also trying to help my spouse with plumbing and the other tasks that need to happen before the dry wall installing team arrives tomorrow.  Yesterday, I made this Facebook post, which sums up the week-end in so many ways:

"I'm working on a sermon, and my spouse is listening to a KISS album while working on rerouting the plumbing, and I'm hearing the song "Beth" and thinking about how 11 year old Kristin heard this song and imagined a future life which didn't really involve plumbing or sermon writing or feeling nostalgia for men in make up."

When I was young, I saw that song as an achingly beautiful love song.  Now that I am older, I am seeing it as a song that shows how difficult it is to balance the needs of a creative life with the needs of a partner.  And as we listened to the album, it was a much softer kind of album than I remember it being.  Of course, KISS was never one of the bands that held my heart.  I found them scary, probably in the same way that many parents do.

I've been feeling a bit of despair about my lack of coherent poetry writing.  I jot down a line or two, or a stanza or two, but very little comes that feels worth revising and polishing.  Perhaps it's the state of the world we're in.  More likely, it's that my writing energy is being channeled in other ways right now.

Take the past three days for example.  I've written 3300 words for just my church job.  That doesn't count any of the writing that I've done as a student.  It's no wonder that there's not much wonder left for my poetry brain to feed on.

I've been in this writing state before.  Poetry has returned, often in a richer way than before.  I will be patient and keep the garden bed mulched.  At some point, sprouts will emerge.

News of a Seminary Relocation

 Yesterday was a mix:  a wintry mix that turned to rain which lasted all day, lots of cooking (chicken stock and pumpkin bread), sermon research, never as much writing as I hope to do but some.  And then, in the late afternoon, news that the Lutheran seminary in Columbia (LTSS) will be relocating to the Hickory, NC campus of Lenoir-Rhyne.  If you want lots of information, this website is fairly comprehensive.

Of course, that website can't tell me some of what I'd most like to know--it can't predict the future, and it can't give me specific details about professors.  There's no mention of the spiritual direction certificate program, which I imagine will relocate along with the seminary.

The graph that shows enrollment is shocking, but not surprising.  If I'm interpreting the graph correctly, there are 40 MDiv students enrolled right now.  When I attended graduation in May, I was surprised by how few seminary graduates there were; the bulk of graduates were in Occupational Therapy and other programs run out of the Columbia campus.  Each time I've been on campus during the past few years, I've been surprised by how few people are on the campus.  Lenoir-Rhyne is formalizing what has been happening informally for years, if not decades.

I do wonder what will happen to the campus.  If I had several million . . . wait, it would take more than several million.  Even if I could buy the campus for several million, there's still lots of maintenance work that needs to happen, millions in deferred maintenance.  And I can barely manage a small house on a small piece of land; why do I think I can handle a small campus?

I imagine that the departure won't mean much to the larger city of Columbia--there are other schools and universities that are much more integral to the economy of the town and the state.  And I do understand that by being at the larger Lenoir-Rhyne campus, seminarians can take a wider diversity of classes, like language classes, management classes, and a huge array of counseling classes.  Those kinds of classes would have been available at the University of South Carolina, but it's not easy to take classes elsewhere and get them transferred back in, not easy for schools to create transferability.  

I feel most bad for students who will have decisions to make.  A move from Columbia, SC to Hickory, NC is no small thing--it's not a commutable distance.  There's never a good time to endure this kind of upheaval.  Potential seminarians with families to consider have probably already made different decisions.  Other seminaries have done a better job with distance learning that LTSS, and students who needed flexibility probably made different choices along the way; I know that I did.

I feel sadness, too, because of family history.  My grandfather and great uncle went to that seminary, and various friends of mine did too.  I completed my certificate in Spiritual Direction there and loved the campus, even as I wondered where all the people had gone.

I feel more than a quiver of worry about larger aspects of the future and the decline of all sorts of higher ed.  It's not just seminary enrollments that are down.  There's a lack of support for higher ed, and all the other kinds of education, in this country and beyond.  I know that some people are worried about what the decline in seminaries means for the future of the Church, and I do think/hope that people are having those conversations in a larger way, in the groups that do more of the decision making.  I have a sense of the larger scope of history, and I know that times of wrenching change can bring all sorts of positive developments in the aftermath.

Let now be one of those periods (and let the wrenching change give way to positive developments sooner rather than later).

March, Meteorological Spring

 A new month--is March coming in like a lion or a lamb?  It depends.  We have a wintry mix forecast for this morning, but tomorrow, the high is supposed to be in the 60's.  Of course, in month we expect this meteorological whiplash.  It is the first day of Spring--meteorological spring.

Earlier this week, I had wondered if my daffodil bulbs would spring into life.  Around the neighborhood, we have lots of daffodils in full bloom.  My yard doesn't have as much sun as the rest of the neighborhood so I haven't been surprised that my daffodils aren't showing signs of life.

And then, on Wednesday, when I took the trash cans to the curb in the late afternoon, I saw the first stalks from my bulbs, the ones that we planted along the fence line.  An hour later, when my spouse noticed stalks along the other fence line.  I would swear that they weren't there when I took my walk in the morning.  If I had camped out by the fence line in the afternoon, would I have seen the stalks poking through the soil and leaf cover?

My brain always turns to metaphors, but I'm aware of the dangers of a tired and worn out metaphor.  But the metaphor of seeds and bulbs sprouting before anyone realizes what's going on--that metaphor always seems relevant to me, even though admittedly, it's not a new metaphor.  

I think of all the parables of Jesus, parables that involve seeds and soil--yes, not a new metaphor at all.

And now, the wintry mix is falling.  It's much more ice/freezing rain than it is snow.  Hang on, little daffodils!