The Feast Day of St. Andrew

On November 30, we celebrate the life of St. Andrew. Unlike his more famous and flamboyant brother, Simon Peter, Andrew often fades into the background.
It’s important to remember that we wouldn’t even know about Simon Peter if not for Andrew. Andrew followed John the Baptist, and John the Baptist introduced Jesus as the true Messiah. Andrew believed, and Andrew brought his brother to see what he had seen. Andrew is remembered as the first disciple.

Tradition has it that the brothers didn’t give up their family fishing business at first, but eventually, Christ requested full commitment. I’ve always wondered about the family relationships that simmer in the background of the Gospels.

I remember one Gospel reading that mentioned Jesus healing the mother-in-law of Simon Peter. I thought, mother-in-law? That means there must have been a wife. What did the mothers and wives and mother-in-laws think of the men abandoning their fishing business to follow Jesus?

I also think about the sibling relationships here. What does Andrew think about Simon Peter, who quickly moves into the spotlight? Is Andrew content to stay in the background?

We know from the passage in Matthew that begins with Matthew 20:20, that there is competition to be Christ’s favorite. We see the mother of James and John who argues for her sons’ importance. We see the other disciples who become angry at the actions of this mother. I extrapolate to imagine that there’s much jockeying for position amongst the disciples.

Christ never loses an opportunity to remind us that he’s come to give us a different model of success. Again and again, he dismisses the importance that the world attaches to riches, to status, to a good reputation. Again and again, Jesus instructs us that the last will be first. Jesus tells us that the way to gain prestige with God is to serve.

We see stories that show that Andrew is the kind of disciple who is working for the glory of Christ, not for other reasons. In John’s Gospel, Andrew is the one who tells Jesus about the boy with five barley loaves and two fish, and thus helps make possible the miraculous feeding.

Andrew was the kind of disciple we could use more of in this world. Andrew so believes in the Good News that he brings his family members to Christ, and he continued in this path, bringing the Gospel to people far and wide. We see him beginning this mission in John’s Gospel, where he tells Christ of the Greeks that want to see him.

Andrew gets credit for bringing Christianity into parts of eastern Europe and western Asia: Kiev, Ukraine, Romania, Russia. He’s the first bishop of the Church of Byzantium and patron saint of all sorts of places, from Scotland to Cyprus to Russia.

On this day when we celebrate the life of the first disciple, let us consider our own discipleship. Are we focused on the right tasks or are we hoping that our Christian faith brings us non-Christian glory? How can we help usher in the miracles that come with the presence of Christ? Who needs to hear the Good News as only we can tell it?

Remembering Christmas on the Biggest Shopping Day of the Year

On this day when many of us will head out to shop, shop, shop, let's take a minute to remember why we're celebrating Christmas, if we're Christians.

It's not about the gifts under the tree, it's about the baby in the manger.

And let's remember the true meaning of that baby in the manger, if we're Christians.  If we stay stuck in the story with the cute baby in the manger, we've lost the important point of the story.

And if we leave Christ on the cross, we've lost the even larger story.

And the empty tomb is not even the end of the story.  We have a mission--and it's not to get the best bargains.  Could we transform our shopping day so that we're doing something to heal the world?  It could be something as simple as adding socks for the homeless to our shopping list.

Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and So Many Reasons for Gratitude

Today we see something we're not likely to see for another 80,000 years:  the intersection of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.  Several times a century, they're likely to be in the same week, but almost never on the same day.

How should we celebrate?  We could rethink our holiday foods, as this piece on NPR suggests.  Those of us who are non-Jews could scoff and say, "Who cares?  It's not our holiday."

But many Christians have a more ecumenical mindset, and it's an interesting time to think about the holiday of Hanukkah and what it might teach us.  You may or may not remember that this Jewish holiday celebrates the cleansing and dedication of the Temple during the time of the Maccabees; they had enough oil to burn for 1 day, but it burned for 8.

As with many ancient holidays, we could spend lots of time talking about what really happened and what it signified.  I will leave that to others.

In many ways, this holiday has more in common with Thanksgiving than with Christmas, the holiday that most Christians link it to.  Thanksgiving is also a holiday of abundance.  Those of us who are spiritual/religious often see the holiday as a time to give thanks to a God who gives us more than we need.  Those of us who aren't too far removed from our agricultural roots can probably remember stories of times when the food stretched further than it should have, when there was enough for everyone and leftovers for later.

We can also celebrate the Thanksgiving/Hanukkah nexus by thinking about religious freedom.  It's good to remember that those Pilgrims left England in search of a place where they could worship as they liked.  And yes, I will admit that those early colonists who were so eager for religious freedom were quick to deny it to others.  But still, it doesn't hurt to celebrate the ideal.

We live in a nation where we can celebrate Diwali and then it's on to Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas.  If we're Muslim, we're free to observe Ramadan.  If we're of a religious faith that's less common, we're likely to find acceptance of a sort.

Sure, there might be a crazed gunman here and there to make us debate how much religious liberty we really have.  It's always been this way in this nation, at least since the European colonists arrived.  I imagine that the Native Americans had similar conversations about liberty and how much freedom a society could tolerate.  It's a question that most societies have wrestled with.

On Thanksgiving, let us celebrate our abundance.  Let us remember those who don't experience this abundance and let us share.  Let us continue to work to create a society where we have religious freedom and tolerance in ever greater abundance.  Let us pause to remember the good work that has been done and to fortify ourselves for the work yet to do.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 1, 2013:



First Reading: Isaiah 2:1-5

Psalm: Psalm 122

Second Reading: Romans 13:11-14

Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44


This Sunday’s Gospel plunges us right into apocalyptic Advent. Maybe you don’t think of Advent as an apocalyptic time. Maybe you’re one of the church members who says, “Why can’t we sing Christmas carols?”

Advent is a time of getting ready, not only for Christmas, but also for all of what is to come. Many people have interpreted these passages in today’s Gospel reading quite literally, as a prediction of what will happen at the time of the final Judgment. You’ve probably seen the bumper sticker that proclaims “In case of Rapture, this car will be driverless.”

Most scholars agree that those ideas of a Judgment Day are fairly recent in Christian thought and interpretation, fostered in the heat of 19th century Revival meetings. If Christ isn’t talking about the Rapture, then what do those passages mean?

This year, the first Sunday of Advent is also World Aids Day. As I read those Gospel passages in the context of AIDS, I’m remembering how terrifying that disease was in the 1980’s. As it quickly became clear that this disease was not just a gay, male disease, it did seem that one day we might be dancing, and 6 months later, we might have lost half our friends.

People with access to protease inhibitors can now see this disease as a chronic disease that can be managed, but in much of the world, the words of Jesus describe the experience of people. Two people are working or walking one day, but quickly one of them is gone.

And even those of us in the first world will face that loss. We can’t travel with our companions forever. Our pets leave us first, and all too soon, friends and family members die.

We don’t want to let mortality intrude, especially not into a festive time. But it’s important to remember that none of us will be here very long.

So, that leads us to the question: if we’re not here very long, how should we live our lives?

Over and over again, Advent reminds us to keep our focus on God. Our culture wants our focus on holiday festivity so that we’ll spend, spend, spend. Advent reminds us to slow down and to listen for God. Advent reminds us that we don’t know the day and the hour, but God is coming.

Advent also reminds us that God is already here. The redemption of the world has begun. Even in the devastation of human tragedy, like a worldwide pandemic with treatment but no cure, God is present.

We won’t realize the presence of God if we’re not alert. The Gospel lesson implores us, as so many Bible passages do: “Stay awake! Stay alert!”

And the Gospel reminds us that God won’t be coming in the form we expect. Throughout the Bible, God shows up in the most unlikely places wearing the most unlikely forms.

Where will you see God this Advent season and beyond?

Prepping for Advent

Last year, a variation of this piece ran on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Since that day is a huge shopping day, I've decided that it makes more sense to post it here, before we get lost in our Thanksgiving cooking and eating and football watching and clean up.

Many of us arrive at Christmas in a state of sheer exhaustion. Many of us arrive at Christmas having succumbed to colds, flu, or worse. Many of us leave the Christmas season several pounds heavier with heavier credit card debt to make matters worse. But a bit of planning before we leave the Thanksgiving season can help us avoid Christmas depletion.

Here are some things to think about as we leave Thanksgiving and launch ourselves towards Christmas. You’ll likely be more successful if you include the rest of your family in these conversations.

--Choose the spiritual traditions you’ll incorporate this year. Will you have an Advent wreath? Will you meditate? Will you help with the Christmas pageant? Will you participate in special musical events? Will you attend church each Sunday in Advent? Will you go to extra services? Be realistic. Maybe you can’t find time to light the Advent wreath every night and have family devotions. But maybe your family will find it more meaningful to light the Advent wreath once a week and have devotional time.

--Think about your family’s traditions. Which are most important? Which can you jettison? You might have a discussion and find yourself amazed to discover that no one really likes going to see The Nutcracker, but nobody has wanted to say anything because they assumed that everyone else really loved that tradition. Keep the traditions that add meaning and richness to the season, but don’t be afraid to let some of them go.

--Think of ways to simplify and streamline. Do you really need to bake every kind of cookie that you remember from past holidays? Maybe you and your friends could have a cookie swap. Or get together to bake cookies together. Have a wonderful afternoon of cookie dough and wine and leave with enough cookies to get you through the holiday. Consider ways to make the holiday meals easier on everyone. Maybe this is the year to change the holiday card tradition to an easier e-mail greeting. Ask yourself which church events mean something to you and which you're attending because you always have.

--Don’t forget that Advent is a great time to work for social justice. The words of the prophets ring in our ears, and we can find many opportunities to actually do something. Some of my favorite holiday memories involve helping others. My Girl Scout troop used to go caroling at nursing homes. The church of my adolescence assembled gift baskets for homeless women. The words of Isaiah are knitted into every fiber of my being: "learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1: 17). My parents, along with social institutions like church, Scouts, and school, modeled the good behavior of working for social justice. It's stuck with me. Advent is a great time to train the next generation in the habits of social justice and charitable work. And it’s also a great time to give back to our communities.

--Before the Christmas season descends on our heads, let’s make several budgets. Let’s start with a time budget. It’s easy during the Christmas season to accept too many invitations and thus find ourselves overextended and irritable. Maybe we want to declare that we won’t go out on school nights. Maybe we want to only accept one social engagement per week-end. Maybe we only want to attend the events that are essential to our family’s traditions. There are no right or wrong decisions, but if we don’t think about these issues before the season starts, we’re likely to find ourselves spending more time than we want to give.

--The same is true of monetary budgets. Before you start shopping, make a budget and stick to it. And before you work on the budget, talk to your family members about your gift giving traditions. Maybe instead of giving gifts to each other, you’ll agree to give that money to a worthy organization. Maybe the grown ups would like to draw names and only have one gift to give. Maybe you’ll decide to order gifts that support artisans or small business owners. Maybe you want this year to be the one where all the gifts are made by hand.

You may do this work and planning and realize that you do want to stand in the dark for a chance to get a really good deal on items that are part of your budget. You may do this work and realize that there’s no need to go to a mall between now and January.

Hopefully, you’ll spend a bit of time deciding what kind of Advent season you want to have, and you’ll choose a few concrete actions that you can take to make your Advent meaningful.

A Month from Christmas, Days from Thanksgiving and Hanukkah

A month from now we will have arrived at Christmas morning.  Dizzying.  Tomorrow, I'll run a post that I wrote last year for the Living Lutheran site about Black Friday--it's a few days before that event, but it's good to think about these issues before it all descends on our head.

Today we see the juxtaposition of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, a lining up of holidays that we're not likely to see again for 80,000 years.  I'll write a bit more about that later, but if you want some light-hearted thoughts, see this NPR piece.  It includes some strange-sounding recipes.

If you want a delicious, cheap recipe for tomato sauce, a dinner you can likely make out of items that you have in your pantry (or could easily keep in your pantry), see this blog post on my creativity site.  As the holiday season heats up, it's good to have an easy recipe that only needs 45 minutes to simmer the 4 ingredients:  an onion, a 28 oz. can of tomatoes, 5 T. of butter, and some salt.  Add a pound of pasta, and dinner's ready.

Maybe we need a different sort of nourishment today.  It's a good day for a poem, before we launch into our Thanksgiving hooplah.

Perhaps I should post a more spiritual poem. This blog is my theology blog after all. I should write a poem about gratitude and God and great feasts.

But Thanksgiving suggests a different kind of spiritual heritage to me. For many years, we went back to my grandfather's homeplace, where his relatives were still farming on a small scale. We ate a turkey that had been scratching in the yard very recently. We ate vegetables grown in the fields outside the door. We talked about our ancestors.

I learned about my great grandmother who was picking beans when she had a heart attack. She made the men wait to take her to the hospital until she could change into clean underwear.

Of course, I learned more than just funny stories. I learned about how people survived hard times and how they celebrated bounty. I learned about a quiet spirituality (of a Lutheran variety) that formed the backbone of my family. I learned about tables that were full of enough food to share with the family members who didn't have as much to contribute--for many starving student years, my husband and I would go to the feast with a meager loaf of pumpkin bread, and we'd leave with enough food for a week--and a Christmas tree cut from the fields!

So, here's a poem that celebrates that heritage. It was first published a few years ago in Big Muddy.



Thanks Giving



Finally, I am with my own kinsfolk.
I do not feel a freak of nature anymore.
Here beneath this hook
where my great grandfather butchered hogs and deer,
I stare into faces familiar to me.
My future face.

I have the strong, solid body
which doesn’t belong to this age
of computers and office politics.
I was meant to be up at half a crack of dawn,
fixing a huge breakfast
before I plowed a field and put an addition on the house.
All in a day’s work.
The strength of my people lies
buried in my bones and brain,
a genetic code impossible
to diet or exercise away.
My hips would balance a baby
while I shaped bread dough and slaughtered chickens,
if only I would comply.

But I’ll submit to my genetic destiny on some level.
I will always awaken before sunrise,
always keep an eye to the sky,
track the weather like a second religion.
I’ll cook enough food for a small third world country
and share my good fortune with others.
I’ll tell the family stories
about strong women
with indomitable wills.

Nominations for Church Council

Later today, I'll head over to church for a Nominating Committee Meeting.  How does your church handle nominations for Church Council?

I've never been part of a church that handles nominations the way my current church does.  My current church council selects a nominating committee.  The committee meets separately and very privately.  I'm not always part of the committee, but I have been, and here's what happens.

We open in prayer and then silence.  We have paper.  We write down names that bubble up.  After a certain amount of time, we compare notes.  We develop a slate of nominations to take back to Council.  From that slate, Council prays for wisdom about who would  be best.  Then Council develops a slate to take to the church meeting in January.

At the church meeting, nominations can come from the floor, but they rarely do.  Usually, the Church acclaims the slate of names.

This process is much less divisive than the ones I've heard about in many churches.  Many churches have regular elections, where people run for office--sometimes complete with campaign themes.  As you can imagine, it can get ugly.

In most churches where I've been a member, they've been small churches where it's hard to find anyone willing to serve.  The process we've adopted doesn't rely on volunteers.  We go to them to say, "Your name came to our minds when we prayed and asked the Holy Spirit for the best candidates for Council."

People can still refuse, of course.  Holy Spirit promptings or no, some people are already overwhelmed without adding another commitment to their lives.  But it feels different than the crass campaigning that's a danger of doing Council elections differently.

You might scoff at the idea that the Holy Spirit gets involved with us this way.  At first, I had doubts too.  But having gone through the process, it does feel more mystical than other ways of electing Council members.  It does feel like God will be present in the process if we ask.