Pastor's Notes

Many years ago one of the women’s circles meeting in our church invited me in. Their gathering had ended and they were sharing in a desert someone had made. The conversation was centered around growing up on a farm. Every woman in this particular circle had this in common. Some of the farms were in Colorado, some in Nebraska, and some in North Dakota, as I recall.

Such warm stories of happy childhoods growing up around farm animals, barns, fields, tractors, and family. Pleasant memories of home cooked dinners, early to bed, early to rise, and hard work. However, when I asked if they wished they lived on a farm now as adults, my question was met with a loud and simultaneous chorus of “NO!”. They all preferred the more lifestyle of indoor plumbing, centrally heated homes with air conditioning. Now scrubbing the floor seems the most difficult labor challenge.

Thomas Jefferson actually thought the future of our then infant nation was in farming. He envisioned a country of gentlemen farmers with only a few small cities. How surprised he would be could he see so many today fleeing small towns and rural areas for cities.

So much of our life schedule remains on “farm time”. Schools continue to have summers off. Originally this was so children could help with the farm during summer’s growing season. Our own church year has the summer months decorated in green for growth and centers on scriptures dealing with the growth of faith and discipleship.

Having grown up near but not on a farm, I must say I never had a hankering to live in a rural area, much less on a farm. Yet there is something lost in our more urban, communal living where most time is spent indoors. Lost is our connection to the earth. Lost also is the value we once had for manual labor.

We need that connection to the earth. I wonder if some of the indifference to climate change and agricultural issues is because few of us literally get our hands dirty in the soil. We have little direct relationship in our modern, urban lifestyles with the very earth upon which we walk and live. Today’s life is more about paving over and building up on the earth instead of plowing it, digging into it, and using it in some way directly connected to our life.

Then there is that second cost: We see physical labor as somehow lesser than the kind of work that can be done in a cerebral fashion; the kind a good education can get us. It is not that we should devalue education. It is that we need to get back to greater respect for those who work with their hands, those whose work can pull muscles and strain backs.

I am not sure if the answer is a simple as having a few live plants around. If we live in a home with a yard, some small garden might help. It has always amazed me how a small seed can become a large plant or even a huge tree. This kind of life lesson can never be learned too often.

If we can, we need to get out more. Walk. Watch sunrises or sunsets, drive up South Mountain or into the desert. Visit parks. Have a picnic. Go outside after a rain to sniff that fresh smell that only a rain can produce. Sprinklers just don’t do the same. Do anything to remember our connection to the earth…the plants, the animals, the soil itself. Pay attention as you do to those wearing brightly colored orange or green vests working hard often in the heat for roadways and utilities.

Next time you are in the produce section of the grocery store, look around. Hold an ear of corn in your hand and feel the avocado as you place it in your cart. Wonder just a bit about where it came from and how many may have been involved in growing it and getting it to you.

God can and does come to us in and through others. God does so whether we live in a high rise building or a single family home. God’s artwork as sculptor and painter is less seen in our urban living. God’s miracle of life that once surrounded us in nature has become more limited to just the human story. There is a reason Ken Burns of PBS documentary fame has called our National Parks, “America’s Best Idea.” There is a grandness of God on display in most of them not seen in apartment rooms or walled-in backyards.

It is not that we have to return to some former often idealized past way of living. It is that we need to be intentional about recognizing and recovering that which has been lost. Oh, and if you would like a gardening project, I am sure Lynn Becker would welcome help with the small communal garden at the church…there is room for growth…growth for the garden and for you. A little work and digging in the soil can be good for the soul.

Some years ago an agriculture professor in my congregation invited me to open the convention of the National Seed Analysts convention with a devotion. The convention was meeting in our city.

When this was first mentioned, I had never before heard of a seed analyst. A cartoon picture immediately popped into my mind of a kidney bean shaped seed laying on a couch with another similarly shaped seed sitting on a chair next to the couch with a pad and pencil in hand. The one in the chair was saying to the one on the couch, “Tell me about your father.”

I discovered that is not at all what a seed analyst is. In fact, I learned there are seed banks around the country preserving and protecting seeds in the event of some catastrophe natural or human caused.

There is a reason analysts, however, do sometimes ask about one’s father or mother; that is, about one’s past. How one got to where they are is a result of the people, places, and events of their past as well as many of their past decisions. The past is how we got to our present.

Currently there are many who seem fearful about teaching of our past in school….that is, of our past in its entirety. Why should a nation or culture fear talking about negative parts of its past? Why be uncomfortable revealing the darker side? Is there anyone who does not have things in their personal past of which they are not proud? Have any of us not ever harbored some darker thoughts or done or said something to cause harm to another?

There is a reason history is studied. It is not because we find it interesting, it is because we need to discover what has worked and what has gone wrong. We need to learn from the past which has brought us to where we are today. We need to confront it, deal with it, change it, and move forward. In fact, failure to address the negative in one’s past robs healing of its fullness.

In the Christian faith we call this repentance. Martin Luther described the Christian life itself as a life of repentance. Those who believe new life can emerge from that which is dead can embrace and welcome repentance, acknowledging the wrongs of the past so as not to repeat or exacerbate them now and in the future.

One of the things we need most confront is why certain issues seem to press such volatile buttons in us. If race and racism is not such a big deal, why can it so easily enflame us? If we are not threatened about issues of sexuality and gender, why does volume seem to increase in discussing such?

It boils down to this: why are people of God, assured of God’s love and forgiveness so uncomfortable and insecure about delving into those areas of our personal and national past? Discomfort is one thing. Insecurity and inability to deal with such important and divisive issues is another. Can we find faith enough to risk saying and doing the wrong things? Can we find faith enough to have others teach us of the errors of our ways so we can repent and change them? Why must we remain so unreflectively convinced of just how right we are and convinced our attitudes and ourselves are never in need of reform?

One of the Reformation insights was that the state of the church is to be in a constant state of Reformation.” Ecclesia reformanta semper reformanda” was one of the Reformation’s several mantras; the church reformed, always reforming. Can we apply this slogan to ourselves? To our nation and world? Only by acknowledging where we were and who we now are. Dare we be honest both with God, each other, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, to ourselves? It is a good way to avoid needing an analyst.

Grammar matters. So does spelling. The suffix “tion”, to choose one word ending, changes verbs into nouns. Words such as abbreviation (abbreviate), conservation (conserve), and extension (extend) are just a few examples. Just an addition of four letters can transform an action into something stationary or into some condition.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some simple addition or deletion that could easily change us? Plug in a four number or letter code and, “Presto!”, we are now the person whom we wish to be or some other is now the one we desire that other to be.

The change that occurs in people is a change that takes place over a lifetime. This change is most often hard work. Life has a way of changing us as events strike and we react. Many times our reaction might even put us on a different path than we have been traveling. Sometimes our reaction may just be a slight course correction and we move on only slightly touched. Other times, the entire trajectory upon which our life’s course has been headed has altered drastically.

Faith has a way of changing us. Perhaps a better word then changing would be forming. Faith has a way of forming who we are and whom we are becoming. We don’t think of this too often as we trudge off to worship, pray our daily prayers, read scripture or reach out to receive a piece of bread at communion and gurgle down a sip of wine. By themselves each act typically does not alter us in any meaningful way. On the other hand, done over a lifetime such routine acts become formative.

Faith, like life, can also be hard work especially as it connects with our life and the moments of struggle and times of joy that we experience throughout our lifetime. With us it is most often the opposite of our friendly little suffix “tion”. With us we tend to go from noun or condition to verb, that is, to action. Life can move us in this way as our emotions are stirred and we sense a need to do something. Faith can also move us in this way as we experience a wrong to us or some other and become motivated to correct or heal this wrong.

Life matters. Faith matters. They seem to matter most and best when connected in relationship. When faith is ethereal and tends to put such a warm, positive spin on everything, it denies our very humanity. It denies life. When faith is able to doubt even in the midst of trusting, when faith is able to hurt or become angry, faith is able to connect with life and help us through until it is also able to heal.

This is why Christians find solace, comfort, and hope in the cross. There hung a God who was more than a few pious platitudes. There hung a God who knew the depths of human suffering to the point of being willing to suffer with us. There hung a God who experienced the vicissitudes of life which can bring change in an instant. There hung a God who knows life matters. There hung a God who gives us faith to connect with this life, this very human life. Here is one more grammatical switch. What if instead of hung I used the word hangs? The God of the past becomes one who is and does the same God of Jerusalem’s Calvary.

You and I are changed over a lifetime. Without such change we would become older, bitter, and feel left out as life’s inevitable changes pass us by. You and I have no easy way on our road to constantly becoming a new person. There are no simple letters that work an easy transformation. You and I have Jesus Christ, a companion on our becoming, a healer who understands well the experiences of life. As we move on from this Easter season in the church, this is our resurrection; that is we move from resurrect, a verb into resurrection; a new state of being for us. In Christ we are constantly being made new. Faith in Christ matters.

So, about this COVID 19 pandemic. Are we out of the woods? Deeper into the woods? Or are we just at the edge of the forest where light ahead is visible? Perhaps the answer is a bit of tossed salad: all three.
I was thinking about this…again!…this morning as we were out for our morning walk, dog in tow. When times were very clear that we were deep within the pandemic, unwritten rules were also clear and followed. If someone was approaching you on the same sidewalk from the opposite direction, one of you had to go. That is, one had to cross the street and keep walking on the other side.

Now the rules are a bit more convoluted. Someone approaches and a sort of dance ensues. While one dodges a bit to the left, the other moves a bit to the right. To cross the street or not cross the street? That is the question. Or just walk briskly by the oncoming pedestrian, nod, smile (but don’t open your mouth to smile), and move on? Oh, such conundrums!

Such seems to be the very condition of life, does it not? To yield or to keep one’s position? To allow for another’s needs or assert our own rights? To be concerned or to not worry? To shift left or shift right or just keep plodding down the middle?

The argument could be made that this also is the condition of faith. Life and faith are full of judgements some deeply moral, and others simply pragmatic. While we are not called to judge another’s status before God or even the person they have become, the quality of life is determined by the judgements we make, including those judgements we make about other people. Frequently in determining a course of action or inaction we dance around a bit until we figure out what course we might take.

Sometimes the point is less what we decide then that we do decide. Decision made, we move forward and live with whatever consequences great or small. Standing on the sidelines refusing to commit or decide is in itself a decision, often with even greater consequences for someone if not us.

As Christians both armed with and covered by grace, sitting safely on the sidelines is quite often not the place for followers of Jesus. Jesus calls us out to the dance of life and faith. Move a little left, move a bit right, but keep moving. Love the neighbor as oneself. Cross the street or just move around oncoming foot traffic. Care about your health and that of others, and a bit less about your right to the walkway.

In the woods or out of the woods? In one way it doesn’t matter. Following Jesus is to be done in both places. The dance of life and faith must go on. After all, it is not about the woods, it is about the followers and, most of all, the one being followed.

In 1687 Isaac Newton theorized the ocean’s tides were affected by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. This is now the standard teaching in earth science courses. Amazing that a moon and a star from so far away can have such daily effect on a part of the earth’s natural rhythm!

Often I hear people say that many things like climate change or evolution are just a “theory.” Strictly speaking from a science perspective, gravity is still in the theory stage. Yet no one has ever thrown something heavy upward that has not come back down. There is a lot of evidence to support this “theory.”

One of our alumni has a theory. Jake Roselius, who graduated two years ago is now a doctoral student in Hamburg Germany. On a recent trip from Hamburg to his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, Jake stopped off here to say hello. When I thanked him for coming to see us, Jake became a bit thoughtful for a moment and then said, “This place has a gravitational pull to it.” Jake had noticed during his four years here how often alumni, sometimes from many years ago, would show up for a Sunday worship service.

I am not sure Jake’s statement is a theory. If so, like gravity itself, I have seen it play out so often. I remember meeting a couple one Sunday who came here to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They were students here in the late 1950’s and were married in our sanctuary. They have been back two more times since that visit. Frequently I hear from alumni who came through here long before my time. I have also met many former church members from long ago who also feel a need to return for a visit.

Gravitational pull. Not a bad image for how memories of college and campus ministry can affect someone even many years later. I think it also a great image for faith. Sometimes we can’t articulate why we come to worship Sunday after Sunday. Sometimes we just can’t explain our connection to a faith community or faith itself. There just seems to be a certain pull. We are drawn to faith and drawn to a faith community.

So it is with God. Some have dramatic experiences. Some don’t think about it much, they just keep praying, worshiping, and serving. Many, on the other hand also keep praying, worshiping, and serving, but also spend some time wondering and even wandering, asking questions, and trying to analyze their faith. It’s all good.

The tides need both the moon and the sun to go in and out each day. We need God’s pull whether through experience, intellect, emotion, or some combination of these. God is not afraid pull us toward God’s self, and each other. Like tides, God can use more than one way to pull us. God knows we can’t do it on our own, so God keeps tugging. Like the tides, sometimes we go in and sometimes out. Sometimes for us it is also a daily thing. This, however, is not a theory. It is how God works.