Pastor's Notes

Have you ever had the good fortune to go to a place where few people could understand you? Notice, I called such an experience good fortune. Such an experience can be a time of learning and growth.

I have been fortunate enough to have done this a few times. As a 17-year-old recent high school grad, I went into the interior of Mexico with a Mexican exchange student who had lived with us. Another time on a church trip with other ULC folk, I found myself in Hungary where I did not recognize a single word on menus, signs, and billboards.

The experience, however, that comes most to mind is one in a small hilltop town in Portugal. Tourism had only recently come to this town and area. Most English-speaking Portuguese in this region were the young. We were taken into a bakery, known for an unusual four-cornered bread. The chief and only baker was an older Portuguese woman who knew no English. We spent some time there watching bread begin as flour and ingredients, moving to become dough, then shaped, and put into a brick oven.

During this time some of our group, including wife Mary Beth, volunteered to be taught how to make this bread. Working with her, not a word that was understood was exchanged between baker and “apprentices”. Yet the communication was perfect! Cooperation, smiles, gestures, the moving of eyes from one target to another, and the rhythm of rolling dough and forming it into bread shapes together did all the speaking and communicating. Without an understood word, she had Mary Beth put the newly formed dough on a large wooden paddleboard to be inserted into a brick oven.

Watching all this it became obvious to me that while our baker friend did not seem to know any English, she was very fluent in humanity. She led the posse of four corner bread mentees not by her tongue, but by her heart. No barker of orders was she, instead leading by her warmth, smiles, pointing, and passion for her craft, and sense of human community.

Mohammed once said, “Don’t tell me your education, tell me your travels.” One does not have to have the ability to go far to do this. The internet and television offer great opportunities. PBS, Discovery Channel, even the Food Network can help us get a sense of common humanity shared with those living and doing differently than us. Like Israel wandering in the wilderness or the disciples leaving all to follow Jesus into the unknown, most of us have some traveling experience as we journey through life.

Having so traveled, do we push those experiences away failing to see the common thread of humanity in others or do we learn from them and grow from them? Were we tourists in our travels more interested in taking photos and acquiring signs of conquest called souvenirs or were we instead explorers, adventurers, and learners?

God does not call us to go through life so much as God calls us into life to experience it through our humanity. Often, we best discover our own humanity as we discover the humanity in those most different from us. May we all work to become more fluent in humanity. We may all better recognize God as creator of all when we do so.

Black History month has passed. Like our Christmas decorations, we stow these stories of history away not to be brought out again until February 2023. The media will cover current issues of race, of course. Yet back we go to the usual cast of characters and events of history ignoring or glossing over many who were highlighted this past month.

I remember the first Black History month. I was a high school sophomore. In our American history class we spent some time watching film strips depicting mostly non-controversial figures like George Washington Carver who fit nicely into White, middle class values and stories of history. Missing was much in depth conversation about Reconstruction, peonage, Jim Crow, segregation, the KKK and lynching. Slavery was mentioned, denounced as a bad thing, but none of its cruelty and hardships were dealt with in any detail or depth. Martin Luther King Jr, who had recently been assassinated, was not even mentioned. In all it was a version of Black History sanitized for White consumption.

This raises the question: How can history be helpful to us if it is scrubbed clean of its dirt and presented as window dressing? I am glad we have been able to get some of racism’s evil out of history’s closets and into history books and classrooms. It needs to happen if we have any hope of overcoming racism in our culture. Ask any 12 step member you know if they could be in recovery without putting their deepest misdeeds out in front of them and of others.

Germany worked hard to denounce the evil of Nazism. Initially this was forced on them. General Eisenhower would parade entire towns through liberated concentration camps forcing the local citizenry to see first-hand the evils of Nazism. It made some ill, a few faint, and the many disgusted and burdened with at least some degree of guilt. Difficult as this was for them, there was no way to rationalize, soft-pedal, or deny the reality. Germany continued for some time to deal with this. There are no monuments to Nazi “heroes”, places like Hitler’s bunker remains unmarked and paved over by a parking lot so as not to become a shrine for neo-Nazis and others. (See Susan Neiman, “Learning from the Germans”)

What are we afraid of in confronting the entire story of African-American history? I suspect we may be afraid of ourselves and the vestiges of racism remaining deep inside. That racism will remain there, percolating out at times in ways of which we are not even aware unless we confront it and deal with it. Odd, but some of the most racist folk I know are those who most loudly proclaim themselves to be free of racism. If only they could hear and see their own words and actions.

Here is where above all you and I need reminding we are Christians. Christians, people who cling in the hope of grace, can be most honest with ourselves and each other. We might even say this is the purpose of grace. Grace removes any need at pretense. We can be honest with each other and with ourselves. Twelve step presentations begin with the words, “I am” followed by “an alcoholic, or drug addict, overeater,” etc. Imagine saying to a group, “I am a racist.” First, we may need to say it to ourselves. I know I do.

Fear not, we hear in one way or another in scripture and from Jesus. Strangely, we too often are more afraid of ourselves than of some other. Burying the truth does that to us. Let’s not be afraid of getting some dirt on us. Christians clean up well. The ashes of Ash Wednesday are more than symbolic. They are a form of reality, a form of recognition. People who cling to the hope of grace can wear ashes. They need not fear ugly truths. There is a power much greater than those.

What a world we live in these days! The winter Olympics gave me a more hopeful picture of this world than I receive from newscasts, news apps, or newspapers. With all that is going in in Ukraine, the US and elsewhere, some worldly hope is appreciated. Sadly, in some ways some of what I experienced watching the Olympics has even succeeded some of the vision the church too often puts forth.

An American skier won Olympic gold for China, an “enemy” nation. A group of American medal winning skaters trained in Montreal with a Canadian coach. An American gold medalist in monobob became a US citizen just prior to the Olympics.

Having lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado, home of the Olympic Training Center nine years and mecca for Olympic Ice Skating champs, I am aware all who train there are not Americans. Nor are all the coaches of the American skaters. Have you witnessed the hugging and celebrating that takes place when someone from another country wins a medal from all those at the finish line….all those from other countries including some who just got bumped off the medal stand?

Often times the church is out front on issues leading the way. Too often because of the fear of empty pews or offering plates the church is too meek on such issues. Sometimes leadership comes from other places like sports. Jackie Robinson comes to mind.

To be sure, all in the Olympics is not free of politics or error. The Russian doping scandal among other issues is a case in point. Yet much of the most visible part of the recent Olympics showing nation after nation parading in for ceremonies, participating and even to a certain degree rooting for one another is a vision for the world.

Sometimes I wonder if God decides that if Christ’s church won’t do it, God will find someone else to lead. The God of the manger has never thought God to be so high and mighty God couldn’t descend to places quite low. From the creator God who in Genesis’ second chapter scooped up the earth to form Adam and blew into Adam’s nostrils, to the manger, cross, and a tomb, God has demonstrated God is not afraid to get God’s hands dirty.

We need to look to and listen to the Word in scripture and sermon. We need to look to the church. We need to listen to one another. We need to listen for God in prayer. Sometimes we also need to lift our churchly gaze beyond the church catholic to the world beyond it. Occasionally places outside of the church can lead even the church and the faithful. God doesn’t mind. God is busy in those places as well.

The Olympic hymn as you may know, is Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. Were you able to see the joy in the faces of even many who lost as they competed together? There is great joy to be found when God’s people see we are better together even as we may compete. There is joy to be found when we become the people God created us to be as God’s children….one family pulling and rooting for each other.

In searching for definitions of the word legacy, I was surprised at what I discovered. One definition has to do with money and property left behind in a will. Another is entering college through preferential treatment because a parent or close relative had once gone to school there. And the third had some definition regarding software that I, of course, didn’t understand.

I was surprised. I thought legacy was some reputation or deed that lived on after one was gone. Some years ago a member here said my legacy would be four Christmas trees in the chancel. In Carlsbad, New Mexico I was told it was more frequent communion. In Fort Collins it was a few new (now old) buildings and in Colorado Springs it was my longevity record, since shattered, as an associate pastor in that congregation.

What will your legacy be? Children? Grandchildren? Some great work achieved? Actually like some of the strange descriptions people have called a legacy (C’mon…4 Christmas trees?), I find this a strange question. Few people I have known see building a legacy as a major goal in life. I applaud this particular lack of planning and constructing.

Don’t you find yourself too busy doing life to be adding the construction of a legacy into that mix? Most of us aren’t heroes, or famous, or even well-known for something. Most of us are simply full-time persons. We stub our toe, do something nice for a stranger or loved one, sort through the bills, check email, make dinner, watch television and go to work. If you are reading this, most likely you can add go to church, worship and pray to that list. Personally, a legacy for me would be fine if I had nothing else to do.

Fear not! I think God would have it this way. There are things that need doing in this life. Important things for us, for our family and loved ones, and for people whom we not only do not know but shall never meet. We need to care for ourselves, let loved ones know they are just that: loved, and we need to care for those beyond our little circles of life. We need to care for those in other places in need of care and we need to care for those yet born; that is we need to care for those of the future. That is why we care for our planet, work for justice and both pray and work for peace. We hope future inhabitants of earth have it better than those of our time. You and I have it pretty well and most major issues of the day will not directly affect us in our lifetime. However, if we are called to love the stranger, who is stranger to us than those not yet treading on the earth’s turf?

There is planning that goes into life. Planning for children, for their college education. Planning for retirement and old age. Planning for loved ones who might have to care for us and who will have to see to the literal disposal of us and of our belongings.

Most of life, however, is spent doing. Most of life is spent as a verb, that is, in action, not as a noun in repose. While scripture might paint images of the future, its most immediate concern is the here and now. Faith itself is for now, not to build up spiritual deposits for a heavenly account in the future. How much of life and of faith might we miss if we do not understand it as a gift to be used now?

Jesus entrusted his legacy to God. In the meantime he taught, healed, called, and challenged. Are you and I able to do this and let any kind of legacy be entrusted to God? Maybe our best legacy is that we were not working on one. Instead we were working on all that life had thrown our way. Maybe this is how we could live now and all the nows that lie ahead. We could then let God handle the legacy part of life. Far more people need us then need some heirloom we could leave behind.