Pastor's Notes

Ecumenism. Our English word comes from the Greek meaning “the whole world”. Ecumenism has become a church word used to describe the efforts of various Christian denominations working together in cooperation. The ecumenical movement has been around in one way or another for many years but picked up speed after World War II.

Christian churches have finally recognized they have more in common than they have differences. Of course, what we most have in common is Jesus Christ. My understanding is that at one time all that was needed to qualify as a Christian church for membership into the World and National Council of churches was to agree to a statement such as “We believe, teach, and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.” Many decades ago, one such group, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was denied membership because they could not say that.

Certainly, it is better that we churches work together in common mission than in our separate tunnels. We can do more and can learn from each other. I have served as a pastor during very ecumenical times and am the better for it. Interestingly, I am also a better Lutheran for it.

While I would agree we might have too many churches (Hey, put your stones away and let me finish!), ecumenism seems to have morphed from cooperation, understanding, mission, and growing into a life line tossed into churches and denominations to for survival. Too often the survival we seek is not survival of the mission of Christ proclaiming the Good News into all the world but simply institutional survival. While the church like all movements needs a degree of institutionalization to live out its mission, it exists for the mission, no simply for survival so there is always a church.

There are concerns today; great concerns. The graying of our congregations, the shortage of clergy. It is now more expensive to operate as a church not just because of inflation but because more is expected of churches.
Too often we focus on what we no longer have. That is, of course, a downer, but it is also non-productive. Why don’t we look at what we do have? We have committed members and partners. There are young people in churches, especially ours. We have facilities underused and ripe for outreach ministries to the neighborhoods in which our churches are located. We have what is constitutive of the church: The Good News of Christ. Why not start from there. Who is in need of this news?

We are actually in a situation the church has been in before. The early church began with a handful of unqualified people in a pagan empire. They must not have spent much time with head down complaining about their small force among such a powerful force. They had something their world needed and they took it out into the world.
When our nation was born, in 1776 approximately 17% of the nation’s population was churched. The churches got busy. By 1960, the end of the church’s growth spurt following World War II, 60% belonged to a church. Today about 25-30% attend church regularly.

This is not news meant to depress. This is information to motivate us. The mission field is vast! While the “nones” are the fastest growing group today, that is those who say they have no religious affiliation, they are not usually anti-Christian. They are many times anti-church. Many like Jesus but dislike how the followers of Jesus treat people and live. This provides a soil that is rich for planting and growth.
We often hear young people are not interested in church and faith. I have read they cannot be reached. First of all, many of them can’t return to church as they have never been there in the first place. Second of all, prior to the pandemic campus ministry in our own denomination, the ELCA was growing for a few years in a row. Young people can be interested, and they can be reached.

Many decades ago, Lutherans who moved into a new community looked for a Lutheran church. Likewise with Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians and others. That is not true anymore. True this means we may lose some long-time Lutherans. It also means the field is wide open. We are no longer restricted to target “our own.” We can find “our own” in many different flavors of the faith. Personally, that is what makes churches in the Western US exciting to me. There is that wonderful diversity of background unafraid to grow, unafraid to do things differently.

You now have a lot of opportunities to do things differently. What might that difference look like? What needs surround the area around University Lutheran/Lutheran Campus Ministry that are not being met and could be served by ULC/LCM? What needs might need a stronger shot in the arm or a different expression?

God will be at work here to make things new. God is not looking at what used to be or what has been lost. God looks at what could be. Start looking around at what you DO have. Run with it and see who might need it. Mission is the church’s call, not survival.

It seems most everyone knows something of the story of Moses and the burning bush. Disney even got into spreading the story in their animated film, “The Prince of Egypt”.
Moses, escaping Pharoah and Egypt was minding both his own business and his father-in-law’s sheep when he came across a burning bush. Strangely the bush was burning but not being consumed by the fire. God then spoke to Moses out of the bush to call him to lead his people out of Egypt and slavery.

Most Christian commentators say this is the dramatic story of Moses’ call to lead his people after negotiating with God as God spoke through the bush. After a few years of wandering in Median, marrying, and shepherding, Moses was called back to his people in Egypt. We know the rest of the story including the miraculous escape through the Red Sea (actually Sea of Reeds) that left the Egyptians treading water.

I find it interesting from time to time to read Jewish Commentators on Old Testament texts. They are often a fresh and new voice on something I have long read and studied. With the burning bush I discovered ancient Rabbis said the burning bush was not a bush at all but Moses very life. In it Moses saw who he used to be, passion he once had, what he was running from, the destiny he left behind in Egypt, and he saw the self that once burned for his people.

These rabbis said Moses then saw the fire had not gone out. Moses, then, drawn back to himself, back to the heart and heat of the fire that once defined his destiny. Moses realized he needed to return and lead his people to freedom.

When I was doing clinical work at the Hawaii State hospital to receive my certification, a reporter from the Honolulu Star Advertiser decided to interview four of us in this program. There were two women on track to become Episcopal priests, myself, and a man studying to become a Roman Catholic priest. When it came to me the reporter asked, “What prompted you to become a Lutheran pastor?” My response was, “Well, I saw this burning bush”… She included this in the article, but somehow did not report on the rest of what I said. Thinking of the ancient rabbi comments on the burning bush, maybe my response was less a joke than I originally thought.

Have you ever seen a burning bush? That is, have you ever seen or been aware of something calling you back to who and how you once were that then somehow propelled you forward into something new; perhaps even something you once thought you had left behind?

What passion once drove you but now is seen only in life’s rear-view mirror? Perhaps it was a passion best left in the past. Maybe, instead, it is something that needs to return and drive you to some needed good for yourself or some other(s).
It is so easy to get distracted by much in life. Like Moses it is also easier, if not easy, to move on to something safer with less struggle. God doesn’t usually call us to the soft stuff. We are pretty good at heading there on our own. And, it would seem, if God does call us to escape it is only for a bit of respite to return and engage those passions to which God calls us. Even Jesus got away at times but was soon back at it. Sometimes his passions followed him thwarting any effort to get away.

The church has retreat centers, camps, and other places of getting away but for a moment to once again engage God’s call through our passions. One of the reason Lutherans and others emptied and ended monasteries is that many functioned as life-long escapes from much that was frightening and burdensome for some.

Seek out your burning bush. Take time to look back upon who you were and who you have become and are becoming. Look into the mirror, literally, so you can look yourself in the eye should you discover something that stirs a passion in you. Ask others who once knew you and know you now. Playing with fire one can get burned. One can also find themselves burning with a passion that God can speak through, call you, and sustain you as you follow that call.

Jesus was not a soothsayer. That is, Jesus did not predict or outline some future. There is not hidden in the words, teachings, or actions of Jesus some hints or clues concerning the European Union, the United States, or any of the world wars. God didn’t want to be mysterious and force us to be word and symbol detectives. God sent Jesus for quite the opposite…so we might clearly know God better.

Too often Christians see things in scripture and in Jesus that simply are not there. Jesus was addressing those around him when he spoke. He was teaching his disciples and the crowds gathered on mountains, near waters, and on the plain.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not writing what they envisioned as sacred scripture to be read for hundreds upon hundreds of years. As time passed those who were eye-witnesses to Jesus were dying off. No doubt there was a sense that Jesus, as we can see Paul anticipating, was not returning as quickly as anticipated. The teachings, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus needed, then, to be written down for current followers and for however many generations the world had to come until Jesus’ return.

Jesus followed in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets. They too were less about predicting some future and more about looking around and calling the present for what it was. Why are those armies coming to Jerusalem? Because you have been unfaithful was the prophets’ insight. It didn’t take a fortune teller or military strategist to look around and see the future as a nation was not too bright with powerful armies heading their way.
This is much like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One the eve of his assassination he said he might not get to the mountain with those in the Civil Rights movement. He was well aware of the many threats against him, the attack on his family, and the very precarious life he was living. Again, one need not be a reader of palms to know it was quite possible if not even quite likely he would be killed. He looked around and called the present for what it was. There were no premonitions about time, place, or circumstances; just reality.

Jesus, instead of being a soothsayer of some type or another was instead one who provided orientation in his teachings. Jesus was, more or less, telling people if they wanted to be those who live and do as God wishes now in their lives, this is how you must live, these are the things that matter to God, and here is the way God intends you to live.
This means in our own day we do not have to read tea leaves, look for signs in the news, the weather, or natural occurrences. We may anticipate and plan for the future in some ways, but we cannot predict it. I have noticed over the years one thing most prognosticators have in common is that when the future they once predicted arrives, it is rarely as they described it would be. I remember the Ford and General Motors exhibits at the New York World’s Fair in the early 1960’s. I am still waiting to see the cars they predicted we would have had long before now.

Instead of looking for scriptural signs to foretell our time, we are much better off reading scripture, listening to Jesus, and working to implement in our own lives the teaching of Jesus in our own present. Doing so will not predict our future, but it may make it more meaningful for us and those who are and will be around us.

I have no idea if Martin Luther actually said he would plant a tree today should he somehow know the world was ending tomorrow. I do know that is a good example of what I have been trying to say in this writing. Whatever the future holds, let it find us as those in our present trying to follow Jesus to the best of our efforts.

Remember back in the day when people used to take their dog for a walk? Or perhaps they pushed a baby stroller taking their little one for a walk. Now I have noticed people instead seem to take their phone for a walk. Really! Look at their posture: bent over, head down, right or left arm out, phone in the hand with the screen facing up to the face which generally has a serious expression. You pass and grunt out a 5:30 am hello and they don’t even hear you due to ear buds.

Before you dismiss this as the rantings of a grouchy old man who spends a lot of time with college students, let me assure you: taking a phone for a walk crosses all ages. All. What is so important that we can’t look up and nod a friendly greeting to other phone walkers? What is so fascinating on Tik Tok that people can no longer look around and check out the scenery? And, at 5:30am?
Cell phones, virtual communication, and technology have their place. I remain convinced; however, they are too often misplaced when used to take the place of humans and fool us into thinking virtual relationships are the same as real relationships where all parties in a relationship are present with one another.

Many of you have heard me quote from the various speakers who address us campus pastors from Arizona State University Counseling Services and other similar offices, psychology professors and counselors. They say almost exactly what the speakers tell us when we Lutheran Campus Pastors gather in the West and around the US. Studies have shown again and again with only slightly different data that today’s young adults are simultaneously more connected and communicate with others more than any previous generation and are also lonelier than any other prior generation. When I mention this to students, I get almost instant agreement from them with no push back.
That is why church and campus ministry are so valuable especially to the young. The CDC reports young adult suicide rates increased 30% from 2000 to 2016. This is, of course, before the pandemic. Teens and young adults have the highest suicide rates in the US.

We cannot, of course, blame it all on technology or virtual “relationships”. There is more to it than that. One thing certain, however, is that such relating and attempts at conducting and sustaining relationships electronically are of very little assistance in combating loneliness.

“Where two or three are gathered, there am I in the midst of them”, Jesus says. I wonder, does that count when the 2 or three are on Zoom? It almost seems to me that somehow only part of Jesus might be present in such media. While God can and does use anything and anyone, I’m not so sure Virtual Jesus is equal to Jesus of scripture.

God so loved the world God didn’t send a Smart Phone. God sent, instead, a person of real flesh and blood. We have proclaimed since the first Christmas this is how God mostly relates to us; through each other and personally, not distant. The God of the Bible can literally look us in the eye or touch us by grasping our hand when we receive a caring grasp from another.

This is not a call to get rid of your phones, destroy your laptops or tablets or delete your Facebook accounts. It is a call to put them in place. They are useful, they really help out when we absolutely cannot be present with others, but never are they are replacement for you or for me or for any others. They are, instead, a helpful, but weak substitute.

So put them aside. Grab the leash and Fido, bundle up the baby and head out. Smile and nod at your neighbors, when you can speak by phone instead of text, call and speak. Let others know they aren’t on your work checklist or something you do while also doing something else. You are not multi-tasking with those for whom you care, you are relating and focusing on them. I wonder if those on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus because they were engrossed in their phones? Probably not, but in personally being present with others Jesus does have a better chance to show up.

Virtual Jesus died on a virtual cross. No real blood shed there. The real and in person Jesus makes sacrifices right before our eyes and in our presence.