Pastor's Notes

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.

Can you imagine marrying someone and not knowing anything about their life prior to the beginning of your relationship? That would be walking on a relationship minefield just waiting for some explosion to rip through that relationship.

It is not that we need to know every detail, every memory and story of our partner, but it is important we are aware of how they got to be the person we met and with whom we fell into a relationship. History is not only a subject in school, it is something we all have and, to a great extent, carry around with us. Our history is why we are who we have become and is yet a factor in who we are becoming.

I bring this up because I see a movement among many to dismiss history. If we would not love or marry someone about whom we know little or nothing of their past, their parents, their family and their life story, how can we be true to our stewardship as patriots, those who care for their country, if we have a vastly incomplete awareness of its history?

As an example, I hear over and over that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It was about state’s rights. Those who say this apparently have not read the secession statements of the eleven states that formed the Confederacy. Their statements said it was about slavery. Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of American in their writings and speeches said it was about slavery sometimes expressed in code language as “our way of life.”

Can a person be great without knowing who they are? Can one be great without an awareness of their dark side, their sin as we would say in the Christian faith? Certainly, such awareness is part and parcel of being a Christian. It is part and parcel of being fully human and on the road to becoming a better and possibly great person. To truly know someone is to know not only their good points, but also their negative aspects.

How can any nation be called great without a full understanding of not only who they are but who they have been; how they got to where they currently are? How can any nation claim to be on a path to greatness without an accurate inventory of its misdeeds as well as its heroic and inspirational moments?

It amazes me that Fundamentalists often claim our nation has some special status with God. Does this mean that somehow God loves Argentinians or Latvians less? Where exactly in the scripture that they claim to take so literally do they find such evidence?
What a stretch it is to go from scripture to such assumptions. It seems to me Matthew included the Wise Men in his birth narrative as a way to express to his presumed Jewish audience in Syria to whom he was writing that Jesus had come for all…. ALL!…not just the nation with whom there is scriptural evidence of a covenant with God. In Jesus God expanded this covenant beyond one nation.

We need to have the courage to face our downside not to beat us up but to give us proper humility and insight so we might learn and not repeat such sin. We must admit if all are sinners, how could any nation composed of sinners not also have its sin and sins?

It sometimes seems to me far too many of the Christian faith must have great fear that grace is not true; that is, that God is not a graceful God. Somehow if we sweep our sins both personal and national under history’s carpet, God might not then be aware of them and will give us a pass. We need reminding grace comes from a very aware God who yet grants us a pass in Christ.

Don’t think for a moment I am saying Jesus came and died for any nation’s sin. Jesus came, died, and rose for all sin and all sinners who pass along some of that sin to their communities, their families, their nation, and their world.

History is more than a story of how someone or something came to be. It is a complicated narrative of experience that informs us where we need to keep going and what we need to admit and cease. History, the fact that we got to where we are and have a future, holds implicit within it the grace of God.

Abstract art by the definition by which I understand it, is art that does not focus on or depict external realities. Shape, form, and color may be there, but the details are not. The art, if it is a painting, may appear almost blurred in its depiction of, say, a beach, though the color of sand may be quite accurate. The ocean past the beach, again, may appear a blur, but the colors of the ocean are very real.

Many of us at times have an abstract picture of God. This God represents the real God, but is a representation of God, not God and God’s self. Such an abstract picture of God can create a God that does not at all look like anything in the real world in which we live. Therefore, this God has would have less to do with us. There is a certain comfort in an abstract God. A God such as this is a God who is more apt to leave us alone; allow us to live and exist as we are in our very real world and our own reality.

I personally am not much interested in an abstract God. Neither was Martin Luther. Luther in the turmoil of his angst wrestled with a God too real at times. A God, Luther thought was in every action, word, and event around him. A God who used these and more to torment Luther. Finally, Luther came to the conclusion that God is present in life’s reality. God, however, Luther discovered, is not in these places to torment, but to resolve, redeem, and work good.

In the two creation stories we have two different Gods. In Genesis 1 we have a God I call, “Management God” or “CEO God”. This is a God who creates by fiat, and orders, but remains aloof from what this God created. In Genesis 2, the second creation account, there is a “Blue Collar God”, one not afraid to get one’s hands dirty. This God literally scoops up the mud and breathes life into it to create humanity. This God is extremely close to its creation and knows what it is like to work hard. This God is present in its own creation and not at all aloof.

An abstract God can be admired and appreciated but it cannot be followed as it cannot be known nor can it have a direct relationship with us. This God does not let us stand there looking and admiring, but calls us to get down into creation; get our hand dirty with the hard work of caring for creation, and, we ourselves, carrying on as co-creators, not certainly equal with God and God’s creativity, but entrusted to care for it and expand the on-going creativity put in place by God.

Many faiths have images of God in various forms. Some, like Islam allow absolutely no image of any kind. Christianity has more than an image. We have Jesus Christ, a living breathing human like us, whose life, death, and resurrection paint a very clear image of God; an image that goes to the depth of God’s character and God’s soul.

God is not a God in the abstract merely to be thought of, debated, probed, and discussed. God is a real God to be present and to be experienced. God can be as real as the next comment we here or the next challenge or comfort in our life. God is one more to be lived with and for than to be admired. God is real.

Do you know what the largest living organism on earth might be? It is a grove of aspen trees in Utah. From above ground they appear as 47,000+ Aspen trees. Yet underneath the forest surface they are all interconnected as one single organism.

I only know this because I lived in Colorado when this was discovered. Immediately foresters and others hunted the hills and mountains to see if they could find a larger strand of aspen in Colorado. Alas, they could not. I remember looking out our living room window at our 5 aspen trees, wondering: Are they one or are they four?

There may be something we can learn from the aspen. Aspens are tall with slender whitish, peeling, bark much like birch trees in the Northeast. Like a Q-tip they are bushy on the top with slender trunks. They turn a beautiful gold in the fall, lose their leaves after the gold turns to brown, and begin it all over again come Spring.

We have our own seasonal habits. Not as much in Arizona where it seems there are but two seasons: Summer and January. However, we do have clothing for cooler weather as well as hot. We have decorations for Fall, Winter, Spring, and shade screens for summer. We use AC in the car for several months, and heat for about three days.

What we can learn from aspen trees is that we are interconnected. We may not see that connectedness, but it is there. Like a neighbor whose lawn service too often blows leaves and debris into our yards, what we do in our towns and in our country has effect on neighboring areas and countries. In the Pacific Ocean there is a debris field of plastic and other assorted trash that, last I knew, was the size of Texas. A former parishioner of mine flew regularly to Japan on business. Some years ago, pilots would make an announcement to look out the window now to see this debris from the air. If you looked too late you missed it. Now, he said, you have a couple hours to look out and see it.

While most of this debris may be from only a handful of countries, the point is that what we do can have an effect beyond ourselves and beyond our own time. How connected do you see yourself with the rest of our country and of our world? How connected do you see yourself with future generations whom you do not and cannot know? How connected do you see yourself with those long before you who have bequeathed some wonderful things to you and some not so wonderful?

In the Lutheran faith we baptize infants. Our baptismal theology says they are as much a part of the church, the Christian community as the oldest members. Baptism is that initiation rite into the church, the Christian community. In baptism the congregation has a role. There is, in baptism, an interconnectedness to us all in the church. There is also an interconnectedness to Jesus Christ and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is an interconnectedness to the God who claims us as God’s own in baptism.
This is the interconnectedness that never fails. Like the roots of an aspen grove this is not always visible. We see it best gathered around the table of Jesus; young and old, rich and poor, all races, all gender identities, all levels of intelligence and mental and physical performance. There we see the interconnectedness to each other and to the Christ who is present with us. I can’t think of any place that welcomes such a diverse group and does so with regularity.

Sometimes we need to look at our roots. Our roots as Christians. They tie us to community and to One far above yet with that community. For most of us this all started somewhere in our past. Next time you witness a baptism and say, “We welcome you into the body of Christ and the mission we share: join us in giving thanks and praise to God and bearing God’s creative and redeeming words to all the world”, remember you too were once so welcomed. As Jesus Christ lowered himself to the form of a servant, you and I often need to look beneath many surfaces in the world and in life to see this same Jesus who continues to serve often in and through low places.

We share an interconnectedness in Word and water with this one being baptized regardless of their age. Remember, too, our interconnectedness not with 47,000+ but with over a two and a half billion people in the world today and the billions all the centuries before you and all the centuries after you. It just might lead us to be more careful with plastic and trash. It just might make us better neighbors for our world and for the future world.

We seem to have little trouble in admitting we are sinners. We do it together most weeks in worship. There may even be a bit of comfort in doing so together as we can look around and know we are not alone in our status as a sinner.

What if instead we had to confess our sins; that is the acts and inactions we committed in the past week. Those deeds and things left undone of which we are aware; how would we feel about putting those out there? Would we feel an act of solidarity with our fellow sinners who are doing the same? Or would we keep score to see who among us was the worst sinner. (No worries, we will not be starting this practice any time soon.)

While being able to readily admit our sinfulness, we are not big on admitting the sins. Not even to ourselves. Just as a for instance, saying “I am a sinner” may flow easily from our lips but saying, “I am a racist” seems unable to come out, much less flow out with the same ease as confessing sinfulness.

And, oh yes, we are sinners. And, oh yes, we are racists. And, one final “oh yes”: “Oh yes, this very definitely includes me. Even though I have publicly admitted this before, this still struggles to be said in any out loud way through speech or writing. I/we cannot be part of our system of living as middle class white Americans without participating in a system that in many was depends upon racism.

This sounds absolutely horrifying and terrible, doesn’t it? Yes, it does because yes, it is. My point here, however, is almost less racism and more sin. As we glibly acknowledge our sinfulness, we far too often fail to understand how horrifying and terrible is sin and sinfulness. We seem to understand “I am a sinner” as synonymous with “I am not perfect.” Sinfulness is a far more serious and deeper issue than imperfection. Adding 2 + 2 and getting 5 is a mistake. Treating others unjustly and living in our protected narcissistic bubbles is horrendous. Ask any who have suffered from our sins.

We confess our sinfulness because we need constant reminder of who we are beneath our well-groomed surface. We have a need to confess our sins if we have any hope to overcome them or grow. Sometimes these do need to be said out loud to someone.

We have great hope in the God of Jesus Christ for forgiveness of our sinfulness. If God can forgive this very basic condition of ours, we need to trust that God can forgive those individual sins, those deep sins that cause hurt to others. Do we trust God enough, do we trust God’s grace enough to be able to admit not only our sinfulness, but our very sins? Putting them out there can be as much for ourselves as it can be for God or even some other. We cannot hope to overcome that which we refuse to acknowledge.

Admitting not only who we are but what we have done, what we do, is the first step to recovery; that is, the first step to dealing with and overcoming our sin. Sin is profoundly injurious to the sinned against, and at times the sinner. Grave and great that sin is, even greater is God’s grace and forgiveness.