Pastor's Notes

Henry Muhlenberg has been called “The Patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.” Born, raised, and educated in Germany, Henry wanted to be a missionary to India. Instead he was sent as a missionary to Pennsylvania. God has a sense of humor: “So, you really want to be a missionary, eh? Well, we’ll see.”

Upon arrival, Henry did a rather quick assessment of Lutheran churches, then went to work organizing them and connecting congregations and what pastors there were with each other. He helped to establish the Pennsylvania Ministerium in 1748. It was the very first Lutheran body in America. Soon, churches from surrounding states were included in this body. A remnant of this body continued until 1969.

Pastors were few in those days and Henry took it upon himself to mount his trusty steed and visit congregations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia (which then included present day West Virginia), New York, and New Jersey. I preached in one of those churches in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Even with modern interstates it is quite a trek from Muhlenberg’s home in Trappe, a town just outside of Philadelphia. Imagine making the trip by horse often following Indian and game trails!

Often Henry was met with tremendous enthusiasm. Occasionally people wept when being able to receive the bread and wine of communion, have their children baptized, sing hymns, and hear God’s Word preached. There seemed to be literally a great hunger and thirst for Word and Sacrament.  Crowds relative to the size of the local population would gather, often outdoors to take part in worship. Henry would do his thing, then move on to the next locale. Sometimes it was years between visits of Henry or another pastor. 

What, do you suppose, made people so eager, so emotional, so touched by this itinerant pastor’s visits? The time between visits had to be one reason. Yet, as I have gone through this pandemic with you and many others, we may have another thought as to what touched them so. Could it have been their isolation, out on the frontier, often with tremendously socially distanced homesteads?  Remember, in Muhlenberg’s time period, Western Pennsylvania was seen as the West. George Washington, among others, bought land in this wild country thinking that someday people might actually move and live in what was seen as a hostile, wild, and scary place.

What have you missed as we have been apart nearly one year? The first Sunday in Lent of 2020 was the last in person worship in our sanctuary. Have you missed Holy Communion? Communal singing? Our fine choir and musicians in person where we can see their smiles as they inspire us with their singing? Do you miss Aiko’s warm smile as she plays and leads our music? Do you miss guests who seek us out? I know what you miss, perhaps most: the gathered community; people. We all know the children’s ditty, “This is the church, this is the steeple, open the door and see all the people!” It rightly expresses that for the church to be the church at its best, it needs people and it needs them together. No, we have not “closed the church.” The church remains open however differently it now operates. Yet it is not the same. 

The people of Muhlenberg’s day eventually were able to build church buildings, call pastors, and worship as they had known before “back east” or in their former countries in Europe. No doubt they did so well they were able to establish Sunday routines and eventually even take some of it all for granted at times as though this was how it had always been. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to once again have such routine and be able to take it all for granted? Maybe, just maybe, a small gift of the pandemic to us has been to give us a jolt out of complacency and routine. Maybe part of that gift can be to realize in our minds and hearts that what we often see as routine and ordinary, can be quite extraordinary in their ability to help us become the person who God created us to be even when we don’t even notice this might be happening. 

The time of being together again will come. In the meantime, it is more than okay to miss those former habits and long for their return. It is okay to have ups and downs, joys and struggles. Like Henry Muhlenberg and his horse, making the rounds, and returning from time to time to be among God’s people, God keeps plodding on refusing to let a pandemic come between God and God’s people. (And good ol’ Henry, apparently did want to become a missionary.)

(As an aside: Two of Henry’s sons, both pastors, had key roles in our nation’s birth. Son Peter became a Major General in the Continental Army and was an aide to George Washington. Later he was a congressman in the US House of Representatives. There is a monument to Peter in Washington, DC. It was sculpted by one of his descendants.  Following the adoption of the US Constitution, son Frederick, also a congressman, became the very first Speaker of the House for the newly formed United States House of Representatives)

For whatever reason(s) God seems to connect me with often highly educated congregations. Perhaps God may get some kind of enjoyment watching me be intimidated.  Me, who never learned how to do chemical equations in high school began my ministry serving as in intern in Los Alamos, New Mexico! Yes, that Los Alamos! The highest concentration of PhD’s in the world and most of those doctorates in one scientific field or another.

Having said this, I have thoroughly enjoyed these communities. I have learned a lot. Often students invite me to their defense of an honor thesis or a graduate thesis. As a result I can talk at length about the brain of the American bullfrog or a better way to test blood for diabetics. And just ask me someday what happens to a baked potato after it cools. 

I have noticed a few things about such faith communities. One thing is the commitment level seems a bit stronger. I am not saying they have been more faithful; it is just that the faith community seems a larger part of life. I have also noticed that while many non- scientists frequently reject a belief in God “because of science”, I have found many very faithful scientists in my congregations. The chair of each major science department at Colorado State was a member of my congregation. In fact a recent study discovered scientists are more likely to be church members than professors of liberal arts subjects, many of whom, presumably, reject faith because of science. 

However, one difficulty I have observed in such communities is that we tend to want to explain Christ instead of proclaim Christ. What do I mean here? I mean that we are not good at expressing what Christ has done for us and what our faith in this Christ means to us. We might mumble something about faith helping us put an emphasis on others and the needs of others, but we are not very good at saying how this might connect personally to how Christ touches and affects me. 

Looking back I don’t ever remember any kind of class or forum on this in a congregation I served. Of course, as leader of these congregations that falls squarely on me. I did teach a class titled, “Word and Witness” from our own Fortress Press. In this class participants studied the Bible in depth and then had to share their faith with people whom they knew and with strangers. You can guess it was a small class. Yet our participants learned what those young white-shirted Mormon missionaries discover. Such sharing may or may not have an impact on others, but it has a great impact on the growth and faith of those who share their faith. It also never seemed to matter what color shirt they wore. 

My point in this is not to encourage you to go out and knock on doors with your personal faith story. You probably wouldn’t find many at home anyway. My point is to encourage you to be more comfortable with your story of faith. Perhaps we don’t share our stories because we are unsure about them. Perhaps also the way to have a better comfort level with our faith story could be found in such sharing and a willingness to listen to the stories of others. People often want to know who we are. Can they know who we are without knowing something about our faith story?

I share this because I just received a lengthy email from a fairly recent graduate. You would know this very bright former student as they were quite active in our ministry. They are currently in a new relationship and this alum shared how the two of them are now engaged in this very exchange of faith stories. Our alum has such a story while their new dating partner does not but seems very willing to listen, to ask, and to respond. It seems in such sharing our alum has been able to identify and better understand better how faith in Christ fits into and helps to mold whom they are becoming. 

You know that clichéd, “It is better to give than to receive?” With faith it just might be “In sharing we can receive.”  Next time you find yourself explaining Christ, ask yourself if this might be a time that would be better to share your Christ. 

Some years ago one of our members, an engineer, would give of her time during summer, to travel to the Central America country Honduras with “Engineers Without Borders” to work on a needed engineering project.  Most, if not all of those projects, as I recall, had to do with water. Bringing clean water from the mountains to places without it was a very challenging and much needed work. 

During a forum presentation here on her work, she showed us photos of discarded trash lining ditches and along streets. This was due partly to being a country where 66% of its people lived in poverty and could not afford trash pickup, but part of it was also somewhat cultural as she explained. With most people in Honduras at the bottom of the class and economic structures, many people needed to think and feel there was someone below them and that they were not the bottom strata of their society. So, they tossed their trash so someone else would have to pick it up. Those others, then, became, in the minds of many impoverished people, the very bottom. 

Of course we can find fault with such a practice and with this assumption. Yet, it often appears to me we all seem to need someone who is below us to bolster our own ego and sense of importance. We all need someone, it seems, upon whom we can look down to somehow build ourselves up. 

City folk sometimes look down upon rural citizens, Americans and economically strong nations look down upon the developing world and so on. Those on both ends, and the middle, of the political spectrum too often look down upon those not in their camp. These days many who once were our strongest allies and often aspired to be like us, now look down on us instead of looking up to us.

Yes, it would seem we all need someone to upon whom we can look down. After all, most of us certainly do so. What about Christians? Are there any upon whom we can look down?  I have been known to call such downward gaze “I” contact.

As I think of Jesus in our four gospels, I am not sure Jesus looks down upon any. Perhaps Herod whom he calls a fox. There are many instances of Jesus being critical of some. Jesus, certainly wasn’t a fan of hypocrisy particularly when it was displayed by religious leaders and authorities. The authorities should have known better. This should give warning to today’s religious leaders, clergy, and others who lead in the church. That means me as well as colleagues whom I respect and consider friends. We try to justify our downward glances by thinking we might be guilty of hypocrisy and self-righteousness, but we are not as bad as “those people.”  “Look at the effect of what “those people” say and do. Look at how their words and actions don’t hold up to the light of Jesus.”

We may be right in some of our judgements regarding words and deeds. But we are not right in somehow seeing ourselves as above those saying and doing such things. Having some attitude of superiority…if only thinking we are sinners, but somehow “better’ sinners is not at all helpful in the deep and wide gulf that currently separates us.  Breaching that gulf, which if it happens will no doubt take a long time, requires us seeing part of ourselves in those whom we think below us.

It is hard to trust those who spew hate, bigotry, and venom in the name of Jesus. We are not those called to trust them. It is hard to even trust ourselves….how might we behave….what might we say and do that can cause further division?  We are not called to trust “them” nor “us.” We are those called to trust Jesus and follow Jesus. It is not that everything will work out just fine if we do this. It is that over time we and our successors as well as “those others” and their successors might learn the healing value of commonality and love. 

Almost immediately after 9-11 one of my Lutheran colleagues called the Tempe mosque to talk to the Imam. The pastor admitted he knew almost nothing about Islam and wanted to learn. They met many times and a great affection and respect developed between them. In fact, shortly after this, the mosque became a part of the Interfaith (now called CORA, Council of Religious Advisors) group of all campus ministries at ASU where they have been an active participant since. A few years ago the same Imam came here to speak and then hosted us at the mosque for lunch. Our student group hosted a newer, much  younger Imam last year for dinner and discussion. Was it begun by one phone call of outreach? 

Who can you reach out to? Are you willing to risk failure? Do we see the peace which we long for as worthy of risking failure and rejection? Do not see failure and rejection as fodder for further feeling somehow superior. We need to see it as just a time to stomp the dust off our feet and reach out somewhere else. There is no time to start like our present. We could all use eye contact, not  “I” contact.