Pastor's Notes

Let’s face it.

May 28, 2020

Dear fellow Migrants:

Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “You can’t go home again.” For most of us Arizonans (73%+), we can return and visit home, but it is the the same home it once was. And we are not the same people we once were when we lived there.

You and I know this. We may have even experienced it. Life does not normally flow in a backward direction. To go back is too often to regress. Growth is an upward and forward movement. A plants roots may be firmly planted in the earth from which it sprouted, but growth is always up or out. When a plant ceases growing, it dies.

Scripture knows this. I think of the book of Revelation. In the next to last chapter of the Bible’s last book (21), there is a new heaven and a new Jerusalem. When this was written the holy city of Jerusalem lay in ashes, destroyed by the Romans. This was tremendously distressing to Jews and Christians alike. No doubt they wanted Jerusalem rebuilt so they could return to the life they once had there. Revelation says this will not happen. Jerusalem will be new. Jerusalem will not be a recreation of what it once had been. Revelation does not anticipate a backward movement that restores some nostalgic time and returns people to a former life. The vision of Revelation was to create and mold life in the present.

We are living in a Revelation time. It is a time we both look forward to and yet are anxious about the future. We want to return to our former life pre-COVID 19. We may even pray for such. God does not return people. God leads people through and God brings God’s people to a new place.

Let’s face it. If asked a few months prior to the pandemic striking how perfect was our life and our world, most of us would not have said it was very special in some outstanding way. God does not want us to hang out in our old haunts and old ways. God wants us to be made new. God does not want us to go home again; God wants us make a new home and God wants us to be at home in our present and our future.

This is the hope of Revelation and the hope of the Christian faith. In the ashes of a fallen city, a new city can be created. In the fears and challenges of living in a pandemic, uprooted from our former life and lifestyle, God can make us new. I suspect you have already added somethings during this time that you will maintain once this crisis passes. I also suspect there is a thing or two you might have abandoned that you will not pick up again in the future. Some part of you has already been made new.

We need not fear that which is and that which will be new. Old standby God will still be there. The God whom we glimpse in Jesus is also made new to do what God has always done: come to us, be with us, and love us. God does not make all new things. God makes all things new.

Becoming new with you,
Gary N McCluskey
Pastor, University Lutheran Church
Lutheran Campus Ministry
Arizona State University

Returning to Public Worship Needs

May 27, 2020

There are a few things we will need to reopen public worship. First is an accurate estimate of how many will return once we worship in person. The sooner we can get an idea, the better we can prepare. We also do not want to have too many in our sanctuary as we will practice safe social distancing. So, if you plan on being ready to attend public worship here, please let us know at Info@ulctempe.org We’d like to know by June 5.

Also, we are in need of Clorox or Lysol sanitizing wipes and sanitizing sprays. Hand sanitizer is also needed. We do have a small supply, but it will be used up quickly. We will be requiring masks for all over 2 years old. Bring masks with you. We do have some for those without or those who may forget. If someone insists on worshiping without a mask, we will have to cancel worship and leave. Wearing a mask is simple hospitality, respecting others and being safe.

We will most likely need extra ushers…we may use multiple doors..there will be no lines arriving or leaving…social distancing only.

The thought currently is to return June 14, 9am. It will depend upon COVID 19 numbers in AZ and Maricopa County. Right now with the holiday, reporting on numbers is behind by about 5-8 days. It will also depend upon any recommendations by the CDC and our synod office (ignoring such advice opens churches to liability) and local officials.

Worship will be shortened to under 30 minutes. Staying in an indoor setting with others requires short times together. We will also still offer an on line worship experience. There will be things in worship whether on line or in person we all will miss. To accommodate every one’s request would lengthen worship to an unsafe time period. The top priority has to be: How can we best limit transmission of the COVID 19 virus?

Thank you for your help, your patience, and your understanding! Stay safe and stay well!

Gary N McCluskey
Pastor, University Lutheran Church
Lutheran Campus Ministry
Arizona State University

Dear Resilient ones:

May 21, 2020

COVID 19. There! I said it. Now, let’s talk about something else, shall we? Like you, I am a bit tired of hearing about nothing but this pandemic.

How ’bout them Diamondbacks!?! Oh, that’s right, they are not yet playing due to the COVID 19 virus. Okay, let’s try this: Any vacation plans for summer? Yikes! Once again no one is going anywhere because of….wait for this……the COVID 19 virus. Hmmm. I think I will take the grandchildren to the park. What? It’s closed? I don’t even have to say why, do I?

Yes! The COVID 19 virus seems to be dominating our life in most every aspect. Wear masks. Wash your hands until they are dry and cracked. By all means, DO NOT touch your face! Take whatever meat the grocery store has and use both sides of the toilet paper.

Let’s not get too excited. Our lives are often dominated by many factors. As we age our aging can dominate with aches, pains, and loss of some functions. Diabetics have to watch what they eat. People wanting healthy life styles have to be physically active and eat healthily. CPA’s have to keep up with a tremendous volume of new tax laws annually. Students must study, do their labs, take tests, and write their papers. Many things can, at times, and at all times, dominate our life or at least some segment of our life.

Yet we go on, don’t we?. We still are able to have fairly full lives despite those things that do or would dominate us or some part of us. We go on because we are still us! I am still me. Those things which can dominate do not have the capacity to rob us of who we are and who we are becoming. Sometimes they even shape us into becoming a better us…a better me.

We are children of God. We are people gifted by God. COVID 19, diabetes, final exams and grades cannot take that from us. Working at home, working alone, cannot take from us who we are at our core. Such things that dominate us can annoy us, frighten us, cause us some vigilance and diligence, but cannot make us into other than a child of God.

As I listen to you, speak with you, I hear YOU! I don’t hear some person I no longer recognize. I hear people doggedly plowing through this quite new and very different experience. COVID 19 has changed our perspective on many things, but it has not changed us! It has not changed who we are.

It remains a proud privilege to serve as pastor to a determined community of young adults, middle aged folk, and elderly people whom, despite much pressure, remain

who they…who YOU are. Keep being YOU!

Hanging in there with you,
Gary N McCluskey
Pastor, University Lutheran Church
Lutheran Campus Ministry
Arizona State University

Lent

March 1, 2020

There it stands in all its resplendent beauty seemingly glaring at me, taunting me. It stands a a sentinel of a wonderful time past If it could speak, I wonder what it might say to me. Would it say, “I dare you to do something to me despite my timely irrelevance?” Or, does the time weigh over it and might it beg, “Do what you have to do! End my misery?”

“It” is a left-over poinsettia. In the back yard in a ceramic pot, it remains as attractive as the day we battled dozens of Black Friday shoppers to wrestle it from the shelf so we could pay only 50 cents for it. Now we are in Lent. a time traditionally that flowers were not allowed in church. A time of sack cloth and ashes, repentance and reflection on sin.

Indeed, Lent is not to be a depressing time, but a season that is serious, and at times somewhat more sober than the rest of the church year. Somehow a brilliant red poinsettia appears to mock a time such as Lent. What to do? I could pretend to be forgetful and withhold its nourishment of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. I could move it to a less visible corner of the yard or place it out front in hopes that vandals would destroy or kidnap it. Perhaps I could simply pull myself together, pick it up, and cart it off to the trash or the church’s compost bin.

I have decided! I will let it go and continue to care for it. I will let its brightness and beauty break into the dusk of Lent. After all Lent is also a time of forgiveness. Lent is not without grace. It is not without the risen Jesus. It is not without the incarnate God, come to earth at Christmas. Remain there, O staunch reminder of a joyful and glorious time! Stand proudly as a witness to a time so joyful it can shine forth in the gloomiest of times and places. Show off your foliage and display God’s created goodness as the shadow of the cross looms, and our sin exposed.

Lent is a serious time for Christian pilgrims. Lent is a time we see the seriousness of God’s grace. Let that grace, too shine into Lent’s tempered light.

In With the New

January 1, 2020

Gary N. McCluskey, Pastor

If it is Happy New Year, must something be new? You know, “Out with the old, in with the new…all that kind of talk. Or is just the fact we now date the year 2020 new enough?

New Year reminds us nothing is static. Not time, not life, not even faith. Sometimes we really do not need such reminding. Change and newness seem to confront us at most every turn. Yet, what is it you will be doing January 2nd or January 6th or January 7th? I suspect for most of us we will be doing what we typically do on Thursdays, Mondays or Tuesdays. Our morning routines will be the same. Maybe there will be the diversion of de-decorating the house and taking down the tree and lights. Yet we will perform our usual tasks and encounter the usual people.

Newness and change do not deny the importance of our daily life. What we do every day was once new to us. What we do every day is how we have patterned our life to serve ourselves and others as we use our days to work, volunteer, read, paint, sew, create, and live our lives. It need not be boring or unimportant to continue as we have. It can be a form of service as we live out our calling to love the neighbor and serve those in need.

There is always much about ourselves and our lives that ought to be made new. Yet we cannot discount what it is we do day after day, week after week, and even year after year. Discipleship has its need to be made new. Discipleship also has its need to plod along trusting we plod neither in vain nor alone. Celebrate, make some changes, take down the decorations and keep chugging along. May it all make for a Happy New Year!