A thought from the shower today

In looking at the scope of the human-divine relationship in the Bible, people do not change, while God changes. People were stupid from the beginning, and still are today (and joyful and naive and murderous and compassionate and courageous and selfish and jealous and wonderfully human). God's approach to dealing with these infuriatingly stubborn people changed a great deal over time.

It's not that God changed in essence - what we know of God's essence is quite limited, mediated as it is by the historical person of Jesus and myriad interpretations thereof, by stories written and told and edited and lost and found over millennia, by personal experiences and visions and feelings of spirit impossible to articulate or recreate. But to the extent that we know God through Christian faith, life, and Scripture, God changes in relation to us while we remain as described above.

It occurs to me that given all this, I should add "and hubristic" to the list of consistent human attributes above, you know, just to cover my bases.

This thought fits perfectly into the blog label category "unexpected," as it happens. I mean, I was in the shower. Shouldn't I have been thinking of shampoo, or singing about Kokomo, or something similarly mundane?

Sermon links

Some of the things I've talked about in recent sermons merit follow-up links, and now that I have the blog, I can do that. Yay.

This is the Andrew Sullivan post about Epiphany I quoted to begin my sermon on 1/9/11.

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From today's sermon (1/16/11), the entire text of Martin Luther King Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Also, here is the text of his speech at WMU here in Kalamazoo in December 1963.

I hope y'all are able to get out and live the dream, as it were, on Monday the MLK holiday.

***

I'll probably post some sermon-related stuff here, maybe audio or video or text, but we'll cross those bridges when we get there. Currently we have none of those three options, but suggestions (and assistance) in making that work are welcome.

Pastor Andrew

Rock and roll, etc

So as the internet will attest, I listen to a whole lot of music. I broadly (and at times ironically) refer to most of this music as "rock and roll," in an apparent effort to make that term meaningless. Maybe some other time I'll explain what I mean by it, but for now I just want to point out a line in a song that caught my ear today. The song is When My Time Comes by the young California band Dawes (you can download the song free at that site for subscribing to their mailing list, it turns out). The line in question is "...and if heaven is all that was promised to me why don't I pray for death?"

I think this is a good question. I have no indication this band is "Christian" (a uniquely loaded term in popular music, and that's maybe not what I mean) though a number of their song titles and lyrics on their album North Hills do seem to point to frameworks Christians use when addressing life's big questions. Such a question might fit well in the voice of one who is questioning or rejecting faith in Jesus, making the assumption or expressing their experience that heaven is the sole focus of Christian faith and life. I often find that I can learn a great deal about  following Jesus by listening to those who question faith, and this is one of those questions.

In brief response to the question, I would say that heaven is far from the "all that is promised to me," and if anything I at times eschew talk of heaven altogether in favor of talking about the full, rich, vibrant, engaged, passionate life to which I feel called right here and now. This is the only Earth God has given us, and our time here is fleeting, and whatever heaven turns out to be, God sent Jesus to this world to be with us. This smelly, cranky, selfish world is the one God created and called good, and is the one God sent Jesus to redeem - not to replace, not to reject, but to redeem. And various New Testament texts are clear that Jesus will return to this earth - not to replace it, but to bring God's love to bear on this creation in a way that makes this world the best it can be. This despite the common misunderstanding of these same biblical texts applied by some who see this world as merely fleeting and disposable, like fast-food wrappers that the careless throw out their windows on the highway.

I need to wrap this up - I have a sermon to finish, and I seriously doubt that this will fit into it - but I guess the point I want to make is that God is working in the world, speaking through the lyrics of so-called "secular" rock songs, through random magazine articles, through the words of strangers in grocery stores. So many of us show up on Sunday mornings seeking Jesus, and while that's important (maybe even vital or necessary), it's not the whole story. We gather for worship and liturgy not because Jesus lives in this building with this mortgage we're paying, but so that we can in this community of faith learn to recognize God's voice, God's hand, God's face outside that building, in the rest of the wide world we are given. If we are followers of Jesus, then God is calling us into the world, the real world, the young-rock-and-roll-band-from-California world, the people-sure-do-drive-like-selfish-maniacs-on-the-highway world, the that-little-girl-at-Meijer-looks-like-she-could-use-a-hug world.

So keep your ears open.Unexpected and mysterious, indeed.

An Introduction

Welcome to the pastor's blog for Lutheran Church of the Savior in Kalamazoo! Or at least that's the idea. I'm Pastor Andrew, and I've had the privilege of serving as Pastor here since October of 2009. In that time have learned a good deal about the people and story of this congregation, about how church works and at times fails to work, and about myself. My expectations for this space are modest, at least for now. I hope to share thoughts about varied topics, church-related and church-appropriate (Lord help me discern that), to post bits of sermons or bits that may become sermons, and to highlight links that inspire me to better serve God's people. The administrator of our congregation's shiny new website hopes this blog will draw more pageviews and generate interest in our community, and that sounds cool as well.

For those wondering about the blog's title, it is borrowed from an Advent hymn by the same name, published in the ELCA's recent hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship (#258). The hymn text's author is one Jeannette M. Lindholm, and since I do not know her and hope she doesn't sue me for stealing her words, I'll endeavor to send her an email and at least let her know the deal. The hymn is set to Calvin Hampton's beautiful tune St. Helena, and as a hymn nerd, I find it a lovely pairing of word and image and tune.

The hymn begins "Unexpected and mysterious is the gentle word of grace," and I hope this blog can provide a word of grace, especially to those who may have momentarily forgotten that God's love is for them. At times I count myself among this number, certainly, and hopefully in this space I will be able to honestly express the joys and struggles and blessings of living out my call in this community.

But before I get too churchy, I should point out that I am generally not one to take myself too seriously, and this blog should be no exception. Hopefully some of my posts will be unexpected, and the mysteries I explore may range from the miracle of the Incarnation to my inability to remember what time Women's Bible Study begins (10:00 am, NOT 10:30, as I need to be reminded most months around 10:10). My main hobby is roller derby announcing, and surely this space will see some news about my adventures with the Killamazoo Derby Darlins. I do suspect that the words "unexpected" and "mysterious" will serve well as guides to figuring out what I'm doing, both on this blog and as the pastor of this church. I like to think I'm getting a clue about the pastor stuff, but this blogging business is entirely new. Lord, have mercy.

Thanks for reading. God loves you. See you around the internets.