2012 Lent 15: April Newsletter Article

April 2012 Newsletter article

O Christ, create new hearts in us

that beat in time with yours,

that, joined by faith with your great heart,

become love’s open doors.

We are your body, risen Christ;

our hearts, our hands we yield

that through our life and ministry

your love may be revealed.

- Herman G. Stuempfle Jr., “O Christ, Your Heart, Compassionate,” ELW 722

Last week I found myself reading an online review of a book about how religion can be useful to atheists. Rather than digging into the core argument of either the review or the book, I want to talk about one particularly valuable insight.

“If you ask people in modern western societies whether they are religious, they tend to answer by telling you what they believe (or don't believe). When you examine religion as a universal human phenomenon, however, its connections with belief are far more tenuous.” (John Gray, http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2012/02/religion-atheism-atheists)

2012 Lent 14: Holy Week

Holy Week is Coming Soon!

This year Holy Week is the first week of April, and Lutheran Church of the Savior will be celebrating Palm Sunday / Sunday of the Passion and the Three Days, or the Triduum, of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil of Easter on Saturday evening. Each of these worship experiences is unique and features ancient ritual in current expression. 

·         Palm Sunday / Sunday of the Passion (4/1/12) will begin with a procession of the congregation featuring new Eco-Palms, fair-trade plants that benefit Lutheran World Relief, handed out by our Sunday School kids. We'll stay with the Palm longer than usual, allowing that celebration to shape our entire gathering until after Holy Communion, when we will turn to an interactive reading of the Passion of Our Lord. As if all that is not enough, this is also the Sunday we will welcome BenJammin and Analisa Gauthier to help lead music. Our plan is that they will join us one Sunday morning per month, enhancing our worship experience with instruments and interactivity.

·         Maundy Thursday (4/5/12) will again include the ancient ritual of foot-washing, emphasizing our humility before we partake in Holy Communion as Jesus and his disciples did on the night in which he was betrayed. This year we will partner with Sunnyside UMC on this day. Sunnyside will host a noon Maundy Thursday gathering, while LCS hosts one at 7:00pm

2012 Lent 12: Love and Justice Are Our Future Because They Are God's Present

Below is the manuscript of the sermon I preached on 3/25/12 at Lutheran Church of the Savior. Normally I don't publish sermon scripts because I preach from notes or scribbles, but this week I have a nearly-passable script. I even stuck to it, though certainly not word-for-word. The text is Jeremiah 31:31-34, which is quoted in its entirety (NRSV) in the body of the sermon.


1.    This past Monday, my wife Sarah and I were at a continuing education event in Chicago, listening to Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver. Nadia founded House maybe three or five years ago, and it’s the hippest (hipster-est?) church in the whole ELCA. Anyway, at one point on Monday, the bishop of Metro Chicago Synod got up and asked her a question about where her congregation is going. Her response really stuck with me: “I’m good at the present. I’m not very good at the future,” she said, which is quite a way to tell a bishop to buzz off. I laughed & thought, Who IS ‘good at the future’? What would that even mean?

2012 Lent 13: On Poetry and Faith

I know, I know, I've shared a paucity of blog posts this Lent, at least compared to my goal. Please trust me that I'm working on a lot of great stuff, both blog-specific and blog-worthy (like the Free Store Grand Opening today!).

For now, check out this lovely reflection on poetry and faith written by my dear friend and Official Poet of Unexpected and Mysterious* Dianne Bilyak. One of Dianne's ongoing projects in recent years has been a series of interviews with poets, and she makes fine use of that material here. Dianne has a beautiful way of talking about the messy confusion of our lives in this flawed world.

2012 Lent 11: Religious Perspectives - Unexpected and Mysterious

Last night I made it to Western Michigan University for the second installation of Religious Perspectives: Islam sponsored in part by Lutheran-Episcopal Campus Ministries at WMU. Expecting to hear revered Imam Sayid Hassan Al-Qazwini, instead I was treated to a very different experience. Imam Qazwini was unable to attend at the last minute. Don't worry; he expects to be here in April, and this gives you a chance not to miss him! Plan B consisted of moving up our scheduled April program of a panel of converts to Islam, one a current student at Western and one a graduate who now teaches Humanities at nearby Olivet College.

So two white guys from West Michigan telling a predominantly white Christian audience about their experience of conversion to Islam: yeah, it definitely lived up to the title of this blog. They told heartfelt, often-hilarious stories about experimenting with various culturally-Islamic styles of clothing, about discovering the Qur'an as teenagers, about searching for balance between their white west Michigan Christian upbringings and their newfound communities of Muslims from around the world. It was a truly wonderful evening, with great stories, honest questions, and deepened understanding of faith and culture.

2012 Lent 10: Faith and Criminal Justice

As you may have heard last fall, Lutheran Church of the Savior participated in the ELCA's study "Hearing the Cries: Faith and Criminal Justice." A group of congregation members met over a few weeks, culminating in a workshop with the ELCA's Director for Racial Justice Ministries, Judith Roberts, when our Bishop and other folks from our Synod joined us to learn about and discuss the study. We offered feedback on our experience of the study and of the wider state of criminal justice as it relates to our life together in Jesus Christ.

2012 Lent 9: Table Tennis as Spiritual Practice

Some weeks ago, a great blessing came to Lutheran Church of the Savior: Table Tennis Tuesdays! Every Tuesday evening from 6pm to 8pm, the Fellowship Hall lives up to that name, as intrepid athletes gather to test themselves against one another in the ancient and noble game of table tennis.* Thus far our most pressing concern has simply been lack of players; two to four has been our number, and honestly I can get tired from that much table tennis. This may be because my style includes diving all over the room, based on my similar style of play in actual tennis, badminton, volleyball, and other sports I should avoid if I value my knees and general health.

2012 Lent 8: Repentance

Okay, okay. I'll start blogging again for Lent. No more avoidance of my responsibilities. No more self-shaming. I would be surprised if even a handful of folks had noticed the failure of my Lenten discipline, but even so I apologize.

See, in terms of Lent, this is how it is with me. I get excited, I make an effort, and I fail miserably. And O! that Lent was an isolated case. No, the fact is that I have difficulty maintaining self-discipline in many practices, often to my detriment. As ever, I require a community of accountability to have any hope of changing an established pattern. I thought I was doing so well, but now it's been nearly two weeks since my last blog post.