Author: Rebecca

Matthew 25: 14-30;  “You Knew, Did you?”  November 15, 2020; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Today we read yet another parable of the kingdom.  This time a master entrusts his servants with HUGE amounts of money.  A talent was worth many years’ worth of wages.  It would be an amount like winning the lottery.  The first two invest and multiply what has been entrusted to them and are met with approval and joy by the master and they are given even more to steward.  The third is afraid.  He sees this generous master as harsh.  He believes the opposite of what is demonstrated by what actually happened; thinking that the master reaps where he doesn’t sow and gathers where he doesn’t scatter.  

The master’s reply may be the whole key to unlocking this parable.  He says, “You knew, did you, that I reap where I do not sow and gather where I do not scatter?”  What do you suppose he meant by that, “You knew, did you?”  I think his question points out the flaw in the servant’s thinking.  After all, he has sown a huge amount in the man’s care.  He has scattered his wealth among his servants, ABUNDANTLY! 

What happens when we live expecting harshness from God, when we live in fear of doing something wrong?  Nothing except the hiding of our gifts and resources from the world.  Nothing but living with an expectation of doom hanging over our heads.  We live our lives in a scarcity mentality instead of the very real truth that we have been showered with gifts and resources beyond imagining.  We hide and hoard what we think of as ours instead of recognizing the riches we have been endowed with. 

I don’t really even think the servant needed to be cast out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I think he’s already living in a hell of his own making, shaped by his “knowledge” of the harshness of God.  “You knew, did you?”  the master asked. 

Our beliefs shape our reality.  We see what we are looking for.  God is great, God is good!  Open your eyes and see the goodness of God.  Let go of your fears and stinginess.  Life is for living and loving and risking, trying new things and investing in possibilities. 

Perhaps you could ask yourself this week, “What do I know about God?”  “What gifts and resources do I have that can be put to use to build the kingdom of God, the Beloved Community, where all are welcome and all are fed?”  “Where in my life have I been hoarding and hiding out of a mistaken idea that there will not be enough?” 

Let’s enter into the joy of our God, with gratitude and confidence.  Amen.

November 8, 2020; Yellow Lake Lutheran Church; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Justice and Righteousness like Water

In 2006 I was working as the Executive Director of a non-profit organization in Duluth Mn called SOAR Career Solutions.  We helped people get jobs.  Our clients had a variety of challenges:  chemical dependencies, or mental health issues, a lack of education or training, negative work histories or criminal records.  We provided training and support to help them break out of the cycle of poverty.

One of our key staff members suggested that we specialize our services on the group of people with criminal histories. I had never imagined that I would find myself in that situation.  You see, I had been the victim of a violent crime when I was 17.  So, my first reaction was just outright rejection of the idea.  Someone else could do that but I couldn’t see myself leading such an effort. 

However, I couldn’t deny the considerable need and our capacity to meet that need.  So, SOAR created the Community Offender Reentry Program to assist people returning to Duluth from prison so that they could succeed and avoid re-offending.  Instead of what I think of as a catch and release model of criminal justice focused on punishment and incarceration, we adopted a restorative justice model of rebuilding lives and creating solid relationships.  I had to let go of my judgmental views and my fears.  The meaning of the word justice changed for me.

One of the volunteers who was instrumental in our program is Don Streufert, a psychologist who facilitated a weekly restorative justice group session for program participants.  But Don is much more than a psychologist.  In 1991 Don and his wife Mary’s 18-year-old daughter Carin was home from college for the summer.  They lived in Grand Rapids MN, a relatively small town where people generally felt safe.  Until the night Carin was abducted, raped, and murdered. 

Although her killers were caught, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for this brutal crime, Don and Mary didn’t feel closure.  They sought healing that the retributive criminal justice system didn’t provide.  They turned to restorative practices and forgiveness.  They founded an organization to reduce violence, held forgiveness workshops for other crime victims and even visited their daughter’s killers in prison.  They found a way forward without letting anger control them.

Amos spoke his prophetic words 2800 years ago contrasting outward displays of piety with what God really seeks—justice and righteousness, rolling and flowing unceasingly like waters. 

Today we hear calls for justice after a crime and the intent is usually a call for prosecution and conviction through the courts and criminal justice systems.  The George Floyd case comes quickly to mind.  But a guilty verdict won’t be enough.  We also hear the cries – No Justice, No Peace.  The deeper need is for the forging of restorative practices and the building of right relationships, for the formation of what Martin Luther King Jr called, the Beloved Community. 

Words from today’s Old Testament lesson are carved on Martin Luther King Jr.’s gravestone.  It was his most quoted passage of scripture and shaped his vision of the Beloved Community, a global vision in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth.  The Beloved Community is something we shape and form together, on earth as it is in heaven: where poverty and hunger and homelessness are not tolerated, where racism and discrimination, bigotry and prejudice are replaced by the all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood, where international conflicts are resolved by peaceful conflict resolutions and reconciliation instead of by wars.  Love and trust triumph over fear and hatred, peace and justice over war and conflict. 

Martin Luther King Jr quoted our text for today in his I Have a Dream speech in 1963.  Now, 57 years later, basically my whole lifetime, we live in a nation so divided, the tension in the air this week is palpable.  Fears of militia uprisings loom right alongside fears of riots and looting.  We are a broken nation right now.  Friendships and families are strained over red and blue lines.  The calls for No Justice/No Peace are not threats but a description of our reality.  After 2800 years the stark call of Amos rings as truly as it ever did. 

Justice and Righteousness are words with rich and deep meaning in Hebrew.  They do not mean law abiding adherence to any external standard as one might think.  No.  At the core, these words have to do with relationship, RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS.  These words are not one-size-fits-all concepts.  No. They instead describe the condition that occurs when each relationship is right, according to its own specific demands.  No one is free until everyone is free. 

Our biblical tradition teaches us that God’s desire is that we be a part of creating a community where all types and classes of people are assured access to what they need to live well.  The people of God are repeatedly called to provide for the poor, to break down systems of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to support the widow and the orphan, to visit the sick and imprisoned because that is what it meant to be in right relationship, with them, and with God. 

Without true Justice and Righteousness all the offerings, prayers, hymns, vestments, and talk of God are of no use at all and not pleasing to God at all. 

I spoke to my son the other day.  He lives in Minneapolis near the Theodore Wirth Parkway.  He walks his dog there daily and he called me during his walk.  He told me there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln there that has become part of his new ritual.  When he feels anxious or weighed down by the conflicts and divisions in our culture he makes his way to Old Abe.  In Lincoln’s second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, he encouraged a divided nation with these words:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.   

One hundred and sixty-five years later those words speak still.  We are challenged to face others without malice, with love, and with a commitment to shaping the Beloved Community that God intends for this world. 

Today, after our worship service we will honor the veterans from our community in another ceremony.  This solemn recognition acknowledges the battles for freedom that have been waged by this country even as we pray for and work toward the day when such sacrifices will not be required. 

Let us pray. 

Gracious God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace.  Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give us peace, peace in our homes and our hearts, in our cities and rural communities, in our civic processes and our government.  In any conflicts help us to meet each other without hatred or bitterness, to listen for your voice amid competing claims and to work together toward the Beloved Community you envision.  In the holy name of Jesus, our Prince of Peace we pray.  Amen.

All Saints’ Day; Nov 1 2020; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Normally on All Saints Day, we would have the memory of the night before, Halloween, when we would have seen ghosts in white sheets floating down the driveway, devils with horns and pitchforks stomping through the dry leaves, skeletons dripping blood out of the sides of their mouths, werewolves, witches and wizards. There might have been a couple of supermen who were clinging to their moms’ legs with all that ghoulishness going on around them, a Cinderella looking a little overpowered.  It would have been a night that belonged to Zombies and Frankenstein and the grim reaper, who demanded candy or else.  As a pastor handing out treats, I might have thought to myself, “Hey, this looks and sounds a lot like the book of Revelation. This stuff is straight out of the Bible.”

Think about it… white robes, some wearing crowns, beasts and a couple of angels. Even if there weren’t any lambs, there might have been lions, bears, eagles.  Flashes of lightning and peals of thunder are part of the displays on some streets. Flaming torches. Bloody moons. Dragons with horns and a two-headed monster.  Such characters, straight out of the Revelation of John, fill Halloween night.

Normally I would be in Mexico at this time of year where the Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos is a fantastic event.  In Mazatlan there would be, in normal years, a parade of costumed skeletons.  There the pre Hispanic customs flavor the day with celebration.  Death isn’t creepy there.  The theme is about remembering their loved ones. 

Today is All Saints’ Day in the church.  It’s a time meant for celebrating God’s victory over death.  We can say to death, “You can howl at the moon if you want to, but we worship the risen Son. And he has already put you in your place among the tombstones and darkness. So you might scare us, but you will not defeat us.”

Halloween, All Saints’ Day and the Day of the Dead remind us in their own way who is in charge of life and death. They help us see God’s revelation.

There is a line between life and death, you know. A thin line. Most of us live as if it isn’t really there until we are confronted by it through our own health concerns or by the death of a loved one, the horror of a tragic accident, violence, brutality, war or this year a worldwide Pandemic. I think the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox believers may have a stronger sense of the thin veil than we rational Protestants. They never quit praying to the departed saints, because in a very real sense, in Christ, these saints are always with us. We can learn something from them, we Protestants. John the Revelator helps us to see it.

In his stunning apocalyptic vision, John blurs the lines between the daily grind and the evermore. He draws the future of God into the present of our lives. He brings heaven to earth and shows us in his fantastic symbolism how things are in God’s world, not the way we have come to think they are.

“Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.”  So begins the last book of the bible.  Peace is not, however, a word many people would associate with this fascinating book.  Fear, maybe.  Confusion, surely.  The Revelation of John is a widely interpreted book and given its image-rich language it is subject to all kinds of wild and often conflicting interpretations.  There is much in this book that is difficult to understand.  Sensational treatments of it can put us off from even trying to grasp its meaning for us but it is well worth making the effort to understand this powerful testimony of a man named John to the risen Christ. 

Let me begin today with a brief introduction to the book of Revelation as a whole.  The author tells us his name–John.  He wrote at about 90-96 AD.  So that means he is probably not the apostle John.  This man was a Christian who lived through the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero and wrote during the reign of the next Emperor, Domitian.  Both were notorious as rulers who harshly persecuted the Christians.  In those days the emperors of Rome considered themselves to be gods.  All people living in the Roman Empire had to publicly state their belief in the emperor as a god and worship him.  Perhaps because he refused to do so, or for some other action related to his faith, John was exiled to the island of Patmos.  His main message is that Ceasar is not God and that the true God, revealed in Jesus Christ is stronger than any government. 

Because of the tense relationship between the early church and the government John was not able to write openly and in direct language about Jesus Christ without facing further persecution and probable death.  So, he disguised his message in figurative language.  For example, he referred to the Roman government as a beast with seven heads and ten horns that had come up out of the sea.  One of the heads has received a mortal wound.  In other words, the first emperor, Nero, died.  The wound healed, suggesting another emperor, Domitian, began to rule. 

This style of writing flourished from about 200 years before Christ to about 100 years after his death, and is called apocalyptic literature.  The biblical book of Daniel is another example of apocalyptic literature written at the beginning of that period.  Like John, the writer of Daniel was being persecuted and wrote his message using highly symbolic language.  This kind of literature was written almost in code and was meant to be understandable only to insiders in the faith.  Books like these were written to give hope and encouragement to people who were having a very hard time.  There was usually a concrete political issue at stake.  The language, as I said, was full of symbols and numbers.  Sharp distinctions were made between this age and the age to come often with a message about the approaching end of all time.

The style of this writing accounts for much of the confusion often experienced when this book is read.  No one writes that way anymore.  When we try to read this book as if it were direct and literal writing without knowing the reference points for all the symbols we wind up with all kinds of crazy and fearful interpretations. 

John was harshly persecuted for his faith.  He was sent into exile, away from his home and family, and stripped of his rights as a citizen.  This was happening to many Christians throughout the Empire.  The government tried to silence all the witnesses to the God known through the crucified and risen Christ.  But nothing could stop people like John.  Through the apocalyptic language that is sometimes hard for us to understand but would have been clear to his contemporaries, John got his message out.  Not exile, not the threat of further persecution, nothing could stop him from telling about his Lord. 

Now comes the hard part.  What does all this mean for us today, in 2020 on All Saints’ Sunday? Unlike John or Peter or the other apostles, or Christians in other places today we are free to say what we want.  Prisons and threats of persecutions are certainly still a part of daily Christian life in this world, even if it is not something we ourselves have personally experienced.  For people resisting government oppression and boldly speaking a word of faith and truth in our time these lessons carry words of encouragement, comfort, and empowerment.  They still say loud and clear that no government can stop the power of God or the witness of Christians to that God.

I believe these texts speak a word of challenge to us here and now.  Prison and threats of persecution or exile are not stopping us from testifying to the astonishing power of God– so what is stopping us?  What makes us so silent as Christians?  Is it embarrassment?  or doubt like Thomas had momentarily?  Do we think we are too busy?  or Do we have the mistaken idea that everyone knows the grace and peace of God? 

These texts also speak a word of comfort to us.  After all, we live in a world full of hurting people.  The world needs faithful witnesses to the power and love of God as much now as ever.  The threats we face today may be more subtle than in the days of the Emperors Nero and Domitian.  John called the Roman government a seven headed monster.  We face a different sort of many headed monster. We face emptiness and lack of meaning.  We face a world full of rampant alienation and loneliness and poverty.  We face addictions and violence and fear of our neighbors.  We face our fear of our own mortality, the loss of our loved ones, the worry over friends and family with health concerns or financial troubles or broken relationships.  We in America face deep divisions and ideological factions that threaten to destroy us. The God who empowered the early disciples of Christ to spread the news of Christ’s resurrection and to write the books of the Bible can fill us with faith and a message and mission that cannot be contained, moving us out to meet today’s seven-headed monster head on.

You see, for those late-first-century and early-second-century Christians, it’s not that John the Revelator was offering pie in the sky by and by. Yes, he was extending the hope of glory. But even more, he was offering hope for the here and now.

Hope for those marginalized, impoverished, weak and starving communities that Rome was gobbling up. And John is saying, in this fantastic vision of a new earth and heaven, with all the tribes on the face of the earth gathered around the throne, John is saying, “Take heart. Be of good courage. That wild thing death — that thing running around your porches, slipping under your bed at night, hanging out in your hospitals, tormenting your cities, wrecking this good earth — that thing death, Jesus has already put a stake through his heart. We call that stake the cross. ”

The saints remind us, you see, that we live on the other side of death. As theologian Dorothee Soelle puts it, Christians are those whose death is already behind them. We are free to live in the victory scene of Revelation 7, because death cannot touch us, not really.

This year especially we see death ravaging. In addition to Cancer, Alzheimer’s, domestic violence, hunger in our cities and rural communities and in all parts of the globe, and the insanity of war, this year we’ve seen 45.8 million cases of Coronavirus and 1.1 million deaths worldwide as of Halloween with the numbers rising dramatically. Death has certainly not given up. But what John the Revelator is saying, what Paul the evangelist is saying, what Jesus the Christ is saying, is that the last enemy to be defeated is death, and the battle is engaged.

So we can live free from the gripping fear of all that ghastliness, because we know the real story. We live how we live and do what we do, as Kimberly Bracken Long says, “because the world envisioned by Scripture is the real world. The real world is not the one of suffering, and pain, and death. That world has been swallowed up in victory — the victory of Jesus Christ.”

So as we worship and live today, we can pray to God for all the saints, those living and dead from this earthly life, that their witness to Christ might embolden our witness to be the true church in these troubled times. A church that draws near to the poor, the hungry, the refugee, the imprisoned, the unemployed and the underemployed, and says, “Take, eat; this is my body, full of good news, my cup, full to overflowing.”

Matthew 22: 1-14; Yellow Lake Lutheran Church, Danbury, WI; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; 10.11.2020

Let us pray,

Open our minds and hearts O Spirit, to hear your word for us today.  Blow through us, so that we may know you more, and live in your loving grace.  Amen.

Well, this gospel is a fine how-do-you-do!  My first sermon text in this new setting turns out to be the hardest parable in the gospels.  A suspicious person might think this was a test!  In the year 1513 Martin Luther, when faced with this text, called it the “terrible gospel on which I hate to preach!”  Well, I accept the challenge.  Digging deep into the Scripture results in rich rewards.  So, let’s dig in.

This is the third parable in Matthew’s gospel addressed to the religious leaders of the day.  The setting is the temple, where Jesus has just turned over the money tables. They question his authority.  It is not a “peace that passes all understanding” sort of a time and place.  No, in fact the verses that come directly before this passage go like this:  When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.  Jesus tells an intense parable for a tense setting.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding banquet for his son.  The king, in perfect story format, sends out his slaves three times.  The first time his slaves go to gather the invited they are ignored. The second time the invited brush it off and go their own way.  The intended guests are too busy.  Some of the invited, though, do more than reject the invitation.  They turn on the messengers seize them, mistreat them and murder them. 

From a story telling perspective, that’s a pretty big escalation. So, the king sends his soldiers out to kill the murderers and burn down the city.  But this stubborn king will be damned if he is going to give up. So, finally, he sends some more slaves into the burning city to invite anyone, good or bad, who will fill the banquet hall. 

Even then the king is not satisfied.  He scans the banquet hall and sees a man who has been dragged in, off the streets who isn’t dressed appropriately.  The King approaches him saying, “Friend, how did you get in without a wedding robe?”  The man is speechless. 

And if this were a movie the final lines of the drama would be spoken with horror music playing in the background.  “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.”

What in the world do we do with a parable like this?! The most common way of interpreting this parable through the centuries has been to turn it into an allegory, where each character in the story stands for a character in the real world. In the typical allegorical interpretation, the king stands for God, Jesus is the son, the wedding feast is the banquet in the life to come.  The invited guests and murdered slaves are the Old Testament prophets and the Israelites, the guests who actually attend the banquet are the gentiles, us, and the servants who bring them in are the missionaries who bring people to the church.  There it is. A nice, neat package.  All said and done.   

But, Oh, how much terrible theology and bloody history has come from that allegorical interpretation!  This text was used by the church for centuries to persecute the Jewish people.  The crusades against Muslims were justified based on this text too.  It’s important to remember history’s lessons when we look for meaning this story.

It might be easy to understand why it has been understood this way.  The essence of faith has often been simplified to something like this: trust in Jesus to forgive your sins and you’ll get to go to heaven when you die. At some level I think we want it to be that clear. 

A cut and dried formula is so much more comfortable than the day to day practice of following Jesus, the challenge of loving our neighbor as our selves, the work of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. It feels better to say the Jews got it all wrong and are therefore cut out of the kingdom.  They are replaced by the Christians. Whew!  We’re safe.  If we just say the right prayer, put on the robe of righteousness, we’ll be welcomed into the feast to come. 

But parables don’t work that way.  Allegorizing the text locks us into our own thinking and keeps us from really experiencing the change of heart that parables are meant to create.  If we tie up the parables in a neat little bundle, we miss the point.  We skip right over the violence, escalation and ridiculousness of the plot. In our attempt to wiggle out of the squirmy feeling that we get at the end of this parable we strip it of its power to change us.

You’ve probably heard the adage that religion is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.  Well, parables fall into the latter category of afflicting the comfortable.  They are supposed to turn something on its head so completely that we see things in a new way. 

Debie Thomas, from St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, California suggests on her blog, Journey with Jesus, that we reconsider this parable – letting it speak to us in all its provocative fullness.  Maybe Jesus is telling this parable in such an extreme and offensive way precisely because we actually DO believe in a God as hard as the king who turns his armies loose on his own people and we need the hyperbole in order to recognize it.   Perhaps Jesus tells this harsh story to the upright, self-righteous leaders of the Temple who insist on the right appearances of things because they don’t recognize him or his authority.  After all, they were looking for a king like Herod, a conqueror who would restore Israel’s might not a simple man riding into town on a donkey. 

She asks, Is it possible that Jesus is offering us a critical description of how God’s kingdom is often depicted by God’s own followers?  What if the king in the parable isn’t God at all? What if the king is what we project onto God?  What if the king embodies everything we’ve learned to associate with divine power and authority from watching other, all-too-human kings and rulers?  Kings like Herod.  Conquerors like the Romans in Jesus’ day.  Leaders in our own time and place who execute their authority in abusive, violent ways, compelling their followers to gleefully celebrate in circumstances that call for lament.

Her questions ring true for me.  I can’t begin to tell you how many people I have counseled over the years who have been wounded by brutal versions of religion, bludgeoned by a depiction of an angry God who demands the right prayer, the right confession of faith, the right sign of the spirit.  So many people have experienced the church as petty, stingy, and judgmental.

I grew up in a healthy church in Moorhead MN.  We had excellent pastors who preached God’s grace.  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know the love of God was bigger and stronger and warmer than anything I could ever imagine.  I hope that’s true for all of you listening to or watching this broadcast.  But I know some of you still carry deep wounds from the years or decades you spent appeasing the King you mistook for God.  Sometimes God is presented to the world as easily offended, displeased, dishonored; whose power is unsearchable, unknowable, and must be submitted to; whose invitation has strings attached.

The opening line of this text says, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king… It doesn’t say as it does elsewhere the kingdom of heaven is like.  It says it can be compared to, suggesting that it’s not like that.  As followers of Jesus do we really believe God is a mean, petty, vengeful, hot-headed, thin-skinned ruler intent on getting even?  Does God burn down a city out of wounded pride? Is God like the capricious king who greets a stranger with a passive aggressive greeting, “Friend…” just before having him bound and thrown out into the outer darkness? 

Debie Thomas again suggests another possibility:  What if the God figure in the parable is the one guest who refuses to accept the terms of the tyrannical king?  The one guest who decides not the wear the robe of forced celebration and coerced hilarity?  There is a striking similarity between the one who is bound hand and foot and cast out into the outer darkness and the one who stood silent before Herod before his journey to Gethsemane, Calvary, the cross and the grave. 

The parables of Jesus are meant to afflict the comfortable and the show us who God is and maybe even who God isn’t.  We must remember that it is Jesus who tells this parable, the one who shows us all we need to know about God; whose unwavering love was always bigger, stronger, warmer than anything we could possibly compare it to.  Jesus the Christ is our banquet host. 

Isaiah foretold it:  The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  And he will destroy…the shroud that is cast over all peoples, and will swallow up death forever. 

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to that stubborn vindictive king’s wedding banquet—and if we hear the parable in its provocative fullness we might see that there is no comparison whatsoever. 

Let us pray.  Gracious God, let us hold on to your good news.  May we rejoice in you always. Show us how near you are to us.  And fill us with the peace that passes all understanding, guard and keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.

Easter Sunday 2020; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Human life moves between two darknesses.  We begin life out of the darkness that surrounds us before we are born, and we end life with the darkness of death.  Life is what happens in between these two dark times.  All along the way, though, there are other dark times.  Given all the darkness that surrounds our lives, we might have a hard time living in the light, if it were not for the promises of God.  Brilliantly bright promises like those we celebrate today– hope, forgiveness, and new life.

But, even Easter is not all brightness and joy.  In fact Mary came to the tomb while it was still dark, the gloomy memories of the last few days shrouding her mind.  Her grief would have weighed down on her like a blanket of dark.  She was not going there to do a happy or pleasant thing.  She was going to put sweet smelling spices and oils on the corpse of her well-loved and well-known friend.  It was one final caring action she could do for his crucified body.

During the terrible days she had just experienced the one they had placed all their hopes on had been betrayed and denied by close friends, he had been falsely accused, tortured, mocked, and killed in a slow and painful way.  All but a few women had deserted him.  She must have felt alone and completely drained.  She might have thought that nothing else could possibly happen to disappoint her.  Then arriving, in the dark, she found the tomb empty.  Even his dead body was taken away from her.  She told Simon Peter and another disciple.  After they looked for him without success they left her alone again, without any answers, alone with her grief and doubts and loss. 

It was there, alone and without hope, as the light of day broke that Jesus, appeared to Mary and called her by name.  There in the place of death, life and hope shattered the darkness and gave Mary a reason to believe again, a reason to celebrate and share her news.  As a people living between life and death we too are called to believe and celebrate even when suffering or death are just a moment behind or ahead.  It is the dark story of Jesus suffering and death followed by the surprising bright dawn of Easter that makes it possible for us to celebrate life even in the face of death. 

A pastor I know of told a story about how she learned through ministering to one of her parishoners that it is the very darkness of Jesus’ suffering and death that gives the resurrection such bright power.  This pastor enjoyed a wonderful friendship with a family in her parish.  The parents in this family was about 50 and the wife and mother in the family had become a close friend of the pastor.  Their house was always full of good music and laughter.  Then their only child was killed in a car accident.  The pastor came to visit and found the parents avoiding each other and not talking.  After a few minutes the woman asked her pastor to leave saying she wanted to be alone.  People from a local grief group came to offer their support.  The woman kept saying she wanted to be alone.  The music fell silent in that house and the woman retreated to the dark quiet of the basement and paced the floor. 

Again the pastor came to visit.  She went into the basement with her and paced with her.  She sensed the anguish the woman felt, the sadness and anger and emptiness.  She silently paced with her and the woman began to share her pain.  She spoke of her despair and loneliness.  She tried to explain that she just had to be alone.  The pastor decided not to pray with her at that time.  She went out and prayed in her car as she left that grieving household. 

Some time later it came to her what to do.  She found a rough cross.  She typed selected words from Psalm 22, including the words Jesus quoted as he hung on the cross.  “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night but find no rest.  I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.”  Then she added the words:  You are not alone.  Jesus is in union with all believers.

The pastor took the paper and the cross to the grieving woman with a request that she read it over and over again.  Then she left her alone as she had been asked to. 

Time went by.  The pastor continued to pray for her but left her alone.  Eventually the woman called and asked the pastor to come over.  They sat in the bright light at the kitchen table this time, not in the basement.  The woman looked different.  She quietly but steadily described her pacing and reading.  She set up the cross in the basement and let it be with her.  Then one day, as she paced and read the words typed on the paper she sensed that someone else was groaning within her, at first groaning the words of the psalm and then crying the words, “I’m gonna live.” 

As they shared Holy Communion at that kitchen table the woman told her pastor that it was through living with the dark pain of the cross that could see the hope of new life in Christ and could believe again.  Darkness and sadness and loss all by themselves are life-taking forces.  But illumined by the presence of the crucified and risen Lord they become bearable, even more than that those dark times can be opportunities to see the depth of God’s love and the promise of new life.

The resurrection with all its brilliance follows the agonizing hell of Great and Holy Saturday and turns a terrible Friday into Good Friday.  It is almost too bright to consider; it is like looking straight into the sun at high noon.  It shines with a light that breaks into all the dark spaces of our lives because it originates out of the darkness of death and sorrow and anguish. 

We live our lives between two darknesses and with dark times scattered all through our lives.  Easter does not remove the dark times.  Easter shines into them and speaks a word of light and hope.  “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” 

Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2020;

ICCM in Diaspora; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Washing and feeding, washing and feeding, it is a rhythm we are familiar with.  My mom used to instruct us to, “Wash up for dinner” and I did the same things when my kids were little.  Now during the Coronavirus we are especially familiar with washing and feeding.  How many times a day do we wash our hands?  I bet we are all eating so many more homecooked meals than we have in years.  Our awareness is heightened right now.

The chaplain of a Baptist Children’s home in Texas tells a story about one little boy who never wanted to wash up.  The housemother had to ask him four times one day to get washed up for dinner.  He stomped past her, muttering, “All I hear around this place day after day is ‘germs and Jesus, germs and Jesus.’  So far, I ain’t seen neither one!”

Washing and feeding… I remember when my children were newborns—it seemed like all I did was wash and feed, wash and feed those hungry little ones.  We begin our lives dependent on others, washed by other’s hands and fed the food that will sustain us.  Gradually we learn to do things for ourselves and then even to care for others.  Being washed and fed evolves into washing and feeding oneself.  Dependence develops into self-reliance.  And we come to live with the illusion of independence and self-sufficiency.  Right now we are tested by the isolation.  I know I am more aware of how much I need other people and how much I miss them when I am unable to gather with friends and family.

On Maundy Thursday, when we read the story of the last supper, complete with the story of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet I think of my great aunt named Rubye.  She and her husband Chuck lived in Moorhead, my hometown.  They didn’t have any children and lavished lots of love on me and my sister Betsy.  I was sick a lot as a little girl and when I had to miss school my mom would bring me either to my grandma’s house or to Rubye’s house when she went to work.  Rubye and Chuck were fun to be with—they played cards with me and fed me lots of treats.  Rubye was a big woman, very big.  She had arthritis and diabetes.

As she got older it got harder and harder for her to move about and care for herself.  Our roles changed some over time.  After I got my driver’s license I would visit them on my own.  I got allergy shots every week at a clinic near their house.  I stopped to see them nearly every week and we would play cards and visit.  I know how much they looked forward to those days.

Rubye and Chuck had a neighbor named Faith who also came to visit them every week.  She brought them groceries and she also provided some personal care for Rubye.  Faith would tend Rubye’s big, arthritic, and diabetic feet.  She washed her feet and trimmed her toenails and massaged her sore bones.  She took care of Rubye’s bunions and corns.  I expect that Rubye looked forward to Faith’s visits even more than my visits.  I expect it was hard for her to accept such intimate service, to be washed by someone else.   

Footwashing—it’s a personal thing, uncommon in our lives, handwashing we can relate to.  But for the disciples, washing up for dinner meant not hands but feet.  Footwashing was an absolute necessity in Palestine.  The road and pathways were packed-down soil.  During the dry seasons they were covered with dust.  In rainy weather they turned to mud.  Footwear consisted of cured leather sandals.  Before entering a home, feet had to be cleaned.  Large water jugs were put beside the door for that purpose.  Richer homes had foot-washing servants. 

Jesus and his disciples, like many people of his time, may not even have worn sandals.  If that was the case, then they really would have needed a foot washing that day.  Since they wouldn’t have had a servant to wash feet, the disciples probably took turns doing it for one another. 

On this one night, the night of the Passover, Jesus was the one who took up the task.  Maybe they had been bickering about whose turn it was.  It wouldn’t have been the first time they fought over status and who was the most important.  Over and over again the disciples showed a silly stubbornness, not unlike the kind of quibbling between siblings over whose turn it is to take out the garbage or wash the dishes. 

I imagine that Jesus ended the bickering by teaching a lesson with his actions.  He humbled himself and evidently embarrassed the disciples in the process, exposing their pettiness with his loving service.  He demonstrated powerfully that greatness is shown most of all in service.  His actions spoke louder than any words could.  Those actions said, ‘I love you.  I will serve you.  I send you to serve one another.”  Then, in case they didn’t get it through his example he told them. 

John 13: 12-17, 34-35: After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants^* are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them… ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

Maundy Thursday brings us up to the threshold of this Most Holy Time.  It brings us right up to the betrayal of Jesus, to the cross, and to the tomb, reminding us that what matters most is not our independence and self-reliance, but those things that Christ does for us.  Today shows us that we need to be washed and fed by Christ. 

We cannot gather right now, so our entry into the dark agony of Jesus’ passion must be a solitary one, were in the quiet of our own homes we can consider how he was denied, mocked, whipped, killed and buried.  The one who came into the world with love and justice was pushed aside and hung on a cross to die. 

Part of me, and maybe part of you too, would rather turn away from this part of the story and from the nasty grisly parts of life.  If we can’t have Easter dinner, with all the trimmings, chairs crowed around a family table, if there will be no egg hunts this year, couldn’t we just move right through to resurrection? 

If we consider the cost of life and freedom in Christ we can glimpse the depth of God’s commitment to us, to justice, to love.  Even as Jesus was being plotted against and set up to die, he offered love and gentle personal service and a meal to his followers.  He offered himself as hope and truth and ultimate victory over the worst this world has to offer.

Washing and feeding.  I am hungry for the table of the Lord, hungry for the words, given and shed for you, in remembrance of Christ. I am hungry for community, for nourishment and strength, for forgiveness and peace and purpose.  Especially now, when danger is invisible, carried on human droplets, when our patterns are disrupted, when we worry for our loved ones who work in essential services or for those with underlying health risks.  We live covered in the dust and germs of this world’s struggle.  In the rituals of the church we are washed and fed. 

Jesus gave a command:  To love as he loved, to forgive as he forgave, to give as he gave, to pray as he prayed, to help as he helped, to do as he did.  And he provided the food we need for the tasks.  This year as we sit at our isolated tables, remind us that we are united in one Body, the Body of Christ.  As we eat whatever food we have and drink whatever drink we pour, remind us that Christ is our bread and blood. Christ supplies our needs, fills us with himself, gives us new life, new hope, and new strength we need to fulfill his command.  Amen.

Hosanna!  April 5, 2020; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

This is not how I expected to be spending Holy Week.  I thought Steve and I would be watching the crowds thronging to the beaches.  Today, Palm Sunday, I expected the ladies in the Spanish Speaking Congregation of Iglesia Cristiana Congregacional de Mazatlan to have beautifully decorated the sanctuary with Palm Branches.  Daniel, Steve and Rich would be playing the opening strains of All Glory Laud and Honor, the trumpet’s clear sound rising over the voices of the English Speaking congregation.  I was looking forward to the first (hopefully annual) Palm Sunday brunch potluck at Linda Hannawalt’s lovely home on Libertad Street.  As the season wound down, we would try to fit in as many farewell -for this- year dinners at our favorite restaurants with friends.  The warmer weather would mean morning coffee on the patio watching the hummingbirds flit between my neighbor Sylvia’s azalea tree, the hibiscus plants and her feeders.  We had plans.  We thought we knew what to expect. 

Jesus’ followers had expectations too.  He was headed to Jerusalem, the seat of religious and political power, for Passover.  Special meals and rituals would recall the ancient plagues and God’s liberating power to save the people.  Their hopes were pinned on this unlikely man, Jesus.  Centuries of longing were going to be fulfilled in this Messiah.  They waved their cloaks and whatever they could find along the dusty roads, palm branches held high in acclamation with cheers of Hosanna!

Hoshiya-na, Hosanna in Hebrew, means Save, Please!  Like a failing swimmer’s cry for help as they struggled to make it to shore, Ayudame!– the word changed over the years.  It came to mean, Salvation! in the sense that even before a call for help was uttered, help arrived.  No longer a victim’s plea, it became an exclamation of praise bubbling from the heart of the endangered as the lifeguard could be seen racing through the turbulent waves to save the drowning. 

The story of the faithful follows a repeating pattern: threats come and then salvation, disaster and restoration, death and rebirth. We know this from studying the scriptures, from reading history.  This too shall pass.  God is good, all the time.  We know this from our own lives too—when we have felt the strength of the community, the support of prayer, the presence of God carrying us through difficult times.  But this global pandemic—this is not what any of us (except maybe the doomsday preppers) know or expected.

We are asked or commanded, as the case may be, to stay safe at home.  Shopping and restaurant parking lots are empty.  Even the beaches in Mazatlan during Semana Santa, normally the busiest time of the year, are vacant for the very first time.  Social isolation means even the faithful are sleeping in on Sunday mornings, or watching hastily prepared video broadcasts of preachers proclaiming to empty sanctuaries.  On this first Sunday in April pastors everywhere are consecrating the elements for the Eucharist via YouTube.  Communicants are individually partaking of their own bread and cup, simultaneously in dispersion.  Not in anyone’s wildest dreams would this be so!

It is a drab morning here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.  I write this from my desk in the loft of our home, looking out our floor to ceiling window.  A dozen deer are silently making their way through the grey and dormant landscape, avoiding the icy patches in the shade they nibble on our brush pile and the tender shoots of my rhubarb plants.  If I close my eyes I can seen the congregation now scattered: a few still in Mazatlan.  Are Rich and Wendy, Keith and Sylvia sipping coffee or tea, watching the waves crash on the empty beaches on either side of the Casa del Marino? Are Chuck and Katy, Bob and Cheryl, Kirk and Carol hunkered down in the Pacific Northwest, one of the hotspots of this silent, invisible threat—the coronavirus?  Are our friends from Alberta wearing wool socks and fuzzy robes warming their feet by a blazing woodstove?  Surely in all these places and more, masks and gloves and sanitizer are ready by the doorways for any essential excursions. 

Like Jesus’ first followers our expectations have not been met.  We face mortality in a new way, the future uncertain. But unlike those palm waving crowds we know the ending of the story.  We know that the betrayal, denial, suffering and injustice of Holy Week was followed by God’s ultimate salvation—resurrection.  We know through the witness of Mary and Peter and others that God has more in store for the world than we can even imagine.  The nationalistic dream of a restored Israel with Jesus on the throne of David was too small a hope.  God’s holy plan is bigger and bolder.  The prophets tried to tell them.  “Behold I am doing a new thing!” (Isaiah 43.19)

Paul proclaimed it for the early church, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation h as come!  The old is gone and the new is here!”  (2Corinthians 5:17)  Each year the cycle repeats, the message is proclaimed.  Each year our hopes and dreams are too small.  This year, 2020, the whole earth finds itself at a standstill during Holy Week.  We wait for what we cannot know, crying Hosanna!  Save us!  Ayudame! 

Surely our dreams and hopes are too small.  We may long for a return to the old normal: palm branches waving, a potluck brunch complete with baked ham and green bean casserole in Grandma’s china dishes, friends and family around the laden table, every chair in the house crowded to fit, the freedom to shake hands, hug, and kiss cheeks.  But this grand pause can direct our attention to the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine! (Ephesians 3: 20)  And so, we are called to open our hearts to trust God’s repeating pattern of salvation. 

Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us the faith to go out (or stay home!) with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  (Martin Luther’s evening prayer.)

Steve has a section of this blog called Cop Out and About. Take a minute to read his latest writing .

March 15, 2020, One Body—Living Water; ICCM; John 4: 5-42; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

There is a hymn for holy communion called One Bread, One Body that goes like this.  One bread, one body, one Lord of all; one cup of blessing which we bless, and we though many throughout the earth we are one body in this one Lord.  Gentile or Jew, servant or free, woman or man, no more.  Many the gifts, many the works, one in the Lord of all. 

We are One Body, the Body of Christ, with various gifts and talents, interdependently entwined.  Our gathering for worship today feels poignant to me.  We come here as the Psalmist said, to sing, to make a joyful noise, to give thanks and praise, to bow down and bend the knee.  It is so good to be together.  This is our lifeblood—our community, a place to give, to serve, to support, to grow, to be held in prayer and Christian love. 

The decision to suspend our services for this season is hard.  We will miss this sharing of physical presence with each other. Some may think this is a premature overreaction. I hope they are right and this whole mess does not materialize as the scientists and mathematicians are predicting, and as has happened in Europe, China, Korea, and as is happening in the United States and Canada already.  But I think that is wishful thinking. 

I believe the decision will contribute to a greater good.  Those of us who are here may be healthy.  If we contract the virus it may be no more than something like the common cold.  But we are acting as the Body, linked together with all of God’s creation, with those who are very old, with those who are frail, with those whose underlying health conditions put them at greater risk.  We are acting to protect the medical workers who will be overtaxed as the outbreak happens and community transmission begins. We are acting on behalf of those we may never meet.  We all need this pandemic to move slowly enough for our collective medical systems to hold the very ill so that all of the very ill can be taken care of. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, and orderlies are a precious and limited resource.  We are protecting them in our action.

Perhaps you’ve seen this story online.  I read it again this week and thought it most appropriate for today.   

A man was asked to paint a boat. He brought his paint and brushes and began to paint the boat a bright red, as the owner asked him.  While painting, he noticed a small hole in the hull, and quietly repaired it. When he finished painting, he received his money and left.

The next day, the owner of the boat came to the painter and presented him with a nice check, much higher than the payment for painting.  The painter was surprised and said “You’ve already paid me for painting the boat Sir!”

“But this is not for the paint job. It’s for repairing the hole in the boat.”

“Ah! But it was such a small service… certainly it’s not worth paying me such a high amount for something so insignificant.”

“My dear friend, you do not understand. Let me tell you what happened:

“When I asked you to paint the boat, I forgot to mention the hole.

“When the boat dried, my kids took the boat and went on a fishing trip.

“They did not know that there was a hole. I was not at home at that time.

“When I returned and noticed they had taken the boat, I was desperate because I remembered that the boat had a hole.

“Imagine my relief and joy when I saw them returning from fishing.

“Then, I examined the boat and found that you had repaired the hole!

“You see, now, what you did? You saved the life of my children! I do not have enough money to pay your ‘small’ good deed.”

The careful decisions we and others make for the sake of those in need may be like repairing all the ‘leaks’ we find. We may never know who we are protecting.

Most of the time when we think about how we are the Body of Christ, we think of it in terms of our own congregations or families.  This pandemic offers us an opportunity to see how truly connected all of God’s world is.  China, to Italy, to Mexico, or Canada or the US. We are all one body, interdependent and in relationship, even when we can’t see that connection or feel it. 

In our gospel today Jesus is alone in the desert. He encounters a woman and has his longest recorded conversation in all of the gospels. The woman, whose name is never revealed, is out in the heat of noonday because she has been ostracized and shunned, and is on her own to provide for her most basic needs. No father, husband, brother or son is around to look after her. And there is no group of women to share her story, wipe her tears or help her to laugh.

Jesus needs to drink fresh water to live. The woman also needs a drink: she needs the fresh, living water of grace and truth only Jesus can provide to drink deep of healing and wholeness and a new life. And in their various needs, these two affirm their mutual humanity. They share in the holy Source of Life that transcends all boundary, custom, hatred, fear and scarcity.

In the desert at noon, with all distraction stripped away, all shadows erased, the light shines bright enough for these two strangers to discover that they need each other. As they are transfigured in the light of the noonday sun, each enemy sees the face of a friend. Distance dissolves into relationship. Enmity melts into mutuality. They glimpse a spiritual wholeness, a new healing reality.

Jesus models a barrier-breaking relationship of mutuality and compassion. The woman is bold enough to both remind Jesus of what separates them—he a Jew and she a Samaritan—and of what connects them—their ancestor Jacob. She is audacious and spars verbally with this strange man. In their truth-telling, she experiences him as prophet and in turn she is acclaimed for speaking the word.

To this day, the Samaritan woman is honored in many cultures. In southern Mexico, La Samaritana is remembered on the fourth Friday in Lent, this week in fact.  Aguas flavored with chilacoyota, tamarindo, jamaica and horchata are given to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. The Orthodox know her as St. Photini, or Svetlana in Russian. Her name means “equal to the apostles,” and she is honored as apostle and martyr on the Feast of the Samaritan Woman.

The gospel witnesses to the gift of God for all God’s children. In the vulnerability of an interdependent community, in the insistence upon relationship, in the breaking down of barriers. Jesus shows us a new way to learn about one another, learn the truth of one another, and learn that we need one another. True worship takes place not at a sacred mountain or even a shared ancestral well, but in a relationship with the person of Christ, who is the wellspring and mountaintop of hope and peace.

On another day, also about noon, Jesus will face death and again confess his thirst. On that day, only vinegar will be offered—in mockery. The gift of his living water will not be apparent to the one holding that sour sponge. But today, when Jesus and the Samaritan woman meet, they conspire to bring life out of death. The water they offer each other, water that quenches the thirst of body and soul, holds the gift of life for all.