Baptismal Renewal in 2011

by the Rev. Nancy Christensen
Southeastern Synod Director for Mission

There's a website called "threadless.com" in which artists can submit designs for t-shirts, and the "community" of viewers can score them to determine whether they get printed, or not. The shirts chosen are for sale, and the designs are quirky, bizarre, funny, ironic... you know, "artistic"! One of my favorites is a drawing of a giant squid under the water, holding a stick with the head of a monster above the surface. It's called "Loch Ness Imposter."

As 2010 comes to a close, I'm resonating with that image. It seems there are many of us who often feel as though we are pretending to be something we're not, and who are living with regrets or disappointment as we look back over the past days and months. We believe it's not enough to be a squid! We want to give the world what we think the world expects from us, and so we work hard to fool ourselves, and everyone else.

But, we are forgetting that, even as squids, we are immersed in the waters of our baptism! We are claimed by God so that in each new day we might be emboldened to begin again, and to be born anew. Over and over, we hear God speak that we should "be not afraid" because we are loved, just as we are!

Maybe 2011 is just the opportunity we need to take God's love seriously, and to live more fully into the gift of our baptism. Instead of looking back with regret, perhaps we can look forward with all the hope and possibility that the new year affords to us. And, perhaps we can even go further, still, committing ourselves to taking risks in faith that will make a real difference.

Dave Daubert, Kelly Fryer, and Tana Kjos have created a consulting group called, "A Renewal Enterprise." Their mission statement is this: Be who you are. See what you have. Do what matters. Like the Threadless t-shirt, this mission statement also resonates with me, and speaks to my inner squid. It says that we are free to participate in God's creative experiment without needing to BE more or to HAVE more than what we've already been given.

For this freedom, I, for one, am extremely grateful.

We give you thanks, O God, that through water and the Holy Spirit you give us new birth, cleanse us from sin, and raise us to eternal life. Stir up in your people the gift of your Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever. Amen.
(from "Affirmation of Baptism," ELW, p. 237)

A Christmas Reflection by Bishop H. Julian Gordy

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us." (John 1:14)

John's gospel begins, not with the birth of Jesus, but with a theological statement of incarnation: literally, "...the Word became flesh and pitched its tent with us."

The incarnation is a mystery that theologians and philosophers have pondered and argued about for centuries. How is it possible for the Creator to become a creature? How could an unlimited and infinite and immortal and unknowable God become limited and finite and mortal and knowable in the way we humans are limited and finite and mortal and knowable? How could the Almighty One who created the Himalayas and the Grand Canyon and the solar system and supernovas become an infant who has to have his diapers changed and be potty trained and learn to eat solid food? How could the God of Righteousness come to need scolding by his parents? How could the all-knowing Creator experience the ordinary fears and ignorance of childhood or the emotional and physical chaos of a teenager or the confusion and anxiety of adulthood?

The idea is the stumbling block and the scandal to some. The best answer that Christians can give is, "It's a holy mystery." But it is a mystery not primarily handed down to us as theology. It is given to us as a story, a very familiar story, a story told and sung and acted out over and over every year at this time.

The whole world knows it by now. In that birth, we believe the God of the Universe became not just a human, but a very specific human being - a poor, temporarily homeless refugee, the victim of an overbearing government policy. The event that we mark now as the turning point of human history was marked then only by the baby's parents and a few shepherds. No one else paid much attention.

In this familiar story, if we are paying attention, we discover that God is not only indescribably majestic, unapproachable light, not only inaccessible holiness and omniscience. God is also one of us, as helpless and wholly reliant on his young and inexperienced parents as any other infant.

I can't wrap my mind around the reality of the God of the swirling galaxies and the big bang, the totally other, outside time, Ground of All Being. But like most of us, I get babies. I've seen them and held them and welcomed them into the family.

In Bethlehem of Judea, on the first Christmas, God came to us as a baby, spoke to us in a language we can all understand - in the story of a baby's first cry, a mother's protective love, a father's anxious standing by. For two thousand years we have been telling the story because it is the best we can do to explain the unexplainable, to say thanks for something so fine as this baby who is evidence that God is with us, with the least of us, with every last one of us.

God is with the poor and the hungry, with the homeless and the unemployed, with the lonely and the addicted, with the sick and the dying. God has not forgotten the refugees and the persecuted and the misunderstood. God is with us. God is with us in the dangerous city of Kandahar, in the refugee camp in Darfur, in the walled-off-prison city of Bethlehem.

God is with us when our marriages fall apart, when our children get in trouble. God is with us when our health fails, when age and disease whittle away at our stamina and our competence. God is with us. So we tell the story again until we can see God with us. We tell it until we can see God with the unwanted and forgotten of the world. We tell the story until it is pressed into our conscience, until God becomes incarnate in us and we begin, to some degree anyway, to become Christ to our neighbors, incarnations of the good news that God loves the world.

Welcoming the Visitor

Pastor Darrel Peterson, Assistant to the Bishop

Most of us know the importance of being a friendly and welcoming church. But so often reports come back that someone attended worship and no one, NO ONE, (except maybe the pastor) spoke to them. We hate to hear it. Sometimes we make yet another effort to create a system of intentional welcoming. We have the members stand and greet those not standing. We ask visitors to put gold crosses on their clothing, so members can welcome those so identified in the fellowship hall. We have members stand near the pastor, so when the pastor recognizes someone is new, he or she can turn and introduce the visitors to the designated welcomers.

Well, it happened again. Someone new to the community attended worship in one of our churches and reported to me that no one spoke to him in the fellowship area after worship. Yes, the pastor greeted him on his exit from the sanctuary. But it was a large church, and the pastor greeted him anonymously. When he got to the fellowship hall, folks were enthusiastically visiting. Some were obviously networking regarding church business. The treats were good. The coffee was “church coffee”. He tried different locations in the room, but no one spoke to him. Being an active Lutheran, he recognized what was going on. He remembered the church he had come from and supposed some of their visitors had had a similar experience.

I reflected on another conversation I had with one of our pastors who lamented how his daughter and son-in-law (finally) checked out churches in another state and reported similar, less than welcoming experiences. His daughter, who had grown up actively in the church, did not feel welcome! He continued to say they now were more likely to go hiking or to go to the gym on Sunday mornings.

You may be thinking that this blog is painfully mundane and lacking in Christmas spirit the week before Christmas. Well, it is, but Christmas is a time when we can get a “fresh cut” on the trunks of our real trees. Perhaps we can take in some water to nurture our tree and keep the needles from falling off.

Mary and Joseph were welcomed into the “overflow lodging”. Early visitors to the stable were the God-sent angels and the shepherds from the countryside. Our Christmas story is about welcoming the Savior, who came into our midst in humble circumstances. The story is most uncommon and would be followed by an uncommon story of God’s salvation for humankind.

Perhaps we can take away from the Christmas story a fresh sense of welcoming. Circumstances may bring them. But chances are we may have to meet them in the community. We need to welcome, realizing their coming will change who we are. And is everyone welcome? We say it is, and it needs to be true. Chances are, God will have some surprises for us. We may need to turn ourselves “inside out” to grasp the power of truly welcoming the visitor. What will it take for us to be a welcoming church? Probably nothing less than a new cast of angels and whoever is out there with the sheep.

The Cross and Christmas

by the Rev. Dr. Delmer Chilton, Assistant to the Bishop

A few years ago, on a Thursday afternoon just before Christmas, I went down to a local retirement center for a concert. Several of the members of the Choir were also members of my church.

They did a very hilarious version of “I'm getting nuttin’ for Christmas.” Do you know the song? A little boy sings about all the mischief he’s been in, and then the chorus goes:“I'm getting nuttin’ for Christmas, ‘cuz I ain’t been nuttin’ but bad.”

After I finished laughing, I started thinking and realized that while that line sums up a lot of our thinking about how God works, it’s just not true. Indeed, it is the exact opposite of the Gospel truth; it is because we “ain’t been nuttin’ but bad” that we have received the one gift we needed, which is Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Not just or primarily us as individuals, but us as the human race, us as humanity, As the Bible says, God so loved the World, the Cosmos,that he sent his only beloved Son.

It’s not so much that we are individually evil, it’s that the world is in a mess, and needs to find its way out. The first Christmas came at a time of political and social unrest. Israel was once again a conquered country, living under the domination of the Romans, ruled by King Herod, a cruel, cruel man.

When Christ came, there was hunger and social injustice and war raged upon innocents, all in the name of such things as Truth and Justice and National Security. Then as now, the old values had become skewed and obscured and unrecognizable and public life was shrill and uncivil.

And into such a world God sent the Son.

The message then and the message now is that we are not alone in the midst of the world’s evil, though we, collectively," ain’t been nuttin’ but bad," we’re still getting something for Christmas.

God has come to us in the midst of our distress. In the middle of our loneliness and despair, God has sent us a sign of his love. Into a world filled with hopelessness, God comes to us in the hopeful form of new life and new birth.

Back in the 1960’s, a Methodist Minister I know graduated from the Seminary at Drew University in New Jersey and was sent to his first church, near a little farm town down east of Raleigh, NC.

In July, he had his first funeral. In seminary they had told him that the choir should sing whatever the family requested, and so he asked the widow what song she wanted, she said, “He liked Silver Bells. He always said he wanted Silver Bells sung at his funeral.” So my friend swallowed hard and said, "We can do that."

So it was that on a blistering hot day in July, in a little country Church without air conditioning,
the choir stood up at a funeral and sang, "Silver Bells, Ding a Ling, it’s Christmas time in the city."

My friend said he would never forget the confused look on the faces of the congregation as the choir sang verse after verse of Silver Bells at a funeral. As the minister led the procession across the street into the cemetery, the widow caught up with him and whispered, "You know Pastor, I was wrong. It wasn’t Silver Bells he wanted. It was When they ring those Golden Bells. "

Christ came to be a beacon of light in a dark world, Christ came to show us love in the midst of hatred and strife. Christ came to bring life in the midst of death. Which is why it is not such a bad idea to sing Christmas songs at funerals.

It is a reminder to us that Christ did not come to be cute, Christ came to die; the cross hovers over the manger of the Christ Child.

Christ did not come so that we can have parties and give gifts.
Christ did not come, to reward us for being good, but to save us from being bad.
Christ came to show us the love and care of God in the midst of a deadly and dangerous world.
Christ came to show us how to live and how to die.
Christ came to die upon the cross for us, to save us from sin, death and the devil.

Which is why, on Christmas morn, we will sing with somber joy and reverent jubilation:

Silver Bells, Ring-a-ling, it’s Christmas time in the city.
I’m getting’ sumin’ for Christmas, even though I been nuttin’ but bad.
For unto us a child is born, who is Christ the LORD.

Working While We Wait

by Mr. Kyle Cristofalo
Coordinator of Programs for Hunger, Poverty and Justice Issues

I have never been particularly good at waiting. When I was younger I would dread having to get my hair cut because the prospect of sitting patiently still for 20 minutes was too much for me to imagine. How could I sit and be calm when there were so many other things to do? What was the point of getting my hair cut if it would just start growing back the next day anyway?
I was the same way in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Each year, starting as early as November, I would scour my house in search of Christmas gifts my parents may already have bought. I would beg my mom to tell me what presents I could expect. I would offer to give some of my Christmas money to my sisters if they would do undercover investigation work for me. Despite very rarely succeeding at finding out what presents I would get, I still tried every year hoping that maybe I would locate the secret treasure I longed for. My mother would quickly reprimand me each time, noting that I shouldn’t be so concerned about my presents. I’m sure she said more, but it was as if she we were speaking different languages. She clearly could not grasp the urgency with which I spoke.

Advent is supposed to be a season of waiting. Derived from the Latin word Adventus, which means “coming,” we are called to eagerly anticipate the birth of Christ; celebrating the event whereby God came to the world in human form. We are called to suspend our earthly temptations to be completely overwhelmed by Christmas preparations, and remember that our celebrations have nothing to do with presents, but everything to do with the advent of the One in whom we trust for salvation. We wait, in addition, for the time when our Savior will return again, confident in the knowledge that Christ’s work on earth is not yet finished.

But is waiting the proper response? Do we miss valuable opportunities for mission by remaining silent? My questions do not derive from my previous admission of impatience. In fact, as I’ve grown older I’ve come to appreciate the time to silently wait for the time when suffering will be no more. Instead, it comes from my unyielding belief that we have been called as God’s partner in the ministry of justice and reconciliation. It is important for us as Christians to understand that waiting does not negate the call to action; we can never be numb to the problems of this world even if Advent calls us to a time of waiting.

In the book of Amos the prophet angrily admonishes the Israelites for their penchant to over-ritualize their faith. God hates that they have chosen to focus so completely on rituals while simultaneously oppressing those who are innocent. Without an ethic of justice and actions to back up their offerings, the gifts become an affront to God.

We must ask ourselves if we too are guilty of such self-serving practices. Have we been numbed by this persistent call to wait? Do we wait on God to fix the day because we cannot be bothered to act as God’s partner? Our call to be followers of Christ does not allow us to sit idly by and wait for better days. Our commitment to follow Christ compels us to understand that a world “where justice rolls on like a river and righteousness like a never ending stream” will never come if we do not act. We must commit ourselves daily to be co-workers of Christ, not only praying for a new world in which our swords are turned into plowshares, and every person is given access to basic human rights, but doing our part to make it come faster. As we enter this Advent season I pray that you will join me in committing ourselves to be the change we seek. The change we so desperately need. With God’s help, I know it is possible.