Gracepoint

Luke 10:38-42

Mary…  sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.  –Luke 10:39

For a long time now, I have had a vision of creating a community of listening.  I have called this place, “Gracepoint.”  A point of grace.  Gracepoint would be a place apart from the frantic pace of life in today’s world.  A place that holds sacred space open.  A place of healing.  A place dedicated to prayer and reflection.  A place where people could stop for a bit to hear the still small voice of God, contemplate the Word, and sit at the Lord’s feet and just listen.  I realize there are already such places in the world.  Retreat centers.  Monasteries.  Bible camps.  But there are not nearly enough of them.   

There are plenty of places where Martha would be comfortable. Places where people are dedicated to building and binding and mission and ministry and witness and teaching and preaching and doing God’s work with our hands.  Places of action and advocacy.  Places of service and compassion.  Places where Samaritans care for people who have been cast into ditches.  People the world walks by unnoticed.  Places where people dive into the frantic brokenness of the world and work tirelessly to share the love of Christ.  This is important work!  Holy work!  Gospel work! But sometimes, I fear that we risk getting so busy with our ministry that we lose our moorings and our roots and Jesus winds up just getting honorable mention in what WE are doing to save the world.  

I live and work in Martha’s world.  But, I yearn for Mary’s.  Both are important and necessary in the life of the Body of Christ.  But I confess that, there are days, when I would step out of Martha’s world in a heartbeat if God opened the door to bring the Gracepoint I have imagined into being.  But, right now, there are still dishes to be done.  And, like the rest of us, I have to settle for finding those points of grace to reconnect to Christ wherever I can in the midst of the busy-ness of life.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

I pray that you can find times to sit at Jesus’ feet and just listen.  Thanks for reading.

Proclaim the Reign

Luke 10:1-24

“Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them ‘The kingdom of God has come near you.” --Luke 10:8-9

I tend to be an optimist. There is something deep inside me that is convinced that problems can be solved, that people can work through conflicts, that people and congregations can grow and that positive change is possible. I generally assume that most people are people of good will and wantto work things out, solve problems and contribute to positive change even when we don’t see those things in the same way. But, lately, I’ve been finding it harder and harder to maintain my optimistic worldview.  Cynicism has crept in.  I’ve begun to wonder if anything ever will change.  I have been feeling tired of trying.  

In this week’s lesson, Jesus sends seventy people out to prepare the way for him as he makes his way to Jerusalem and to the cross.   He gives the seventy a pretty focused mission: to extend peace to the people they meet, cure the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God.  He warns them that they will meet resistance, but also that they should receive the hospitality extended to them.

I admit, I’ve been wrestling with what it means to proclaim the Reign of God this week. It’s hard to proclaim the Reign of God if you can’t see it.  And it is hard to see it if you are overcome by a fatalistic cynicism that limits your vision like a nighttime fog on a twisty road.     But, then I realized that in spite of the many legitimate reasons to succumb to cynicism and even despair, God is at work in the world!  So here are just a few examples.  Maybe you can think of a few of your own.

Just a few weeks ago, I was in Tanzania visiting our companion church there.  The Tanzanian Lutheran Church is one of the fastest growing churches in the world.  That alone is cause for celebration.  But, I was struck by their hospitality, their welcome and their generosity.  I was awed by their excitement and eagerness to share their faith with us, and with anyone who will listen.

I thought about the many little churches (15-50 in worship) in our synod who are deeply engaged in caring for people in the name of Christ: immigrants, the homeless, the hungry, the poor, the suffering, the struggling, strangers and friends in their communities. Our churches have meal programs, and are involved in advocacy efforts, and are working to build bridges with “the other” right outside their doors.

I thought about congregations who are welcoming new people to the faith.  Who are growing in faith, love and devotion to God.  Two of our smallest congregations have each baptized over a half-dozen people in the last year!  One of our largest congregations continues to grow steadily and welcome newcomers.  More than one congregation has embraced the radical inclusivity of the Reign of God and it shows in the vibrancy of their ministries both inside and outside of their church walls.

The Reign of God is drawing near!  God’s Shalom – wholeness, peace, healing – is happening!  The sick are being cured!  Oh, there is still resistance.  Always will be.  Jesus is clear about that.  But he is also clear about the Good News that, because God reigns, all things are possible – including resurrection and new life.

I think I feel a spark of optimism.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.  I pray you see the Reign of God breaking into your world this week.

Who is My Neighbor?

Galatians 5:13-23

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  --Galatians 5:13-14

Paul’s words to the Galatians echo the teachings of Jesus.  Jesus says that the law is summed up in two commandments:  “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:38-39).  But, what does it mean to “love your neighbor as yourself?”  In discussing this with a lawyer (an expert in the Law), the lawyer asks Jesus this question, “Who is my neighbor?”  Good question.  In response, Jesus tells the well-known “Parable of the Good Samaritan,” a story about a Samaritan caring for a Jew who had been beaten and robbed. (Luke 10:25-37). Samaritans and Jews did not like each other, and did not get along, a point that would not have been missed by the lawyer.  But the answer to the lawyer’s question, “Who is a neighbor?” is ultimately this:  “The one who shows mercy.”  Being a neighbor is to show mercy.  Even to one others might ignore, avoid or even disdain. But, what does mercy look like?   In the “Parable of the Sheep and the Goats” in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his listeners that the one who feeds the hungry, gives a drink to the thirsty, welcomes the stranger and clothes the naked and cares for the “least of these,” does it to him.  (Matthew 25:31-46)  That’s mercy. Compassion.  Kindness. In the “Sermon on the Mount,”  Jesus teaches that we should even love our enemies! (Matthew 5:43-44).  Paul teaches that, through Christ, we are freed from sin, death and the devil, not just for our own sakes, but so that we might serve our neighbors, and to do the good works God has prepared for us to do. (Galatians 5:1-14, Ephesians 2:8-10).

So, in our own time, who is our neighbor?  Our neighbor is not just the person who lives in the house across the street, or who sits in the pew next to us on Sunday morning.  Our neighbor is also the person who is of a different race, or ethnicity or who speaks a different language, or comes from a different culture.  Our neighbor is also the person who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or describes their gender in a way other than we do.  Our neighbor is the immigrant at the border, or living in our community, or the refugee seeking asylum from violence and war.  Our neighbor is the person who we disagree with on almost every hot button issue out there, who votes the opposite way we do, and who says and posts stuff that makes our blood boil.

The question is, how do we love all these neighbors in the way of Jesus?  With mercy, compassion, kindness and servanthood. The way Jesus taught us to love.  The way Jesus himself lived.  Like the one who, while we were still sinners, gave his life for our own.  Luther put it this way in his explanation of the 8^thCommandment,  “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations.  Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”   

This “loving our neighbor” business is complex, challenging and never easy.  We often fail at it miserably.  Sin, death, and evil continue to have their way with us.  Lord have mercy on us!  And, praise God!  In Christ, the Lord does, graciously freeing us through the power of forgiveness so that we might go about the work at loving our neighbors again and again.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading. Pray for those neighbors who you find it hard to love.

Afraid of Jesus?

Luke 8:26-39

Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.  –Luke 8:37

A few years ago, my wife was asked to rehab an injured, young blue heron.  Herons are large, beautiful birds with long sharp bills and lots of attitude.  She put the bird in our guest bathroom tub and set to work caring for the bird.  The bird didn’t realize she was trying to help.  She had to wear a protective mask to keep the bird from poking out an eye.  It reacted in fear whenever she tried to take care of it.  But her love overpowered the bird’s fear and, eventually, she returned the bird to the wild.  (This is a picture of release day)

This week, I’ve been struck by the attitude of the Gerasenes to Jesus’ healing (the Greek literally says, “saving”) of one of their own.  One would have thought they would be grateful for Jesus’ saving act which both freed the man from his torment, and the community from their need to try to control him.  Instead, like my wife’s blue heron, they react with fear.  Rather than thank Jesus – they ask him to leave.   

In pondering all this, I wonder, are there times when we, like the Garasenes, are afraid of Jesus and his power?  Of his power to transform us through the renewing of our minds? Of his power to change us.  Of his power to save us?  Change can be a scary thing, and Jesus’ love can change us!

It’s easy, I think, to turn Jesus into a sweet guy who we can call on when we need him; to see him only as a kindly comforter.  But, that’s not the Jesus we meet in the New Testament. Jesus embodies God’s love and compassion, yes.  But Jesus also wields God’s awe-full and overwhelming power.  He calms stormy seas with a word.  He overcomes legions of demons.  He defeats the power of death itself.  And that kind of power can upset the apple carts of our lives, run our precious herds off the sides of cliffs, and knock over our sacred cows.  Jesus’ teachings can challenge us, and sometimes, yes, even terrify us, especially when we are comfortable with the status quo -– as unsavory as that status quo may be.  

Sometimes Jesus’ love and grace for us can feel like law to us, especially when his love for us challenges us to love in new and not-so-easy ways.  Sometimes Jesus’ love and grace comes as Gospel, as good news for our weary, tormented souls. Often times, it comes as a little bit of both!

When we feel challenged by Jesus’ teachings, we might be tempted to ask Jesus to leave.  Or, we might just look for another church where they preach a less uncomfortable Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t occasionally strike fear in our hearts.

We can be a lot like blue herons.  But the good news is that Jesus just keeps on loving us, and saving us and healing us, and sending us out to declare how much God in Christ has done for us. 

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.  Pray for those who are tormented to be comforted, and for all of us to be challenged by the powerful, life changing love of our Lord.

The Assault on Truth

John 16:12-15

[The Spirit of truth] will guide you into all the truth.  –John 16:13

“What is truth?”  Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, asks Jesus this question during Jesus’ trial before his execution.  It’s a question being asked a lot these days.  In recent years, the whole idea of “truth” has been under assault.  There is, it seems to me, an emerging cultural belief that each of us has the right and responsibility to define our own “truth;” that “truth” is a relative thing tethered to our own personal experience.  In the era of “fake news” and media spin and our tendency to read and watch and listen only what we happen to agree with, this relativism divides us into rigid camps of certainty and, at the same time, leaves us feeling like we are walking on glare ice much of the time. 

Against the backdrop of this relativistic assault on the whole concept of “truth,” how do we hear Jesus’ promise that the “Spirit of truth will guide us into all the truth”?  “Truth” is a key concept in the Gospel of John. In John, Jesus himself defines the truth because of his relationship with the Father who is the source and basis of all truth.  According to John, God’s Word is truth and Jesus is that Word made flesh.  It is the Spirit of truth which opens our hearts and minds to see the truth that Jesus embodies.  As disciples of Jesus, we do not define our own truth, Jesus does.  As disciples of Jesus, it is not our personal experiences that create our truth, but our trust that, in Christ, we come to know the Truth that is God.

That’s heady stuff. But, if we are to find a solid place to stand in the whirling world of relative truth, it gives us a place to start.  And, that place is found in teaching and way Jesus himself.   It is found in the life, death and resurrection of the one who came to show us the depth of God’s great love for the world – the whole world – no exceptions. It is found in the one who says to Pilate that his “kingdom is not from this world” (John 18:36) who transforms the world by defeating sin, death and the devil, freeing us from fear so that we might love others (yes, even our enemies) as he loved us.

So, is this just one more relativistic “truth” in a world of competing truths?  Perhaps.  But I believe it is something more.  Much more. The Truth which Jesus embodies reflects the deep wisdom that lies at the heart of all creation.  Why?  Because the Truth he reveals is the God who created the heavens and the earth, and you and me, and everything that exists.  He reveals a Truth worth staking our life on because it gives life not just to me, but to everyone else – even those who think and believe and act differently than I do. 

This is why proclaiming the word and witness of Jesus needs to be at the very center of who we are and what we are about as disciples of Christ.  It can’t just be background noise, or subtext or corollary to a life of faith.  It is the Truth which transforms the world, even when we, as is so often the case, fail in our efforts to do so ourselves.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thank-you for reading.   

Between Betrayal and Denial

John 13:31-35

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  -John 13:34

In just a few days’ time, I will be on my way to visit my friends in the Morogoro Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.  I will be accompanying four women from the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod who are going to Tanzania to begin building relationships between women in our synod and women in the diocese.  This is not a “service trip.”  We are not going to “do for…” the people there.  We are going, quite simply, to get to know one another better, so that we might accompany one another in mission and ministry more effectively in the future.  We offer ourselves.  They offer themselves.  We will give and receive.  They will give and receive.  Together, we will learn from one another in a deeper way what Jesus means when he tells us to love one another as he has loved us.  We will celebrate both the ways we are different and the ways we share a common humanity and faith.

It is striking to me that Jesus’ new commandment to love one another as he loved us (which he demonstrated by washing his disciple’s feet – the master serving the student) is sandwiched in between Judas leaving the upper room to betray Jesus and Jesus telling Peter that he will deny him three times.  Between betrayal and denial, Jesus calls his disciples to a servant-love that will bind them to one another in the dark and painful days that lie immediately ahead of them, and on the challenging and often dangerous journey they will take following the Resurrection and Pentecost.

Learning to love like Jesus loves, means doing the hard work of figuring out how to love one another when we find ourselves living in the tension between betrayal and denial.  No easy task.  

What I hope and pray we will all learn during our time in Tanzania is that Jesus’ love is so powerful that it transcends a world that is fractured by factions and fighting.  I hope we will experience how Jesus’ love binds disciples across cultures and languages and nations and anything else that might divide us.  I pray that Jesus’ love will move us beyond platitudes and paternalism, beyond romantic mushiness and sentimental sweetness, to take seriously those things that divide us, embrace the wonder of our diversity and motivate us to work together for the good of all people.  All people.  

In a world where fleeing immigrants are treated as less than human, where people are attacked in subtle and not-so-subtle ways because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, the religion they practice, their orientation or their gender, learning to love in the way of Jesus is a critical step in learning how to walk together as siblings and as friends.

Sometimes, it takes going half way around the world to figure that out.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Please pray for us as we travel this next week. Look for the next “On the Way” reflection in two weeks.  Thanks for reading!

The Mortality Factor

John 10:22-30

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand.”  --John 10:28

I don’t think I fully appreciated my own mortality until my senior year of High School.  Sure, I knew, intellectually, that one day I would die. But, like most seventeen-year-olds, I figured that was a long, long way off.  But then, one of my peers died.  He was in the class after mine.  He was driving home from out of town late one night when his car left the road and crashed. We weren’t close friends, though I knew him and we talked from time to time.  We had talked just a few days before he died.  I remember how hard it was to get my head around the fact that he was gone.  That death had claimed someone my age.  That my youth did not exempt me from dying.  His death forty years ago had a huge impact on me, and I still think about him from time to time.

Today, in the light of school shootings, kids being gunned down in the streets of our cities and the pervasive reality of violence in our world, the fact that the reality of my mortality didn’t sink in until I was seventeen almost seems quaint.  On the other hand, Americans seem bent on doing everything we can to defy life’s ultimate reality, and to push death back back as much as possible.  But, the truth is, death is coming for all of us, and it is no respecter of age, economic status, privilege, power or place.  Our inevitable mortality is a problem that we, on our own, cannot fix.

Jesus’ promise of eternal life stands out in bold relief against the backdrop of this cold reality. It almost seems too good to be true. And, for some, it is.  But for those who believe it, it has the power to change our whole way of looking at, and living our lives.  Knowing that, though we will all die,  death will not have the last word can give us a bold confidence to be who God created us to be, and the courage to face our mortality head on, not avoid, defy or deny it.   But, even more, knowing that, through Christ, our lives have been given to us, allows us to live with gratitude and thankfulness for how ever many days we have been given.  Knowing that our futures are secure and that no one and no thing can snatch us from God’s hand means we don’t have to live fighting for our own survival all the time.  It frees us to live, not for ourselves, but for the sake of sharing the life we have been given with one another and for joining hands and fighting the pervasive reality of death together.

Eternal life is an amazing gift not just for some point down the road, but right here, right now.

This doesn’t mean that Jesus’ sheep don’t have struggles, get sick, suffer and die.  We do.  It just means that we know that we never have to face the valley of the shadow of death alone and that there is always, always life waiting on the other side.  That’s the hope of the Resurrection.  That’s the hope of Easter.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.