YOU Feed Them

Matthew 14:13-21

And all ate and were filled.   –Matthew 14:20

One of the universities where I worked spent a lot of money hiring a marketing firm to help them reach out to prospective students.  After a year of research and development, the university unveiled it’s new campaign, “It’s all about U.”   Billboards, newspaper ads, brochures and a new website all declared “It’s all about U.”   I cringed.  But, the campaign was successful.  Enrollment increased.  It seems that students resonated with the “It’s all about U.” theme.  I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me.

Not much has changed since those years.  Today, many still resonate with the “It’s all about you” philosophy of life.  I hear it in the churches too.  Driven by anxiety, a sense of scarcity and a fear for their own survival, congregations adopt an “it’s all about us” approach to life and ministry.  The result of such myopic thinking is exactly the opposite of the goal.  Congregations turned inward invariably continue to decline and eventually die. 

Jesus’ way is different.  Jesus teaches that it is never all about us.  The Feeding of the Five Thousand is a story about the power of looking beyond ourselves to the needs of others.  All the disciples could see was a huge problem and limited resources when they asked Jesus to send the people away.   Instead, Jesus turns their vision outward, and shows them how they could use their seemingly meager resources to maximum effect.  Then, he blesses their efforts and multiplies their offering so that everyone is filled.   No one gets sent away.  

Jesus changes the meaning of “It’s all about U” from inward focused self-service to outward focused compassion and care.  “It’s all about U” is not all about ME, but about the neighbor we are sent to serve.  It is all about us, but an “us” which is broadly and inclusively defined.  

The men, women and children around us are still hungry in so many ways.  His command is still the same,  “YOU give them something to eat.”   Dare we risk offering what we have and who we are to respond to his command?  If we do, Jesus will still bless it and multiply it until everyone is filled.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.   Want to help feed the hungry?  I would invite you to consider a gift to ELCA World Hunger, https://www.elca.org/hunger.  Thanks!

Life in a Fuzzy World

Matthew 13:24-30

“Let both of them grow until the harvest…”   -- Matthew 13:29

The theological style of Joseph Sittler, one of the most eminent Lutheran teachers of the 20^th century,  was once described like this:  “With both feet planted firmly in midair, he takes off in several directions.”  (Sittler, Grace Notes and Other Fragments, p. 24).  I think this description of Dr. Sittler’s theology can be aptly applied to Lutheran theology in general.   While it sometimes describes our Lutheran tendency to be wishy-washy on any number of topics, I think it also describes our willingness to live in the tension of opposites.  I think one of the strengths of Lutheran theology is it’s ability to acknowledge that there is a lot of fuzziness in the world and its assurance that faith allows us to stand in the midst of that fuzziness with confidence, courage and compassion.  

One of the cornerstone principals of Lutheran theology is that we are all, in this life, simultaneously both “saints and sinners.”  Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes our best intentions backfire in the worst possible ways.  Sometimes our biggest mistakes lead to new insights, learning and growth.  Life is always a mixed bag of good and bad, success and failure, joy and sorrow.   Paul put it this way, “I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…”  And again, “…So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.”   (Romans 7:15,21) 

Jesus’ parable of the weeds and the wheat perfectly describes the fuzzy world we all inhabit.

But what does this mean?   Does it mean simply throwing up our hands and accepting the evil in ourselves and the world around us?   In isolation from the rest of the story of Jesus and his teaching the parable seems to suggest that.  But that can’t possibly be what he means!   Jesus himself regularly challenged what he saw as the evil at work in the hearts and lives of people.  He cast out demons, called out Pharisees for their hypocrisy, embraced those cast aside by society and forgave people and told them  to “go and sin no more.”  He sent his disciples out to do the same.   He sent them and us out be the signs of God’s Reign and the proclaimers of God’s kingdom.  Wheat among the weeds.  Or is that redeemed weeds among the wheat?  Hard to tell sometimes.

Jesus sends us out into our fuzzy world with the promise that it won’t always be this way.  We won’t always have to dwell with our feet planted in midair.   Clarity will come.   The harvest will happen.  We get a vision of that clarity on Easter morning.   On Good Friday, evil had done its worst.  Jesus’ way of love and abundant life appeared to be defeated.  Death had seemingly crushed hope.  The weeds had choked out the wheat.  But, the Empty Tomb proved otherwise.  That vision calls us into God’s future, gives us the courage to stand here in the fuzziness, and the ability to dwell among the weeds and the wheat with compassion, forgiveness and mercy always looking for the best in ourselves and in those we meet day by day.

Peace,

Bishop Mike.

Thanks for reading.

Soil Science

Matthew 13:1-23

But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.  –Matthew 13:23

As we drove along in the van on our Spring Break service trip, we were talking about what our parents did for a living.  “My dad is a soil scientist.”  One student remarked.  “You mean, you dad studies dirt?!”  Another student scoffed.  “Who dedicates their life to studying dirt!?”  Everybody laughed (including me, I confess).  The daughter of the soil scientist looked hurt.  It  wasn’t the first time she had been ridiculed because of her father’s profession.  She launched into her defense.  She explained that managing the soil properly was essential to providing food for the world.  Her dad focused on working with natural soil preservation and renewal techniques that poor farmers around the world used to increase their harvests and move beyond barely surviving.  By the time she was finished, there was an embarrassed silence in the van.  “I never knew.”  The student who had ridiculed her admitted.

Even in Jesus’ day, farmers understood that good soil produced better crops.  They knew that roads, rocks and thorns were detrimental to the harvest.   In his interpretation of the Parable of the Sower, Jesus explained that God’s Word was the seed, we are the soil, and that the fruits the Word produces in us depend on the quality of the soil where it is planted.

It is easy to immediately ask the obvious question: what kind of soil are you?  And the follow-up question, “What must I do to make myself good soil?”  But I think those are the wrong questions.  My student’s father didn’t go out to the fields and tell the soil to get its act together!   I’ve never seen a field remove it’s own rocks.  Thorns don’t pull themselves.  The same, I think, is true for us.  God, you see, is the primary actor in this whole drama.  God is the sower who plants the Word in our hearts – through preachers and teachers, bible studies and devotions, worship and prayer, and the witness of God’s people.  Paul asks in Romans 10:14,  How can they believe without a preacher?  God is the one who breaks up the paths and roots out the rocks and thorns from our lives through the forgiveness, grace, and mercy that is ours in Jesus Christ.  God is the one who gives the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6).  When the Spirit goes to work on us, we bear fruit, fruit that will last.   Our only task is to listen.  Our only task is to hold the Word within us like the good soil wraps itself around the seed and let it grow into understanding. 

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.  

The Wisdom of Babies

Matthew 11:25-30

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”  --Matthew 11:25

Every time I started to preach, the infant three rows back started to babble.  Not cry.  Not scream.  Babble.  Baby talk.  “Sometimes her sermon is better than yours.”  The mother teased.  Or was she? 

I have spent the majority of my ministry in college and university settings surrounded by the “wise and intelligent” and those aspiring to be.  I like academic communities.  I love the life of the mind.  I enjoy scholarship, research and reflection.  I was perfectly “wired” for the ministry I was doing.  To this day I immediately feel comfortable the minute I walk onto a college campus.

But, it wasn’t in the halls of the academy where I learned my deepest lessons of faith.  I learned them in subsistence Mayan villages in Guatemala, from herders in the bush of Tanzania, from my friends George and Elizabeth in my internship congregation who had literally nothing by the world’s standards but were two of the richest people I have ever known.  I have learned some of my deepest lessons of faith in moments when wisdom and intelligence simply failed me.   Weeping with parents who lost a child. Eating a meal with a homeless drifter who radiated with the presence of Christ.  Sharing Holy Communion with an elderly couple separated by the ravages of dementia, yet still bound by an unshakable love for one another.  Frequently, I have learned more about who God is from people outside the church than those inside it.

I weary of all the people in the world who seem to think they know something when, in reality, they do not.  People who claim to have all wisdom and understanding and think it’s their business to point out everyone else’s failures, faults and foolishness.  People who think they know the mind of Christ, but don’t seem to understand Jesus’ heart.  The resulting diatribe does not deepen the faith, but deepens the ever growing divisions among us.  I lament when those kind of thoughts cloud my head or worse, spill from my mouth or keyboard. What we think is wisdom and intelligence can leave us fools. 

I have spent a lifetime learning how to push the locus of my faith from my head to my heart.  I still have a lot to learn.  And unlearn.  Yes, and sometimes the grace of God in Jesus Christ leaves me babbling,  speechless, and as silent as a newborn cradled in a parent’s loving arms.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading. 

Value Added

Matthew 10:40-42

[Jesus said,] “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive the prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous person.”   (vs. 41)

Not long after I was elected Bishop of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod someone said to me, “welcome to the dark underbelly of the church.”   Sadly, there is some truth in that.  One of the roles of the bishop is to walk with congregations and other ministries during difficult and conflicted times.   I admit I have seen Christians treat one another in very un-Christian ways in these last years.  I understand when a person who is no longer a part of a church laments, “Why would I want to belong to a church?   Look how they treat one another!”   I weep when I hear the painful story of someone who has been deeply hurt by people in the church and wants nothing to do with us.  I get it when someone accuses churches of being judgmental and hypocritical.    I’ve experienced it live and unedited.

A church, as a community of sinners, sometimes sins all over each other. 

So, why would anyone want to be a part of a community of faith?

In my ministry as bishop, I am also privileged to see the blessings that come from belonging to a community of faith.  In this ministry, I get a much broader view of the church than I ever did as a parish pastor.  Even after six years I still wonder at the breadth and the depth of the good Christians do in the name of Jesus all across the world.   I have witnessed churches surround total strangers with care in a time of loss or tragedy or crisis.  I have seen churches stand in solidarity with the outcast, the oppressed and the rejected of the world.  Christians have founded hospitals and schools in places no one else would dare to go.  I have heard many stories of kindness, compassion, generosity and forgiveness from people whose lives have been saved and transformed and renewed and healed in communities of faith.

A church, as a community of saints, sometimes – oftentimes -- embodies the holy in a hurting world.

In Matthew 10, Jesus describes the challenges and trials the disciples will face as they carry out his mission of proclaiming the kingdom of heaven and his ministry of healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers and casting out demons.  (10:7-8)   Following in the Way of Jesus is not always easy.  But he also promises a reward.  Oh, not of wealth or power or prestige.  No.  But in knowing him, and knowing the One who sent him.  In knowing the love and grace of the God who created the heavens and the earth and you and me.  That’s the value added of walking in this wonderful, challenging, joyful, difficult, often imperfect and always holy way of life Jesus invites us to travel with him and with one another.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

See you in church!   Thanks for reading!