Ageless Christmas

What is it about Christmas that makes us ageless?  Somehow this time of year easily and consistently takes me back to memories of years gone by.  I ponder the lights on the Christmas tree in our house and at the same time feel myself transported to the sofa in the living room of my parents house where every year my mother and I would sit side by side and admire the Christmas tree together.  The smell of coffee and Christmas bread reminds me of the early morning Julotta services at church where I would have to patiently wait for my parents to drink that second cup of coffee at church before we got to go home and open the presents that Santa had brought.    There is the same swelling of emotion and pride at choir concerts and Sunday School programs as I remember in the years when our children were young.    Now my heart is filled as I watch other parents and grandparents grinning ear to ear with their child’s performance.  I made rosettes last night and could see my mother and our neighbor, Julie, standing in the kitchen making them while I had to stay a distance away because of the hot oil on the stove.     The memories keep flooding back and I am 8 or 12 years old in my heart.   I am 25, 30, or 40 again in my mind.

All these memories can be comforting and reassuring but for many it is also a bittersweet journey.  Times and lives have changed.  People are missing from our holiday celebrations.  Traditions have evolved to accommodate scattered and busy schedules. I desperately cling to some pieces of the holidays that connect me to past memories while at the same time realizing that there is no way to go back and that time and change will continue to march on in our lives.  Of course some of that is good.   It is good to grow up.  It is good to be flexible enough to embrace new opportunities in life. Yet, it always seems to be an emotional mix in this season.  

And then I come to the Christmas story.  There it is again.  The same story from the gospels.  The one everyone knows and has heard over and over again.  For a preacher it is hard to figure out what could possibly be said that is new or refreshing... but then maybe that is the message.  In the midst of changes, in the midst of things we cannot control in our lives, in the midst of the sometimes bittersweet emotions of the season, there is something that is unchanging.  Jesus comes to us - a little baby born in Bethlehem.  Thanks be to God for the unchanging, unconditional love of God revealed to us at Christmas. 

Advent Tug of War

I had one of those days recently.  You know the kind.  A day when you have perfectly timed out a plan in your head so that you can make the most efficient use of your time and get everything done.  That is until the day actually starts.  What began as a happy morning, suddenly took a turn as activities took twice as long as expected.  Nothing went wrong but even pleasant interruptions and circling the hospital parking lot four times for a parking spot intensified my frustration of not keeping to the appointed agenda. 

This advent has been that way.  For much of it, God and I have been playing a game of tug of war.  I imagine God smiling and laughing as I have tried so hard to pull on the rope to get it to come my way. Alas, God has held strong.

Slowly and finally the message has come to me.   Our timing is not God’s timing.  How often I have used that phrase - usually in the context of someone dying or receiving a difficult diagnosis. But this year it seems to me that it is also the advent message that God has been trying to teach me.  The more I plan and get anxious about checking things off my “to do” list, the more hurting people come to visit me.  Each person, unaware, has been a messenger of Advent.  Not only is my timing not God’s timing, but my priorities of  tasks over  people have been misplaced.   This week, I thanked God for a couple that came in asking for assistance and told me all about their life story.  They were messengers of Advent as I put aside the piles on my desk and focused on their desire for better times in life.    
It is in Advent that we wait, we wonder, we hope, we dream and we believe that God will come to restore us and  make us new.    It is in unexpected interruptions -  the announcement of Gabriel, the imposed travel for a census, the appearance of angels in the night sky - where God’s love intervenes with hope.  And perhaps it is in the interruptions of our daily schedules that God continues to break in to redirect our paths.  The proclamations may come in such humble packages from unanticipated visitors that they could be easily missed in the frenzy of busy days.  It is in anticipation of unexpected interruptions that I enter in to the last week Advent with joy. 

The Other Sermon

     I am preaching this weekend.  My problem in preparing a sermon is not a lack of ideas.  My problem is having too many ideas and needing to choose one that I think I can develop in to 10 -12 minutes of something meaningful.  Often the “other sermon” is what I share at the communion services in nursing homes. However, I have decided that this blog may be a place to share some of my undeveloped thoughts that continue to intrigue me.  

     This weekend’s text is the parable Jesus tells about the end times in Matthew 25.  Jesus returns in glory as king, gathers the nations, and separates the sheep from the goats.  On the one hand, the sheep receive eternal life because they have fed the hungry, visited the prisoners, etc.  On the other hand, the goats are punished for sins of omission in not caring for the “least of these.”  It is a tough text with some hard questions for a wide variety of reasons. 

     What I find curious is that both the sheep and the goats are surprised by the dividing.  Neither group realizes what they have done or not done.  Jesus seems to be able to discern something that they do not even realize.  When I was researching the difference between sheep and goats, I further discovered that in the wild and certainly in Jesus’ time it was very difficult to tell the difference between sheep and goats.  Primarily it is their tail that gives them away.  Goats have a tail that stands up and sheep have a tail the goes down.  Goats aren’t inherently bad and sheep aren’t inherently good.  They are both very useful animals.  The curious difference comes more in what I would call attitude.  Goats are independent, like to go their own way, more frequently butt heads with the other goats while sheep prefer to stay in the flock and will follow wherever they are led.  In fact in the sale barns today, sometimes a goat will lead a flock of sheep into the ring only to slip away and lead another group in while the sheep are being sold for slaughter.  The men at Bible study this week exclaimed, “sheep are just dumb.”

     So what does all this mean for us?  “Thank God I am a dumb sheep” or “I hope I’m not a stubborn goat.” Is it our resistance to recognizing our need to live in community that Jesus is addressing?  Is it our independence that gets us in trouble?  How often are we the ones who want to decide who is in and who is out of our community, church, family, etc?  

Maybe you can continue this "other sermon" for me. 

Free Love Hippie?

Last spring I was standing in line at the post office waiting to mail a package.  In my mind I was reflecting on the gospel story about the man who was born blind and thinking about the different kinds of blindness there are in the world today.  As I turned to leave, a man in line said to me, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice how you are dressed.  You might be interested in this.”  He handed me a business card.  I received the card saying, “thank you,” and walked out the door. 

To my amazement the card read, “Hippie from Iowa.”  Once in my car, I ruminated the whole way home.  Hippie? Me?  What is there about my dress that says “hippie”?  Okay, now my daughter says that my wardrobe is dated and I dress “frumpy”.  I didn’t think I was doing that bad but I was wearing shoes that look a little like earth shoes from the ‘70s,  a long khaki skirt,  and my pink tweed coat.  Maybe it is all a little dated since I bought it used at least 5 years ago but retro is cool, right?

Anyway, according to the card, the gentleman in the post office line has written about his “coming of age” experiences, learning about sex and traveling Europe during the 70s.   Maybe I should be flattered that he thought I was in to the “free love” movement but obviously he pegged my age if not my temperament.

So ultimately, the question is, “what did he see?”  And perhaps more to the point, what do I see when I look in the mirror?  Obviously, they are two different things.  And when I am out in the community, am I truly seeing the people around me or just passing judgment about whether they are like me or different from me?  Blindness comes in many different forms, from denial to distrust.  But then I wonder what God sees.  No amount of wardrobe choices cover or confuse who we really are before God.  Yet in God’s great mercy, we are the recipients of “free love” through Jesus Christ.  Open my eyes, Lord, and let me see Jesus.

To Be a Spider Plant

Ministry is a rewarding career.  I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than being able to share the good news of Jesus Christ in a variety of ways.  However, there aren’t very many concrete measuring tools.  The kind of success that I generally value is not related to numbers but more about the spiritual growth that goes on inside of a person. It is hard to hold that up to a yardstick.  That’s when I look at my spider plants.   

When I moved in to my office at Trinity, formerly occupied by Pastor Sam Hamilton-Poore,  I inherited a spider plant.  I remember meeting with Pastor Sam before I started and making a joke about the poor plant.  It was laying sideways in a pot with very little dirt.  He said he would leave it for me as a gift.  Within the first month of starting at Trinity I took the plant home, re-potted it, and put it outside in the spring sunshine to see if it would survive.  By the end of the summer, I was overwhelmed with spider plant “babies” hanging off the plant.  I cut and potted a few and returned the original to my church office.  Since that time, they have multiplied with so many new spider plants that I haven’t known what to do with them or where they have all gone.  My college age kids have them in their apartments and dorms.  I put them in with my annuals flowers outside at home and at our businesses.  They adorn the front entry of the cafe downtown.  I have given them away to friends and strangers who then have given them to others.  As I started to move my plants inside for the winter this year, I potted numerous spider plant babies to give to the youth to sell at the Scandinavian Bazaar.  One forlorn little spider plant at Trinity has given birth to countless other plants that have gone all over our community and beyond in the last 5 years.


When Jesus talked about discipleship, he used familiar images from his environment:  vines and branches, sower and soils, mustards seeds and trees.  I wonder if Jesus lived in north Iowa today, he would say, "You are spider plants."  We are to send out shoots of growth, creating new plants.  These plants then find their own soil where they can grow and create more new plants, eventually to the point that no one is sure where they all came from or where they all have gone.   


Sometimes, I like to think about the ministry at Trinity as trying to live up to my spider plant.  In the last five years, it is my hope that some words and actions of comfort, hope and challenge have reproduced in others.  And it is my belief that shoots of spiritual growth from Trinity have made an impact all over our community and beyond.


(For those of you wondering... After a 3 week silence of returning to regular ministry responsibilities and evaluating some responses to this blog, I have decided to continue writing.  Because of other time commitments, the entries may not be as often as they were during my sabbatical but will evolve as my life experiences reveal God to me in fresh ways each day.)

A Perfect Autumn Day

What a great day!  Thirty six friends from Trinity made the journey from Mason City to Iowa Falls to board the Scenic City Empress Boat for lunch and a cruise along the Iowa River.  The weather was lovely, the food was delicious, and the fellowship was wonderful.

As I sat on top of the boat watching the vista of colors, experiencing the gentle flow of water, and reflecting on the beauty of creation, the words from Isaiah 55: 12 seemed to be exemplified before me.

For you shall go out in joy,

and be led back in peace

the mountains and hills before you

shall burst into song,

and all the trees of the field

shall clap their hands.

I hope your autumn days are filled with God's blessings and thank you to those who shared this one with me.

All Behavior Has Meaning

      It is said,  “All behavior has meaning.”  I’m not exactly sure if I completely believe it but I do think behavior sometimes reveals more about who we are as people than we realize.  Every once in a while, I have fun analyzing what I am doing(or what I forget to do) and what it reveals about my psycho/spiritual self.

      I slipped back in to church on Friday to go through some mail and get re-oriented to what has been happening.  I started to resume my usual "pre-sabbatical" morning routine but immediately experienced a difference.  Noah is driving himself to school. (Motorists beware of a rusty blue pickup J)  For the first time in 17 years, I don’t have anyone to drop off or pick up from school.  What will I do with all my extra time?  Instead, I went to my favorite coffee shop, (you might know which one) and filled my to-go mug.  They brew Hazelnut on Tuesdays and Fridays so those are always good days.  I wore jeans and a sweatshirt to church so no one would take me too seriously.  I pulled in to the parking lot but in spite of my routine, I discovered that I had left my calendar at home.  Oops.   I carefully packed my bag the night before, like a kid going to the first day of school, but left it in the kitchen.  Yes, all behavior has meaning.  I guess I am ready to be back at church by the end of this week but maybe not for the calendar of activities and commitment to a schedule.  In fact, I haven’t worn a watch for two months and I actually misplaced my calendar for over a month during my sabbatical.  You don't have to be Freud to figure that one out.

     On a completely different note, however, I arrived at church only to discover a whole other way that all behavior has meaning.  Extraordinary things have been happening with many extra-ordinary behaviors by our church members.  What was the spark of the Holy Spirit moving in one person’s life to do something of incredibly generous proportion for the church, has been fanned in to a “wild fire blaze” of activity since I have been gone.  Kitchen renovation, demolition of the old parsonage, new carpeting, stained glass repair are part of what appears to be contagious generosity, excitement, and caring .   Benevolence has abounded through time, talents, and unexpected charitable gifts.  All behavior has meaning and the meaning of Jesus' gospel teachings have truly found expression in multiple kinds of behaviors in the last two months at church.  I am humbled to minister to, with, and ministered by such a wonderful group of committed servants of God.

      And so I was led from my external parking lot self examination of what I forgot to do, to an internal soul searching of what I ought to do.  If all behavior has meaning, and the church is filled with good stewards and disciples, then what am I to learn from their examples?    How do I prioritize what is meaningful in my life.  Do my actions reflect the hierarchy of importance?  What does my charitable giving, or lack there of, demonstrate about who I really am as person? And through it all, thanks be to God for the meaningful behavior of so many people.