Craig A. Satterlee's Blog

Coming in Currents:The Preacher as Sermon Illustration

2012-02-07T17:00:00.002-06:00

Is it okay for the preacher to use stories from their personal and family lives as sermon illustrations? The short answer is that opinions vary. Proponents of the preacher as sermon illustration remind us that Saint Paul says, “Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us” (Phil 3:17). They contend that what is true for Paul is equally valid for those whom Christ through the Church calls to preach. Moreover, research indicates that many people are engaged by sermons in which preachers refer to their own questions, struggles, insights, and joys. These listeners are drawn to sermons in which preachers reflect theologically on the meaning of their own experience as a lens through which to help the congregation encounter the gospel (Mary Alice Mulligan and Ronald Allen, Make the Word Come Alive: Lessons from Laity (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2005), p. 25.). References to the preacher’s own life can illustrate the point of the sermon, help establish identification between preacher and people, stir the people emotionally, and serve as an authority for the claims of the sermon. Thus, some listeners suggest that preachers share their vulnerabilities with the congregations, seldom make themselves heroes or sheroes of stories, and bring their experiences into dialogue with other sources of theological authority, such as Scripture (Ibid.).

On the other hand, some homileticans make a hard and fast rule: “Never use yourself as illustration.” They contend that people remember the story rather than the point, may identify negatively with the preacher, might be stirred emotionally in ways other than what the preacher desires, and may give the preacher less authority. Moreover, people may fear they will become “sermon illustrations” themselves. Opponents of the preacher as sermon illustration warn that the use of personal and familial material rather than material from the shared life of the congregation may signal that the preacher has no relation to the people, and does not desire one.

Somewhere in the middle, many preacher and teachers of preaching attempt to negotiate the tension by coming up with rules to guide them, including using personal illustrations no more than three times in the same congregation. Some say never be the hero; others say never be the dunce. I like the rule, “Never put yourself in the place of Jesus.”

I find that, as in all rules about preaching, they work until they don’t. Someone can always name a preacher or a sermon that broke the rule and the sermon was a smashing success—bringing people to faith, saving the congregation, or transforming the neighborhood. So rather than providing rules to follow, here are six variables to weigh.

First, David Buttrick warns of “split focus.” According to Buttrick, by speaking of yourself, the congregation will focus on you and the intended subject matter will not form in congregational consciousness in a satisfactory way. Preachers often use personal narratives to build relationship and demonstrate their humanity to create empathy. Buttrick contends there are better ways of building relationship (like visiting), and that our humanness will be all too evident to congregants without our putting it on display (David Buttrick, Homiletic Moves and Structures (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1887), pp. 94-95).

Second, research indicates that oeople want to know about their preacher—to a point. Parishioners want limits on both the content of personal material and the frequency of its use. They are clear that the pulpit is not a confessional; they do not want to hear about their preacher’s ethically inappropriate activities and behaviors. And we should only share our doubts when we have come to terms with them.

Third, preachers should weigh whether the personal material points to itself and the preacher or points beyond itself to Scripture, the gospel, Jesus and God. This can be difficult for the preacher to distinguish, since we all want to come across as a faithful Christian, visionary leader, and likable, even cool, person. So preacher might well to vet their personal material they want to use with someone they trust.

Fourth, preachers should weigh the unanticipated consequences of the stories they tell. The preacher people scratching their heads when he shared his frustration over his airline’s Admiral’s Club running out of shrimp the last time he flew.

Fifth, while some people want to use the preacher’s experience as a model for growth in the journey of faith, I need to weigh how much I want to be that model or example. Preachers cannot point to themselves in the pulpit and say their lives are their own out of the pulpit. Is your life so spiritually profound as to be exemplary? Mie is not. So if I talk about the ordinary things of my life—work and family, for example, without ever mentioning myself, my stories become our stories.

Sixth, how will others who share the story feel about you telling it? Their comes a point in our children’s lives, for example, when they are done providing sermon illustrations. So, always ask permission before using people’s stories in sermons, and never embarrass them.

I am mindful that not everything that happens to us is meant to be a sermon illustration. I pray that you have a pastor who hears your confessions and doubts, and special beloved ones to tell your best stories to.

Craig's Byberg Sermon

2012-02-05T16:30:00.000-06:00

Jesus Comes Home With Us!

Mark 1:29-39

“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Do I hear that right? After leaving their boats and their nets and their families to follow Jesus, the second stop that Simon, Andrew, and the Zebedee brothers make on their apostolic adventure is not to "go out into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." Instead, after a stop at the synagogue, where they are eyewitnesses to Jesus' teaching, authority, and power, these disciples bring Jesus home for sabbath afternoon lunch. The four fishermen who left everything to become, as I once sang in Sunday school, "fishers of men"—who left everything to bring people to Christ and not, as a church bureaucrat is reported to have said, "to capture members"—find themselves heading home to tend to the realities of everyday life, like a noon meal and a sick mother-in-law.

What are you heading home to tend to today? I'll make it home just in time to attend academic cabinet and personnel committee meetings. In the grand scheme of God's saving activity, a mother-in-law with a fever or the scheduling of next year's New Testament classes or a congregation burning up with fear, anger and anxiety, or a seminary struggling to become financially sustainable, all sound so small, so ordinary, so everyday, so us. For, while we long to get caught up in the salvific sweep of Christ's mission of transforming the world, so often we spend our days, we spend our ministries, we spend our lives tending to things small and ordinary and close to home.

Sigh. I confess to almighty God, before the whole company of heaven, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I long to do great things for Jesus. I long to do great things for Jesus. And, please, be clear: I am not fishing for compliments or reassurance. I get it that I lead a wonderful life. But bringing three thousand to faith in Christ through a single sermon, as Acts reports Peter did on Pentecost, still on my "bucket list." And walking on water with Jesus, even for an instant, still on my "bucket list." And revealing the messianic secret like Mark tells us Peter did, still on my "bucket list." Next week begins my seventeenth year of trying to convince seminarians that sermons are about Jesus and not about us.

How about you? What's next for you now that the annual meeting is over and the congregational budget is hopefully passed? I pray it's something Petrine. Yet, so often, the only kinship with Peter we can claim is the times we deny Christ and the ways we, like Peter, get in Jesus' way.

Except for this single story, perhaps, where all Peter does is to bring Jesus home to someone he loves—I assume Peter has a decent marriage and so loves his wife's mother. All Peter does is bring Jesus home to someone Peter loves—who is urgently sick and in need and burning up with fever. All Peter does is bring Jesus home to someone Peter loves who needs Jesus. And the remarkable thing is Jesus comes home with Peter and Jesus does the rest. Jesus—the teacher, healer, wonder worker, sshh, don't tell anyone—Jesus, the messiah, who has set out on his salvific mission of transforming the world—comes home with Peter and Jesus does the rest.

"And Jesus came and took her by the hand, and raised her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them." Now we get all agitated by the fact that poor Mrs. Simon-in-law has been sick and now has to jump up and serve Sabbath lunch, perhaps because that's the way some of us treat our wives and mothers. But that's not the case here. Peter's mother-in-law's fever prevents her from fulfilling her role, as senior woman in the household, of preparing the meal and serving the guests. While Peter's wife certainly could have served up supper, the privilege of showing hospitality to important guests fell to Peter's mother-in-law as a matter of honor not servitude. It's like when guests come to dinner at my house; no one gets near the kitchen without Cathy's express permission.

So, Jesus restores Peter's mother-in-law not just to health. Jesus restores Peter's mother-in-law to her social standing, to her place in the household. Jesus restores Peter's mother-in-law to community, to dignity, to honor. Just as Jesus called the disciples and they left their nets so they could follow Jesus, so Jesus raised Peter's mother-in-law up, and the fever left so she could serve Jesus.

In the grand sweep of God's saving activity of transforming the world, Jesus' power extends even to Peter's home. Jesus' power extends to our homes. Jesus' power extends to the people we love who need Jesus. Jesus' power extends to the small and ordinary things we spend our days, our ministries, and our lives tending. And Jesus raises the people we love and the small, ordinary things we tend. Sometimes, Jesus frees and empowers them to leave behind relationships, jobs, or past attitudes and actions so these things no longer control their lives. Sometimes, Jesus causes sin and sickness to leave us so that we are free to serve. Either way, Christ brings a drastic change from what was before when Jesus comes home with us to the people we love and the things we tend.

And the word spreads. "That evening at sundown, they brought to Jesus all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door [of Peter's house]. And Jesus cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons." And Simon and Andrew, James and John, found themselves caught up in the grand sweep of God's saving activity, all because Jesus came home with them to someone they loved who needed him.

So I've been musing about approaching preaching as Jesus coming home with us to people we love who really need him. I suspect that this kind of preaching would be all about Jesus, with preachers doing their best to get themselves out of the way. It requires preachers to love the ones at home, and to have an idea of what those beloved ones need. Rather than worrying about how to get swept up in the grand scheme of God's saving activity, we'll notice and appreciate when we're there. Mostly, bringing Jesus home to people we love who really need him means that, in one form or another, we will find ourselves standing at the foot of a cross.

After all, isn't that what the gospel is—God bringing Jesus home to those whom God loves who desperately need him? And there, in the place we need Jesus most, the place of ultimate pain and shame, forsakenness and failure, meaningless destruction and senseless death, Jesus raises himself and us up, bringing healing and dignity, relationship and victory, purpose and life.

So, Jesus comes home to this table. And whether we’re Peter, longing for apostolic adventure but tending ordinary things, or Peter's mother-in-law, too sick to serve, Jesus takes us by the hand as we take the bread and cup in our hands. And Jesus raises us up to honor and service. And after this stop at the Byberg synagogue, Jesus comes home with us to raise up those we love.

Coming in Currents: Good Friday

2011-12-22T21:08:00.000-06:00

This essay is based on Craig A. Satterlee, “Good Friday,” New Proclamation Year A 2011, Advent through Holy Week, ed. David B. Lott (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, 2010), pp. 224-231.

In “Preaching the Gospel of John: Abundant Life as a Vision for Christian Community,” the award-winning course I teach with Barbara Rossing, we are exegeting and preaching on John’s Passion as I edit this issue of “Preaching Helps” for Holy Week and Easter. Professor Rossing and I emphasize preaching John’s Gospel and not blending or conflating Passion accounts, and inadvertently proclaiming either an account of Christ’s Passion not found in Scripture or an interpretation of Christ’s Passion unfamiliar to the Church. For the Fourth Evangelist, Jesus’ Passion is the hour of Jesus’ glorification and his coronation as king. Jesus, who willingly and completely controls the situation, is “lifted up” and enthroned on the cross, where he completes his work of defeating the forces of evil and drawing all people to himself. It is the "hour” (Cf. John 2:4; 7:6, 30; 8:20; 12:23; 13:1; 17:1.) of Jesus' “glorification” (Cf. John 11:4; 12:23, 28.), the occasion of his departure to the One from whom he came. For John the cross is the moment when the One by whom the world was made lofted himself to the place of power and light, which he had in the beginning with God. If we are preaching from John, we need to preach Jesus’ Passion as God’s plan, Christ’s victory, and the hour when salvation is complete.

In Preaching John class, we find it helpful to divide John’s Passion account into its components scenes—Jesus in the garden, Jesus’ trial before the high priest and Peter’s trial in the courtyard (18:1-27); Jesus before Pilate (18:28-19:16); crucifixion (19:16-37); and burial (19:38-42). In so doing, the scenes that surround the crucifixion provide ways if preaching about it.

The garden scene shows that Jesus completely controls his fate. While we traditionally think of this episode as the betrayal and arrest, in the hands of the fourth evangelist, Jesus dominates the events of the garden and completely controls what occurs there. The Passion is underway because Jesus allows it to begin.

Jesus’ trial inside the house of Annas and Caiaphas and Peter’s trial outside in the courtyard contrasts Jesus’ faithfulness with Peter’s—and our—cowardice. The maid who keeps the door asks Peter if he is Jesus’ disciple. Whereas Jesus responded, “I AM” in the garden, Peter lies and answers, “I am not.” Peter then joins the very ones who came to the garden to seize Jesus around a charcoal fire (vv. 18-19). Jesus’ answer to Annas’ question about Jesus’ disciples and his teaching highlights the devastating effects of Peter’s denial.

Interrogated by Pilate (18:28-19:16), Jesus is revealed to be a king. In actuality, two trials again take place. Inside Pilate’s headquarters, Jesus stands trial before Pilate; outside Pilate’s headquarters, Pilate stands trial before the Judeans. A compelling image for me is that Jesus comes out to the crowd under his own power, still in control, dressed as a king. Unlike the synoptic gospels, Jesus remains dressed in purple robe and crown. He goes to the cross, his glorification, as a king.

They take Jesus to be crucified (19:16-37). Still in control, Jesus carries the cross himself to Golgotha. Jesus is “lifted up” between two others, already gathering people to himself. The author of John does not dwell on the bloody details of crucifixion (19:18) and neither ought the preacher of John’s Passion. The author of this gospel moves immediately to the inscription on the cross, another instance of Rome’s ironic proclamation of Jesus as king, written in the cultured languages of the empire. That Jesus is king is universally proclaimed and can be read by all who pass by, one more indication that Jesus is drawing all people to himself. Even though Jesus’ accusers protest, Pilate will not change the inscription. Once again, Pilate unwittingly proclaims the truth.

John’s account of Jesus’ Passion ends where it began—in a garden—as Jesus is buried by friends (19:38-42). Two secret disciples become public. Joseph of Arimathea secures the body of Jesus from Pilate and Nicodemus brings a very large amount of myrrh and aloes. Together, they anoint Jesus’ body with the spices and wrap it in linen cloths. Then they place Jesus in a new tomb. Jesus is buried as a king. In the garden that began this Passion account, Jesus was surrounded by enemies, betrayed by Judas, and misunderstood by Peter. In this garden, Jesus is surrounded by friends, who publicly witness to their relationship with him by attending to his body in a royal manner.

Taking My Own Advice

2011-08-01T19:31:00.000-05:00

My wife and daughter infrequently label one of my sermons a “keeper.” They did yesterday. So did my congregation. Obviously, I am not going to give it away word for word. I will say that it was a stewardship sermon based on what I say in Preaching and Stewardship: Proclaiming God’s Invitation to Grow. I preached from the lectionary, using the appointed First Reading and Gospel from the Revised Common Lectionary—Isaiah 55:1-5 and Matthew 14:13-21.

I began by asking, “How much is enough?” I acknowledged this is a question I ask, a question we all ask. The disciple’s answer, at least in terms of loaves and fishes, is, “Scarcely enough for ourselves.” Again, I acknowledged that this is often my answer. It is often our answer. I then gave Jesus’ answer: “Bring them here to me” (Matthew 14:18). I described what Jesus did with our scarcely enough and then talked about the offering being us disciples and bringing Jesus scarcely what we have. First, I described what Jesus does with bread and wine—Eucharist—then with our money in terms of hungry people. God’s vision and goal are found in the reading from Isaiah. God wants to feed everyone. I talked about the Horn of Africa. I talked about a stat that says every American knows ten people who are hungry—sorry I lost the link. I told this story about a 9 year-old girl and clean water. http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/01/washington.girl.death.donations/ I talked about thousands responding to a little girl’s death and moved to how we respond to Jesus’ death. I unpacked Jesus’ death and resurrection in terms of the gospel. I said our giving is and must be bigger than paying our congregation’s bills. We take some of our scarcely enough for ourselves. We place it in Jesus’ hands, and Jesus uses it to feed and change the world. It preached.

Craig's Sermon on the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

2010-10-24T21:19:00.000-05:00

Catching Up With Technology

2010-10-22T00:14:00.000-05:00

I spent today catching up with technology. I added a podcast page to my web site, set up a channel on You Tube (CraigASatterlee), and began fussing with a flip camera. It was a fun day and, with making espresso, a relaxing one at that. I am reminded of something my seminary president and mentor, Fred Meuser, once told me. He said stress relief does not come from sitting and doing nothing. Stress relief comes from getting so immersed in something other than your work that you forget about it. That's the kind of day I had today. It was a real sabbatical day! I am also proud of myself because my choice NOT to teach preaching online is increasingly pedagogical and not because I wouldn't know how to do it. I wonder, would you want a pastor who took his or her preaching class online My parishioners say that, if we ever go that route, this should be noted on the pastor's paperwork.

"The Preacher and Teacher of Preaching as Barista" has moved to its own Blog

2010-10-07T00:31:00.000-05:00

http://preaching-and-espresso.blogspot.com/

What I Preached at Notre Dame

2010-05-15T19:44:00.001-05:00

“Let Your Light Shine!”

Matthew 5:1-16
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God. “ So declared the invitation to this Evening Prayer of Thanksgiving. And tonight we lit candles, symbolically adding an explanation mark to Jesus’ command. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God. “ The temptation, I suppose, is to name your light, to bless you for your light, and then to send you with Jesus’ instructions to let that light shine. And yet, to yield to this temptation suggests that the light is, in fact, yours; that the light is something you possess, something that your years of theological education got you, something that we had a hand in giving you, something that you can and do control. To bless you for your light and send you to let it shine suggests that you are, in fact, Masters of Divinity.

If only this were so. Truth be told, this is not the first time you’ve been blessed and sent. Somebody, some body, some community, some assembly blessed you and sent you to Notre Dame to become a Master of Divinity. I hope we didn’t accomplish that. I hope you don’t leave us thinking that you have mastered Divinity, that the light is your possession, and that you can and do control it.

You see, the light—your light, my light, our light, any light that we possess—is a gift. It is God’s gift, poured into us in baptism, when someone lit a candle from the paschal candle and handed it to us or to someone on our behalf. In so doing, the Church declared that, more than God’s gift, the light that God gives us is God’s Very Self—the light of the Father, which brought order out of chaos and called forth life in God’s own image; the light of the Son, which shines in the darkest of places and cannot be overcome and which brings the dawn of resurrection; and the light of the Holy Spirit, which shines in our hearts and in our heads and in our hands, gifting us to share in God’s own work of reconciliation, recreation, and new life.

So what we have done together in these three years is not give you light, though I suspect there were times when we made you somewhat salty. Sometimes we trimmed the lamp, kindled the flame, and stoked the fire. And so your light shone brightly. Sometimes, we allowed soot and smoke to build up, withdrew the atmosphere and fuel that help a candle to burn, threw on a bucket or two of cold water and offered up some bushel baskets for you to climb in and hide. And your light shone a bit less brightly. And even if it felt like your light had gone out, it hadn’t. It hadn’t. And it never will.

For the light that shines in you is none other than Christ. It’s not up to you to conjure the light. It’s not up to you to control the light. Rather than claiming the light as your possession, allow the light that is Christ to possess you. When you do, I suspect that, wherever you are going from here and whatever you choose to do with your life, you will find yourself mourning, meek and merciful; hungry and thirsty for righteousness, bent on peace, poor in spirit, even persecuted. You will also be blessed for you will be sharing the life and the light of Christ.

In other words, you will be pure in heart. You will see God--at work in your life, in our world, in the people around you. You will be pure in heart. Or, as one translator put it, "Blessed are the single-hearted." Blessed are those whose hearts are fixed on God.

Perhaps something we learned in these three years is that purity of heart, single-heartedness, and faithful focus are difficult, if not impossible, to sustain amid the ambiguities of this life. Pain, loneliness, frailty and confusion are strong distractions, and the very questions of life cause our flames to flicker and to fade. And so it becomes very easy for us to conclude that such purity of heart, such single-heartedness, such faithful focus is a special gift meant only for a few special people, maybe those who have mastered Divinity. The problem with that is, even as they hand us the diploma, we know that we haven’t mastered Divinity.

The good news is that we do not have to. For, though Christ’s light is special, Christ does not confine it to special people. That’s what Jesus’ ministry, and especially the cross, is all about. And in the resurrection, Christ declares his intention that the light of his resurrection, the light of his love, the light of his life will shine so brightly that no one is left sitting in darkness, no part of creation is lost in the shadows, nothing is lost in death. As the Church declares in the Exultet, the glory of Christ’s resurrection is not diminished, even when its light is divided and shared. The default setting on the light that is Christ is to shine.

So, we bless you with the assurance that the light is not something you conjure or control. The light is Christ shining in you as he has since you were joined to his death and resurrection in baptism. And we send you not so much to let your light shine as to not hide it under a bushel basket. We do this best when we worry less about our own light and allow the light of Christ shining around us to keep us pure in heart, faithfully focused on God. So, more than blessing and sending you, we are here to thank God. For in these three years, your light helped us to be faithfully focused on God, even when you couldn’t see it.

Coming in Currents: "Mea Culpa!"

2010-02-14T21:53:00.000-06:00

Perhaps you noticed—or experienced—that life can be overwhelming. For several months, I experienced life as overwhelming and these days I am discovering by the balls I dropped just how overwhelmed I was. When I recruited writers for Preaching Helps, for example, I overlooked a few Sundays and festivals. For this issue, I neglected to recruit someone for Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. “Mea Culpa!” I ask you forgiveness for this (and any other recent) oversight, and I humbly offer these reflections in the hope that they will in some way contribute to your preaching.

On Pentecost (May 24, 2010), Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21 are paired to compare and contrast how God is at work in human communication. In Genesis, the LORD confuses human language, so that we do not understand one another’s speech, and scatters humanity abroad over all the face of the earth (vv. 7-8). Though we might want to see this diversity as God giving different gifts to different people, I cannot escape understanding God’s confusing and scattering as punishment for creatures made from dust attempting to “make a name” or build a “reputation” for themselves by making a city and tower out of dust. In other words, Babel is humanity’s second attempt to become like God. Regardless of how God intended it, confusion and scattering led to separation, estrangement, mistrust, and competition among the peoples of the world.
As the Book of Acts tells it, God undoes all this by giving the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Each of the apostles, traditionally representing one of the twelve tribes of Israel, received the ability to speak in the language of another nation. Everyone heard the apostles speaking in their native language. Babel was undone. The gospel of Christ Jesus and the Spirit of his death and resurrection unite us. God frees us from needing to make a name for ourselves, by naming us children of God and giving us the Spirit of adoption in baptism, making us heirs with Christ who, like Jesus, cry to God as “Abba” (cf. Rom. 8:14-17). By pouring out the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the unity, reconciliation, trust and cooperation that are ours in Christ Jesus become manifest as each and all hear the gospel in their own tongue. The Spirit frees and empowers humanity to bring glory to God by loving and serving the neighbor.
The doing and undoing of Babel also warns preachers and congregations who have declared their mission and vision and come up with their plan to b careful. Those who steeled on a plain in the land of Shinar had a vision, a mission, and a plan to make their name great. God blew in, scattering their blueprints to the wind and their lives in unimaginable directions. If the Easter readings were any indication, the apostles likewise had a plan: remaining behind locked doors or perhaps resuming a life of fishing. Yet, the Spirit blew and the apostles acted boldly and spoke with power. The pairing of these readings makes plain that, whether gathered or scattered, comprehending or confused, we are utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Our God both gifts and lifts us, so that we might participate in God’s own purpose. And God’s purpose is bigger than giving birth to the church. In Christ, God is about reconciling all humanity to God’s own self in ways that bring the world together. The sermon might help the Christian, congregation and church to consider how the Spirit is empowering and limiting us to share in God’s own work of reconciliation.

On Trinity Sunday (May 31, 2010), the church frequently explains a doctrine rather than proclaiming the gospel through the appointed readings. The homiletic challenge is helping people to understand why knowing God as Triune is important for our lives and for the world. The short answer is that we share the very life of God and Trinity revels to us what that life is and is to be.
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 offers the unexpected image of Lady (or Teacher) Wisdom showing up everywhere and shouting at us to come to her. On Trinity Sunday, this image always causes me confusion. My inclination is to think of God as proclaimed in the Hebrew Scriptures as Father or Creator. Yet, Wisdom’s words in vv. 22-29 remind me of John’s Prologue and Wisdom “rejoicing in the Lord’s inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (v. 30) leads me to think of Matthew’s description of Jesus as Emmanuel (1:23). So, rather than assigning a Person of the Trinity to this passage, the preacher might reflect upon what it suggests about the Triune God. For example, the Trinity is everywhere calling to us. Wisdom as God’s “helper” evokes the reciprocity of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit helping one another in the unity of God. Finally, Wisdom’s persona is joyous; she gladly and overwhelmingly offers her gifts to humanity.
Romans 5:1-5 seems to describe the Trinity’s relationship to humanity. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access to this grace. God’s love is in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. So, even as we boast in our hope of sharing the life of the Trinity, we have faith that the Trinity shares of our life of suffering and produces endurances, character and hope within us.
The Holy Spirit is the subject of Jesus’ teaching in John 16:12-15. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth” (v. 13), and suggests that truth, like the Trinity, is relational. Just as we often reduce the Trinity to a doctrine, so we often want to embrace or dismiss truth as proposition or fact. The Trinity invites us into the truth that flows out of relationships and that creates and strengthens community. In contrast to the truth of the individual, which so characterizes our culture, the relational Trinity and leads us to value and decide everything in terms of ourselves, the Trinity invites us to decide and value unselfishly, according to whether something points to the Father, glorifies Christ, and is empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Augustana Chapel, the Leadership Conference, and the Communion of Saints

2010-02-09T21:26:00.001-06:00

During LSTC’s Leadership conference, worship in Augustana Chapel provides its own experience of the communion of saints. Today, a 2006 graduate, vested in a stole given by the class of 2009, preached a simply outstanding sermon. Teachers smiled proudly; students heard a preacher they want to emulate. Another alum greeted a professor as if she was still his student, then turned and was greeted by two seminarians, who know the professor’s student as their field education supervisor. Old friends from many eras greet each other as if time stood still and, regrettably, brokenness manifests itself as if the breach in relationship happened just yesterday. On these days, everyone is reminded that the space, the worship, and the community are theirs, yes, and they are larger, greater, and more inclusive than those who occupy the chapel and the campus at any given time. The graduate who brings his daughter to check out the school is a proclamation that the space, the worship, the community will continue after those who currently occupy the campus are gone. Identities change. Students become leaders. Professors who once seemed so powerful turn out to be good conversation partners and perhaps a bit too human. And as this unique community gathers, everyone is mindful of someone who isn’t there. And in the midst of this we splash water, hear Word, eat bread and drink wine. We experience God. We know that, more than anything else, we are Christ’s baptized saints. And in this we find unity or communion.

Coming in Currents: Preaching the “Idle Tale”

2009-12-13T23:09:00.000-06:00

I genuinely admire the optimism of preachers who attempt to move their congregations from arriving at the empty tomb to proclaiming that Christ is risen, indeed, all in a single Easter sermon. It’s so Matthean. Of course, Matthew had an earthquake, an angel, who descends from heaven, rolls away the stone, tells the women (twice) that Jesus has been raised, invites them to see the place where Jesus lay, and instructs them to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is risen and where they can find him—in Galilee, as Jesus promised. If this is not amazing enough, as the women leave the tomb, they run into Jesus.
This year, we get Luke. “But these words [that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again] seemed to them [the disciples] an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (24:11).” Luke tells us. And then Luke tells us that, after Peter got up and ran to the tomb, stooped and looked in, and saw the linen cloths by themselves, he went home (24:12).
And this “idle tale” comes after a week of “idle tales.” On Passion Sunday, Luke told us that, to the end, innocent Jesus associated with sinners and extended them God’s forgiveness. Many in need of forgiveness who have experienced the realities of Christian community would call this an “idle tale.” On Maundy Thursday, John told us the “idle tale” of Jesus, with a towel and basin, doing more than becoming his servants’ servant. Jesus loves his own to the end, even though his own misunderstand, protest, resist his love, and even betray him. For any who are seriously grappling with the ways they have misunderstood, protested, resisted, and betrayed Jesus, the idea of Jesus washing their feet, let alone unconditionally loving them to the end, at some level seems an “idle tale.” On Good Friday, John tells is the “idle tale” of a Passover lamb that declares his work “complete” and then dies. As the institutional church fights so hard for survival on every level, we would hardly call this “idle tale” being faithful to God. We know too well that ”faithfulness” means “growth.”
So, perhaps we can understand why, on n the Second Sunday of Easter, at least as the lectionary tells it, we hear that, a week after the risen Christ appears to them, the disciples are still locked behind locked doors. On the Third Sunday of Easter, the disciples are out from behind locked doors, but they are not proclaiming, “Christ is risen, indeed!” Seven disciples decide to go fishing, and the risen Christ needs to appear to them the third time. It seems to take the disciples, who had direct encounters with the risen Christ, time to embrace and internalize the Easter gospel.
Perhaps we can be patient with ourselves, our Easter preaching, and, most of all with God’s people. The Church, through its lectionary and liturgical calendar, is wise in giving us seven Sundays to preach that, “Christ is risen, indeed!” Whether we frame resurrection as forgiveness, reconciliation, new beginning, or the end of death, we can find much, both inside and inside the Church, to suggest that the Easter message is an “idle tale” or the Church’s wishful thinking. Daring to believe—as in trust—the Easter gospel is, perhaps, the hardest thing we ask our people to do. Perhaps that’s why the Church gives us an Easter season.
At least during Luke’s year, before we run too quickly to telling people to go and tell, “let us” (my students know how I don’t like that phrase in sermons, because it’s a nice way of saying ”we should”) patiently proclaim the good news that Christ is risen, so people can move from the idleness of the tale to their own doubt and hesitation to trying to get life back to normal—and finding they cannot. In other words, let us use this Easter season to help disciples grapple with the Easter gospel, as the first disciples did, confident that Christ will send the promised Spirit.
You know, if we are going to give our hearers the Easter season to wrestle with the “idle tale” of Christ’s resurrection, I suspect that we preachers need to do this ourselves. Like Cleopas and his companion, I hope that you find partners and a journey in which you ca discuss these things and I pray that the risen Christ encounters you as you walk and talk together.

Craig A. Satterlee, Editor, “Preaching Helps”
http://craigasatterlee.com

All Saints

2009-10-26T10:41:00.003-05:00

From Craig A. Satterlee, When God Speaks through Worship: Stories Congregations Live By (Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2009), pp. 82-83

At St. Timothy’s Church, we celebrated All Saints’ Sunday by lighting candles. For a congregation whose membership was shrinking, some observers might say that the congregation was dying, finding ways to remember those who gave their lives to the church became increasingly important. People were aware that they might lose their connection to their history and to deceased loved ones who were church members. They wanted to do something more than read the names of those who died in the past year. We decided to remember everyone that anyone wanted remembered. As we prayed the names of those who had died, either a loved one or the person who submitted the name came forward and lit a votive candle placed on the altar. By the time we were finished naming the names, the altar was symbolically ablaze with the light of those saints who, although they have parted from us, continue to share Christ’s table with us. Standing at the altar to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, I was aware of the communion of saints, that great “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1), which surrounds us and whose lives brighten our path as we walk through this world by faith.

The light of those candles reflected the light of Christ’s resurrection by reminding us that Christ’s table has one end here on earth and one end in heaven, or one end in this world and the other in the world to come. Even though people move from one end of the table to the other, they remain at Christ’s table with us. In the Eucharistic meal, God joins us with saints of every time and of every place. When we receive the bread and the wine, we sit at the same table with biblical biggies, with loved ones who have gone before us, saints who will come after us, and with Christians of all nations and denominations. The barriers of time and space, life and death are broken as this taste of the Kingdom of God breaks into our world and into our lives. God gives us a real and delicious foretaste of the feast to come. God provides a hint of what the fulfillment of the kingdom of God will be like, when the pains of this world are destroyed and we live forever with God and those we love. At Christ’s table, we bridge the distance between life and death. We traverse the gulf between this world and the next as we participate in God's own life by eating the risen Christ’s body and drinking his blood. In Holy Communion, heaven and earth are united; death and life become one as we sit at the banquet table of God's kingdom with Jesus and all the saints.

Our experience at the table with Jesus and the saints made things clearer for the people of St. Timothy. We could assume that Jesus loves us and not that he was angry or disappointed that our congregation was shrinking. We could expect to live with Jesus forever, regardless of what the future brings, because our fate was finished lovingly on the cross. And so what we do on Sunday, hearing the word and sharing the meal, is a foretaste, an appetizer of the banquet described by the prophet Isaiah, when the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines. And God will destroy the shroud that is over all peoples, and swallow up death forever, and wipe away the tears from all faces. Those who lit the candles those All Saints’ Sundays, and we who watched the candles as they were lit, both received and shared this light of the risen Christ.

A Reformation Eve Rant

2009-10-24T20:28:00.001-05:00

These days, I’ve been thinking a lot abut penance, and what a good thing it is. Luther didn’t like it, and I guess, as a Lutheran I shouldn’t, either. Yet, I suppose that, if you cut me deep enough, you’ll find a Romantic Catholic – one who can claim the best of the Roman Catholic Church and let go of the rest. One of my students once took a class at Catholic Theological Union and the professor asked him what Lutherans think about a particular subject. “Professor Satterlee says,” the student began, and the professor cut him off. “I want to know what Lutherans think,” the professor said. “For all practical purposes, Craig’s a Catholic.” Perhaps that professor is right.

Luther didn’t like penance. If I recall The Babylonian Captivity of the Church correctly (and this is a blog entry or Face Book post so I am not doing footnotes), dear Martin was concerned with demands for humility, contrition, and acts of repentance (36 Our Father’s) in place of trust in the promise of the Gospel. So, we pretty good Lutherans threw out penance and replaced it with an evil of our own.

The good news of penance is that, when it is accomplished, the penitent, the Church, and the community of faith all know that relationships are (or need to be) restored.
So, for example, when one who grievously sinned was sent on a pilgrimage for several years as penance, the sinner who was sent out of town and the community knew that if/when he returned, it was time to forgive.

We do it differently. We speak of grace, the foot of the cross, forgiveness, Christ. Then someone sins in a way that is known to us, and we don’t act out of grace, cross, forgiveness, and Christ. Even worse, we don’t tell the penitents what they can do or need to do to be restored to the community. We passively yet aggressively watch and judge them and whether they have sufficiently demonstrated humility, contrition, and repentance. If they look too sad, we chastise them for not trusting the Gospel; if they look too happy, we shame them for not taking their sin seriously. We don’t tell those who have sinned what they can do or how long it will take for them to be restored to the community. We shame and shun, punish and humiliate until we decide it’s time to stop. The problem, of course, is that faith communities are rarely of one mind -- so the penitent never feels safe in church. Just when everything seems okay, someone announces that the sinner is either too happy or too sad. The bigger problem is that this is not the example or command of Christ. Grace does not mean, Jesus forgives but we don’t have to.

I am hearing lots of concern about preaching cheap grace – as if those who have sinned will somehow get off the hook. I think that, if anyone needs to hear about costly grace, it’s our church and those who consider themselves righteous. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,” we pray every Sunday. So how are we doing with that when it comes to the sinners in our midst? Perhaps it’s time for us to stop counting the cost that others ought to bear and, instead, swallow the cost ourselves and forgive. Or, if we cannot be Lutheran, we should at least hand out some “Hail Mary’s” or other acts of contrition (social justice or recycling, perhaps) so that penitents will know that, if they say and do them, there is at least a chance that, someday, we will forgive them.

WHAT I PREACHED IN CHAPEL - Proper 19

2009-09-16T20:21:00.002-05:00

“That Word is Jesus!”

Mark 8:27-38
“Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.””

I read an email last week, which said that LSTC is filled with many pastors (some of whom are ordained). While I wonder why an institution whose mission is to prepare pastors and other rostered leaders regularly downplays the circumscribed but essential role of the ordained, I appreciate the sentiment. As baptized members of the Body of Christ, we all minister – pastor, if you will – in Christ’s Name. We also all teach the Christian faith. So, in this spirit, I’d say that LSTC is filled with many teachers (some of whom are members of the faculty).

In fact, we are all language teachers. We use our tongues to teach the faith. We use our tongues to bless and praise God. We use our tongues to help others name and claim the promises of baptism. We use our tongues to loosen other tongues to speak of Jesus, to teach others the vocabulary of faith, and to empower others to testify to God’s presence and activity in their lives and in the world.

And we use our tongues to boast of great exploits, to slander, gossip, and disrespect. We use our tongues to present pat answers, leaving little room for questions. We use our tongues to make the difficult sound easy or the mysterious sound plain. By the way they speak of things, our tongues create worlds of meaning, which we can mistake for the real world, the whole world, and even the world that God intends. Isn’t that what Peter does when he calls Jesus the Messiah? Peter is speaking of a political liberator who will free the people from tyranny. His tongue got so busy that he forgot to listen to Jesus talk about rejection, torture, suffering, humiliation, public execution and death. And Peter’s tongue didn’t want to talk with anyone who didn’t agree with him, including Jesus. Perhaps that’s why Jesus “sternly warned them not to tell anyone about him.” Peter and the disciples had the right title – Messiah – but the wrong meaning.

In Peter we see how our tongues lead our actions. And as teachers our tongues do more; our tongues shape our community’s actions in the same way that a rudder guides a ship. If the Word of God doesn’t become incarnate in the flesh of the congregation, our tongues – the words we speak in worship, for example – cast a wicked spell. It’s as if we post a sign advertising fresh water and have thirsty people bring their cups and take a drink, only to end up with a mouth full of salt.

James is right. The tongue is both powerful and volatile. Like a small fire that sets a great forest ablaze, it’s a small thing that makes big things happen. It’s a wild thing that can do great good and bring great harm. The tongue reveals who we are – saint and sinner. Left unbridled, the tongue can be an untamable beast, a cosmic force set afire with apocalyptic potential. And in our information age, the tongue reaches farther and faster than ever before.

So James’s warning is aimed squarely at all of us. “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” We all make many mistakes with our tongues, whether we intend to or not. James makes that plain. But teachers who are to be followed, imitated, even emulated, must be most careful. And so it’s in those small moments, when someone else is vesting us with authority, that we are most closely judged. Sometimes judgment comes from our selves. Sometimes judgment comes from our students. Sometimes judgment comes from the community and the world. Sometimes, judgment comes from God. Wherever it comes from, judgment is not some future event – when Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. Judgment is underway right now.

And so the temptation is to give up on being teachers. The temptation is to close our mouths and refuse to speak. Since we know too well that we cannot tame our tongues, the temptation is simply to silence them. Except for one thing. In the words of Isaiah, “The Lord GOD has given us the tongue of a teacher, that we may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” And that word is Jesus. Jesus, whom we call Word made flesh. Jesus, who came to preach good news. Jesus, who underwent great suffering, was rejected and killed, and after three days rose again to teach us that God’s Word to us is always love. God’s Word to us is always forgiveness. God’s Word to is always life. The Lord God gives us the tongue of a teacher, so that we can sustain the weary with the Word that sustains us. That word is Jesus.

With this word in our mouths, our tongues will not be still. Our voices will not be silent. And so, to learn to speak with the tongue of a teacher, we deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus. Like Isaiah, morning by morning we are attentive as the Lord God wakens our ear to listen as those who are taught. We are not rebellious; we do not turn backward.

When we follow Jesus to the cross, when we open our ears to what Jesus has to say, we will hear Jesus speak of forgiveness. “Whenever you stand praying,’ Jesus says, “forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.” Perhaps more familiar, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing,” Jesus says. And “for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

We echo Jesus’ words in rooms like this one. “Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” we pray. “As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and by his authority, I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins,” one says for us all. I believe that these are among the most important words that the ordained speak.

Yet, we live in a time in the church’s life and in the life of our country and the world when these words are insufficient; we live in a time when these words are not enough. In congregations and faith communities, in Congress and in town hall meetings, and even at the VMA Awards, hurtful, harmful, even hateful things are being said. Mistakes are being made. Relationships are breaking. More than a pastor’s absolution, what’s needed are words from another member of Christ’s body whose been wronged, from a brother or sister in Christ whose been hurt. “I forgive you.” “I forgive you.”

To deny ourselves is to say these words before we are ready. To take up our cross is to say these words when they may not be deserved. To follow Jesus is to relate to others in ways that declare these words are true. “I forgive you.” When we say thee words, we tame our tongue. We train our tongue. We speak with Christ’s power. We do great good. And we claim our calling as teachers.

What I Preached in Chapel: “BE OPENED!”

2009-09-08T14:31:00.001-05:00

Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 2:1-10
Mark 7:24-37

The scriptures we will hear in worship this week seem to have been selected especially for LSTC. Isaiah talks of waters breaking forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert, and burning sand becoming a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water – God let us help you renew the face of the earth. James hints at God's preference for the poor, a theme dear to this seminary's heart. And the Syrophoenician woman makes plain how everyone, including Jesus, gets tripped up by unquestioned religious and societal oppression – a reality with which we are oh-so familiar.

With so much great stuff, it's easy to overlook the man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech as we begin a new school year. After all, this man doesn't save the planet, serve the poor, or overcome oppression. This man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech doesn't do much of anything – except, of course, to be taken aside in private by Jesus, away from the crowd. This man doesn't do much of anything – except, of course, to have Jesus say to him, “Ephphathat!” And his ears are opened. His tongue is released. His life is transformed.

Now there are lots of ways to think about this season of your Christian vocation, this time of semianry education. This year, I'd like you to think of yourself as that man. Jesus is taking you aside in private, away from the crowds, and saying, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” Jesus takes you aside for this season of your life so that, by the very power of Christ that opens ears and frees tongues the very power of Christ who on the cross opened for us the God's reign of love and the way to everlasting life, by that very power of Christ, you might hear God's Word clearly and speak the Gospel plainly. Yet, compared with all the other words we will hear from Scripture this week, going aside with Jesus to be opened can seem small and insignificant, especially since Jesus might use things as mundane as spittle – Hebrew and Greek, Old and New Testament, Church History and Systematic Theology, Pastoral Care and Preaching -- to open and transform us.

But we live in a church and a world where often we cannot hear above the noise of the crowd. We live in a church and a world where there are words from God we just can't hear, that we just won't hear. We live in a church and a world where tongues have become so set in what we say and how we say it that our speech becomes an impediment to proclaiming the Gospel. So there is wisdom in going aside with Jesus for a time.

When we do, Jesus says to us what Jesus said to that man. “Ephphatha! Be opened!” And while Jesus used spittle, today we use oil. While Jesus touched ears and tongue, we anoint hands. St. Ambrose suggests that to do exactly what Jesus did would be somewhat awkward. And so we do it a bit differently. And Jesus, who opens ears and loosens tongues, who brings life out of death, speech out of silence, and hope out of despair, will surely transform you. And, in the fullness of time, Jesus will transform the world through people like you, who commit yourselves to go away with Jesus, away from the crowd, and be opened by Jesus.

For Jesus doesn't only open us for ourselves. We spend this season of our Christian vocation, this time of Christian education, for each other, for the church that we love, for the congregations we will serve, for people who do not have the privilege of studying their faith, and for the world that does not know what it does not know. What we begin this week, what we do this year, is a sign of the Spirit’s presence, a way of following Christ, and a share in God’s work of reconciling the world to God’s own self. God invites us to trust, to have faith, to be open to the reality that what we are doing will make a difference.

And so, today, we anoint new students’ hands as a sign of Jesus opening them up for ehe work of this season of their lives and ministries. Jesus’ call in this season of life is be opened to study and preparation. During these years, the work of our hands is to open books, to turn pages, to write papers, and to manipulate keyboards. Our hands will do more praying for the world than serving in the world. We will learn to extend our hands in peace when it would be easier to distance ourselves and turn away. We wil learn to set a watch before our mouth and listen when we have so much to say. We will learn to use our hands to bless when we want to and are justified in cursing. This work is not separate from ministry. Our hands are set apart to minister to those we will one day serve by faithfully studying Scripture, diligently learning the faith, intentionally growing in spirit, and passionately practicing the arts of ministry. You see, even as Jesus takes us adie, Jesus sopens us for important work.

Having your hands anointed, deciding to come to–or to come back to–seminary is controversial. Seminary challenges our tendency to distinguish between the academic and practical, between learning the tradition and engaging in mission. In the anointing, Jesus opens our hands so that we know how empty we really are, so that Christ might fill us. God opens our hands, so that we might be free to hear and to speak in new ways. In the anointing, Jesus says, “Ephphatha! “Be opened!” Let your life be transferred – not only for yourself, but for the planet, for the poor, for the Syrophenician woman. For the time is coming, Jesus says, and will surely come, when I use your hands, your ears, your tongue, your life to transform the world.

On Taking Scripture Seriously

2009-09-07T18:48:00.002-05:00

I am being asked about why the ELCA isn't taking the Bible seriously and obeying the Bible, by which the inquirer means literally doing what the Bible says. My answer is that Christ reigns even over the Scriptures. Or, as I tell my students, the Gospel -- the unconditional love of God revealed in Jesus Christ -- trumps even the Bible. Besides, iIf we were to do exactly what the Bible says, what do we do with verses like these?

“Speak to Aaron and say: No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord’s offerings by fire; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the food of his God.” Leviticus 21:17-21, NRSV.

“In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”” Luke 3:11, NRSV.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.” Matthew 5:29, 30, NRSV.

“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” John 13:14, 15, NRSV.

“CHOOSING TO REMEMBER”

2009-09-04T19:05:00.002-05:00

Craig A. Satterlee

I preached this sermon on the first anniversary of 9-11.

Luke 10:25-37
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And Jesus said, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." But wanting to justify himself, the lawyer asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when the Samaritan saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day the Samaritan took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and, when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The lawyer said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said, "Go and do likewise."

If you’ll permit me to stretch Jesus’ parable just a bit, I wonder what the one who fell into the hands of robbers chose to remember on the first anniversary of that fateful journey down from Jerusalem to Jericho. What did he choose to remember? You know, how we remember is our choice. Whether we observe an anniversary and how we observe that anniversary are choices we make. So what choice do you suppose the one who fell into the hands of robbers made? How do you imagine he chose to remember that awful day?

Do you think the one who fell among robbers dwelled on the attack? Did he take the day off to sit and watch the images replay again and again in his mind? Maybe he created a media event, something like Larry King’s Where Were You When? or Jane Pauley’s The Untold Story Behind or Diane Sawyer’s Stories of How Loved Ones Survived the Last Year. Perhaps this one who fell among robbers returned to the spot and held a ceremony--dignitaries, a wreath, and a prayer. Maybe he wrote a book about his experience. Could it be that he simply paused silently as the clock ticked the hour of the terror?

What do you suppose he chose to think about? Was his mind so filled with the robbers, the bandits, the zealots who stripped, beat, and abandoned him, that the one who fell into their hands was consumed with anger, so that the desire for justice bled over into vengeance and the need for security whetted the appetite for war?

Were his recollections of the priest and the levite? Passed by twice after laying there so long, did this one see in these policymakers the faults and failings--and worse, the selfishness and indifference--of the system in which he’d placed his hope and his trust?

Perhaps thoughts were of the road--the seventeen-mile, 3,000 foot, rocky descent from Jerusalem to Jericho. People fall into the hands of robbers on that road all the time. And there are roads where people are stripped, beaten and left half dead all over the world. Why should this attack get an anniversary celebration when so many other attacks go unnoticed?

Certainly there were remembrances of the Samaritan, whose face was but a blur and whose name remains unknown. An anonymous volunteer who made all the difference, an ally who acted unexpectedly and saved a life.

Perhaps the man’s thoughts were only of himself, of how life had changed. Where once the isolated road from Jerusalem to Jericho didn’t bother him, now travel made him feel uneasy, unsafe, cautious, vulnerable. Where once what the robbers fought to take from him was so important, now he was concerned with things less tangible but harder to steal. Or perhaps this one who fell among robbers spent the year developing complex security systems to make himself feel safer. Has that camel been in your possession the entire time or did someone unknown to you pack it?

Yes, we choose whether and what we remember because we just can’t bear to remember it all. It’s just too overwhelming. So how did you choose to remember today? What images replay in your mind--the planes hitting the towers, the firemen carrying the bodies, the 63 babies born in the last year to 9-11 victims? Do you long to see a flag in our sanctuary and red, white and blue paraments on our altar? Or is the word from Washington only compounding your fear? Are your thoughts of the world, of all the ways that people are attacked and terrorized--the daily violence in the Middle East, the lack of fresh water in Africa. The list goes on. Or maybe you are so keenly aware that the American cocoon has been pierced, that you no longer feel as safe.

I choose to remember how quickly various groups within our country, including assorted expressions of Christianity, how quickly these groups told us what we should remember about September 11 and how we should respond. While many saw the United States as the victim laying at the side of the road, or even as an ungrateful world’s Good Samaritan, many others saw our country as the lawyer seeking to justify himself, as the priest and levite selfishly and indifferently passing by those stripped, beaten and left half dead, or even as the robbers. Voices asserted that, although the events of 9-11 were a shock, they should not be a surprise. Other voices countered that nothing the United States may have done makes such violence conceivable, let alone anticipated. Along with prescriptions for what to remember and how to respond came strong convictions about inappropriate recollections and offensive responses. I had a few of those convictions my own self. A year later, we are so bombarded with September 11 recollections that one writer worries that memories have become so public and so procurable that America is left numb, bereft of anything of 9-11 that is personal or profound.

Jesus doesn’t tell the lawyer what to remember or how to respond. Jesus points to God’s Word and asks, “How do you read?” How we read Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan depends on where we find ourselves in the story. And whether we find ourselves in the robbers or in their victim, in the priest or in the Samaritan, or even in the innkeeper, God is with us. God is with us. Regardless of how we choose to remember, God always responds to us, perhaps with comfort, perhaps with challenge, but always with love and life.

As we cry with the psalmist, “Deliver me, O GOD from evildoers; protect me from the violent,” God comforts us with recollections of times the Lord God, the strength of our salvation, has covered our head in the day of battle, maintained the cause of the poor, and rendered justice to the needy.

As we taste the death that is the way of this world and are terrorized by the spirit of wrath at work within and around us, we are empowered to resist by Paul’s promise that these forces will not stand. They will fall not because of military might, increased security, national resolve, or international coalition, but because of God who, rich in mercy and great in love, makes us alive with Christ. The terror of the cross tells us that nothing, not planes crashing, not buildings crumbling, no attack of any kind can keep us from God’s love. On the cross Christ does more than remember. Christ bears all our memories in the most personal and profound way, in his own body. On the cross Christ lives and dies with us, showing us God’s response to terror. God raises Jesus to new life, and with Christ God raises us up. In Christ we are saved. And, more pertinent perhaps, in Christ we are safe. Not by our own doing, but as the gift of God.

And God intends this gift for all. God intends this gift for all. Even as we draw lines and identify suspects and beat the drums of war, we hear of God’s love for the hundred and twenty thousand people of Nineveh. And we are challenged by God’s love for the people of Bagdad and Alchata.

With Jonah we find ourselves sitting under our booths, waiting to see what will become of the city. In Christ we know. Regardless of what we choose to remember and how we choose to respond, God remains faithful. God remembers Jesus and responds with life and love. God responds with mercy and with grace. If like the lawyer who asked about neighbors, we want to justify ourselves, we must go and do likewise. But if we remember that we are justified in Christ, when we respond we won’t have to go and do likewise. We just will.

What About Preaching Sin?

2009-08-12T15:47:00.002-05:00

"What about preaching sin?" I am regularly asked, often by younger preachers. I don't think that it works to convince people that they are sinful, or that they ought to feel sinful. At its best, preaching holds up a mirror in such a way that people say,"That's me! That's us! That's the world!" People who get sin, who claim the psalmist's words as their own, don't need convincing. And people who don't get sin, who have never voiced the psalmist's cry, cannot be convinced.

“Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many—terror all around! —as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.” (Ps 31:9-13 NRSV)

Coming in October's Currents -- Advent Waiting

2009-08-12T15:37:00.002-05:00

I recently reviewed the manuscripts of some of my Advent sermons and the experience left me feeling a bit silly. I discovered that, for more than a quarter century, my Advent preaching reveals an underlying theme, sometimes explicit and sometimes subtle, of convincing people to wait. For example, I once said, after proclaiming the gospel, of course, that our job is to keep watching, to be ready and waiting for God to come to us in Christ and to put an end to the old and begin something new. To drive the point home in the congregations I served, we waited until after the Fourth Sunday of Advent to put up the tree in the sanctuary (I still make faces when a Christmas tree goes up in the lobby of the seminary in mid December) and until Christmas Eve to sing carols. In some sermons, I came across as a parent lovingly insisting that the children wait until Christmas morning to open their presents; more often, the congregations I served responded as if I was Ebenezer Scrooge. Every Advent, someone reminded me that the church has been waiting for two thousand years for Jesus to come suddenly and he hasn’t arrived yet. Most often in worship, we pretended or feigned waiting and it was not very convincing.

So, feeling silly that I cannot convince people to wait, I find myself wondering how my Advent preaching would sound if I consciously preach to people who don’t need convincing. What would my Advent preaching be like if I preach to those who are really, truly, earnestly, and genuinely waiting for God? Who are these people? Perhaps they are still sitting in the ash of last Lent, because their awareness of their sin is so great that, when the church celebrated Christ rising on Easter, they somehow got left behind in the tomb. Jennifer Moland-Kovash, who offers reflections for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, reminds us that “Mary’s pregnancy is not a long-awaited grandchild for her parents; the cries for God’s action are born out of an experience of God’s perceived absence or even punishment.” Perhaps those waiting for God include people convinced that God has abandoned them and are waiting for God to come back. Maybe they are people whose experience of God is penalizing, unforgiving, even vindictive, and they are waiting for the mercy and grace they hear so much about. Jenn continues, “Those who grieve--whether they sit in the pew, stand behind the pulpit or hover just outside the doors--might resonate with the very present sense of longing in these readings.” In addition to those grappling with sin and grief, I am mindful of people who understand themselves as gifted by the Spirit, called to participate in the priesthood of all believers, but are unable to find employment, and so have given up hope of exercising any sense of vocation. We all know people waiting for God to grant them justice, forgiveness, wholeness, and peace.

How do we preach Advent to these people? I do not imagine that preaching to those who genuinely wait for God will change the core message of Advent preaching. I won’t, for example, offer a sermon series on getting through the holidays after a loved one has died. This is important pastoral care that, in my opinion, works best in a venue other than the pulpit. Besides, I think we need to be reminded that we know the end of the story, the world’s as well as our own. “Christ will,” as we pray at the table, “come again in beauty and power to share with us the great and promised feast.” Rather than changing sermon content, I want to include people who are truly waiting for God as my conversation partners in sermon preparation to give the content urgency, immediacy, authenticity, and realism. To do this, I could imagine devoting my November newsletter article (a task I am so very glad usually is handled by my pastoral colleague) to inviting those who are genuinely waiting for God to invite me to coffee and tell me their story. I’d open the readings and I would ask them what they think, what questions they have, what feelings get evoked, what they need to hear. I suspect that these conversations would infuse my sermons–and through them the congregation–with an authentic Advent spirit, which I previously thought I had to cultivate by convincing.

I pray that we who earnestly and genuinely wait for God will experience Christ’s coming in and through the Church’s preaching this Advent. God grant that our sermons will be experiences of forgiveness, comfort, hope, purpose, justice, and peace. “Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.”

What I Preached in Chapel: Fourth Week of Easter

2009-05-06T21:58:00.001-05:00

“EVEN FOR US”

John 10:11-18
Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

This week we end. This week we send. The message seems so obvious, so empowering, so joyful. “Jesus sends us out to shepherd God’s people!” “Jesus sends us out to shepherd God’s people!” Some among us are perusing congregational profiles and even anticipating congregational votes. Others among us have been in conversation with internship supervisors and CPE sites. Some are setting out into uncertainty, into the unknown. All of us are being sent from this year, from this community as it comes to an end, to another faith community, even if it will be located in this place. We will have different roles, different relationships, perhaps different responsibilities. “Jesus sends us out to shepherd God’s people!” The message is great!

Except for one thing. I’m reminded that, when these readings showed up three years ago during the week we were ending and sending, there was conversation around the fact that, although the church calls its ministers pastor, which in Latin means “shepherd,” there is only one shepherd who is good, only one shepherd who is true, only one shepherd who is perfect, only one shepherd who is the model. That shepherd is Jesus. It certainly isn’t me. It certainly isn’t us.

First John says, “We know love by this, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” It’s what I hear in lots of sermons: Jesus as the role model, Jesus as the example. “We know love by this, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” We are to imitate the model given to us in Christ the Good Shepherd. “Not in word or speech,” First John says, “but in truth and action.” Making professions and having good intentions are insufficient. We are to embody, enact, and live the selfless love of Christ, who said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Only the act of freely and willingly laying our life down for another, of setting our life aside for another, will do. And we just don’t do it. We just can’t do it.

If we are anything in this story, we know ourselves to be and, sometimes, we show ourselves to be hired hands. We see the wolf coming, leave the sheep, and run away. And the sheep get scattered and snatched. Though we may deeply care for the sheep, they do not belong to us. While we might even risk our lives for the sheep, somehow, we seem to fall short of freely and willingly laying our lives down for them. Even more subtly, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” But sometimes we do not know the shepherd, the sheep, or even ourselves. Intentionally or accidently, we meet our own needs, pursue our own interests, and, in the process, we lose track of our responsibility to care for, to lay down our lives for, the sheep. The wolf comes, and the sheep get scattered. The sheep get snatched. We fail the Good Shepherd. We hurt the sheep. We come face-to-face with what we truly are – hired hands and even lost and wounded sheep.

All who are hired to lend the Good Shepherd a hand come to know, to feel, to be haunted by this truth about themselves. In the words of First John, “our hearts–our consciences–condemn us.”
We feel the irony in the title pastor. We will never be the Good Shepherd. We are hired hands who fall miserably short. Mostly, we are lost and wounded sheep.

In these moments, we realize just how good our shepherd is. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” And, with nothing to cling to except Jesus’ words, we slowly dare to trust, to believe, to hope, that Jesus lays down his life for all the sheep, even for us. Even for us. Because of Jesus’ words, because of Jesus’ glorification on the cross, when Jesus did indeed lay down his life for the sheep, we dare to believe the words spoken to us at the table. “For you, for you.” We dare to believe that God will bring a time when our hearts will rest. For, even as our heart condemns us, even as we are conscious of having sinned, we find hope that God, who knows us better than our own heart, better than our own conscience, is rich in mercy and will forgive us, because we are truly God’s own. God will forgive us, precisely because we are a lost and wounded sheep for whom Jesus freely and willingly laid down his life.

Of course, if our heart, if our conscience, is not plagued by knowledge of our sin, we can be confident of and bold about God’s favor. And so we keep God’s commandments. We live in faith and love, so that we can experience God’s closeness and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit within us, and do our best to lend a hand in tending the sheep.

Jesus says, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” Jesus takes up his life again for himself and for all who live through his saving work. Jesus lays down his life and takes it up again even for us. Jesus raises us from lost and wounded sheep. One way or another, Jesus hires us again to help him tend the flock. And, maybe, for a moment or two, we can do some good shepherding, and know ourselves to be saints as well as sinners.

How does Jesus do this? Jesus raised us up this year as we heard the promise, remembered baptism, shared the supper, exchanged the peace, offered our prayers, confessed our sin, sang God’s praise, wrote and read papers, discussed and disagreed, laughed and cried, hurt and forgave. Jesus will raise us up as we share this final supper, finish our work, and bid farewell. And Jesus isn’t finished.

Jesus said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” I have always imagined Jesus standing with us talking about someone else. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Perhaps Jesus is standing with someone else, perhaps Jesus is standing in the communities to which we go, talking about us. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Wherever we go, whenever we know ourselves to be hired hands or lost and wounded sheep, Jesus is there, in that community, laying down his life for us, even for us, and raising us up with him.

So, more than end, more than send, this week we commend. We commit. We entrust. We commend ourselves, one another, and our whole life to Christ, our Shepherd who alone is good.

What I Preached at the Easter Vigil

2009-04-28T21:42:00.001-05:00

“When . . . the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, God said, "Let there be light. And there was light.” On this Most Holy Night, the Church declares, “The light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.” We lit the paschal candle, symbolizing Christ rising in glory and triumphing over sin and death. We passed the light so that, with hand candles, we received and shared the light of Christ’s resurrection. We followed the paschal candle from there to here, singing a lengthy, archaic, Christian chant that proclaims Passover and crossing of the Red Sea, as foreshadowing Christ’s cross and resurrection, his Passover from death to new life that rescues us from evil and the gloom of sin, renews us in grace, and restores us to holiness. And we plunged the paschal candle into the stony, watery grave to suggest that in baptism we share in Christ’s death, and in the light and life of Christ’s resurrection.

As Paul says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” We share the light of Christ.

And here is light. Here is Christ’s own light. Here is the light of resurrection dawn shining into the Church, shining into our lives, shining into the world. We see it in Miles. Tonight we heard that “early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.” We heard that Jesus called Mary by name, that the light of faith dawned in her, and she saw the risen Lord. Tonight, on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, we went to the stone tomb, where our old life is drowned and buried, and we heard Jesus call Miles by name and name him, “child of God.” And the light of faith dawned in us anew. We saw Christ truly risen in Miles Elliot, Jesus’s own newly-born one. We remembered that Jesus named us when our old selves drowned. God gave us a new heart and a new spirit. And we rose, are rising, will rise with Christ. Best if all, we saw that the glory of Christ’s resurrection is not diminished, even when its light is divided and shared. In fact, Christ’s light grows brighter as we share it! Salvation, it seems, is intended for all.

Renewed in baptism and enlightened by Christ, tonight we celebrate that the light of Christ, rising in glory, always creates order and calls forth life. The light of Christ, rising in glory, always brings new beginning and God’s covenantal love. The light of Christ, rising in glory, provides for us in times of terrible testing, makes a way to safety where there is none, enlivens us when our bones are dry and our life is gone, and delivers us from the furnace of death.

Tonight we see the light of Christ shining in our brother Miles, and we know that it shines in us, in the Church, and in the world. Tonight, the light of faith dawns anew. The light of Christ, rising in glory, dispels the darkness of our hearts and minds. For Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

What I Preached on the Sunday of the Passion: St. James Lutheran Church, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI

2009-04-05T21:19:00.001-05:00

“The system is not sustainable.” How weary I am of hearing these words. “The system is not sustainable.” Whether it’s preparing pastors for our church, producing cars for our country, providing health care for our people, or preserving a future for our planet, the system, we are told, is not sustainable. An end, the end, is coming. The end is near. This news catches us off guard; it surprises us. But the news that the system isn’t sustainable isn’t anything new. The system, all of our death-dealing systems, ended on the cross of Jesus Christ.

So many of the people in the passion, so many of us, expected Jesus to command the system, to take control of the system, to make the system work for us. But Jesus submitted to the system – in the garden, before the religious authorities, on trial at government headquarters, and even – or especially -- on the cross.

Everyone reacted as though the system was winning. The young man who ran away in the garden certainly did. “All of them deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following [Jesus], wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.” This young man represents all of us when we get caught up in death-dealing systems. We feel naked, ashamed, vulnerable, and deserted. We offer the alabaster jar of our love and it is a scandal. We prayerfully discern what we think we are to do, and the result is betrayal. Embarrassed, ashamed, vulnerable and scared, we run away. We play it safe. We swallow truth. We put up defenses. We erect boundaries. We end up isolated from others and dying inside. Yet, Jesus does not leave us there. We, like that yong man, are saved from error, evil, and past poor performance by the One who wears a linen (burial) cloth and by the news announced by another “young man” we will meet at a tomb. Jesus ends the system of death. But not today.

The women who looked on from a distance surely knew that everything was ending -- “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.” These women, who will go to the tomb, testify to both Jesus’ death and resurrection. They make crystal clear that, even for God, there is no new beginning without an end. There is no new life without real death. Jesus does not end our death-dealing systems without dying. Joseph of Arimathea makes clear that Jesus is dead. Joseph wraps Jesus in a burial cloth, lays Jesus in a tomb, and seals the tomb from grave robbers. Jesus’ end is real. Our systems of death must die. And they are dying today. And Jesus dies with them.

Even Jesus seemed to know that our systems are not sustainable, that our systems are dying, that the end is coming. How could a sustainable system leave the Son of God to cry out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" That is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The death of our systems is painful, forsaking, isolating. Even for God. Yet, God stays with us. God dies with us. The One who felt forsaken does not forsake us. And so we do not die alone.
“The system is not sustainable,” we are told. As our systems are ending, and God knows they are. As our systems die, God in Christ is with us. God in Christ ends with us. The One who once felt forsaken does not forsake us. And, more than this, in Christ, God’s power is at work even when we cannot see it. In Christ, all ends are new beginnings, though not necessarily the beginning we want, the beginning we hope for, the beginning we expect. In Christ, all ends are new beginnings, though not necessarily today. As we wait, as we end, Jesus waits and ends with us. Even as our systems die, Jesus does not forsake us. Jesus does not leave us to die alone. Jesus brings us to new life, though not necessarily today.

St. Joseph's Day

2009-03-19T22:45:00.004-05:00

The train ride was long enough to provide some distance ad perspective.

It was comforting to see my name on the door to “my” room, even though I hadn’t been there in months. Turning the handle, I found everything as it should be. Dropping my bag, I closed the door behind me, slipped out of the seminary, and made my way down the steps to the path that leads around the lake. The dome, lit against the night sky rather than golden against the blue of day, greeted me as an old friend. My north star, it reminded me exactly where I was. As I made my way through trees on the path, I sensed the angels come alongside. I never seem to walk alone at Notre Dame.

Arriving at the Grotto, I performed the ritual – touched the stone from Lourdes, lit candles, and knelt to pray. I was surprised that there is now a thick kneeling pad. Warmer and more comfortable, I prayed a but longer in the cold night air.

As I passed the dome, the bell on the basilica sounded, as if to say hello. I tried the church door, knowing it would be locked. It was. I had to settle for remembering the warm baptismal water therein.

I was impressed by the students who, unsolicited, dropped cell phones and ipods from their ears to say hello and ask if I needed anything. I so enjoyed the students that I made a detour through the Huddle and sat for awhile where we used to eat pizza, just to watch.

When I entered the library, an old monitor greeted me. “Haven’t seen you in awhile,” he said. “How’s your daughter?” I rode the elevator to the twelfth floor and my corner of the library. The blinds were up in carrel 1210, so I could peer through the window in the door at the desk where I spent years with St. Ambrose, the desk under which I took my daily nap, and out the window on the other side at campus. I miss that view. I was disappointed that they moved the preaching books, but I found them, and even found a few of my own books in the collection. While I was fussing at the catalog, one of my students stopped to say hello – a joy and blessing.

On the walk back, the grotto called to me, so I lit one more candle, for a friend, and, kneeling on the pad, offered some more prayers.

There’s no better way to spend St. Joseph’s Day then with Our Lady!

Coming in Currents: A Time to Keep Silence and a Time to Speak

2009-03-12T23:23:00.001-05:00

On February 19, 2009, the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality released the proposed social statement on human sexuality, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” and the “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies.” You can find both documents at http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements-in-Process/JTF-Human-Sexuality.aspx. The ELCA Church Council is expected to transmit its recommendations on these statements to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, August 17-23, 2009, in Minneapolis. The assembly will consider both the recommended proposed social statement with impending resolutions and the ministry policy recommendation. I surely believe that the Holy Spirit may work so clearly and powerfully in the churchwide assembly that observers later say, “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32). However, I suspect that, regardless of how the Spirit works and what the churchwide assembly decides, some, whether in the assembly, the ELCA, the greater church, or in society, will be disappointed, even angry. And I suspect some in our congregations will be struggling as well.
Preachers might feel compelled to preach, and congregants might demand to hear, a sermon on human sexuality, and particularly the rostered leadership of persons living in committed same sex relationships, on Sundays, August 16 and 23. I’d like to propose an alternative strategy. The author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). I propose that preachers and congregations should decide that the Sundays before and after the churchwide assembly are not times to speak to the issue of human sexuality, except for praying for the churchwide assembly on August 16 and the whole church on August 23. Sermons on these Sundays ought to be a bold, clear and unambiguous proclamation of the gospel, to testify that, as the ELCA Constitution says, “the Gospel, recorded in the Holy Scriptures and confessed in the ecumenical creeds and Lutheran confessional writings, [is] the power of God to create and sustain the Church for God's mission in the world.”
Even as they decide not to preach on the issue of human sexuality on the Sundays that bookend the churchwide assembly, I propose that preachers and congregations decide, before anything else is decided, when they are going to preach about this issue and discuss it as faith communities. One possibility for preaching such a sermon is Sunday, September 27. As Ecclesiastes reminds us, while there is “a time to keep silence,” there is also “a time to speak.” Michael Fick, who authored this series of preaching helps, observes the readings for this Sunday (Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; James 5:13-20; and Mark 9:38-50) speak to the structure and authority of leadership in the church, and our desire to know with certainty who has the authority to do what and why. These readings can help us to wrestle with the question of how we can achieve some common understanding of how, and by whom, ministry is carried out. Pastor Fick observes that the priesthood of all believers is prefigured in these readings. Moses longs for all the people to be seized by the spirit with spiritual gifts to share, and Jesus warns in the most graphic terms the danger of placing barriers between people and the works they would do in his name. At the same time, these readings affirm the variety of gifts carried out by those identified by the community at large. Eldad and Medad’s perfectly valid ministry did not negate the role of the called seventy in leadership. Nor did the acts performed in Jesus’s name replace the calling of the twelve in the ministry of accompaniment in which they serve. James reminds us that different gifts produce different kinds of ministry.
Setting “a time to keep silence” and “a time to speak” well in advance of the churchwide assembly proclaims that the gospel rather than any single issue defines the church. It gives people the opportunity, even obligation, to pray and listen before they respond and speak. Finally, a sermon that speaks to the issues of human sexuality and rostered leadership can grow from the appointed Scripture readings, rather than being imposed upon them.
Remember that, no matter how effective they are, sermons alone will neither satisfy people nor settle issues. Preaching works in partnership with worship, fellowship, Bible study, relationships, outreach and social justice as people are formed by and witness to the gospel. Congregations need opportunities to share, process, and respond.

Lenten Devotion written for LSTC

2009-02-25T22:32:00.001-06:00

“And the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12). After descending on Jesus in the Jordan, the Spirit compelled, forced, exerted and obliged God’s Son, the Beloved, with whom God is well pleased into a desert place. So, beloved child of God, where is the Spirit driving you this Lent? So often I think the way I will observe Lent is my choice, my decision. Lent is something I commit or do not commit to. I determine whether to give up dessert, volunteer more, take on another (or different) spiritual discipline, or not. So what if, rather than choosing, deciding, committing or not committing, I spend these first days of Lent allowing myself to be driven by the Spirit? What if my Lenten discipline is to give up resisting? What if my Lenten discipline is to go where the Spirit is driving me? Where might that place be? If I am going to follow Jesus, I am probably on my way to some wilderness, to a time of temptation, to wrestle once again with what it means for my life that God has named me “beloved child.” It’s much easier and safer simply to give up sweets. But where the Spirit drive me, Jesus has been, Jesus is there. And so I pause to consider what it means to stop resisting this Lent, and to allow the Spirit to drive me.

Come, Holy Spirit. Goad, compel, force, exert, oblige, . . . drive me, just maybe not immediately.

On Propping Up Large Stones

2009-02-08T00:27:00.000-06:00

These days I find myself spending considerable time thinking about some words from Mark’s Gospel. “As [Jesus] came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down’” (Mark 13:1-2). Scholars tell us that this prediction concerns the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, when Roman legions attacked its underlying supports in such a way that the entire structure collapsed and many of its stones were crushed. (1) What if Jesus was speaking of more than that temple? What if Jesus was speaking of all the structures of power, particularly religious power and institutions, that he came to transform?

In worship these days, many congregations love to sing “Canticle of the Turning.” (2) I wonder of they are really taking in the words:

“From the halls of pow’r to the fortress tow’r, not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware, for your justice tears every tyrant from his throne.”

It sounds to me as if we are praising God for tearing down stones as God brings God’s gospel reign. Yet, it never seems to occur to us that the church may have stones that God intends to tear down. So I might add a line to the hymn.

We are fools to believe that God will leave our precious stones in tact.
The visible church the Spirit will lurch, when the gospel power we lack.

Thomas H. Troeger invites us to see the church as an edifice of thought and belief that is marked by an unmistakable incompleteness. (3) The church’s walls are still standing and its space remains defined, but there is a hole in the ceiling above the altar where a mosaic of the Almighty used to be. This “God shaped hole” serves as Troeger’s poetic expression of the church’s loss of commanding certitude about God. Preachers are challenged to bear witness to God with an imaginative power that vitalizes faith and ministry as Christians and congregations reconstruct their understanding of belief, worship, and ministry. (4) In order to do this, preachers must open themselves up to scripture as the “visions and voices of the cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 11:1-12:1) borne by the wind of the Spirit that will guide us ‘into all the truth’ (John 16:13).” (5) These witnesses remind us that ours is not the first age in which the church’s dome of meaning has collapsed; whenever this happened, the Spirit stirred God’s people to a more expansive understanding of God. That new image dominated the church’s dome of meaning until it also crumbled and the Sprit has blown yet again. Thus, for Troeger, the Bible canonizes a process of perpetually revising our theologies. Troeger cautions that we must expect inherited interpretation to be in tension with experience. This tension is rooted in God, who is not confined to the Bible and the past. Troeger writes, “We have a technical term for people who do not change: dead. If Christ has not changed since the resurrection, then Christ is no longer alive.” (6) This process of theological reconstruction brings sorrow because it means acknowledging the loss of things once held sacred. Following Troeger;’s metaphor, though the Spirit provides a new, more expansive image of God to replace the church’s cherished image of God that is crumbling, this new image of God, which brings the church’s resurrection, is terrifying before it is empowering because resurrection gives more freedom to Christ than most believers want their Savior to have. (7)

“Do you see these great buildings?” Jesus asks. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” It occurs to me that this as much Jesus' pronouncement on our institutional church as it was the Jerusalem Temple. I fear spending my life propping up stones that are destined to fall! I am terrified by the new thing God is doing, the new life that God is bringing. And I am amazed when I see it!

Notes

(1) Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, Preaching Mark: Proclaiming the Power of God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), p. 221.

(2) Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006), #723.

(3) This summary of Troeger’s work is taken from Craig A. Satterlee, When God Speaks Through Change: Preaching in Times of Congregational Transition, (Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2005), p. 17.

(4) Thomas H. Troeger, Preaching While the Church is Under Reconstruction: The Visionary Role of Preachers in a Fragmented World (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), p. 15.

(5) Ibid., p. 19.

(6) Ibid., p. 100.

(7) Ibid., p. 105.

I Am Receiving Fan Mail for My New Book!

2009-02-04T23:47:00.003-06:00

Dr. Satterlee,

I just finished reading your new book, "When God Speaks Through Worship". It did what you predicted. It brought up stories from my own ministry.

I have been a pastor for almost 35 years. Worship has been central to my ministry. I always remember a layperson who gave me advice when I was ordained. It was "Hang on to Word and Sacrament and then hang loose!" That has been central to my thinking in all of the situations I have ministered in since.

Learning that ministry is not about your actions but God's action is the hardest lesson for pastors. I give spiritual direction to Pastors and the hardest thing for me and them is keeping the focus on what God is doing.

I liked your reference to the "grace place." I have come to call it my "nada point" It is where you totally realize from head to toe that you are powerless and cannot move without God's intervention. At that point you learn what surrender is and what it means to die in order to live.

I also liked your honesty about your disability. I carry some of those feelings in regard to my stuttering which I thought would keep me from ordained ministry. Instead it has been my reminder that this again is not about me, but about God's grace being proclaimed through me. Most of the time I do not stutter when I preach. It is quite a gift to be enabled to let go of self consciousness.

I used at a retreat last Saturday your images of mountaintop, desert, and river. I introduced them as markers for their sharing where God has been active in their lives. They really got into it. The images helped them pinpoint times of grace in their lives. There wasn't a dry eye among us as stories flowed and barriers of mistrust fell . We found the courage to be vulnerable with each other. Our Bishop was present and even he felt moved to share.

So Craig, thanks again for your wonderful writing. I am talking up your book with colleagues.

So blessed,

What I Preached in Chapel: Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

2009-02-03T19:59:00.001-06:00

Stand By to Be Astounded!

Mark 1:21-28
Jesus and his disciples went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

Jesus brought disciples with him when he went to Capernaum. We all bring people with us when we come to seminary. Some of those people are physically here with us – the children who started new schools and the spouses working so hard so that we can study theology and prepare for ministry. Some of the people we bring with us to seminary are here in every way except being physically present. They’re the spouses, kids, significant others, parents and friends who put up with our prolonged absences and who we desperately miss. They offer prayers, send cards (sometimes with checks), ask too many questions, allow us to vent, and get mad at the church on our behalf. Then there are the people we bring with us to seminary that we do not know yet. They are the people we will one day serve, whether in congregations, classrooms, institutions and agencies, or models of ministry that have not yet emerged.

With so many people behind us, with so many people supporting us, with so many people investing in us (not to mention faculty and staff, congregations and the church who claim as part of their mission to prepare us), we surely feel the pressure to produce like Jesus. There are so many unclean spirits to be cast out – in LSTC, Hyde Park, the church, our nation, and all around the world. "Be silent, and come out!" We long to command those unclean spirits. But, alas, we’re not Jesus. But surely we can be the means through which Christ works! Except that there are books to read, papers to write, lectures to listen to, MIC, CPE, Form D, internship interviews, synod assignments, comprehensive exams, and summative evaluations. That about sums up the semester. So how are we to call out unclean spirits?

Truth be told, our time for calling out unclean spirits will come, and Christ might ask us to do a bit of that here and now. But whether this is your first semester of seminary, your last semester of seminary, or what feels like yet another semester of seminary, Jesus invites us to do something simpler and harder. Jesus invites us to join the crowd in the synagogue and be astounded at Jesus’ teaching, and to experience the Christ as one having authority to command even unclean spirits.

"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” The unclean spirit asked. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." Some scholars say that the reason the unclean spirit recognized Jesus is that Jesus was filled with the Spirit of God. In the synagogue, both Jesus and the man were possessed by spirits; as we used to say on the playground, “It takes one to know one.” Jesus received God’s Spirit when it descended upon him at the Jordan. God’s Spirit took possession of Jesus during forty days in the wilderness, when Jesus was tempted by Satan. I imagine Jesus’ wilderness time to be one of searching and struggle, of discovering and doubting, of questioning and of becoming clear, convicted and convinced. Then Jesus commanded spirits, cured diseases, called people to faith, cultivated God’s kin’dom, and changed the world. And on the cross, Jesus yielded up the spirit – to the world, to the church, to us.

Whether we think of seminary as a synagogue or a wilderness or both, and regardless of whether we count our time here in terms of semesters, years or weeks, it’s a precious time of being filled with Christ’s spirit as we are astounded by Jesus’ teaching. It’s a privileged time of studying the faith for both the people we bring with us and the people we will serve one day, as well as the church we love and the world that so needs to be astounded by Christ’s presence and power.

And so, today, we anoint the hands of those who are beginning this astounded time. The oil is both a baptismal reminder that we are beloved children of God and a clear indication that the Spirit sets us apart for the precious and privileged time of being astounded at Jesus’ teaching. During these years of seminary, our work is to open books, to turn pages, to write papers, to manipulate keyboards, to engage in conversation, to question, to struggle, to be astounded by Jesus’ teaching and filled with Jesus’ spirit. This work is not separate from ministry. We minister to and with those we brought with us to seminary by faithfully studying Scripture, diligently learning the faith, intentionally growing in spirit, and passionately practicing the arts of ministry.

Having your hands anointed, deciding to come to–or to come back to–seminary is controversial. Seminary challenges our tendency to distinguish between the academic and practical, between learning the tradition and engaging in mission. Seminary challenges us to be content to stand by and be astounded by Jesus’ teaching, rather than rushing into the ministerial spotlight. In the anointing, as in seminary, Jesus assures us that we have the Spirit, and Jesus slows us to so that the Spirit can astound and possess us.

Reflecting on My First Week of Facebook

2009-01-26T00:55:00.003-06:00

So I am now on Facebook. It reminds me of toddlers playing "together." Everyone is doing their own thing in the same "virtual" room. Or, it reminds me of when I was into CB radio in the 70's. Lots of people having lots of conversations about not much of anything.

Don't get me wrong. I am enjoying Facebook. It's good entertainment. I am saying hello to lots of students and former students, and having a meaningful conversation with an old friend.

So here us my question: I have two email accounts,a web page, a blog, and now Facebook. How do others find time to do it all?

Coming in Currents

2009-01-21T20:24:00.005-06:00

“What Sunday after Pentecost is It?”
“So what Sunday is it?” I find myself increasingly asking, both in these Sundays after the Epiphany and as we round the corner from Trinity Sunday into summer. Or, more precisely, “What happened to the Sundays after the Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost?” While the lectionaries that preceded the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) used a variety of numbering systems for the weeks after Epiphany and Pentecost, including “Nth Sunday after,” “proper,” and “ordinary time,” the RCL suggests two systems: the Arabic lectionary number (Lectionary 15) or the calendar date range for the set of readings (Sunday, July 9-16). Yet, old habits die hard. ELCA congregations appear to be so attached to the designation “Nth Sunday after Pentecost” that you can find “conversion charts” to help negotiate these various numbering systems at the denomination’s worship web page (http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Worship/Lectionary.aspx). In five columns, the charts tell you that

If today is…” …it falls within this date range... The “lectionary” number assigned to this date range in Evangelical Lutheran Worship is…” …which is equivalent to “proper ___” in previous printed lectionaries. In 2009, this Sunday is numerically the ‘____ Sunday after Pentecost.

Look up the calendar date in the first column and you will find the correct “Sunday after Pentecost” in the last column.
During these Sundays after Pentecost, preachers also ask me why the readings don’t fit together so well. While for much of the year, the Old Testament reading is closely related to the Gospel reading, from the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday to the end of the church year, the RCL provides both a continuation of the complimentary Old Testament readings and a semi-continuous pattern of Old Testament readings. This year, the semi-continuous readings from the Old Testament focus on the covenant of David and Wisdom literature. Similarly, epistle readings, which are from 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, James, and Hebrews, are intended to provide a semi-continuous reading of these letters rather than correspond to the Gospel. Depending on what readings are selected, the congregation might hear three parallel reading tracks, which are not intended to fit together. During this time of the year, making the readings fit together frequently requires very “creative” exegesis, and should therefore be avoided.
If you wonder where the Revised Common Lectionary came from, another question I am frequently asked, it is the work of the Consultation on Common Texts, an ecumenical consultation of liturgical scholars and denominational representatives from the United States and Canada who produce liturgical texts for use in common by North American Christian Churches (http://www.commontexts.org/). Gail Ramshaw’s A Three-Year Banquet (Augsburg Fortress, 2004) explains how the Revised Common Lectionary was developed and how the gospels, the first readings and the epistles are assigned. I find Fritz West’s Scripture and Memory: The Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-Year Lectionary (Liturgical Press, 1997) very helpful. An outline of the lecture “Lectionary Patterns and Strategies,” which is part of the required preaching course I teach and includes strategies from departing from the lectionary, is available on my web site. Visit http://craigasatterlee.com and click the Preaching tab.
I am a lectionary preacher because the lectionary compels me to listen to God before I dare to say anything. I get really frustrated when preachers spend sermon time bashing the lectionary; what is most obvious to me is that they do not understand what the lectionary is (and is not) designed to do. As we begin this “ordinary time,” when the lectionary becomes a bit less ordinary, preaching is richer for the congregation and more joyous for the preacher when the preacher understands what the lectionary is trying to do.

What I Preached at St. Andrew's (The congregation where I am privileged to be a pastor): Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T16:22:00.003-06:00

I am grateful to my senior pastor, Gretchen Freeese, who invited me to both preach and presde on Christmas Eve, since a knee injury prevented me from standing at the altar in December. When the senior pastor is gracious, it is a joy to be a consulting (assistant) pastor!

"Be Not Afraid!”

Luke 2:1-20
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among all with whom God is pleased!"

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." And they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child; and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

The angel said to the shepherds, "Be not afraid.” Imagine that! A multitude of the heavenly host is streaming from heaven. The glory of the Lord is shining around the shepherds. An angel is speaking, and the shepherds aren’t supposed to be afraid. Truth be told, the shepherds had good reason to be scared of an angel of the Lord. Though we have lovely, romantic images of shepherds – kids dressed up in Christmas pageants. Though great men of faith such as Abraham, Moses, and David are all described as keeping sheep, by the time of Jesus, shepherding had become a profession most likely to be filled by people who couldn’t find decent work. Society stereotyped shepherds as liars, degenerates, and thieves. The testimony of shepherds was not admissible in court, and many towns had ordinances barring shepherds from coming inside the city limits. The religious establishment, what we would call the church, took a particularly dim view of shepherds since keeping sheep kept them from keeping the Sabbath and made them ritually unclean. The Pharisees lumped shepherds with tax collectors and prostitutes, persons who were "sinners" because of their job. For an angel of the Lord to appear to these guys, who know that society, the church, and even God hate them, would be scary stuff. I imagine the shepherds expected God’s angel to blast them out of their boots. But, no. Instead, the angel says, “Be not afraid.”

I sense that lots of us are scared this Christmas. I feel the fear myself. We’re in a bit of a mess. This year, letters to Santa aren’t asking for Nintendo Wii or Apple iPod Touch. “Help my mom find a job.” “Don’t let us lose our home.” “My family needs food for Christmas dinner.” Many of us are scared about our health. Many more of us are scared about the ultuimate cost of our government loaning billions to bail out corporations that seem to have brought their problems upon themselves. How do you suppose Rod Blagojevich and Bernie Madoff would repond if an angel of the Lord appeared to them this Christmas Eve. Do you think they’d think they have some explaining to do? And what if an angel of the Lord appeared to us? Would we fear that the angel wants to talk about what humanity has done to God’s creation, what we are doing with our lives, how the Church is serving ourselves rather than the world, or thoughts, regrets, sins and desires that are only known to us?

This Christmas, the angel of the Lord comes to all who are afraid. The angel of the Lord comes to all who have good reason to be scared. To us, the angel says, “Be not afraid!” “Be not afraid!” Rather than fear, the angel says, be filled with great joy. For the good news that the angel brings us is that, no matter what kind of mess we are in, no matter what kind of mess we bring upon ourselves, God in Christ is with us “wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Jesus is flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, sharing our fate, bringing God’s promised future.

Now, Christ’s coming does not mean that all the reasons we have to be afraid will simply disappear. God’s promised future won’t come instantly, like turning on a Christmas tree. And God’s promised future won’t come painlessly, as surely as this season is not without pain. The babe lying in a manger will spend his life allaying people’s fears. But people that think those who bring problems on themselves should get what they deserve will object. They will rally the forces of fear by nailing Jesus to a tree. And on the cross, Jesus will conquer all fear, including our fear of God, our fear of the future, our fear of death, our fear of forgiving others as we wish to be forgiven.

In Christ, the babe born in Bethlehem, we have nothing to fear. And so, more than not being afraid, we can dare to be brave. We can dare to be brave. Like the shepherds, we can let go of our need for proof. We can say, "Let's go and see!" We can look for signs of Christ coming to us, Christ in the mess with us, Christ relieving our fear. And then we can tell what we hear and see. And we become Christmas angels, members of the heavenly host, who come to those with good reason to be scared and tell them, “Be not afraid!”

What I Preached at Immanuel Lutheran Church (Evanston) 120th Anniversary Celebration

2008-09-28T20:56:00.003-05:00

Jesus Moved In!

John 10:22-30
At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Jesus answered, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

I never knew anyone who was 120 years old before. I once spent time with a centenarian shortly before his hundredth birthday celebration. “Dumbest thing I ever heard of,” he told me, “congratulating someone just for managing to stay alive. How long you live is not what’s important,” he said, “it’s what you do with the life you’ve been given that counts.” That’s the temptation, isn’t it? Sometimes I worry that congregations and other Christian institutions are content to congratulate themselves for surviving, for managing to stay alive, or for what they have accomplished, the things they have built. And, if they reach the ripe old age of 120, they often have lots of reasons to ongratulate themselves.

King Solomon had reason to congratulate himself. Solomon is dedicating the temple to Yahweh. Solomon built the house of God and, standing before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, Solomon spreads out his hands to heaven and invites God to move in. Though even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain God, much less the house that Solomon built, the king asks God to move in to that house so that God might hear the prayers of God’s people when they pray in and toward the Temple. Solomon asks God to move in so that God’s people know that God hears and heeds their prayers and forgives them.

Today, as we recall the house of God that Solomon built, we give thanks to God for this house, and for those generations of saints who, knowing that God is everywhere and that God hears their prayers anywhere, built this house and came to this house to offer their prayers, to hear God’s Word, to receive the sacraments, and to sing God’s praise. And as we thank God for this house, we do not congratulate ourselves that the building is still standing with people inside. We don’t congratulate ourselves for a renovated sanctuary, handicapped accessibility, and other new facilities. No, we are mindful of our debt to the saints who offered their prayers in this house over the course of the last 120 years; we are mindful of our responsibility to the saints who will offer their prayers in this house in the 120 years to come. Mostly, we are mindful that people came to this house, that we come to this house, that people will come to this house, because God is with us, because Jesus moved in.

Today, we thank God that this is a house of God, where we have experienced what Solomon said: “O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart.” We thank God that this is a house where we have experienced Immanuel, God with us.

Today is bigger than a church building. Today is bigger than what we have built and all that we could congratulate ourselves for. For in the portico of Solomon’s temple, on the anniversary of its dedication, when Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the assembly, spread out his hands to heaven and invited God to move in, Jesus tells us that what the Father has given him is greater than all else. Jesus tells us that he gives us eternal life and that we will never perish. Jesus tells us that no one, that no thing, that not even death, will snatch us out of Jesus’ hand.

In Christ God comes to us. In Christ God moves in with us. Christ does not move into a special house where he can more easily hear our prayers. Christ moves into a manger, a cross and a tomb, so that he can truly share our lives. And Christ moves into word, water, bread and wine, so that we can share his life as well.

We do not celebrate this house today. We celebrate Immanuel – Christ’s presence, God with us, in this house. You name ways you experience God’s steadfast love in this house in the Hymn of the Day that you choose to sing today:

When we prayed, “Your kingdom come,”
Christ showed us how God’s will is done.

We see God’s wonders, year to year;
within our loving reach new lives appear.

And so we praise God for this glorious place,
where God transforms us by God’s word of grace,
and where we find rest in God’s sincere embrace. Alleluia! Alleluia!

It’s telling that you comissioned a hymn for this day. As I have told you, when I come to Immanuel, I expect that, sometime as we worship, I will be stopped in my tracks by your signing as Eden’s song re-echoes in this space and joins the song of all the choirs of angels, the church on earth, and the host of heaven. You could rightly congratulate yoruselves for your singing. But in my experience, you’d rather just sing and add your voices to Eden’s song.

For you know that this house is not a shrine. This house is not a mouument. This house is the gathering space of that spiritual house founded on the stone rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight. This house is the work place of that spiritual house made of living stones. This house is the mission base of that spiritual house that worshiped and wittnessed to Christ first in Jacobson’s home, then in rented quarters, then in a wood-frame church building, and finally in this church building. Today we celebrate that the spiritual house called Immanual is bigger than the physical house we call church, and that the spiritual house called Immanuel is but part of the spiritual house that is Christ’s body. For we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” called not to congratulate ourselves, but to “proclaim the mighty acts of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Ad so, as even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain God, as the tomb could not contain Christ, we, empowered by the Holy Spirit, will not allow this building to contain us. For, although Immanuel is 120, this house is not a retirement home.

With zeal like God’s, that cannot rest
while anyone is still oppressed,
we cast our nets at Christ’s behest.

Because how long we live is not what’s important; it’s what we do with the life we’ve been given that counts. And the life we’ve been given is eternal; the life we’ve been given is Christ’s.

What I Preached at the Northern Illinois Synod Professional Leaders Conference

2008-09-26T23:56:00.001-05:00

“An Altar to an Unknown God”

Acts 17:22-31
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, the one who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is God served by human hands, as though needing anything, since that very God gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

“From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for and find God—though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For ‘In God we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are the offspring of God.’

“Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now God commands all people everywhere to repent, because God has fixed a day on which to judge the world in righteousness by a man whom God has appointed, and of this God has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

At first I felt sorry for the Athenians and their “altar to an unknown god.” After all, our altars proclaim how well we know our God, how much we know about our God. Think of your altar. What does it tell you about God? The altar at LSTC is freestanding because our God is in our midst and not off in some faraway place that we can only reach through a spiritual intercessor. As Paul said, “God is not far from each one of us. For ‘In God we live and move and have our being.’”

Our altar is shaped like a table because our God desires intimate relationship with us, as intimate as eating together. Our table is made of wood to remind us of nature and creation because, as Paul said, God made the world and everything in it; God is Lord of heaven and earth. There is a white cloth on our table to remind us of newness because our God makes all things new.

And when bread and wine are brought to our altar, we remember that, as Paul says, “We are God’s offspring.” God appointed our brother Jesus to suffer with us, to suffer for us. God gave assurance to all by raising Jesus from the dead, and Jesus will come again to judge the world in righteousness. All we need are the Words of Institution, and Paul’s sermon makes quite a Eucharistic Prayer!

Yes, at first I felt sorry for the Athenians and their “altar to an unknown god.” But as I joined Paul in front of the Areopagus, and heard the Apostle addressing not only the Athenians, but also us, I began to envy the people of Athens for their altar. For the Athenians are wise enough to admit that there are things about God they do not know. I wonder: How ready am I to admit that there is so much about God that I still do not know. How ready are we, as leaders and as church, to admit that there is so much about God that we still do not know. Isn’t it Paul that reminds us, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

As we contemplate change and transition, we might do well to set up and spend time praying at an altar to our unknown God. For we do not know how God will reveal Godself in our midst, whether in this place or in the places where we serve or in the places to where the church is being sent. We do not know to what tables our God will invite us. We do not know what the Creator of heaven and earth has in mind to create. And we certainly do not know what new thing God is doing; we don’t know what newness God is bringing.

What we know, all that we know for sure, is that God in Christ keeps bringing new life until no foe may harm us, not even the final foe of tomb and death. Jesus keeps bringing new life until all people, indeed all creation, is raised. God keeps bringing new life until God makes complete what has been accomplished in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ--the end of all our woe.

That ours is in many ways an unknown God means that, as surely as the Athenians ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals, we should not expect that we know what God is doing and how God is doing it. We should not expect that our established doctrinal understandings and inherited interpretations of scripture will predict the new thing that God has in store. In fact, our understanding may very well be in tension with our experience of the new life that God in Christ brings. This tension is rooted in Christ who, risen from the dead, is not confined either to the Bible or to the past, and is certainly not the slave of our understanding. My colleague Tom Troeger, who teaches preaching at Yale, writes, “We have a technical term for people who do not change--dead. If Christ has not changed since the resurrection, then Christ is no longer alive.”

This kind of talk makes resurrection terrifying before it is empowering because this kind of resurrection gives more freedom to Christ than most believers want their Savior to have. We’re ready to be raised to life as we know it, life as we want it, life as we expect it, and life as we understand it. But Jesus is talking about new life. To proclaim resurrection is to preach the living Christ as more than the once-a-year theme of Easter. Christ’s resurrection opens astonishing possibilities when we give up the delusion that we control reality. Resurrection is the vital ministry that results when a church releases its obsession with doing things as they always have. Resurrection is the future that opens to a society when it comes to terms with its prejudice and injustice. Resurrection is the vision of Christ that is granted us when we release the images we cling to in order to preserve what we hold dear.

Spending time praying at an altar to our unknown God leads us to fold up and put away our precise blueprints for faith, Church, and community, whether in this place or in the places were we serve or in the places to which the Church is going. For, as we spend time praying at an altar to an unknown God, the permanence, autonomy, and authority that we want our faith or Scripture or worship or community or our call to possess give way to the presence, power, and voice of the risen Christ. As we spend time praying at an altar to an unknown God, Christ speaks to us. Christ conveys meaning not only through content but also through the way Jesus speaks and is heard. For the language of new life is spoken not silent. It’s memory is communal not individual, its interpretation is shared not localized. The risen Christ speaks to us and we know that when it comes to the new life God intends, there is so much we just do not know.

And so we listen more than we study. We experience more than we comprehend. We appreciate more than we analyze. But mostly, we remain open to what we don’t know more than we conclude what we know. And the risen Christ comes to us in ways that we never expect but we come to know to be true. For resurrection is not about having all the answers. And neither is leading the church through change and transition. Leading in the power of the resurrection is about being encountered by the living Christ in the places to which we go. And so we pause at an altar in Athens as we spend time together in this place, knowing that Christ will encounter us, but not knowing how.

Writing Update: "How's the Book Coming?"

2008-09-09T00:12:00.003-05:00

When I was appointed Dean of Augustana Chapel for this academic year, I thought it best to make the final push and get the book done. The manuscript was approved this week. Now it's on to copyediting and proof pages.

When God Speaks through Worship: Stories Congregations Live By is a collection of stories of congregational worship in which, upon reflection, God’s ongoing presence, speech, and activity are apparent. On the one hand, they are small, unassuming stories of God’s involvement in the weekly worship of congregations where I served as pastor. On the other hand, these are stories those congregations lived by, instances in which they experienced God giving them new life and gathering them to share God’s work of bringing new life to the world. The themes of the stories in this book are things Christians do when they worship—preach and pray, baptize and bless, light candles and sing songs, share Holy Communion, commend loved ones to God and the communion of saints. Yet, the stories are not about Christians; they are about God speaking and acting in worship when Christians do these things. The thread that holds these stories together is the connection between God’s saving activity in Scripture and God’s saving activity in worship. Their purpose is to celebrate the good news that worship is God’s work of saving and recreating the world, before it is an activity of the church or the Christian.

The book will be out in January.

What I Preached in Chapel - Proper 17

2008-09-08T23:52:00.001-05:00

God Sets Our Hands Apart!

Craig A. Satterlee

Matthew 16:21-28
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." But Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

"For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his dominion.”

Where do you suppose Peter’s hands were when Peter rebuked Jesus? Where do you suppose Peter’s hands were when Peter rebuked Jesus? Did Peter spin Jesus around, grab Jesus by the shoulders, and try to shake some sense into him? "God forbid it, Lord!” Did Peter put his arm around Jesus and pull Jesus into a private moment? “Let’s just take a minute and think this suffering thing through.” Or, was it a finger in the face? “This must never happen to you."

Where do you suppose your hands will be when you rebuke Jesus during this season of your Christian vocation, during this time of semianry education, duing the days and weeks and months that lie ahead? It’s not a matter of if but of when. You will rebuke Jesus. People like my friends Vitor and Lea will get to hear some of it, when you talk about Jesus undergoing great suffering, and being killed, and on the third day being raised. You’ll discuss atonement theories and our blood-thirsty God and all that stuff. And you will wind up rebuking. But most of you will raise your fist toward heaven and rebuke Jesus because the cross you want so desperately to take up is not the cross that Christ has laid on your shoulders during this season of your Christian vocation, this time of seminary education, during the days and weeks and months that lie ahead.

"If any want to become my followers,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” And there are so many glorious crosses to take up. Hyde Park, LSTC, the church and the planet all need saving. And courses in Hebrew and Greek, Old and New Testamrnt, Church History and Systematic Theology, Pastoral Care and Preaching can all feel academic, tame, remote, irrelevant. We don’t want to talk about doing ministry. We want to do ministry. We know how the Messiah’s mission is and is not supposed to happen, just as Peter knew how the Messiah’s mission is and is not supposed to happen. “Not through a cross,”Peter said. And we might add, “And cerrtainly not through homework.”
And Jesus says to us what Jesus said to Peter. “Get behind me!” Take the place of a follower, the place of a learner, the place of a student. “Don’t get in my way so that I stumble over you,” Jesus says. “For you are thinking like you think. You are thnking like human beings think. You’re not thinking like God thinks.”

Here’s how God thinks: God saved the world through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, a mystery that we are still trying to figure out. And God, who brings life out of death, speech out of silence, and hope out of despair, will surely transform the world through people like you, who commit yourselves to take the time to be followers, learners, and students of Jesus. For we not only study, pray, and grow in faith for ourselves. We spend this season of our Christian vocation, this time of Christian education, for each other, for the church that we love, for the congregations we will serve, for people who do not have the privilege of studying their faith, and for the world that does not know what it does not know. What we begin this week, what we do this year, is a sign of the Spirit’s presence, a way of following Christ, and a share in God’s work of reconciling the world to God’s own self. God invites us to trust, to have faith that what we are doing will make a difference.

And so, today, we anoint new students’ hands as a sign of the Spirit setting them apart for the work of this season of their lives and ministries. During these years of seminary, there will be many calls for helping hands, many crosses that want to be taken up, all kinds of work that you will want to do. Yet, Jesus’ call in this season of life is to study and preparation. During these years, the work of our hands is to open books, to turn pages, to write papers, and to manipulate keyboards. Our hands will do more praying for the world than serving in the world. This work is not separate from ministry. Our hands are set apart to minister to those we will one day serve in congregations by faithfully studying Scripture, diligently learning the faith, intentionally growing in spirit, and passionately practicing the arts of ministry. You see, when Jesus sets our hands apart for important work, Jesus also sets our hands apart from other equally important work. Jesus also sets our hands apart from activities that conflict with the work to which he calls us, such as acts of violence and injustice, and self-centered behaviors.

Having your hands anointed, deciding to come to–or to come back to–seminary is controversial. Seminary challenges our tendency to distinguish between the academic and practical, between learning the tradition and engaging in mission. Seminary challenges us to lay aside human things and set our minds on divine things, on the things of God. In the anointing, God sets our hands apart to engage in certain tasks and activities, to refrain from other tasks and activities, and to postpone still other work until another season of life. In the anointing, God sets limits and determines priorities. “Get behind me,” Jesus says. “Follow. Learn. Be my student. Take up that cross. You will make a difference.”

Sermons Posted on this Blog

2008-03-20T22:33:00.008-05:00

Following the example of many congregations, the sermons that I post on this blog, whether I preached them last week or a few years ago, are only here for a limited time. My purpose in posting them is to proclaim the Gospel, not to provide an archive or resource for other preachers. I find that textweek.com and workingpreacher.org are good sites for sermon help, though I never use either for my own preaching. Occasionally, things I've written are posted there.

Luther’s Small Catechism: A Preaching Text?

2008-03-09T21:52:00.001-05:00

I am glad that Luther’s Small Catechism is included in the assembly edition of Evangelical Lutheran Worship and the pew edition of Lutheran Service Book. More than a handy resource for inviting God’s people to rediscover this Lutheran treasure, the inclusion of the Small Catechism in the hymnal invites preachers to read it in new ways. Though I keep the Book of Concord in ready reach, reading the Small Catechism from that book inspires an attitude of study. Reflecting on the Small Catechism from the hymnal affords both a certain freedom when considering the catechism and a disposition of prayer. Lately, I have been approaching the catechism as a “preaching text”–not a text for preaching but a text about preaching. I’ve been exploring what insights Luther’s Small Catechism gives about preaching. Permit me to share just a few.

For starters, Luther’s treatment of the Ten Commandments always gives me a headache as I am confronted by the absolute impossibility of keeping the law. Fear, love, and trust God above all things? How do I even know when I am loving my wife and daughter ahead of God so that I can not do that? In preaching, I need to hear and receive grace; I certainly need to preach it. “Do not despise preaching or God’s word, but instead keep that word holy and gladly hear and learn it.” I confess that I have weeks when I despise preaching and am not too pleased with the appointed portion of God’s Word. On those weeks, Luther points the preacher beyond the task and the pericope to the the preacher’s relationship with God. Perhaps the preacher is not fearing, loving, and trusting God above all things.

Luther also reminds me that God’s Word is bigger than I think and, often, bigger than I am comfortable with. The prohibition against murder calls us to help and support our neighbors in all of life’s needs. The commandment not to steal includes the expectation that we help our neighbors to protect and improve their property and income. And, according to the eighth commandment, we are to come to our neighbors’ defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light. As a preacher, these explanations remind me that, whenver I think I know what a passage of Scripture means and stop listening to it, I sell God’s Word short.

I’ve begun including Luther’s explanation of the third article of the Creed in one of my preaching lectures. I hear lots of sermons that tell me what I should, ought, and must do. I wonder how I am supposed to do all the stuff the preacher tells me to do when “by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” Far better than telling people what they should, ought, and must do, preachers proclaim what God is doing and what people can do because of the Holy Spirit that calls them through the gospel and enlightens them with the Spirit’s gifts.

Turning to the Lord’s Prayer, I find Luther inadequate when it comes to daily bread. I add God’s Word to Luther’s list. Recalling Jesus’ words, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Mt 4:4), this petition helps me to receive God’s Word with thanksgiving. Moreover, this petition keeps me humble and realistic: sermons are daily bread and not eternal utterances that will change the world. Change comes through a steady diet of the daily bread of God’s Word.

Baptism reminds me of the power of God’s Word. God’s Word in water forgives sins, redeems from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation. My favorite verse in Scripture reminds me that “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Co 1:23-24). To preach the Gospel is powerful stuff.

Holy Communion challenges me. More than comforting me that the grace of the table will compensate for a lack of grace in the sermon, the table requires me as preacher to move toward saying in words what the bread and cup will say–Christ given and shed for you.

Mostly, the Small Catechism assures me as a preacher who, first and foremost, is a baptized child of God, that God created, provides for, and protects me; that Jesus Christ redeemed, purchased and freed me; that the Holy Spirit makes me holy and keeps me in the true faith; that I can use God’s very name in every time of need to call on, pray to, praise, and give thanks to God. The list goes one. In preaching, I simply thank and praise, serve and obey the God who loved me first. This is most certainly true.

I Found My Way Back to Chapel Last Week: Confessions of a New Seminary Professor

2008-01-30T14:10:00.001-06:00

I wrote this 5 June 2001, after completing my first year as a seminary professor. No one wanted to publish it.

I found my way back to chapel last week. That’s undoubtedly a shocking admission to hear from a brand new seminary professor. It’s certainly an unsettling confession to make. I remember that, when I was called to teach preaching at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago just over a year ago, one of the things that excited me most was the opportunity to participate in daily worship. Certain sermons and liturgies from my own years in seminary stand out in my memory as formative experiences in my life. Over the years of my ministry recalling them provided an oasis from which I drew refreshment. Yet, reflecting on those years in seminary, I had to admit that my insight about the importance of chapel came only after I graduated and daily worship was no longer an option. While I was in seminary, there was so much to do that my chapel attendance was not what I wished it had been in later years. But now I was older and wiser. I knew better. Coming to LSTC, I really looked forward to spending a part of each day gathering with God’s people to hear God’s Word, to sing and to pray, to celebrate the sacraments, and to be sent back to work grounded in the Gospel. I remember thinking that daily chapel was a luxury, a privilege that I was determined to take advantage of. In the fall I was very deliberate about attending daily worship. I never scheduled anything during chapel time and stopped whatever I was doing in order to attend.

Then winter came and things got a little crazy. I found myself bouncing from my preaching lecture to five preaching labs to meetings with students to committee and all sorts of other meetings to administrative responsibilities to discussions on important issues and out the seminary door to teach and preach in the church. Part of this craziness came from being new and still needing to figure out how to manage my ministry in this context. Part of this craziness is inherent; LSTC is a fast, busy, challenging, roller coaster kind of place. I’m not complaining. In reality, the zaniness of winter quarter at LSTC isn’t very different from many of the weeks that I spent during thirteen years in the parish. So it won’t be surprising to hear that there were days during my first year as a seminary professor, too many days, when I looked at my calendar and found that the only free moments I had to even catch my breath were during daily worship.

This made going to chapel harder. To be honest, chapel made going to chapel harder. You see, chapel wasn’t always in keeping with my preferred “style.” Even when it was, chapel wasn’t always to my “liking.” This affected my attitude toward daily worship. I was hearing twenty sermons a week in class, most of them very good, but I couldn’t figure out how to shut off the sermon critic when I went to chapel. As I participated in worship, I inevitably found something to criticize, and sometimes it required little if any effort. So chapel time became catch-up time. I stayed in my office. At first I felt uneasy but soon I felt justified. As the winter wore on, I also found myself feeling more and more disappointed and depleted, even deleted.

Let’s be clear. My struggles aren’t the important point. They’re not new; they’ve been around at least since I was in seminary. They’re certainly not unique to LSTC. It occurs to me that the specifics are not even relevant. Suffice to say, the struggles of this first year as a seminary professor are part of being new. They are also part of being in a fast, busy, challenging, roller coaster kind of place. They are part of what happens whenever you bring together a bunch of people who are on fire for the Gospel, who are in love with the church, who are highly invested in the kingdom, and who bring with them a wide range of perspectives and experiences. What I am saying is that my struggles in this first year as a seminary professor are no different from the struggles of the church and the parish and ministry in any context. And this is the point. How often pastors and seminarians (I can’t speak for AIM’s and deaconesses) get so caught up in the struggles that we find ourselves lamenting the fact that the first place we cut corners is our devotional and spiritual life. And how adept we are at coming up with reasons to justify doing so.

I drifted in and out of chapel throughout the winter and into the spring. I told myself that I needed to do better when it came to daily worship but knew that I wouldn’t. Then last Wednesday I sat down for chapel in the auditorium. As one who is legally blind, I am always uncomfortable in that space, afraid that I’ll trip, fall down the steps, and break my neck on the way to receive communion. As I sat there before the service meditating (worrying) about getting down the stairs, the assisting minister came up and offered to bring me communion. It was Margo, one of my students. Her tone was respectful but determined. No bones about it, they were bringing me communion. I quickly agreed, and found myself feeling wonderfully stunned that “they” would think to do this all on their own. Then I was even more stunned to find myself stunned. When had this community, my community, become “they”? Why was I surprised that my community would think to do this for me? When had my perception of this community become so askew? I was aware once more that, as we strive for diversity and inclusion, it is often the smallest gesture that makes the biggest difference, providing dignity and challenge all in the same instant.

My internal sermon critic noted that there was nothing particularly spectacular about the service. The sermon was quite fine. The hymns were good. The presiding and assisting ministers brought me communion—dignity and challenge. Then, after communion, we came to the service of sending our interns. It hit me all at once and I wasn’t prepared for it. These were my students—the first Lutherans I taught to preach! My colleagues will fight to claim these same students as their own but they’re mine. We spent the winter learning a theology and method of preaching. We worked through texts and exegeted congregations together. I heard them proclaim the Gospel and listened as their faith, their hopes, their fears, their questions and convictions were all given expression. I was privileged to accompany these students, as their preaching voices grew from quivering to confident. Now they were on their way into the church. As their names were called, along with the names of the places where they were being sent, I was overwhelmed with all sorts of feelings—pride, hope, sadness at their leaving and excitement for their going. I even felt a twinge of envy as I recalled my own internship. I certainly didn’t feel disappointed or depleted.

That’s when it occurred to me that my first year as a seminary professor was similar to my years as a seminarian. I was allowing all the things I had to do get in the way of understanding and appreciating what God through the church has called the seminary to do. I allowed all the things that this community struggles with to overshadow the reason that we struggle. We are equipping leaders for the church and the world. I prepare, form, and shape men and women to preach, to be proclaimers of Jesus Christ. And these men and women, the ones I had taught, were on their way to preach the good news to congregations and communities all across our church. They were going to fast, busy, challenging, roller coaster kinds of places where they will struggle because they are new and because that’s the way ministry is. And, if they’re not careful, they, like their teacher, will take on a skewed view of God’s people because they will lose track of daily “chapel” and find countless reasons to justify themselves for doing so.

In the next instant, I found myself feeling protective…like a bear! I didn’t want my students to make the same mistake that I had—twice! I didn’t want these students we were sending to get so caught up in all that they had to do that they lost sight of what they were doing. That’s when the preacher’s words came booming into my ears. She had said that the best way to keep this from happening was to take time every day to sing, pray, hear God’s Word, celebrate the sacraments, and be grounded in the Gospel. I had nodded in agreement but now it was hitting home. The preacher wasn’t only talking to the ones we were sending. She was talking to the ones who had been sent here.

On that Wednesday last week, being in chapel reminded me of all the reasons that I need to be in chapel—for me, for my students, for the church, for the world, for my community and for my way of looking at it. Daily worship is a privilege. It is a luxury of being in seminary. It’s also a necessity, a responsibility, at least for me. And so I’m finding my way back to chapel. I’m getting back in the habit of scheduling nothing during that time and stopping whatever I’m doing in order to attend. There are plenty of other things around here to be absent from in order to catch up on work or to pause long enough to catch my breath. And lately I’ve been excusing myself from some of them. But I’m not excusing myself from chapel. And I am attending chapel differently. I do my best to leave the sermon critic at the door. Chapel is still not always in my preferred ”style,” and certainly not always to my “liking.” But more and more, I find myself attending daily worship not as a seminary professor, not as a homiletics or liturgical scholar, or even as a pastor. More and more, I attend chapel as a beggar, as someone begging to hear the Gospel, longing for a word of life and hope and promise, needing a bit of good news. Somewhere in chapel I find it, even (especially) when worship is not to my liking or in keeping with my preferred style. And I am seeing things differently these days. You see, for me, the gift of chapel is perspective.

January Travels

2008-01-27T19:23:00.000-06:00

I spent most of January traveling to different expressions of the Church. I always find it invigorating and grounding to be among pastors and other leaders, in the same way that I find it invigorating and grounding to preach and preside in a congregation on a weekly basis. Church leaders are gifted, committed, hopeful, worried and tired folk, that could easily be doing something else very well. Yet, they choose (every call involves a choice) to serve God and us. Their service is itself a gift of God’s grace and a sign of the nearness of the reign of God, which Jesus proclaims. Being out in the church also gives me needed perspective on some of the issues that so consume me when I spend too much time on the corner of 55th and University. Most important, I am reminded that, more than anything else, my call to to make sure the gospel gets preached.

I began January in Savannah at the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy. For me, the chief gift of this meeting is spending time with good friends from my years at Notre Dame, along with pals from my work on the theology of the sacraments with the PC(USA). Jim White once remarked to me that one’s position on a conservative-liberal continuum depends upon context. It’s fun to spend a few days a year being liturgically laid-back in comparison to some others. It seems to happen so rarely!

I then boarded a Carnival Cruise ship to lead Trinity Seminary’s Class of 1996 in a continuing education event on Preaching in Lent and Easter. What a wonderful idea! We sailed from Miami to Key West to Mexico and had a day at sea coming back. I taught for two hours a day then saw the sights, sat on deck, and ate too much. The January cruise meant it was warm and affordable. I need to promote this as the future of continuing education!

Back in Chicago, I attended a gathering of ELCA bishops and teaching theologians. We worshiped several times during out days together. We heard excellent lectures and engaged in great conversation. I was most impressed with the bishops and the church’s teachers. The former aren’t bureaucrats and the latter aren’t ivory tower eggheads. I saw some of my seminary professors and some bishops who were students at Trinity the same time that I was. I am still reflecting on the irony of attending that meeting. When I graduated from seminary, we weren’t sure that I’d get a call. Now, I am a seminary professor meeting with the conference of bishops. I find it godly.

From bishops and teaching theologians, I journeyed to Philadelphia and Region 7 (New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) first call pastors. This was an impressive event with impressive pastors. The region brings them together for four days for worship, plenary addresses, small groups, and workshops. I delivered three lectures on the theme, “Solid Word, Shaky Ground,” and preached at the sending service. These pastors gave me hope and made me excited about the future. It was great to reconnect with the bishop of Upstate New York, an old friend, and get to know the bishop of SE Pen. Both women are impressive leaders.

This morning I returned to St. Andrew’s to preach the Word and administer the Sacraments. The more I am privileged to do in the church, the more I realize that preaching the gospel and praying over water, bread and wine is the central call, the heart of everything else I do.

The Christian Life: Baptism and Life Passages

2008-01-26T21:42:00.000-06:00

Many people are asking about Volume 2 in Augsburg Fortress's Using Evangelical Lutheran Worship Series, which I wrote with Dennis Bushkofsky. The volume begins with a theological chapter, "Baptism: Wellspring of the Christian Life," and a chapter on the place of baptism in the Church's worship. The book continues with chapters on Holy Baptism, Welcome to Baptism (catechumenate), Affirmation of Baptism, Corporate and Individual Confession and Forgiveness, Healing, Funeral, and Marriage. Like all the books in this series, and indeed like Evangelical Lutheran Worship itself, the tone is more suggestive than prescriptive. I have returned page proofs and now it's up to the publisher. We are hoping for May.

When God Speaks through You: How Faith Convictions Shape Preaching and Mission

2008-01-26T21:11:00.000-06:00

I am particularly excited about my new book from Alban, because I wrote it for people who listen to sermons and their preachers to read together. I describe the book as a "conversation starter." It invites groups within congregations to use preaching to talk about leadership, worship, the purposes of preaching, faith and daily life, Christian community, congregational mission, and the future. By discovering the diverse perspectives present in congregations on these topics, I hope faith communities will become better prepared to discuss the hot topics that they face. I am using it my own congregation, and the conversations are very satisfying. I am looking forward to teaching a course using the book this summer for both M.Div. and D.Min. students. See the link below--When God Speaks through You--to learn more about the book.