Mission: Possible - Last Week/Next Week

I sense that Peace Lutheran Church - where I serve as Pastor - is on the brink of doing some new exciting things to share the gospel. I don't know what they are yet, but my first step in making them a reality is cultivating a hunger in the church to grow and reach new people.  To that end, I'm doing a sermon series for Easter based on the book of Acts called Mission: Possible.  Here's the synopsis/preview for last week/this week.

Renewal in one’s own faith life is the first step to sharing the good news with other people.  The same Peter who had denied Jesus turned into a bold witness to the gospel.  What happened? He encountered the resurrected Jesus who loved him despite his betrayal.  Jesus forgave Peter, gave Peter a new start, and it made all the difference.

How has Jesus made a difference in your life?  This question is sometimes impossible for people who’ve been in church forever to answer.  It’s critical for our sense of mission to be reminded that we are people in need of God’s love and we’ve got it.  The more we live with the awareness of that amazing grace, the more courage we’ll have to share it with others.

Listen to the sermon here.

This week I will preach on the conversion of Saul.  Saul persecuted Christians and then, an experience of the resurrected Jesus on the road and just like that, he becomes Paul, the biggest champion of Jesus.

It leads to the question: why don’t you think God can change you too?  Adults come up with all sorts of excuses for why we can’t do new things (too old, too set-in-my-ways, too comfortable, too poor, too tired, too many people relying on me, too embarrassed, too afraid).  God can ALWAYS do new things.  If God could change Saul into Paul, God can transform your life too.

Questions:

1)      Is there an area of life you’d love to change but don’t know how?

2)      Do you believe that in the future, you could serve God in a new or different way?

3)      When is the last time you remember having the courage to make a big change?

Be at Peace,

Pastor Sarah

Christians in the snow

Hi church - I've seen lots of posts about how to stay safe and get what you need in anticipation of a big snow storm.

Here are a few thrown together thoughts about how you can act out your faith during a snowstorm:

1) If you anticipate you'll have special needs this weekend, let someone know.  This is not the time to be proud.  Loneliness, hunger, thirst, cold - we're all susceptible.  If you're afraid of experiencing one of those during what could be a debilitating snowstorm, let someone know you need to be checked on and cared for.  Email me if you don't know who else to tell.  I'll do my best to get you some care.

2) Call people you know who live alone, who are frail, who might rely on delivery services like Meals on Wheels or grocery deliveries.  Check in on them and make sure they have what they need to get through a couple of days.

3) Elderly or disabled neighbors?  Neighbors with small children who can't be outside in cold for long? Let them know ahead of time that you'll shovel their walks for them.  This will be a huge relief. 

4) Snow days are no fun for a lot of people, including people who won't get paid if they can't get to work, people who don't have enough money for heat, people who have nowhere safe to sleep.  If you are lucky enough to enjoy your snow day, consider giving an extra gift to a local organization that helps people in need.  In our area, Annandale Christian Communities for Action and Bailey's Crossroads Shelter are both worthy places to give. 

5) If church is cancelled, (I'll make the decision on Saturday by noon), use the hour on Sunday morning to pray, read the scriptures and sing.  You can find the texts here. But don't feel the need to be super holy about it.  Snow days are a super-sabbath.  Hang out in your pjs.  Make pancakes and enjoy one another in the name of God!  Sleep in, rest up.

6) Speaking of super-sabbath...don't try to keep up your normal pace and by all means, stay off the roads.    Remember, emergency vehicles still need to get through.

7) Play.  I firmly believe that God smiles when we laugh. If you are in a position to relax during the snow day, get out in the snow and enjoy it. Go for a walk, through a snowball, make a snow angel, take in the wonder of the silent stillness that a big snowfall creates.

Be safe and stay warm - God bless all your days,
Pastor Sarah

Before the Christmas Pageant - We are the stories we tell.

(This was my introduction to the Christmas Pageant at Peace Lutheran, Alexandria VA, Dec 20 2015)

A few weeks ago I was in a training session about discipleship. What's that, you ask? The great commandment of the resurrected Jesus is to go and make disciples.  Since then, one of the purposes of church is to do that with every generation: make modern disciples who will follow the ways of Jesus.  In this time and place, we can’t assume people learned discipleship at home or in church as youngsters.  We have to teach them.  Hence, the training.

In the session, we searched for a word to use for “disciples-in-training.”  It’s too long, too church-y, and just kind of weird.  People brainstormed words around the table:

Mentee. Student. Apprentice. Novice. Fledgling. 

We all burst into giggles when someone said below his breath, “Young Jedi.” 

Ahhh, Young Jedi, prepared to follow Jesus you will be. 

Our confirmation students would probably better understand what we’re doing with them if instead of calling them ‘confirmands’ we called them Padawan.

For those who don’t know, those are Star Wars references.  That’s a movie.  And the reason I bring them up isn’t because I’m a super fan – I’m not - but because it's very clear that Star Wars has influenced a lot of people’s lives.  With the release of the most recent episode, the anticipation was at its highest.  People dressed up in costume, memorized their favorite parts, and even reenacted famous scenes.

What a weird thing to do?  To get SOOOO into a story that you would dress up and reenact it?  Why would you do that?

Indeed. Why?  It must be because that story means something. 

Stories give meaning to our lives; they help us understand our larger context and give us connection points to previous generations.  As one South African saying goes, “We are the stories we tell.”  We are the stories we tell and even more we are the stories we repeat.

As I prepare to spend time with family in the next weeks, I plan to be intentional about listening to their stories, especially the ones I’ve heard before, because those are probably the ones that matter most. I’ll hope people have the grace to listen to my stories too.  Though it costs nothing, listening to another person's story may be the most precious gift I give this Christmas.

All our stories are best understood against the narrative of that larger story that holds us all together.  As we tell our stories, we may even be able to see ourselves in light of that great story: a story of good and evil, innocence and corruption, complex father-son dynamics, ancient wisdom passed on to the hope of the next generation, empire and rebel, an underdog team of misfits, sin and forgiveness, justice and mercy, the need to save the child, the hope that the child will save us.

This is not Star Wars, of course.  This is the story of Jesus and it’s the story that makes us who we are.

We can't get enough of it.  We tell it and read it and sing it and write books about it and make sure our children know it.  We listen to older generations reminisce and we marvel as younger generations catch its spirit. 

We become superfans. And yes, we even dress up in costume and act it out. We are the stories we tell.  Now let's hear from our youngest disciples-in-training as they tell us the greatest story of our lives.

Independence Day

Independence Day

You were three and a half weeks old when I drove away from you.  That makes it sound much more dramatic than it was.  I didn’t leave for good or sneak off like an unhinged mom who just couldn’t take it anymore. Your dad and I decided it would be good for all three of us if I took time by myself and he cared for you without me hovering.  I left you fed and content sleeping on his lap. I had nothing to worry about.

And I wasn’t worried.  But as I backed out of the driveway, surprising tears sprung.  I felt a physical tug in my uterus – your old apartment - as I slowly drove away from home. “You can do this.  This is good,” I tried to soothe myself.  I was disoriented on my own street.  I wanted to go back home to you but that wasn’t the deal.  I needed to be gone for an hour.

59 minutes to go.

I decided to go to the library and then the garden store, two places I knew well that were close enough to home so that if the SOS call came I could be back in 10 minutes. I expected that call to come.

From the library parking lot I called my own mother.

“Guess what I’m doing for the first time in 3 and a half weeks?  Spending time away from my daughter.” 

My mom’s response? “It’s not the first time in three and a half weeks, it’s the first time in ten months.“

Indeed. She understood.  For ten months you and I have been as intimately tied to each other as two people can be.  It should not have surprised me that even in a familiar parking lot five minutes from home, I felt completely lost without you.

I hung up with my mom, halfheartedly searched the stacks where the books all seemed like foreign objects, and checked out something by an author I remembered I used to like.  I drove to the garden store and called my mom again while I browsed perennials. She told me what kind to get.  We talked about the details of your young life. And then she told me of the death of someone I’d grown up with.  A skateboarding accident.  He was 35 years old with a wife and young child. 

I heard that news differently than I would have before.  I pictured your dad dying and I ached for the wife left to raise their child alone.  I imagined if I died and shuddered at the thought of you growing up without me.  I pictured the man’s parents and felt their grief in my gut.

To lose a child.  This is a new fear. It makes me want to never let you out of my sight.

Had the hour passed? Had I been gone long enough?

“I love you mom, I have to go.” 

“I love you too sweetie. You’re doing a good job.”

I hung up the call, paid for my plants and hurried home.  I imagined a scene of chaos.  You shrieking while your dad tried his darndest to shush and sway you.  Him at his wits end and me rushing in to save the day with that thing only I can give: milk.

Instead you were cashed out on the mint green boppy on his lap.  He was reading, the dog was sleeping.  All was calm.  I was both grateful and at a loss.  Didn’t you miss me?

“How was she?” 

“She was just fine.  She woke up a while back and cried so I gave her formula.”

Gulp.

We had talked about that option.  It was perfectly ok in the parenting pact for your dad to break open our emergency stash of formula and give you a bottle. We’d even gone over how to make it.  But I was crushed.  For your entire existence, except for that microscopic material that swam in from your dad, all the physical building blocks of your life came from me.  Now, you were sullied with enfamil.  No longer a breast milk virgin.  No longer solely my creation. You could survive without me.

This is how it goes from here on out.  We slowly unravel from each other. 

A goal of my parenting is to raise you to be an independent person. The tricky part is that means I will need to become an independent person too.  Rationally I know it is a good thing.

Still it felt good to take you in my arms, whisper “I love you” and feed you my milk.  

Still I hope that 40 years from now, you’ll call me to comfort you when you feel lost and afraid.

photo credit: _DSC2628 via photopin (license)

Backpacks full of stones are heavy. Words for the week, Feb 22 - March 1.

We’re in a focus on forgiveness during Lent at Peace. We're also mostly off the lectionary.

Last week, I preached about the woman who had been caught in the act of adultery and was about to be stoned to death in John 8.  Jesus told the crowds ‘let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.”  One by one, people put their stones down and she was free to go.  Jesus showed compassion for her.  It’s only through God-given compassion that we can forgive one another. 

 

I told a personal story of forgiveness between my father and me.  For years, I experienced the lack of forgiveness between us like a heavy backpack of stones.  I could always reach in and find an old hurt to hurl at him.  I was always worried that something I’d done would be flung at me.  The burden of carrying all those hurts weighed me down.  When I decided to ask for and offer forgiveness, it was a huge relief.  As we both set our backpack of stones down, we allowed for the past to remain the past and for the future to be something new.

 

Listen to the sermon here:

 

This week, I will preach about the decision we all have, in the face of hurt, to choose to harm or choose to heal.  Drawing on two Biblical stories of brothers, Jacob and Esau (Genesis 32) and The Prodigal Son and Older Brother (Luke 15), we’ll see how God’s future comes through healing, not through revenge.  Healing isn’t easy and it can take time, sometimes years.  Throughout the process, God is with us, empowering us, every step of the way. 

 

Questions:

1. In the world, where do you see people clamor for revenge?
2. If you forgive, is that the same as letting someone off the hook?  Have you ever withheld forgiveness because you were concerned about being fair?
3. When have you experienced a homecoming like the one the father offers his prodigal son?

 

Be at peace,

Pastor Sarah

Bye Bye Buy Buy Baby

For Friday date night, my husband and I went to Buy Buy Baby.  We were no farther than the first aisle when I needed to sit in a glider for 20 minutes and take a break. All we'd looked at were cribs but I could see the shelves of stuff threatening ahead.  I was overwhelmed.

How many kinds of bottles or blankets or strollers need to be made available to expectant parents?  How much of my waning energy will be sucked up by researching the difference between car seats or brands of diapers?  And how much is this all going to cost???  We made it through every aisle but we had to stop at the grocery store on the way home. This called for ice cream.

We were demoralized.  It wasn't that the experience made us think we'd be terrible parents exactly.  It's that it's all new landscape and we want to do our best. Having the right stuff seems like it should make the navigation into parenthood easier but the sheer variety of choices just makes it harder.   

After emailing some close friends and family for advice, I quickly learned this is a rite of passage for middle class parents-to-be.  Go to the big box baby store; get totally overwhelmed; feel daunted by the consumerism of this supposedly natural and holy event; eat ice cream.  

It reminds me of when I went into the Peace Corps.  I received a standard packing list for my host country and I began fretting.  I bought tee-shirts and returned them for button-downs.  I couldn't find the perfect dresses so I sewed some myself.  I lost sleep - yes, lost actual sleep - over the question of how much shampoo to pack.  I weighed and reweighed my suitcases a hundred times as I tried to get the perfect 81 lbs of stuff, my sole provisions for 2 years.  

It was not until after I settled into my life in Malawi that I realized how much my stress about stuff was really misplaced anxiety about the transition itself.  After all, people in Malawi live their whole lives with what they can get there.  Duh.  This couldn't have been about the stuff.  It was about my need for control and predictability in a time when everything seemed strange. 

As I fret about baby stuff, I know that it is mostly about trying to control and predict what is uncontrollable and unpredictable: what will happen with our child's life.  All the stuff in the world won't be able to answer that.  It's a faith challenge to trust God, my husband, and myself with the gift we're about to receive. The words of Psalm 23 ring in my ear: "The Lord is my shepherd, I have all I need."

We'll do the best we can to prepare, of course.  The lists from our friends have helped tremendously.  Victory! We've actually chosen a stroller and car seat.  People have been generous with hand-me-downs and our stockpile is growing. Plus, we can actually purchase things after the child is born, right?   


A little perspective helps too: most parents throughout time and history haven't had the luxury of such choices.  Our choices mean we're rich.  We have the basics covered: food, shelter, heat, health care.  I can't imagine the anxiety of wondering how we'd provide for this child's most essential needs.  And plenty of people who long for children and have experienced the pain of miscarriage, infertility or drawn out adoption processes would kill for our problem. We're hardly facing a crisis.  

Still, I'll probably feel overwhelmed by stuff again.  When I do, I'll cling to the advice my mother wrote in the face of my buy buy baby panic.

"I don't even know what a bumpo or a boppy are.  What a child needs most is parents who love it and yours already has that."  

It most certainly does.  

Be at peace,

Sarah