Sermon for The Holy Trinity
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa  52101
Presider: Pr. Marion Pruitt-Jefferson
Preacher: Daniel Grainger

First Reading: Isaiah 55:6-11; Psalm 8; Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20

Dear friends, grace and peace to you from the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Amen.

Five years ago I was sitting in the Center for Faith and Life after chapel in the latter half of April, during my senior year of college, when I got the call. The executive director of Camp Ewalu had called to offer me a full-time job as the director of church relations. As you might imagine, as a senior with less than a month left until commencement, I was absolutely thrilled!

Most of us can recall a time or two when we’ve lived with a great deal of anxiety; the anxiety of not knowing. For college seniors who have recently graduated, it’s the anxiety of waiting while writing resumes, submitting job applications, and scouring the job market day in and day out like the search itself is the only full-time job they’ll ever have!

Getting that job offer to work at Ewalu was a huge relief for me, not because it was my dream job, but because I needed to get away. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great job! I got to work at my favorite place on earth with some of the best people. But I needed to get away from what felt like was a pretty big failure.

When I transferred to Luther in 2010, I chose to study religion because I wanted to prepare myself for seminary. At that point in my life, I had worked several summers at a bible camp, and each summer I felt more and more a sense of call to ministry. And more and more it felt like I was being called to be a pastor.

To be honest, this wasn’t completely out of nowhere. I don’t remember the context, but sometime around the age of ten, my mother leaned over to me in church whispered: “I think you’d make a good pastor.”

This spring, Allie and I, joined many in the Decorah community in attending the evening lecture by Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. During the Q&A session of the lecture, Pr. Nadia began to dissuade a young adult from considering seminary.
She claimed that the church doesn’t need more pastors who were church youth group all-stars, who went to camp every summer, who went to a Lutheran college, who worked as camp counselors, who know a few Ole and Lena jokes… Rather, what the church needs more, are pastors with real-world experience.

If you lost sight of me during the lecture, I was sinking down in my chair, because I was involved with church youth group. I went to camp. I went to a Lutheran college. I was a camp counselor. I was involved in college ministries. And yes… maybe I do know a few Ole and Lena jokes.

I do agree with Pr. Nadia – the world needs pastors with real world experience… but people don’t necessarily have to go out looking for real-world experience. In being human, being present, being vulnerable – life will give us experiences.

During my first semester at Luther in 2010, my dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack. I was meeting with my Greek tutor in the lower level of Preus library when I got that call.

Now, in addition to the experience of deep grief and sadness, I had more questions and doubts than I knew what to do with. During the remaining two years at Luther, I studied, I cried, I prayed, and I tried to makes sense of it.

How can I possibly serve a God when I feel cheated? Where is God in the midst of pain and suffering? What good is prayer?

These questions were not unfamiliar to me, but now so very raw and real. The religion courses weren’t just theological lectures and discussions in my courses, but the key to understanding why.

Still, each semester I had a growing list of questions and doubts. But I thought if I was to serve the church, I needed to know – I needed to be sure in faith – to have the answers. So I tried. I tried so hard. All to justify my reasoning for going to seminary…and in the end, against going to seminary.

When it became clear that the answers I wanted weren’t possible or easy, I walked away. I walked away from church; I walked away from a God who would not give me answers, who stayed hidden, who eluded me.

Looking back now, I’ve come to realize that, like a weed imposing itself over the sprouting seed, I was strangling the innate call I felt within me. I was strangling it because I wanted to fully understand it. I wanted to know why.

I don’t know about you, but I suck at honoring mystery. Ask me what I KNOW. Don’t ask me what I don’t know!

In the reading from Isaiah this morning, the Lord says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Seeds can’t flourish by taking them out of the soil to examine each day. We have to trust that the roots are taking, and that it will grow. New life cannot flourish without some degree of surrendering to the mystery of the resurrection.

For me, I received new life when my father passed in the relinquishing a life lived on stand-by. Most of my life, my dad’s health was poor, and I was always on stand-by in case something happened. Fear has a myriad of ways to immobilize us; to keep us from participating in God’s vision for us and for our world. I’m certainly not fearless, but I’ve practiced being at peace with the God beyond my understanding.

This spring, I received my acceptance letter from Wartburg Seminary. For the sake of time, I’ll have to spare you the many the details of my discernment in the past couple of years. But what I can tell you is this: I still feel like I don’t have any answers.

In a column called “Born Baffled: Musings on a writing life”, author and activists, Parker Palmer, writes as advice “allow yourself to be baffled, which shouldn’t be hard to do. I mean, what’s NOT baffling about ourselves, other people, and the world we co-create?” Indeed.

My mind can NOT stop, WILL not stop seeking understanding. It’s just the way my brain works. But that’s okay – it’s okay to ask questions, to wrestle, to have doubts, to be angry, and to seek understanding. But I’ve discovered that, in allowing ourselves to be open to the mysteries; in letting go of the vastly hidden God that we will never fully understand; a new life opens before us.

There’s a lot I don’t understand, but God calls to us from the cross, God calls to us from the empty tomb, and God calls to us from within the mystery of resurrection. It is a call from death to life – it is a call into living as Christ did. It is a call to the embodiment of God’s abundant love for the sick, the poor, the widow, the immigrant, the marginalized, the oppressed, the persecuted, for the doubter, for the skeptic, for ALL the world. Fortunately, THAT call is not contingent on how much we know.

Dear friends, in relinquishing the need for all the answers, I think we can begin to live and participate more fully in something that starts to resemble the kingdom of God.

To close, I simply want to offer a blessing from Jan Richardson, called Blessing the Seed.

I should tell you
at the outset
this blessing will require you
to do some work.

First you must simply
let this blessing fall
from your hand,
as if it were a small thing
you could easily let slip
through your fingers,
as if it were not
most precious to you,
as if your life did not
depend on it.

Next you must trust
that this blessing knows
where it is going,
that it understands
the ways of the dark,
that it is wise
to seasons
and to times.

Then—
and I know this blessing
has already asked much
of you—

it is to be hoped that
you will rest
and learn
that something is at work
when all seems still,
seems dormant,
seems dead.

I promise you
this blessing has not
abandoned you.

I promise you
this blessing
is on its way back
to you.

I promise you—
when you are least
expecting it,
when you have given up
your last hope—
this blessing will rise
green
and whole
and new.

Sermon for the Day of Pentecost, June 4, 2017 – “Fire and Rain”

Day of Pentecost
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of the risen Christ.

When Jesus’ followers were together on the day of Pentecost, divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue of fire rested upon each of them. No matter who you are, it would be startling to have fire come rest on you. Even more so if you were Jewish, as Jesus’ followers were, because throughout their history as a people, God’s presence was often made known in fire. What did it mean that the fire of God was now resting upon them? What does it mean that God’s fiery Spirit also rests upon us?

The presence of God has often been made known in fire. Here at Good Shepherd we experienced God’s presence in fire at the Easter Vigil this past April. Such an amazing thing happened. A fire and a candle were lit in the midst of an epic thunderstorm.

This year was Good Shepherd’s turn to host the community vigil and people were excited about having a huge bonfire here in this great backyard. The fire at the beginning of the vigil serves as a sign of the eternal presence of God. We light the Paschal Candle from it – this candle that remains lit throughout Easter and is lit at baptisms and funerals as a sign of the presence of the risen Christ.

We’d been preparing for months for this bonfire and candle lighting. Since late December people had been bringing their Christmas trees to be burned in the fire. That week, Reg Laursen stacked a really large number of trees into a huge pile. When he saw that there was rain in the forecast he enlisted my son Nathan to help him cover the pile with a tarp.

For a while on that Saturday, the sun was finally out and it looked like it would be a gorgeous evening for the bonfire. I was so hoping it would work; we needed a powerful experience of resurrection that night.

The gray skies we’d had for weeks seemed appropriate for all the painful news in our state, our nation and our world. Many in our community were grieving this Easter, and some of them I knew would be at the vigil. I, too, was experiencing deep grief as I approached the first Easter since the death of my dearest friend and fellow pastor, Sarah. That week her husband had called to say he and the kids needed a change of scenery for Easter – could they come to Decorah? “Yes, of course,” we said; but how would I preach resurrection with them here on Easter Sunday? At least they’d be here for the dramatic vigil, I thought, and Sarah’s seven year old son Stefan would love the fire. We needed that fire, we needed that candle lighting.

But as we were preparing for worship that night, a thunderstorm rolled in and let loose. There was torrential rain and a massive amount of lightening. The other pastors and I thought there was no way the fire would burn and, even if it did, how would we light the candle from it and keep it lit? You wouldn’t want the flame representing the presence of the risen Christ to get snuffed out. We started making alternate plans.

Reg got that twinkle in his eye and encouraged us to give it a try. The fire lit and blazed powerfully and almost defiantly in the face of the storm. It was a huge, beautiful miracle. God worked through those trees, through Nathan and Reg. God brought fire even in the pouring rain.

Even when all looks hopeless, even when we are drenched in sorrow, God is present and working new life. That fire reminded us of that.

Then Don Berg got an umbrella and shielded Megan Buckingham as she carried out the Paschal Candle to light it in the rain. The rest of the assembly stayed inside to watch. The candle lit. Megan and Don processed inside carefully and the candle stayed lit. Lise Kildegaard captured beautiful pictures that tell the story. Little Stefan loved it.

It took a community tending the fire and the light, it took trust, it took a willingness to be uncomfortable – Reg, Don and Megan got both soaked and smoky. God worked through all of that to remind us of the presence of the risen Christ.

God’s transforming presence has often been made known in fire. God spoke to Moses in a burning bush,

God led the people of Israel out of slavery through the wilderness by a pillar of fire. When God gave Moses the law, the appearance of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the mountain; fire consumed the temple offerings. The prophet Elijah called down fire upon wet wood to show the power of God. The fire of God brought light and guidance in treacherous times. It was also a refining fire, burning away everything that chokes life and so sparking renewal – like the prairie fires we have here in Decorah.

Throughout the history of the Jewish people, God was made known through fire; God was present to the people in a very dramatic way. Yet only a select few people could access this fire – just Moses and a few select prophets and priests could approach it.

It is striking then, that on the day of Pentecost, the fire of God’s Spirit was poured out upon all the followers of Jesus and upon all flesh – men and women, young and old. The transforming fire of God was given to all people. With fire and the rush of a mighty wind, God’s Spirit was let loose upon the world.

And that same Spirit is poured out upon us. When we are baptized, the fire of the Spirit comes to rest on us and a candle is lit for us from this pillar of fire.

We now bear the fiery presence of God in our very beings. We are all glowing embers in the fire of God’s transforming presence. All of us – Reg, Nathan, Don, Megan, Lise, each one of us – carry God’s fire within us. We are signs that God is present and active in the world, bringing new life even amidst the torrential downpours of grief, climate change, terrorism and hatred.

Together we tend the fire of God’s transforming presence, we light the candles, we keep the flame amidst the drenching sorrows of our world. Together we defy all the forces that would extinguish this fire; together we trust in God’s presence even amidst the storms. At times we will be uncomfortable, at times we will get soaked and smoky; but this fire brings light, warmth, hope, change and new life and we are a part of it.

Look at you, glowing like embers.

Thanks be to God.