For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

– Galatians 5:1

Beloved of God,

Two of our own, Eldon and Marcia Olson, began their 34 hour flight odyssey this week en route from Southwest Seattle to Southwest Africa for the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) gathering in Windhoek, Namibia. (You can read an article about their journey on page 3 below.)  There they’ll be gathering with representatives from 145 Lutheran church bodies from around the world representing 74 million Lutherans from 98 countries.

This LWF gathering during this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation centers on a central theme and three sub-themes.  The central theme is: Liberated by God’s Grace. This theme articulates two pivotal insights of Lutheran theology: the prevalence of God’s grace when it comes to justification, and the gift of freedom that results from God’s transformative action. The theme tells us that the gracious love of God, through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, opens up opportunities for us as faithful Christians to reach out as healers and as people able to reconcile to a world torn apart by strife and inequality.  “We are liberated by God’s grace,” the theme suggests, “but from what and for what?”  These questions lead to the three sub-themes: CREATION is not for sale; HUMAN BEINGS are not for sale; SALVATION is not for sale. We are freed by the grace of God to engage in this Christian ministry.

The fact that the Lutheran Church of Namibia is hosting the gathering is of particular interest to me because the presiding Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Namibia is Dr. Shekutaamba Nambala, whom I met at Luther Seminary when both of us were students—I working on my M.Div. and he on his PhD.  We met during a class we were both taking on the Holocaust, and our families, who lived in adjacent housing complexes, became acquainted.  I recall riding together and talking with Shekutaamba in the backseat of a car on our way to a Holocaust lecture.  My theological understanding of LIBERATION BY GOD’S GRACE expanded through interactions with Pastor Nambala and other students from around the globe.  Their voices and experiences helped me move from the “WHAT” of freedom in Christ, to the “SO WHAT.” The Lutheran Church in Namibia played important roles both in the liberation struggle against apartheid and in the Namibian struggle for independence. Liberation in the Namibian context meant refusing to “submit to a yoke of slavery” any longer.  As incidents of intertribal conflict and even genocide have unfolded on the African continent over the 30+ years since we met, I’ve often wondered about the trajectory of Dr. Nambala’s ministry.

As I surfed the internet this week I found an article highlighting Dr. Nambala’s comments at the funeral of a regional Namibian political officer.  It seems that on the casket, the flag of the political organization to which she belonged was laid on top of the Namibian national flag.  Bishop Nambala took exception to this practice and called for national unity. The members of competing political parties are all God’s people, he said.  Tolerance towards one another is needed.  He called on his country’s national administration to ensure equal distribution of national wealth and to refrain from serving personal interests.  I think there is much in these statements made in his context that rings true in our own as well.

We have indeed been liberated by God’s grace, as St. Paul, and Martin Luther after him, both affirm. Lutherans have trumpeted that truth for half a millennium now.  Yet the questions remain: From what? And for what?  These are questions each Christian community—wherever its location around the globe—must ask continually.  And the answers we give must be as concrete and enfleshed as the ministry of Jesus himself:  full of invitation, reconciling conversations, bold truth, acts of healing, transforming encounters, gifts of forgiveness, lavish love.  Such liberating gifts as these are not com­modities that can be traded or brokered way.  They are not for sale.  They can only be given away.

Pastor Erik

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the LORD.

– Exodus 12:11

Beloved of God,

After hiking five miles in the snow through fields of standing corn and over frozen lakes in the dead of a Minnesota winter, every one of us in Troop 72 was famished. But we all knew there would be nothing to eat until a fire was going. So, gathering wood quickly, we built a kindling tipi over thin strips of birch bark, put a match to it, and waited—all eight pairs of eyes eager and focused—for smoke and flame to rise. What we were after, what we needed for cooking, were hot coals, so we tended the growing fire with studious care, feeding ever larger pieces into the flames at careful intervals, until the crack and pop of the wood and the enveloping warmth convinced us the fire would succeed.

Then, reaching into our green canvas knapsacks, we took out the foil pouches we’d packed at home before our journey began; pouches filled with chunks of carrot, potato, and onion, and seasoned with pepper and salt, with a large paddy of hamburger in the middle. And as soon as the flames were low enough, we tossed our treasures onto the coals, sat back, and waited for the sizzle and the mouthwatering aroma that signaled dinner was on its way. When the meal was ready we pulled the pouches off the coals with pairs of sticks, opened them up, and dug in to what—even 45 years after the fact—was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.

Meals to remember. What’s on your list? Some meals stand out from the rest. The first date; the wedding feast; the last taste of home before going away; the first meal alone after years of living together. Sometimes the menu or the occasion are everything. Other times it’s neither the menu nor the occasion but the company we keep that’s memorable; or the setting. At the first Passover it’s all of the above. God’s people are poised on the edge of something that they cannot fully grasp, and won’t for many years. The menu is lamb and unleavened bread; the occasion is their last meal together in Egypt; the company they keep is all whose doorposts have been marked with the blood of the lamb; the setting is the land of captivity—Pharaoh’s land—which they will soon be seeing in the rearview mirror.

There’s urgency in the air in this story from Exodus:

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the LORD.

There’s no time for yeast; no time to boil water. No time to prepare the animal in the usual way—just roast it quickly over the fire. Make certain your shoes are laced, your staff is in hand, your clothes are on, your pack is ready; for the time for which you have been waiting, is at hand. In the morning, you will be on your way.

Our Lenten journey comes to a culmination with the Three Days—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil. We’ll mark the final meal Jesus shared with his disciples with two elements: bread and wine. It’s the old meal; a meal celebrating liberation from bondage. And it’s the new meal, the new covenant Jesus instituted on the night he was betrayed.  We take Jesus at his word when he says, THIS IS MY BODY, THIS IS MY BLOOD—trusting he is fully present with us, offering himself with the bread and wine. In his Large Catechism Luther compares the benefit of the Lord’s Supper to a remedy that heals sin’s disease. It is “a pure, wholesome, soothing medicine that aids you and gives life in both soul and body. For where the soul is healed, the body is helped as well.” In other words, forgiveness and healing.

As we cross the threshold together from Good Friday to Easter, the feast of remembrance becomes a Feast of Victory for our God. God’s greatest surprise of raising Jesus from death animates our life together. There is urgency here, too, and energy enough to carry us and our mission forward. Let’s make the journey together, and find our lives renewed.

Pastor Erik

“The LORD said to Moses: Write these words;

in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel…

And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”

– Exodus 34:27-28

Beloved of God,

Lent is a season of truth-telling.  And truth seems to be in short supply these days. Everything, it seems, is up for grabs.  Your point of view not getting enough love?  Find the right Facebook group, chat room, or online news source, and you’re home free.   The data don’t support your perspective?  Crunch your own data.  The science doesn’t backup your worldview?  Enlist some “alternative facts.”

Lent is an antidote to all this.  The ashes we wear are a no-holds-barred articulation of human origin and destiny in one sleek sentence: REMEMBER YOU ARE DUST, AND TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN. In Lent we tell the truth about the way things are with us:  We are in bondage, and cannot free ourselves.  It is a hard truth; but it’s a good truth, because it disabuses us from any notion that we can get our act together if we only try harder.

During this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, our worship planning team has us focusing on Luther’s Small Catechism during our 5 Wednesday evenings together, beginning March 8.  In his explanation of the 1st Commandment in his Large Catechism, Brother Martin says: “Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God. The intention of this commandment therefore is to require true faith and confidence of the heart, which fly straight to the one true God and cling to him alone.”  If we can’t grasp this 1st command, what chance we’ll honor the others?

The season of Lent reveals truth as paradox: on the one hand, the weakness of our wills and the limits of our abilities to do what God requires; and on the other hand, the depth of God’s love for us in Jesus and the boundless ability of the Holy Spirit to transform our lives.  Contemplating this paradox is the journey of Lent.

To help us do this, we’ll see a new artful expression appear, by degrees, on the East wall of our sanctuary during this season.  This installation is inspired by 15th century Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev’s depiction of the Holy Trinity. (At right)

Franciscan Richard Rohr notes that icons like this “point beyond themselves, inviting a sense of both the beyond and the communion that exists in our midst. This icon shows the Holy One in the form of Three, eating and drinking, in infinite hospitality and utter enjoyment between themselves. The gaze between the Three shows the deep respect between them as they all share from a common bowl.”

The opening stanza of Brian Wren’s hymn on the Trinity reads:

When minds and bodies meet as one and find their true affinity,

we join the dance in God begun and move within the Trinity,

so praise the good that’s seen and done in loving, giving unity,

revealing God, forever One, whose nature is Community.[1]

The central truth the season of Lent reveals is the incessant Voice of the Triune God calling us into relationship—through the Ten Commands; through Jesus’ journey to the cross; through the Font which gave us birth; through the communion of the Table. All of these reveal the passionate longing of the Triune God to share the Divine Feast with us—to teach us the steps of the sacred Dance.  This truth is more hopeful than anything the world casts our way.  So get your toes a tapping!

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Brian Wren. Words © 1980, Hope Publishing Company