PETER: Lord, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?

JESUS: Not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times.

Fellow Pilgrims,

A new School Year has begun (STRIKE averted!) and later this month we’ll begin our program year here at Peace with our annual Rally Sunday celebration September 27 under the theme: WEAR LOVE.  Ashleigh Ellsworth-Keller from Lutherwood will join us for the morning.  I’m looking forward to seeing you as we return to the regular rhythms of faith formation and worship! 

I don’t know about you, but the summer past was an eventful one for our family, marked by road trips, new developments, and renewed connections.  After bringing daughter Naomi to Chicago for the beginning of her college career last month, Chris and I drove back to the Twin Cities, where she stayed for a while and I continued the drive west toward home.  It was a solo trip I had been looking forward to through landscapes I’d grown familiar with over the years:  the corn fields of Southwest Minnesota; the “wide Missouri” river at Chamberlain, SD; the Black Hills; the rivers and mountains of Montana.

A prearranged stop in Sioux Falls found me reconnecting with longtime friend and colleague Larry Peterson.  A mentor from my camp counseling days at El Camino Pines in southern California, Larry later served a congregation in the heart of the Black Hills—what the Lakota call Pahá Sápa: sacred ground revered as wamakaognaka e’cante: the heart of everything that is. During his long service there, Larry became engaged in a joint Lutheran-Episcopal ministry on the Pine Ridge Reservation.  During lunch over fresh tomatoes, grilled ham, and the first sweet corn from his garden, we spoke of the people and connections we shared.  It was a rich conversation that could have gone on for days!  But with the road beckoning, I said goodbye and once again pointed the van west.

The familiar landscapes through which I traveled evoked memories stretching back 60+ years—of places visited, of experiences shared, of harrowing moments when I and fellow travelers found ourselves at the mercy of nature’s power.   In southeastern Montana, near the junction of US Highway 212 and I-90, I turned off the road and wound my way up the hill to the Battle of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  The monument commemorates the 1876 battle between the U.S. 7th Cavalry, led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, and a coalition of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors—a battle in which the Native warriors prevailed. 

For decades, memorials and graves at the site remembered the fallen members of the Cavalry but had little to say about the U.S. government policies and actions that had led to the confrontation.  In recent years that has changed.  In 2003, a circular earthwork was established to honor and reflect on the sacrifices of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors who sought to foil the deliberate attack of troops led by Custer, whose mission was to enforce policies that threatened their way of life.  150 years after the battle it’s clear that history is still being revealed.

Northern Cheyenne Traditional Chief Phillip Whiteman, whose great-grandparents were chiefs and warriors at Little Big Horn, speaks of the importance of carrying on the message that the “old formula of resistance, of being against something, is over now.”  Speaking at the site during one of the annual observances, he said the future lies not in perpetual resistance but in building a future based on peace, balance, and harmony.  “In order for two-leggeds to exist together collectively, we have to walk in peace, balance and harmony for all living things. Air, land, water, language, and culture are all one and the same.”  The annual gatherings at the Little Big Horn that bring descendants of Tribal warriors and descendants of 7^th Calvary soldiers together is an encouraging and integral part of making that vision a reality.

During the month of September we’ll hear stories from Scripture that speak of forgiveness—the call to give it and the cost when it is withheld.  After visiting my friend Larry and the Little Big Horn, I’m hearing those stories differently.  

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik