{"id":1565,"date":"2012-10-03T13:52:30","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T20:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2012-10-31T22:09:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T05:09:00","slug":"pastors-pen-october-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/?p=1565","title":{"rendered":"Pastor\u2019s Pen October 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"
Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?<\/em><\/address>\n
Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
We are pilgrims on a journey; we are trav\u2019lers on the road; <\/em><\/address>\n
we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
I will hold the Christ-light for you in the nighttime of your fear;<\/em><\/address>\n
I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
I will weep when you are weeping; when you laugh I\u2019ll laugh with you.<\/em><\/address>\n
I will share your joy and sorrow till we\u2019ve seen this journey through.<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/address>\n
Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?<\/em><\/address>\n
Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.<\/em><\/address>\n
Richard Gillard \u00a9 1977 Scripture in Song <\/em><\/address>\n
Evangelical Lutheran Worship<\/em>, Hymn #659<\/address>\n

Beloved of God,<\/p>\n

Fall is a favorite season of mine. I love the colors, the crispness in the air, the golden light of late afternoon, the harvest moon.\u00a0 And I am awed by the transformation that occurs as leaves let go of their homes in the sky and begin their new project of nourishing the soil. \u00a0In autumn the earth teaches us what it means to let go, to relinquish, to shed, to become empty and ready to be filled, a lesson we practice year after year, time and again.\u00a0 <\/strong>As I watch the leaves turn and fall I\u2019m reminded of a poem by Macrina Wiederkehr entitled, The Sacrament of Letting Go<\/span><\/em>.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Here are the opening lines:<\/p>\n

Slowly she celebrated the sacrament of letting go.
\nFirst she surrendered her green,
\nthen the orange, yellow, and red
\nfinally she let go of her brown.
\nShedding her last leaf…she began her vigil of trust.<\/p>\n

We celebrate two sacraments in the Lutheran Christian tradition:\u00a0 the sacraments of font and of table\u2014Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.\u00a0 But if we ever added a third, I would cast my vote for the Sacrament of Letting Go.<\/em>\u00a0 The earthly sign for this sacrament would be a red or golden leaf plucked up from the ground where it fell.\u00a0 And the texts? There are many. We\u2019ll be hearing two of them later this month, from Isaiah 53 and Mark 10. Isaiah 53 includes the fourth and final Servant Song from Isaiah\u2019s corpus.\u00a0 You\u2019ll recognize the verses as coming from the section of Isaiah we hear particularly in Holy Week as we contemplate the passion of Jesus:<\/p>\n

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases;<\/em><\/address>\n
Yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.<\/em><\/address>\n
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;<\/em><\/address>\n
Upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.<\/em><\/address>\n

This Suffering Servant<\/em> of whom Isaiah speaks knew the Sacrament of Letting Go<\/em>.\u00a0 The first Christians came to recognize in these verses the one they had come to call the Christ; the one of whom St. Paul spoke when he wrote: \u201cThough he was in the form of God he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave\u2026and being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death.\u201d <\/em>(Phil. 2)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 10th<\/sup> chapter of Mark, after all the time they\u2019ve spent with Jesus, all the teaching they\u2019ve taken in, after all the miracles they\u2019ve witnessed and experienced, we find James and John asking Jesus for special favors.\u00a0 \u201cTeacher,\u201d <\/em>they say as they sidle up to him, \u201cwe have something we want you to do for us. We\u2019d like the places of highest honor beside you in glory\u2014to sit on your right and on your left.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 While the gospels don\u2019t contain stage directions, I readily imagine Jesus, after hearing their request, bowing his head, shaking it slowing, and sighing.\u00a0 After all this time, they still didn\u2019t get it!\u00a0 So he tells all of them once more:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.\u00a0 <\/em><\/address>\n
For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give this life a ransom for many.\u201d<\/em><\/address>\n

Jesus asks them (us!) to learn the sacrament of letting go.\u00a0 \u201cYou know how the world operates,\u201d<\/em> he tells them.\u00a0 \u201cBut that\u2019s not how we\u2019re going to operate.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0Jesus takes the power-grabbing, top-down approach to authority and turns it on its head. \u00a0After 2000 years, the church still struggles mightily to embody the way of being that Jesus made so clear.<\/p>\n

The hymn of Richard Gillard quoted above celebrates this call to servanthood which belongs to each one of us by virtue of our baptism.\u00a0 The God who emptied himself to become one with us invites us to loosen our grip on our own agendas and yearning for power and to embrace the yoke of service each and every day of our lives. Like baptism, this letting go<\/span><\/em> is a life-long sacrament.\u00a0 We\u2019re never done with it. \u00a0We are called to practice this sacrament as we send our children off into the world.\u00a0 We are called to practice this sacrament as we begin a new job, or as we retire, or as we leave a home we\u2019ve known for years and move to some place new.\u00a0 We are called to practice this sacrament when, in various circumstances, for differing reasons, significant relationships in our lives can no longer be sustained.\u00a0 We are called to practice this sacrament when death approaches, separating us from those we love.\u00a0 No, we are never done with it, never done with letting go.\u00a0 But neither are we alone.\u00a0 For every step along the way, with every leaf that falls, every trembling fear, every ounce of pain and suffering, every gesture of relinquishment, we are companioned by the One who claims us in baptism, and whose promises are so secure death itself cannot put them asunder.<\/p>\n

This month, as servants of the Servant, we\u2019ll hit the pavement on the annual CROP Walk and write letters to congress advocating a Circle of Protection<\/a> around the vulnerable poor.\u00a0 We\u2019ll hear from our youth how trips to the Yakima Reservation and other places have transformed their understanding of what it means to be a servant.\u00a0 We\u2019ll hear also how a congregation at the end of its life cycle dared to dream that by dying well it could become the seedbed for a transformed model of ministry\u2014Luther\u2019s Table<\/a>. \u00a0(NOTE<\/strong>: Pastor\/Developer Gretchen Mertes will be guest preacher here Oct. 21)<\/p>\n

In autumn the trees teach us what it means to let go and become empty so we are ready to be filled.\u00a0 And in doing so, perhaps they also teach us how we might embody servanthood in such a way that Jesus will smile instead of sigh.<\/p>\n

With you on the way,<\/p>\n

Pastor Erik<\/p>\n

\u00a0[1]<\/a> Macrina Wiederkehr, Seasons of Your Heart<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too. \u00a0 We are pilgrims on a journey; we are trav\u2019lers on the road; we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-newsletter","category-pastors-pen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1575,"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peacelutheranseattle.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}