Encountering God: Nicodemus

 

Last week’s sermon,

where we moved from encountering Temptation to encountering God,
was a sort of preview of the coming sermon series
—spread out over, potentially, 15 weeks; we’ll be paying close attention to God encountering
—meeting, confronting, comforting
—everyone, from Adam to Thomas to the vast crowd on Pentecost. Stories of encountering God.

            Stories just like today’s story.
How do you meet God, how do you encounter him?
After all, “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven.”
We can’t climb up to see God, we can only meet
the one who abides with the Father,
the one who comes down for us.
And that’s who Nicodemus encounters, the Son of Man—Jesus the Christ, and in encountering him, he encounters God.
God reaches across the barrier between the Infinite and the finite,
to be there with Nicodemus.
Nicodemus’ conversation with Jesus tells us what it can be like to encounter God
—it is like night!
It is like being born!
It is like Water & Spirit,
my Lord, it is Life!

Let us pray

 

            Nicodemus arrives at night,
and he starts off with the right words, a good assessment of who he is speaking to:
he calls him Rabbi and Teacher,
he even insists that Jesus is from God,
and that God is present with him
—that in some way Nicodemus does not yet understand,
he is encountering God in this teacher from Galilee.

            And Jesus’ words, which can be read as a trap, a back-and-forth conflict between two people,
can also be read as an invitation:
“You’ve seen correctly,
you have noticed the nature of my relationship with God
—come and experience it!”

 

Here, in the night,
name both the known and the unknown,
that you too might be drawn into the heart of God.

            The night where Nicodemus can embrace his vulnerability,
where he can walk by faith and not by sight,
where he must lean into trust.
Encountering God always means encountering the unknown
—we’re creature, God is Creator
—God has a freedom and strangeness that is always surprising to us.
Holy literally means: different/strange/set apart
—apart from the ordinary experience of life.
In the night we walk with God,
trusting that he’ll lead us and guide us even if every other helper, even the good ones, fail.
We admit our limits and follow after the one who is beyond limits.

 

            “Be born again.”
That’s how you see God’s relationship with the world… Or is it?
That word that our Evangelical and Pentecostal siblings get all worked up about
—means a little more than expressed by a surface reading.
Born—Again/Anew/from Above.

            Born again, sure.
This is the time of year when I re-watch the Rock Opera Jesus Christ Super Star, and there is a poignant song the Disciples sing to Jesus when the enormity of Jesus’ last few days strikes them, “Could we start again, Please?”
This doesn’t seem right,
we’ve gone off track somehow,
could we return to the point before things became fearful or dangerous or painful or beyond the pale? Before the breaking point.
There is something of Lent in that, isn’t there? Being born again.
Repentance, returning to the font, recommitment to a right path.

            Born Anew.
I don’t just want to go back! Transform me!
That’s what encountering God does
—makes you something new.
Think of Adam, a man out of dust, there was lifeless, then breathed into, there was life!
Or the universe—there was chaos, and then there was Creation.
Something new born, something that could only come from outside
—Holiness coming into the ordinary
—Jesus’ invitation into eternal life!

            Born from Above.
Nothing short of an intervention of God will reveal the Kingdom.
Only God can cross that bridge, all attempts on our part are hubris and destined to fail.
Thanks be to God, Christ comes down to lift us up.

 

            Nicodemus doesn’t quite get it, at first.
He gives a sort of “Benjamin Button” example
—the old grow young.
Then he offers the awkward image of re-entering a mother’s womb
—like the in utero-prenatal combat between Jacob and Esau that the Women’s Group studied a few weeks back.

            No Nick!
—when you encounter God
you are born from above, anew, again.

           

            You are born of Water
—yes, your Baptism!
Also the living water that quenches
and comes from the source.
Your sustenance and nurture.

            You are born of Spirit
—the peace Christ leaves with us.
The breath that awakened that Earth-Man Adam.
A new creation, a rebirth
—both astonishingly uncontrollable and like rescue breathing, CPR
—you were dead, but you shall live!

 

            Live! Have eternal life! The Life of the Ages—life aware of God.
Are you living, Nick?
Are you living, siblings in Christ?
A life aware of God, God with us, both in the here and in the hereafter! That’s Kingdom, that’s Salvation
—this ongoing connection through Christ with God.

            A life of trusting confidence, that is salvation.
Life where we really believe that God desires our salvation,
not a crisis of alienation or despair,
but walking in the dark,
held by a loving parent,
a return,
an utterly unique spark of something new,
an intervention on our behalf,
sustenance and rescue.
I wish that for all of us, desperately so!

 

            And for Nicodemus—this encounter is a slow one, probably even a little painful.
-He begins with these questions for Jesus—the awkward fumbling we read today.
-Then he turns around and insists to his fellow religious leaders—hey, give Jesus a fair shake. Don’t dismiss this message out of hand—wrestle with it, like I am.
-Then, finally, on the other side of the cross, he joins the followers of Jesus in anointing the body of Jesus—the body that will rise—lifting us up to eternal life.

Encountering God
—it is night and birth and water and spirit and life! Amen.

What’s the difference between guilt and shame?

 

Another excerpt from Hearty Masculinity: Of Body and Spirit:

              I’ve found that shame hangs heavy on many men. They’ve elevated one moment of failure or one bad habit or one broken relationship, and transformed it into something more than it is. This is the Grand Torino problem. In that movie the Clint Eastwood character elevated a sin he once committed, kissing someone who was not his wife at a Christmas party, into a base element of who he is and allows it to warp every other relationship he has. So too, many men have confused guilt for shame, have moved from “I have sinned” to “I am an unredeemable sinner.”

              There are several things wrong with this way of thinking. Firstly, it condemns you to despair. Secondly, it conjures up an awful excuse that keeps you from the hard work of forgiveness. Thirdly, it is just categorically incorrect.

Shame is about a person’s being, not their doing. Shame takes a discrete act and plunges it into your heart. When you sweep a guilt into your very self, identify so strongly with a wrong you have done, or even that has been done to you, you claim that you are irredeemable. Shame takes an instance of little lowercase plural sins, and puffs them up into what’s off about the whole world, the singular uppercase reality of Sin. Who would not crumble in the face of such an evil force, who would not feel defeated if they believed they were facing Sin in their very being and all alone? But, dear friend, Christ Jesus has already faced that curse and left it on the cross.

Shame wants to stay with you, stick to you like cat hair to Chapstick. It knows that if you confront it for what it really is, guilt, it can be excised. The Tutus’ fourfold path of forgiveness, and other practices like it, can crack it open, and cure what ails your conscience. On some level, seeing your guilt as your shame, can become an excuse for inaction, it can be easier to say, “I’m fundamentally broken,” than to look the past square in the eye, and begin to take steps to move beyond it.

              Finally, there is this confusion of categories. Shame is a chapter 1 problem—My why is that I kissed someone who was not my wife; who am I? An adulterer. Guilt is a chapter 3 problem—I need to repair my relationship with my wife. Sin is about a breaking of a relationship, not the breaking of a rule.

Sin is not a discrete action that God disapproves of, it is the breaking of relationships—with God, neighbor, and self. Start with that, and there are ways to make things right. That’s why sin is always a question of guilt, not shame. It’s harder, being forgiven by God—lightened and enlighted by the Spirit—and then called to a life of ongoing repentance and reconciliation, mending what is broken. But it is truer to the human condition than a lightened heart and no follow up or acknowledgement of what has been broken and who has been wrong, harder, but it is the way of the cross.

Paul writes in Romans 8:38-39 that nothing in all of the universe can separate us from God’s love found in Jesus Christ. Shame does not trust that to be true, it elevates something else as able to overcome God’s love. It gives a piece of creation power that it doesn’t rightly have. It creates an idol out of a sin or assumption, it creates a barrier that isn’t naturally there within us. But, thanks be to God, the Cross smashes every idol, God tears down every wall, builds bridges, and elongates tables, so that there might be plenteous forgiveness and grace.

Let us pray: God, deepest mercy and sweetest grace, replace all thoughts and feelings of shame, with the identity that claimed us at the font. Give us courage to face our failures and fears, even old terrors and those things that Sin uses to overwhelm us. Guide us on the path of reconciliation, a lifetime of turning again and again to you in whom we may always trust, confident in the love we find in Jesus Christ. Amen.

What is the Good Life?

 

Another excerpt from Hearty Masculinity.

              When you read through some of these men’s books, they like to attach themselves to religion, Christianity in particular, in one of two ways.

On one hand, these folks often make the case that religions empower civilization, and that Christianity[1] in particular is the “juice” that keeps western civilization moving. They’re saying that affirmations of right Christian belief and the hierarchical structure of the church, fused to masculine virtue, is the only thing keeping the Western world from utter collapse.

On the other hand, there is a sleight of hand that some of these guys do,[2] sometimes even in the same breath that they affirm traditional Christian Orthodoxy, where they present themselves as a Jungian/Bultmann-esque[3] shaman-like figure who can crack open what all those silly Christians are saying and get to the meat of it, which is… whatever program they’re selling. Christianity is actually about overcoming your dominant father. Christianity is actually about re-writing your own story through native American or Egyptian archetypes. Christianity is actually about owning your own property and marrying a trad wife. In short, if you squint at the Christian story, you’ll see Christians have gotten it wrong for 2,000 years and -insert guru here- alone has the magical key to unlock the real meaning of the faith.

Whenever I run into this type of thing, I ponder and puzzle over their focus being either on orthodoxy, even when they’re affirming some pretty out-there and heterodox stuff, or the hierarchy and structures of the Church. To my way of thinking, top down authority structures and a ridged set of beliefs, aren’t the stuff of life—and Christ comes that we might have life and have it abundantly. These aspects of religion that the manosophere fixates on might make you more susceptible to joining a cult, but they’re not going to lead to a good life. They’re not going to help your life flow with meaning and purpose and joy.

So, just as I offered you a different perspective—that of a man with a heart condition—in the first half of the book, I’ll be doing the same here. Instead of structure or belief as the starting point, what happens if we begin with practice? Instead of heady orthodoxy, let’s be grounded orthopraxy; instead of the heights of hierarchy, let’s notice the connection points between worship and life!

I’ll begin by giving you a basic sense of what is going on in worship, specifically that there are seven things Christians have consistently done in worship since we started describing worship. Then I want to tell you how those things have made me a better man and point out how its absence has made our world worse—I’ll be making the case that these worship practices are good both individually and societally. Next, I’ll take a little time to ground the Seven Central Things in scripture, as people often accuse liturgical churches of skimping in that area. Finally, I’ll get to the heart of the matter and name some ways each of these seven movements of the worship service point you to the good life, wrapping each one up with a question that might be useful for you.

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[1] Paul Kingsnorth, Against Christian Civilization in First Things, January 2025 is an excellent reflection on why this line of logic goes against that man we find preaching in Galilee and crucified on a Roman cross.

[2] I’m looking at you Jordan Peterson.

[3] Jung a psychologist who focused on archetypes. Bultmann a theologian known for “demythologizing” the Greek New Testament.

What’s the difference between reacting and responding?

 

Another excerpt from Hearty Masculinity:

You aren’t a blank slate, you don’t come to your decisions without a history, much of which you had no control over. For that matter, you don’t “come at” or attack time hoping to subdue it, but instead you are in time, part of it. As such, we will always, in an ultimate sense, be reacting to time. Yet, as David Allen, efficiency guru extraordinaire, says, “Reacting is automatic, but thinking is not.”[1] Or, to frame it all another way, its good to respond instead of react.

Reacting is shooting from the hip (which is a good way to blow off your feet), doubling down on your hot take and first impulse. Responding is slowing down, taking a pause and a beat. Do you know where the word respond comes from, it’s etymology? To pledge again! Just as we pledge allegiance to a flag, when we respond instead of reacting, we are acting out of our faithful prior commitments, out of our allegiances and loyalties, our better and more thoughtful selves.

Responding is taking the time with those glasses of yours, to see more clearly, to pay attention. Have you heard of theSelective Attention Test? It is sometimes called the “gorilla experiment.” A psychologist named Daniel Simons would show a video of people throwing a basketball and ask the viewer to count how many times the ball was thrown. What he didn’t tell them was that a person in a gorilla suit was going to dance through the frame, and because people were too busy keeping their eyes on the ball, they didn’t even notice the gorilla in the room.[3] To quote Burkeman again, “What you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is… At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.”[4]

You hear the lump of paradoxes and tensions there, right? I am asking you to pay thoughtful attention to your deepest most meaningful allegiances and self—while also acknowledging that what you pay attention to is a sort of pledge, it will determine your future loyalties and become your future self. Additionally, you’re somewhat violently tossed into all of this, yet I’m asking you to keep calm and carry on. No wonder we’re simultaneously fallen angels and anxious apes!

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[1] Allen, Getting Things Done: the art of stress-free productivity, page 16.

[3] Beck, Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age, page 4.

[4] Burkeman: 4,000, page 91.

Encountering God 1: Encountering Temptation

 

                Today is the start of an (overly… perhaps) ambitious 15-week sermon series titled: Encountering God. It will link Lent and Easter and culminate on Pentecost. 15 stories of God meeting 15 different individuals, from Adam to Ezekiel to Thomas to the 12 and eventually to all of us on Pentecost.

                What I didn’t anticipate was that, from the start, these stories resist an overly flat telling or categorization—and that’s okay, the preacher has to let the Word do what the Word Does—I gotta let God be God.

                For example, today’s lesson complicates an easy, “Look, this is how God interacts with Adam” sort of reading—instead there is a dynamic when encountering the God of Scripture that we Lutherans call—Law and Gospel. The Word must work on us some as a Mirror (showing us our faults) and Window (interpreting injustices), before it can exude grace as a Love Letter from God.

So, despite my best efforts to wrestle scripture into a simple formula—we’ll enter into this series, “Encountering God” by beginning with Encountering Temptation.

Prayer

 

God and Humanity’s story begins well enough—Work this land, care for the Garden; it is so precious. Avoid this one thing—here is a boundary I give to you, so that you will live, not die.

And The Crafty One, destroys God’s boundary and uses it for spare parts, constructing a new boundary, one with an unnatural thickness that makes it into a THING—an idol out of a rule. No longer is this some sort of good advice or gracious protection from danger, it is a violent wall keeping Adam down. Serpent asks questions predicated on rules instead of promises. “Is God stingy?” “Is God a liar?” by the end there is even an implied: “Does God think he’s better than me?”

And then Humanity’s eyes are opened to our own capacity to collapse our connections to God and neighbor—we believe falsely that it is our duty to rebuild the break—each attempt just another folly, another fig leaf, another whirl of blood and nonsense, all of it exposed. Instead of abiding with God, we rely on our weak animal heat to fix what only God can.

 

And the Apostle Paul reads all this, and sees it as the rough intersection between Death and Sin—Death’s uncontrollable descent strips away decency! We replace limits with lies, shrug off finitude and make it murder… That we are Dust, that we are Ash—it becomes an excuse and entry point for alienation, manipulation, exile, revenge, boasting of violence… and all of that just in chapters 3-4 of Genesis! Have mercy!

 

But he doesn’t stop there. He insists that God the same God who offered a lifegiving boundary, a garden to keep, good labor—that same God keeps after us—gives us gift and gift—abundance, blessing, justification—the rightwising of the world that I yammer on about so often! In Christ Jesus God deals with Sin singular with a capital S and presses back through all those vile responses to finitude until death itself is destroyed! Christ is the better way—the way from the beginning—Humanity in the Garden, embraced by promise instead of rules, instead of idols, abiding.

A New Adam—one who is Fully—completely—human. “Look! That one is a true human being!”

 

                The Human One, the Son of Man, the Son of God—when he encounters Temptation, it comes seeking the Old Adam, but finds the New One instead.

                “Is God stingy?” “Is God a liar?” “Is God better than me?” The Spirit chased you out here into the desert—thin with scarcity and want. Embrace an If/Then world—if God is truthful, if God is more worthy to worship than the powers of this world—then show me so!

                But that’s the Old Adam’s playbook—the New Adam responds, “Because God is good, therefore get out of here Satan!

                But the Tempter kept at it, still assuming he was like the Old Adam, curved in on himself, a naval gazing narcissists… and Jesus responds to continually trusting in God, naming his dependance on God, God is at the core of his being.

                “Feed yourself with this bread” “No, I will feed the 5,000.”

“Never be dependent on anyone ever again!” “Lord, give us today our daily bread.”

                “Save yourself.” “No, this path is the salvation of the whole world!”

“Look here is a lifeboat for one.” “Deliver us from Evil.”

                “Don’t you want a Kingdom for yourself?” “No, my Kingdom is not of this world!”

                “The powers and riches of this world can offer you everything—there won’t be a single boundary for you!” “Lord, Thy Kingdom Come!”

 

                In encountering temptation, we are able to see its opposite—we Encounter God.
-A God who is not stingy, but abounds in gift and grace.
-A God in whom there are no lies, but instead is dependable and trustworthy.
-A God who would never even consider the question, “Do I think I’m better than you?” because God blesses and makes right the twisted world we’re addicted to and continually construct—redeems our idols and puts them in their proper place. Do not die, but live!

Amen.

Why should men go to the doctor?

 (An excerpt from Hearty Masculinity)

              A few years back, I went to that national Adult Congenital Heart Association convention down in Florida. It was amazing, I got to meet tons of people who had similar health backgrounds to me; people born with a congenital heart condition. I couldn’t help but notice the ratio of women to men was incredibly skewed. I eventually got around to asking someone what was up with that, and her ominous response was, “they drop out.”

              She didn’t mean they join the group and then decide it isn’t for them. She meant men with congenital heart conditions drop out of care, they stop seeing their doctors about their hearts, and eventually they die. I gotta say, this seems unimaginable to me, irresponsible, embarrassing. I initially thought maybe it was some sort of stigma for men with heart conditions like mine, but having talked to friends and done some googling, it seems we men are choosing not to take care of ourselves! As Rev. Angela Denker, who wrote the book Disciples of White Jesus points out, “In an April 2023 study, the Washington Post showed that men in the United States were likely to live nearly six years fewer than women, the largest gender-based gap in life expectancy in twenty-five years.”[1]

I know it is a pain, but going to routine yearly medical examinations is a must. It establishes a relationship between you and a doctor, and gives them a working baseline of what is “normal” for your body. On top of that, they can also catch things early, so what might otherwise have been a tragedy is instead a minor inconvenience.

              For example, I went to a routine eye exam. My optometrist thought she saw something funny, and sent me on to a retinologist colleague of hers. Before I knew it, I was diagnosed with lattice degeneration and that very day they scooped my eye against the side of my head and lasered it. While that might sound traumatic—and it did feel a little like that one scene in “Clockwork Orange”— it sure beat going blind for no good reason!

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[1] Denker, Disciples of While Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood, page 98.

Hearty Masculinity: How do I figure out what my values are?

 

 (An excerpt from Hearty Masculinity)

Values can be understood as both a boundary and as a standard. As a boundary they echo the singer Meatloaf, “but I won’t do that.” As a standard they point us to our ideals and what we consider to be worthwhile. They determine both ends and means—I desire this value, but my values stop me from pursuing it in this way. I value peace over war, but that same value precludes me from resisting war through violent means.

So, one way to answer the question, “What do I value?” is to look around and notice your boundaries. Think back on your life and notice those times when you’ve clearly said no to something, or put boundaries up; think through why you did that, what was at stake, what did you value about yourself enough that doing that thing would have violated your integrity?

An exercise to help you figure out the other side of values—what you consider to be of great worth—is to pretend today is both the beginning and end of Daylight Savings Time. Today is a day where you either gain or lose an hour in your day. What would you do with an extra hour? Alternatively, what’s the one thing you’d preserve in your day if you lost an hour; what would you miss in your day if you lost an hour? Those things are probably pretty important to you!

Alternatively, if you aren’t as whimsical as me, inventing days that don’t actually exist and such, there is a more concrete way to get at this same question. Pay attention to your use of time, “keep track of your time for at least two weeks,”[1] and see to what you devote the majority of your time. As you look around at your world, keep those in mind, they hold great meaning to you.

What we value, our boundaries and our ideals, help us to know ourselves, set goals, and find our place in the larger world.

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[1] Willard, Time Management for the Christian Leader: Or How to Squeeze Blood from a Turnip, page 25.

What is Hearty Masculinity?

 

You might have noticed by now that there is a new Page in the side bar and Label on my last post, “Hearty Masculinity”. After I discerned that I was not called to put my name forward for Bishop of New Jersey I also did discern a different calling, to write a book for men.

You see, on one end of things we’ve heard from Jordon Peterson and his 12 Rules for Life not to mention Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and their ilk. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve read a whole lot about men (for example, Denker’s Disciples of White Jesus and Reeves’ Of Boys and Men), but not nearly enough to and for men and boys. What I am offering lands in a different spot, a gentle and kind book from my perspective as a mainline clergyman with a congenital heart condition, Hearty Masculinity: Of Body and Spirit. The completed book is 44,000 words spread out in 6 chapters that offer tools and maps for navigating both secular and sacred situations as a man these days. Essentially, it makes a very practical case for Hearty Masculinity.

The first half of the book, the “Body” section, focuses on practical secular concerns. The first chapter looks at time management as a way to know yourself. The second chapter is about life maintenance, both noticing and regulating emotions and also caring for your physical wellbeing. The third chapter focuses on relating to other people and being able to discern between performative masculinity and vocational masculinity (our masculinity ought to be about caring for community not a costume).

The second half, the “Spirit” section, is about soul care. The fourth chapter makes the case that the liturgy is a pattern for a good life (gee, where have I heard that before?). The fifth chapter reconstructs masculinity using Paul’s paradigm of “power in weakness”. The final chapter consists of 10 brief devotionals for men.

So far no dice on finding a publisher, so I thought I’d start sharing some insights from the book on this blog occasionally.

How can my congregation minister to men better?

 

              What follows are three places where I think the ELCA in particular and the mainline church in general, could engage with a demographic that it feels like we’ve largely abandoned–young men.

 

Offer Individual Confession and Forgiveness

              In a Historical Jesus class I took in undergrad we watched the movie Jesus of Montreal. One aspect of the movie that scandalized me at the time was a scene where a priest who had ceased to care what Jesus really was all about justified himself with the argument that his ministry, confession and forgiveness in particular, was the closest thing the average person would ever get to mental healthcare, counseling, or social work. I’d have to go back and watch the movie again, there was likely more nuance to him than that, but I’ve grown sympathetic with this argument. Not, please understand, because I don’t believe in the radical transformational nature of Jesus’ person and ministry, but because I have eyes; living in a neo-liberal society where care of any sort has been firmly attached to a person’s job and economic worth, and has to be navigated by the individual in distress, my ministry often times involves being the only person who pauses to notice that: someone is acting atypically and might have an infection, that a person is starting to lean toward an addictive behavior or unhealthy ideation, and that someone isn’t able to make ends meet. On one hand, I think naming that as part of ministry is worth doing, on the other hand I think it points back to how to minister to men well.

              As much as our society makes noises about how men ought to: open up, go to therapy, and take more intentional care of themselves, we also, in a myriad of ways, glorify those who do not. One of the few traditional places where these sorts of things come up, where vulnerabilities can be shared, where the unnamable can be named, where one’s life can be looked at front and center, is the ritual of Individual Confession and Forgiveness. Throughout my years of ministry, I have found informally “offering confession”, just letting people know that there are a couple pages in our liturgy addressing this rite, brings out a different flavor in my ministry. There are folk—men in particular—hungry for confession, to name failings and hear words of forgiveness, to be returned to the font of baptism and find the cross of Christ again sealed upon their brow.

              I wonder what a more formal confession ministry, more like the Roman Catholic model, might look like in the mainline? I wonder what the experience of “Evangelical Catholic” Lutherans is with young men in our current moment? I wonder if, in this moment where masculinity is being pandered to by podcasters and flim-flam men and stigmatized by wider society, which has left so many young men feeling objectified and alone, if the Ministry of Confession and Forgiveness is the Church’s answer, if it is the good news men need today?

 

Monastic Challenge (Deconstructed Hours)

              For around a decade, I have participated in #NaNoWriMo, where I try to write 50,000 words in a month, and hope that they will come out in a vaguely novelish form. It is a practice that forced me to give up other things in order to take time to do one thing. It focuses my life. And #NaNoWriMo is just one of quite a few different challenges out there that young men are using to bring structure and focus to their chaotic lives. There are all sorts of challenges out there, everything from abstaining from smartphone use to avoiding “Onanism” to No-Shave-November. The commonality in all of these challenges is imposing a meaning on to a period of time, to cut things out of life that don’t correspond to that meaning, and to be devoted to something bigger than oneself.

              All of that sounds quite a bit like a desire for the monastic life, or perhaps secular attempts at Lent. I think the Church has quite a bit to offer men hungry for meaning, focuses, and devotion! What would it look like if you offered a Monastic Challenge to your congregation? What might happen in your church if you offered prayers for dawn, noon, dusk, and evening, and expect people to actually pray them? My guess is the men in your congregation between 15 and 25 will be grateful that you saw fit to challenge them, that you pointed their restless hearts on an adventure of the soul, that you offered them devotion, focus, and meaning.

 

Some questions you need to be able to answer

              Finally, if you are serious about ministering to men, you need to be able to engage with at least some of the following questions:

-How do you talk about shame?

-What can you say to visceral impulses toward revenge?

-How do you talk about sabbath in a way that combats workaholism?

-What’s your strategy when confronted with finger pointing and deflection?

-Do you have a non-theoretical understanding of the experience of having scruples?

-Young men feel so alienated, what’s your message to that sense of omnipresent exclusion?

-When you talk about baptism, do you do so in a way that affirms the dignity and self-worth of young men?

-If you are going to ask young men to express their emotions, are you ready to see and hear all that has been repressed?

-There are so many critiques of faith out there, from pre-modern version of pluralism to acidic modern scientism to post-modern puncturing of metanarratives. Most young men have a popularized sense of all of these from videogame narratives and memes. Can you take that sort of theology seriously?

 

Conclusion

If you would like to better minister to young men in your congregation, three things to consider are: Reflecting theologically on the concerns of young men, challenging them with prayer, and offering individual confession and forgiveness.

Sermon: The Beatitudes

            Remember back to Christmas? When I offered up 12 questions to reflect upon,

to ponder as Mary pondered…
all ultimately impressing upon you the meaning of that great mystery
—God comes among us in Jesus Christ.

            That mystery spills out beyond personal ponderings at Epiphany.
And, despite the snow
(and this January where it felt like years have happened before our eyes)
we’re, in fact, 4 weeks into the Season after Epiphany.
We’re thick into that unfolding mystery,
beyond Mary, beyond the Holy Family, beyond John the Baptist, beyond the Brothers Zebedee
—what does that mean for the Whole World?
What does it look like when God comes near?

Prayer

 

            There are quite a few different ways to read Jesus’ blessings
—the Beatitudes.
When we covered it a few weeks back at Bible Study, I think I described them as:
Descriptive—Jesus did just heal a bunch of people before he blessed him.
Inspirational—keep on keeping on even in the worst of it.
Transformational—What if our world did bless these types of people.
Observational—What if we at least noticed the meek and impoverished?

            Bigger picture, there are two main ways of reading the Beatitudes:
as Virtues (be this way!)
or as Reversals (God’s going to flip your awful situation around)…
and neither way QUITE works… at least in Matthew.

 

            The tradition of these being virtues has heavily influenced how Jesus’ blessings get translated,
without getting into the weeds, this way of reading things assume Jesus is basically a Roman or a Greek philosopher… not a Jewish Holy Man.

Don’t get me wrong, “Be pure in heart. Be peacemakers.”
that works, but
“Be hopeless, miserable, humiliated, starved for justice.” Not so much.

 

Likewise, reversal works only up to a point
—sure turn mourning into gladness, please every day!
But surely Jesus isn’t telling us to be Merciless, hypocritical, warlike, or persecutors! It’s just not there!

 

So, Biblical Scholar Mark Allen Powel, looked at these two competing readings
—Jesus is offering virtues versus Jesus is pointing to reversal,
and essentially says, “Why not both?”
After all, Matthew’s Gospel always points to humans being messy and mixed up
—wheat and weeds, sheep and goats
—Simul Justus et Peccator to use Lutheran Language.

            What if, Dr. Powel asks, the first 4 beatitudes name reversals
—Because God is at work: kingdom, comfort, inheritance, and fullness have come. Because God has come near there will be reversal of fortunes.

 

            And the second set names 4 virtues to practice in such a reality
—if God is at work in the world practice: mercy, pure hearts, peacemaking, and a commitment to righteousness.

            Think back to your small Catechisms,
(if you have one of our new ELW next to you check out page 1163).
Luther explains that God does stuff without our asking for it,
but we’re asking that those things might come among us…
That we might notice it, that:
God’s name might be holy/ Thy Kingdom come / God’s will be done—and the like… for us, not simply in a universal and general sense.

            I’d mentioned the Holy Family earlier, think about Joseph, when he first hears that his fiancé is pregnant,
he decides to do the virtuous thing by “putting her away quietly”
but then he catches a glimpse of God,
and realizes the right and virtuous thing is to stay with her and raise the child who is God with us.
Virtues isn’t about moral rectitude, but seeing God! Virtue as vision.

            Or, to go back to the Beatitudes…
 those who directly experience God reversing their humiliation, will likely know it…
but those who are more fortunate
—they need a practice to see what’s right in front of their nose
—making war isn’t a good way to remember your baptism,
you can’t be merciless and still sing, “Lord have mercy”
without it catching in your throat.

 

            All that to say, this reading of the Beatitudes leaves a place where
the haves and the have nots,
those suffering and those just trying to figure out what’s going on,
can meet,
can both be citizens of the Kingdom of God.
The poor in spirit and the merciful meet,
those who hunger for justice, are upheld by those taking it on the chin for justice.

            It’s good news for everyone
—after all we’re all one medical bill or accident or stroke or societal shift
away from being one of these for whom reversal by God is our only hope.

           

            So, to make this all a little clearer—take out that green sheet.
I’ve reordered Matthew’s beatitudes, and interpreted them without the Greco-Roman flavoring, or at least be able to hear it without the dullness that familiarity brings:

 

 

Beatitudes

“Blessed are the hopeless, for God will reign among them
 and blessed are those who show mercy, for they will receive mercy.”

May the hopeless be met with a show of mercy.

 

“Blessed are the miserable, for they will be comforted
and blessed are the authentically honorable, for they will see God.”

May the miserable find comfort from someone who deeply cares.

 

“Blessed are the humiliated, for they will receive their share
and blessed are those who make things whole, for they will be called children of God.”

May the humiliated be made whole.

 

“Blessed are those who are starved for justice, for they will be stuffed with it
and blessed are those who are persecuted for their commitment to justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

May the justice-starved be fed by one who is doggedly committed to justice.

 

And finally, the 9^th blessing:

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

May we be found together when God comes near. Even when it’s hard. Especially, when it is hard. Beside the foolish cross, humble, kind, and just. Amen.

COVID is back (A Poem)

COVID is back

Those so formed by Covid-tide

Distance, speaking to empty funeral homes,

Yet another video spoken into the void,

Even gospel gobbled up by the single dull distorting, yet reflective, eye,

Of our black mirrors.

Now I see the former,

things, that dangerous time.

It reappears as a fresh reaper,

replaying at inopportune times.

 

This time, returning recklessly at a snowstorm.

Canceled events and quickly snaggled anxiety

Expressed in outrage.

It is our awful emptiness

being so alone in a nation of millions,

All so frenetically alone.

 

The Déjà vu of no support or solidarity or simply connecting the dots

Instead society slicing itself up

Non-reckoning with violent consequences

Of violent policies.

Stuck at home, seeing clashes in our streets

Consequences.

Consequences of choices.

Do not lie, at least not too often.

This is what we chose.

 

Ice thick violence

George Floyd

Good and Pretti

Minnesota cold

Camera capturing again

Our failure to imagine

Imagine a world where peace reigns

Where the pieces are put back together

Where the rough reality of life is lifted up

Examined, and empathized with

Taken seriously

As seriously as we take quack conspiracies

And fringe fanatics

 

All that is old is new again

What once was, is and shall be.

Turn turn turn.

Gyres of our wretched hearts

Perhaps we must lean into the skid,

Point not to the target, but to the solid blacktop.

"Help Us!" they write

 

On Wednesday we got word from Greenland, “Help us!” The Lutheran Bishop of Greenland expressed the great worries of her people, and urged us Americans “to write to their representatives on Capitol Hill to ask them to stand by Greenlanders in their right to determine their own future.”

On Thursday all 6 ELCA Bishops of Minnesota wrote a letter saying, “Help us!” expressing the profound fear and anxiety of the people in that state, our fellow citizens. “We are tired, and our hearts are broken. Yet we are not deterred… Go to church… ground yourselves in Scripture, and surround yourselves with those who will echo the voice of God for you. This is the nourishment that will sustain us… join calls for a thorough investigation into this case, accountability for the shooting and a de-escalation of ICE enforcement across the United States.”

On Friday we received yet another missive, this time from Canadian, Danish, and American Lutheran Bishops pleading, “Help us!” Writing, “We pray for peace and respect between nations… We invite you to write to your elected leaders and tell them to respect the independence of Greenland and the Greenlandic people.”

Help us, they write. Pray for and with us. Root yourself in faith and speak up for us. Care, for God’s sake, please care. Please help us.

Here is a link to find and contact your Representative, and here are two prayers.

“Almighty and everlasting God, we come before you in prayer for our nation. We pray that you would bless all elected officials with the wisdom and courage needed to best serve the common good of people. May they govern with a spirit of reverence for your will and respect for the will of the people. We especially pray for our president, our governor, our legislators, and those who serve in the court system. Amen.” (Minister’s Prayer Book, page 45)

“O Lord, make me the instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O Lord, grant that we seek not to be consoled, but to console; not to be understood, but to understand; not to be loved, but to love. For it is in giving that we receive, in forgetting that we find ourselves, in pardoning that we are pardoned, and in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.” (Minister’s Prayer Book, page 176)