Sermon: Butterfly Wings

 

         Have you heard of the butterfly effect? It is the idea that small events can have big effects.

         The term was coined by a meteorologist who explained that weather prediction is hard, because you have to take into account a butterfly flapping its wings… or to quote the title of his papers: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? 

         This idea has outgrown its initial boundaries of weather prediction, as an all-encompassing term to talk about small changes having large consequences.

         For example, did you know that the first Bishop of the ELCA became religious in the first place because his dad was fired for smoking on the job, 
and part of the family making ends meet involved little Herb Chilstrom—the future Presiding Bishop—ringing the church bell of the local Lutheran Church at 6pm every day
—and the rest, as they say, was history. 
Small events that have larger consequences
—the butterfly effect.

Let us pray

 

         Philip tells him, 

“I’ve found the one we’re looking for! 
I’ve seen him! 
The one of whom scriptures sing! 
Jesus of Nazareth!”

         To this Nathanael scoffs: “Nazareth? What good can come from Nazareth?”

         There are different theories why Nathanael is down on Jesus’ hometown… 
-perhaps it’s just not Nathanael’s home town, and that’s enough of a strike against ‘Nazareth. 
-Perhaps he’s read his scriptures so literally that “Nazarene” has to be a type of vow, not a town. 
-Perhaps he’s prejudice against that little town sitting in the shadow of big city Sephoras.

         Or maybe, Nazareth is just too real. 
Too concrete
—when God acts, God will act in a fairytale place at a fairytale time
—Once upon a time… 
a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

         I know when I’ve visited Nazareth it seemed… 
less than pristine
—dirty even, 
walls with shards of glass baked in to keep out intruders, bars on every window, sketchy. 
I’d went hoping to see where Jesus once resided… 
and the place was full of people, living breathing people, people just living their day to day life…

 

And that’s where we often end up when we seek God
—there is a famous poem “The Preacher’s Mistake” about a preacher who climbs up on a church steeple to be closer to God, 
and stays there until he is at death’s door, at which point… 
well let me just read the end to you all:

In his age God said, 
“Come down and die!” 
And he cried out from the steeple, 
“Where art thou, Lord?” 
And the Lord replied, 
“Down here among my people.”

 

         We can get this idea, that to be part of God’s story, you need to experience something grandiose, 
we need to climb up to heaven where it isn’t sketchy or small or clogged with people…

         There is a religious impulse to seek God in the tornado—in big grand acts, 
and our lives are too little to contain such things—we affirm: 
Our stories are too small for God to be at work there, right!

         And when we do that we miss seeing the butterflies moving the world, taming or inflaming the tornadoes.

         We miss seeing God, we miss our moments to point and say, “Look, there is God at work!” because we’re caught on the steeple.

         I’ve told you about this study before
—but I repeat myself, because I hope you hear what I’m saying
—there was a study where folk were asked to watch an inning of a baseball game, and then asked what jumped out at them as strange, and they replied “nothing” but there was a man in a gorilla suite walking back and forth across the field the whole time
—people weren’t looking for it, so they didn’t see it, they couldn’t find anything out of place… 
so too with God,
God at work in our lives, 
if we don’t know to look for it, we’ll never see it!

 

         And just so, Philip says to Nathanael, “Come and see!”

         Have you thought about the strange ripples of butterfly wings that get Nathanael to Jesus’ side?:

-Nathanael heard about Jesus from Philip, 
-who was a neighbor of Peter.
-Peter, heard from Andrew, 
-who heard about Jesus from John, 
-who heard it from the Holy Spirit…

         Come and see, 
and be seen, 
and found, 
and find 
and follow 
after him in whom God is doing a new thing!

 

         I can think of my own Come and see moments
—An ordained minister in Rural New Jersey because 
-a faithful first call in central Jersey that lasted a decade, because,

-Communities in North West Baltimore and West Philly trained me up on internship and Field Ed, because 
-Dr. Falk and Pastor Kegel shepherded me through college in Oregon, because
-Pastor Sarah preached about a Gracious God and took my questions seriously in Wyoming, because 
-I was obsessed with the musical Jesus Christ Super Star for longer than was probably healthy, because
-my grandma sang “Jesus loves me this I know” to me when I fell asleep at her house in the summer, because
-my parents entrusted me to a wild eyed, chain smoking, chaplain in Fargo, who baptized me, because… because… because

 

         Take a look at those cards you filled out—who shaped your faith? Find someone near you, tell them at least a little about that person you are thankful for, for their because, that they flapped their butterfly wing and it kindled your faith!

 

         Butterfly wings
—I think of one of Bishop Chilstrom’s most moving moments as Presiding Bishop
—he was about to go to Ethiopia to celebrate the church there, 
and he remembered a note in his mother’s Swedish Psalm-Bok, that had been in the family for generations. 
In the back there were some notes, family trees, that kind of thing, and a special note about donating a few pennies to a collection for “the black man Onesimus in Stockholm.” 

         Onesimus, who would later translate the Bible and Small Catechism into his own language and is seen as one of the founders of Lutheranism in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Church, which is now the largest Lutheran body in the Lutheran World Federation.

 

         The Butterfly effect—God showing up in Nazareth. 
The Butterfly effect—the spirit prompted words “come and see.”

         The gift of seeing beyond prejudices and visions of grandiosity. 
Seeing what is right in front of our nose. 
Being seen by God and found through the gentle witness of our neighbors
—sharing God’s story with those all around us. 
Amen.

Reflections on "A Journey of Grace" by Herbert W. Chilstrom

               Reading Chilstrom’s book was a joy and a revelation! It was both wonderful to learn about the man who was the first Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, and to learn a thing or two about the inner workings of my denomination from the time before I joined, as well as some of the character of predecessor church bodies.

 

A Lived Theology

              I met Bishop Chilstrom once, at the Churchwide Assembly in 2009. I didn’t fully get who he was at the time and so I did not understand both the awe and vitriol being lobbed his way by our dining companions. I wish I’d had a chance to talk with him in a more meaningful way, in his book he comes off as a compelling and thoughtful figure.

His relationship with his brother, David, who was mentally disabled, and how his brother’s life exemplified for Herb an incarnational ministry and the Theology of the Cross, put flesh on some pretty heady concepts.

On one hand, David was the famous local son, not Herb, because he lived such a relational life, deeply embedded in the lives of everyone who lived within walking distance of the facility where he lived for decades. It reminds me of that mind blowing truth that all but the end of Jesus’ ministry took place in a 7 mile by 13 mile area.

On the other hand, Herb tells the story of his parents sending David off to a special needs school. Herb lost his best friend that day, and for the weeks and months that followed he cried himself to sleep, wondering, “How can this be? Where is God in all of it?”

As Bishop Chilstrom, Herb, writes, “I believe this experience was the beginning of what I later came to understand as the theology of the cross. I could not believe that God, as I had come to understand God in family and Sunday school, would cause things like this to happen. Instead I came to see that God comes to us at our most distressing moments in life, helping us to see that Christ, the Suffering Servant of God, understands our deepest sorrow because he has taken it to the cross.”

              Additionally, I appreciated reading about the pathos of being a Bishop. It is “lonely at the top” especially when also being a first. Then there was Bishop Chilstrom’s struggle with the tension between his role as bishop and his personal feeling regarding church policies, especially the ELCA’s 30-year conversation/fight over Human Sexuality. Chilstrom’s conscience told him homosexual relationships were no more innately sinful than heterosexual relationships, but he had to enact the policies of a denomination that wasn’t there yet. At times he considered quitting and becoming a Lutheran DJ—no literally, that was his plan at one point!

 

The Leak

              Speaking of the ELCA’s 30-year conversation about sexuality, I understand it better now. I’d always assumed the distrust and animosity that swirled so savagely through the ELCA around the subject had to do with just that, the subject. After all the questions around inclusion of the LGBT+ community seemed to pit grace against scripture, and talking about very personal, important, and relational parts of a person’s life can be uncomfortable to say the least. All that is true, but the other dynamic at play was the leaking of the first draft of the ELCA statement on sexuality.

Get this, most ELCA pastors heard about what was in the original draft document on the national 10 o’clock news. Someone leaked it to the press! As the news tends to do, it focused on the most controversial parts of the statement (Masturbation and Homosexuality) and didn’t offer any nuance (for example, that this was a draft social statement, not a change in “doctrine”), and the statement was still in the mail, so no ELCA pastor could comment with any certainty about what the draft contained! 

I may have heard about this situation before, maybe even in Seminary, but now as a lightly seasoned pastor, I get on a gut level what a betrayal of trust that was for everyone involved.

You are shaking hands after worship and family after family asks about the statement, and you have to reply, “I don’t know,” and they don’t fully believe you, because you should know something about it; the Synod wouldn’t leave you flat footed! Some people shout at you because they had to explain a sexual term the news presenter used to their child; they’re angry and they have to attack someone, and you’re the easiest target, and the softest too, because they know you, and they know you’ll forgive them even if they’re nasty to you.

Other folk whisper in your ear that they have a cousin who is “that way,” and you don’t know how to respond, because they have expressed bigotry toward gay people in the past… and that family doesn’t come back the next week, and don’t answer your phone calls.

The confirmands can’t stop talking about hairy palms, and it is so bad that you can’t get through the lesson about the second article of the Apostle’s Creed with them. Do you make that session a teachable moment? Well… you don’t have the statement itself to work off of, and if you’d talk about something that sensitive there would need to be some pre-work, probably parental permission.

The next week is a council week and there are some unexpected guests at the meeting, a group of concerned members who want to know why you didn’t prepare them—they wonder what they pay you for, if you aren’t at least the person in the know about what “they” are doing in Chicago.

Maybe you did text study with a colleague or two. They want you to join them in sending a formal complaint; there is a consensus that this would never have happened if we were still LCA.

              Imagine that experience repeating itself over 10,000 churches. Yipes! Talk about a self-inflicted wound! No wonder questions of human sexuality consumed three decades of our life together. No wonder when we as an organization have idle hands we return to those fights and cliques that were developed during the argument. The ELCA was traumatized by that event!

 

Predecessors & Polity

              Finally, there was a lot of talk about the various Lutheran Church Bodies that existed before and alongside the ELCA. I’m a young one, relatively speaking; I’ve never not been an ELCA Lutheran.

Prior to the ELCA there were four major strands of Lutheranism floating around that shaped the ELCA:

The Lutheran Church in America. This denomination was more top down and clergy focused. When they talked about Christian unity and ecumenical dialogue they tended to think about uniting with the Anglicans, the Roman Catholics, and the Orthodox traditions. Broadly speaking it was “liberal” and East Coast centric, and the baston of “German confessionalism.”

The American Lutheran Church. This denomination was more congregational and lay oriented. When they talked about doing stuff with other Christians, they talked about doing stuff with folk from the Calvinist tradition and with other protestants in general. As a rule, it was a more “conservative” and midwestern denomination; many members came from Norwegian or German pietist traditions.

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. This denomination is decidedly conservative and hyper-confessional to the point that they don’t consider ecumenical dialogue or doing stuff with other Christians as something Lutherans should do. At one point the leader of the LCMS was a relative of the leader of the ALC. There was a moment where those two church bodies may have united, but that ship sailed. They are a very German denomination.

The American Evangelical Lutheran Church. This is a group of people and congregations who left the LCMS. They left after several LCMS seminary professors were essentially tried for heresy and the students at that seminary revolted—This situation was called Seminary in Exile, Seminex. This much smaller group’s goal was to unite with the LCA, or become the hinge for the formation of a new Lutheran Church.

              As a minor point of interest, Chilstrom believes he became Presiding Bishop mainly because, while he was LCA, he was from the Midwest and came out of the Swedish Lutheran tradition, that was simultaneously very confessional (like the LCA) but also had a Scandinavian pietistic streak (like the ALC); additionally, his wife was a minister in the ALC. So, he was a great bridge between two of the streams of tradition feeding into the ELCA.

              One of the what ifs I wonder about is what if the AELC/LCMS split had gone a little differently, or Seminex never happened? What if the ALC/LCMS cousins had forced a merger? What if the LCA had scooped up the AELC quickly? But, that’s not what happened. Instead, the ELCA was formed by the merging of the AELC, LCA, and ALC. We are a denomination that is neither top down nor bottom up, but instead interrelated in three expressions: Congregation, Synod, Churchwide. Chilstrom acknowledges that this is an expensive church, as all of the expressions are fully functioning, funded, and empowered entities.

One interesting point about paying for all these expressions, or more to the point not paying for it, is that the ALC had a dual giving pattern; each congregation gave to their district (think Synod) and Churchwide, whereas the ELCA’s giving patter is that congregations just give to the Synod, who in turn gives to the national church (though as I wrote elsewhere this isn’t always how it works out). It seems that after the merger most former ALC congregations, while giving to the Synod in the same way they used to give to the District, chose to retain locally the money that they used to send on to Churchwide. For the sake of unity, no one on the Churchwide staff was comfortable pointing out that former ALC congregations were being less generous than former LCA congregations.

There are two major players on the Churchwide level, in addition to the Presiding Bishop and their staff, the Church Council who have a lot of authority, but no power, and the Conference of Bishops who have a lot of power, but no authority. While the Conference of Bishop is theoretically an advisory group, Presiding Bishop Chilstrom found they could act as a surprising brake on his decisions when they disagreed with him. At times the structure of the ELCA felt to Bishop Chilstrom like it did not live up to its interrelated design, and instead took on the character of a federation of 65 synods and 10,000 autonomous congregations.

This review may have gone into the weeds, but I assure you that has to do with yours truly, not the book I'm reviewing. It is well worth a read. It features encounters with such varied people as Mikhail Gorbachev and Billy Graham. It is a faithful and kind telling of the formation of the ELCA and the formation of Chilstrom's faith.