On the Alleluia Side

Here it is Easter Wednesday and I’m still dwelling in the afterglow of the Vigil fire. I’m so grateful to my various colleagues for all of their hard work, especially John Weit, our new musician for jumping into the experience head first. I’m also grateful to the other writers here on this blog, your contributions provided great food for thought to use in my ministry settings and I know that several parishioners read Many But One during Lent after I publicized it in the newsletter.

As for me, I am always touched by the powerful drama and saving truth of Holy Week. For better or for worse, though I suspect largely for the better, my father reflected deeply and profoundly on the sufferings and the triumph of Christ during his own battle with terminal cancer. My cruciform witness comes from a hospital bedside as much as from the hill of Golgotha.

In our interfaith dialogues at Worcester Polytechnic Institute we discussed the troubling violence and suffering that permeates Holy Week. However, I would suggest that these very real trials are precisely what make the gospel so relatable to people in great distress of their own.

The passion and perhaps even the seeming “reboot” of the resurrection make us uncomfortable, because it is uncomfortable! We are brought face to face with death, our mortality and a radical promise of life that contradicts every bit of logic. We are invited into the pattern of the Paschal Mystery and what a joy that is, tears, shouts, joy and all. Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Does God need a Guardian?

“But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” -from Matthew 1:18-21

Today the church commemorates Joseph of Nazareth, a descendant of King David, a carpenter and builder (we might say construction worker today).  Joseph was Mary’s husband, (probably arranged from an early age) and functioned as Jesus’ human stepfather through his childhood.  The last we hear of Joseph in any of the Gospels is in Luke’s account of Jesus in the temple as a boy (age 12-13).  He is also mentioned in Matthew and John as people question whether Jesus could possibly be Joseph’s son.  It turns out that questioning the legitimacy of someone’s birth circumstances is indeed a very old tactic to discredit them

The bigger question for Christians is not about Joseph’s genetic relationship to Jesus, but really whether he is important in the story at all, especially since Jesus’ public ministry is clearly grounded in a profound sense that the God of the Torah is also his Abba.  There are apocryphal stories of Jesus as a child that feature him doing some astoundingly divine and yet childlike things, making birds out of dirt, levitating or flying, and zapping a neighborhood bully with a bolt of retribution.  Does a child with such power need a foster father?

Yet, our affirmation of the full humanity of Jesus means that like all other humans, he grew, learned, changed and experienced his life as all children do.  Studies have shown how vital positive adults are in the lives of children.  Matthew’s witness places the responsibility for the flight to Egypt and handling their stay there with Joseph.  In some small part, Joseph’s patient willingness to be a dad to a child that was not his own, and to provide the love, protection and guidance needed was a harbinger of the longstanding Christian ministry of adoption and caring for orphans.

That is the power of all parenting, both birth and adoptive, that the child may surpass the parents precisely because of what they give to the child.  For Mary, what an honor to give life in the flesh to the life-force that spawned the galaxies.  For Joseph, what an honor and a privilege to be the protector and the rescuer of the one who would rescue and save us all.  God’s ability to work through the most ordinary people, and to do the extraordinary amazes me every day.

Let us pray:

Loving God, for Joseph and for all parents who foster, adopt and protect the children who were not born to them, but who were entrusted to them, we give you thanks.  Go with them and with all parents this day, who in sharing your unconditional love with a child, reveal the might of your love for your own Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

What to Remember, What to Forget

“Remember the wonderful works he has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he uttered,
O offspring of his servant Abraham,
children of Jacob, his chosen ones.” -Psalm 105:5-6

If salvation is a “done deal”, why do we keep going back to the well (or perhaps the font?) and remembering the deeds of God.  Why spend half a year every year rehearsing the birth, life, passion and death of Jesus?  Why spend another half of the year remembering the ministry of Jesus and the nascent church and recounting what the Holy Spirit has done?  Can’t we just peg our hopes on the sure and certain hope we have in God’s Gracious nature and get on with it?

The answer to this quandary is both yes and no.  Our faith does allow us to move forward, not to be paralyzed in re-enacting ancient ritual out of fear.  On the other hand, we do well in Lent and throughout the year not to adopt a totally casual approach to God’s grace.  We can easily forget the lengths God in Christ has Gone for us.  Or we can remember God’s goodness in a way that is not central to our lives and wellbeing.  God can end up in that glass box down the hallway with the sign that reads “in case of emergency, break glass”.

Today the psalmist calls us to recall the history of God’s dogged persistence with the children of Abraham.  We see the pattern of challenge and struggle and God’s willingness to get involved.  This very pattern will be recalled through Holy Week and especially at the Great Vigil of Easter.  This pattern of retelling the salvation story forms the scriptural base of the Jewish celebration of Passover.  We need to remember that God has not forgotten us.  It helps us to remember who we are.

Friends and Enemies

Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great; but let me not fall into human hands.”  from 1 Chronicles 21:1-17

When King David has his sin brought before him, he is given three choices on behalf of his people.  God offers three years of famine, three months of devastation by their political rivals and ethnic enemies, or  three days of “the sword of the Lord”, which is identified as a plague.  That David is even offered a choice in this case speaks to his special relationship with God, and the concern that God has for the people of Israel and the king God appointed.  But the eternal truth remains as well, there are consequences to decisions, even decisions that seem perfectly reasonable.

What was the flawed decision?  David is tempted by Satan, encouraged to see where he stands in the world, and to trust in the might of the arms he controls.  David’s census enacts the kind of accounting that made taxation possible (the vigorous pursuit of which led to trouble for his son Solomon).  The census would also demonstrate how powerful the King’s fighting forces were, and perhaps encourage him to push the boundaries of his kingdom further (another thing that led to trouble for Solomon).  These are not the actions of a people whose protector was the Lord.  These are not the actions of a people who were once conscripted as fighters and then as laboring slaves in Egypt.

The sin that Satan incites here is a loss of trust in God to protect and guard the people.  We too are tempted, to overextend our time and talent, working more for less; to hold fast to our treasure, forgetting entirely where it came from; and to seek things that are beyond our reach (perhaps through debt).  Satan would love for us to take stock of our strengths and weaknesses without accounting for God.

Faced with the inevitability of the consequences, David chooses to place his crown and his kingdom in God’s hands, knowing the devastation of famine or war to be far greater and without mercy.  David remembers the mercy of God in the midst of the consequences of his own bad judgment.

During this season of repentance and reflection, we may be knee-deep in the consequences of our decisions.  We may realize that we have failed to take God into account when we figured what we had going for us.  There is no better place to remember God’s mercy.

Grace and Peace

To the faithful assemblies gathered around Word and Sacrament, and apparently around the LCD flat screen, grace and peace be to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  I bring greetings from the church that meets at the corner of Salisbury and Lancaster streets in the city of Worcester.  My name is John Longworth, and I serve as the Associate Pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. My call has a special focus on education, catechesis and young adults.  As part of my work with young adults I spend some of my time each week ministering to students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a university in the same neighborhood as the church building.

I live in Worcester with my wife Sara.  Sara’s daily work involves driver examinations for the Central Massachusetts Safety Council Auto School, though her calling is centered around handmade clothing and fine arts.  Fortunately, Worcester has a growing arts scene and is a very diverse immigrant destination.  This makes two of our favorite activities, exotic cooking and exotic dining, quite possible.

Beyond its status as an immigrant and refugee destination, Worcester has a rich history as an industrial center, a medical/biotechnology hub, a college town, home to New England’s only diner factory and to several classic diners, and a bastion of independent punk and hard rock, from the days of Wormtown radio and the shows at the Paris, Palladium and Tammany Hall to weekends at Ralph’s Diner (Punk Dive Bar par excellence!)

One of the things I love about my work is that I get to write!  Aside from sermons and lessons, I publish articles in our monthly newsletter and LERNing (the newspaper of the Lutheran Ecumenical Representative Network).  I also Tweet and author two of my own blogs, one that pertains to urban ministry and one that allows me to celebrate my geekdom.  I look forward to contributing to this project and having a chance to learn from the colleagues who are participating here.