PASTOR'S MESSAGE FOR APRIL 2018
When I was teaching, I would take one class and show the movie Stand and Deliver, a film from 1988 based on the true story of Los Angeles high school math teacher Jaime Escalante. In the movie, Escalante is played by Edward James Olmos, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The movie tells the story of struggling high school math students. Escalante decides, that instead of simple math, he will teach the students calculus. The most poignant quote of the movie is when Mr. Escalante says to the other teachers, “Students will rise to the level of expectation...”.
We as a species have a tendency of only doing what is expected and little or no more. Basically, when the bar of success is set low, we accomplish low. Within our nature there is also a need to have something worth striving for. Understanding that humans have potential for greater things inspires leaders like Lester Pearson, while he was Canada's secretary of state for External Affairs, to work with UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (a good Lutheran), to attempt the impossible task of creating a peacekeeping force to stabilize the situation in the Suez Canal and to permit the withdrawal of the attacking forces. We need aspirational goals. Sometimes the peacekeepers are world changing, and sometimes they just change our part of the world.
In his homily on Good Friday 2018, Pope Frances made a plea to the youth who are feeling oppressed ,“you have it in you to shout,” even if “we older people and leaders, very often corrupt, keep quiet.” The complaint being made was that people were being held to impossible morals. Sadly, the missing element in moral theology is the proclamation of grace.
I had a professor at Seminary that loved to say, “Any donkey can preach the law!” (referring to Numbers 22:21-41). It takes a pastor to preach the gospel. The inclusion of the grace of God is critically important. Without grace, morality becomes the unattainable law, and condemns without hope. It makes morality pointless. It makes the church empty. With grace the situations changes. The imprisoned soul is freed to try again.
Pastors, like doctors, deal with anamnesis*. As we celebrate the Easter season we are expressly remembering the Passion of Christ. By the rituals and special service, the story is retold, and we are enculturated to remember and to then live accordingly. When however, the story is not told in its entirety, or we skip over parts we don’t like, we run a risk of not hearing the full story. Not having the full story means what we remember is flawed.
When what we remember is flawed, our response is altered accordingly. To tell the story properly we tell it many times, over Holy Week, through the seasons of the church and through the rotation of the church years. Each time, trying to properly and faithfully tell the story of God’s love for us.
The trying again is important. Without a push to try again the professed freedom is hollow, empty, meaningless, and futile. This is why Luther was so focused on Grace as a core understanding of our Lutheran theology; that law and gospel need each other. The morality or law is the perfection to which we aspire. The grace is the freedom to fail and do better time as we learn from our mistakes. When put together law and gospel teach the soul to dance, not because we are moral, but because we are immoral and need forgiveness in order to try again...
And again...
And again...
As we grow into what we should be from what we are, all because of the grace of God.
See you on Sunday.
Pastor Mike
We as a species have a tendency of only doing what is expected and little or no more. Basically, when the bar of success is set low, we accomplish low. Within our nature there is also a need to have something worth striving for. Understanding that humans have potential for greater things inspires leaders like Lester Pearson, while he was Canada's secretary of state for External Affairs, to work with UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (a good Lutheran), to attempt the impossible task of creating a peacekeeping force to stabilize the situation in the Suez Canal and to permit the withdrawal of the attacking forces. We need aspirational goals. Sometimes the peacekeepers are world changing, and sometimes they just change our part of the world.
In his homily on Good Friday 2018, Pope Frances made a plea to the youth who are feeling oppressed ,“you have it in you to shout,” even if “we older people and leaders, very often corrupt, keep quiet.” The complaint being made was that people were being held to impossible morals. Sadly, the missing element in moral theology is the proclamation of grace.
I had a professor at Seminary that loved to say, “Any donkey can preach the law!” (referring to Numbers 22:21-41). It takes a pastor to preach the gospel. The inclusion of the grace of God is critically important. Without grace, morality becomes the unattainable law, and condemns without hope. It makes morality pointless. It makes the church empty. With grace the situations changes. The imprisoned soul is freed to try again.
Pastors, like doctors, deal with anamnesis*. As we celebrate the Easter season we are expressly remembering the Passion of Christ. By the rituals and special service, the story is retold, and we are enculturated to remember and to then live accordingly. When however, the story is not told in its entirety, or we skip over parts we don’t like, we run a risk of not hearing the full story. Not having the full story means what we remember is flawed.
When what we remember is flawed, our response is altered accordingly. To tell the story properly we tell it many times, over Holy Week, through the seasons of the church and through the rotation of the church years. Each time, trying to properly and faithfully tell the story of God’s love for us.
The trying again is important. Without a push to try again the professed freedom is hollow, empty, meaningless, and futile. This is why Luther was so focused on Grace as a core understanding of our Lutheran theology; that law and gospel need each other. The morality or law is the perfection to which we aspire. The grace is the freedom to fail and do better time as we learn from our mistakes. When put together law and gospel teach the soul to dance, not because we are moral, but because we are immoral and need forgiveness in order to try again...
And again...
And again...
As we grow into what we should be from what we are, all because of the grace of God.
See you on Sunday.
Pastor Mike