Lutheran

The Good Place & The Resurrection

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Last week, I went to Saskatchewan to see my family. While there, I took some time to drive to the edge of my old home-town to pay my respects at my parents’ graves. That’s a strange expression: “to pay one’s respects.” These days we only use it about death. Once people said it for all kinds of visits. Now, paying one’s respects is pretty much about cemeteries, or visiting families at a funeral. There I was, in a empty graveyard beside the trees. I could see my breath in the air and hear the big trucks whistling by on the highway. In my case, “paying respects” meant rooting through little skiffs of snow and pushing aside dead leaves in a half-dozen places, until finally I found the brass plaques in the ground that have my parents’ names on them.

It felt good to make that visit. But really, who was it for? Someone could easily point out that now my parents are gone they don’t need my respect. Dead is dead, they could tell me. Your parents are gone. It’s nice you did that, but that visit had far more to do with you feeling good about being a dutiful son, than about them.

Some Sadducees, those who claim that there is no resurrection, came to Jesus one day and asked him a question. Teacher, they said, we have a problem for you. Then they went into a long story about a woman who married seven brothers in a row, all of whom died. So, they asked him. You can just imagine them smirking. Shrugging their shoulders at Jesus. You tell us, whose wife will this poor woman be in the resurrection?

The point isn’t the story, which is kind of weird. The point for the Saduccees was, “dead is dead.” Jesus was one of those Jews who taught that there was a resurrection. What, is this woman going to have seven husbands, they asked? They were trying to trap Jesus into admitting the whole idea is ridiculous.

We don’t realize what a “hot-button” issue resurrection was back then. As much as climate crisis is today, the resurrection was what a number of first-century Jews argued about. The group that came to see Jesus didn’t like resurrection. They thought it was silly. But Jesus and the Pharisees took the other side: at the end of time, God wouldn’t have any trouble scuffing through piles of snow or pushing aside leaves. God can find the faithful no matter how much snow is on the ground. That’s what Jesus taught, and the other Pharisees too. The faithful dead would be raised.

On this issue, we who claim to follow Jesus, who call ourselves Christians, are probably more like Jesus’ opponents. “What do Christians believe happens to you when you die?” I’ll ask that to my classes sometimes at Concordia. Sometimes the Jewish and Muslim students know the answer better than the ones who actually go to a Christian church.  The Christian kids will say things like: “Christians believe our spirit goes to heaven to be with God.” Or: “our soul spends eternal life in heaven.” Floating on clouds or something like that. When they say that, I show them what Jesus said, and what Paul writes in the New Testament. There’s nothing about souls.  When we say the Apostles’ Creed later on in the service, notice the words: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of …the soul? No. Some kind of disembodied spirit that floats around? No. Immediately going to heaven through some kind of shining tunnel? Not at all. We believe, we say every church service, in the resurrection of the body.” At the last day. When the reign of God changes everything, and everyone.

I’m not saying I personally have any idea what happens to us! But I do know what the Bible says. And it doesn’t say much about individual post-life spiritual existence. The scriptures tell us there will be a whole new, physical, world. There, truth and justice and love will reign, and all of the awful things that can happen to people here just don’t. There will come a time, it says, when the lion will lie down with the lamb, and wars will cease, and hatreds will stop. It will be a time where there will never be another Krystallnacht, the sad anniversary of which we marked yesterday. It will be a place where every child will grow up without fear, healthy and happy. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. And that place, the Bible insists, will be very real. And physical.

Again, who knows? The Bible was struggling to put hope to words. Paul says we’re baptized into Christ’s death, so that just as Jesus rose, someday we will too. That starts, he insisted, right now.

I really like the resurrection of the dead way of looking at life after life for two main reasons. Firstly, it’s organic. Jesus and the Pharisees taught that ALL creation would be renewed. Not just human beings. ALL creation: plants, animals, trees, air, water. I think that’s a message we need to hear. We don’t need a faith that tells us we can ignore what’s happening to our planet because, after all, humanity’s real nature is spiritual and all this physicial stuff is just distraction. Physical resurrection doesn’t privilege human beings. Jesus said that what he called “the children of the resurrection” will ALWAYS be physical, in some way at least. If we really believed that this place, this earth, is where we will always be, maybe we would take better care of it. Maybe we’d honour those trees and plants and animals and water right now, because they are co-heirs with us of what is coming.

Secondly, I think the resurrection of the dead gets another idea right, and that is relationality. By that I mean that the usual Christian idea of dying and going to heaven is pretty individualistic. It’s more than a little selfish. But the Biblical idea of post-life life is radically corporate, and mutual. Just like we are in constant relationship right now with other human beings, and with the natural world, so we will be forever. We were created into relationships. And that’s how we hope to be RE-created. There will be a city, says the book of Revelation, and a river will run through it. Its gates will be open. And it will have trees.

Lately I’ve been watching the Netflix series “The Good Place”. It’s fascinating that in a world that insists it’s not very religious, there’s a hit TV series about what happens to us when we die. But the take-away message of “The Good Place” is really about life NOW. Not life after death. The characters, whose names are Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani, struggle to change and to be better. When they do that, they’re doing what we all need to do. They’re learning what it means to be better people. Better human beings, less selfish, and more loving.

Whenever I go to that cemetery in Saskatchewan to visit my parents’ graves, it’s a bit disconcerting. Even though I’ve been there a dozen times its always hard to get oriented. It always takes me a while to find them. This time I took Christmas holly. I banged the ice out from the frozen flower containers and put in the holly. Then I stood around for a while, and thought about my parents. To the Sadducees who came to test him, Jesus said: the children of the resurrection cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God. I started getting cold, and my step-mother was waiting. So I said a sort of prayer, and climbed back in the car.

In “The Good Place,” the real message is that what will endure beyond the tomb is mostly who we’ve become because of how we treat each other. Jesus said the same thing. What happens after death might be a mystery. But whatever your beliefs, practicing the discipline of how to act with love, and faithfulness, and justice is a start. And caring for each other and the planet like our future depends on it, seems exactly the best place to begin.

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Truth in a time of Disinformation

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Truth. You will know it. That’s what Jesus says. You’ll be able to sniff it out. Somewhere between the meandering, hateful, mysogynistic, racist late-night tweets and the tap-tap-tapping of thousands of trolls putting out fake social media posts from St. Petersburg and Tehran, and robocalls whispering to us here in Quebec that elections have been cancelled under mysterious circumstances, and Saudi Arabia murdering a journalist and then saying he died in a fistfight and a Trump supporter sending pipe bombs by courier but many Republicans listening to talk-shows that tell them the Democrats set up the whole thing, because, after all, no one got killed, and, well: God knows what else.  If you continue in my word, says Jesus – THE word, not all these dissimulations – then you are truly my disciples, and you will know, NOT the lies. Not the innuendo. Not the most reasonable inferences, based on the latest poll results. The TRUTH.  And that will set you free. So often we focus on that one noun, “truth.” Too often we overlook the very important verb before that, the verb “to know”. It might be a truth that a grizzly bear and her cubs are on the path ahead of me. But if I don’t KNOW it, it won’t help. Indigenous writers tell us that knowing always depends on one thing: relationship. What twitter has taught us is that what people call truth is relative. But the relationships under real truth – love and forgiveness, and grace that reaches through our brokenness and heals us – those things never change. When we face the disinformation and the hurtful lies, the way through is asking: of all the so-called options, what keeps us in right relationship with our Creator and each other? THAT is the truth we must cling to. Then, even in times of trouble, even should the world fall apart and the mountains crumble into the centre of the sea, that truth is our safety and stronghold. Our mighty fortress. Truly.

17 “Finnish” Clergy & the Future in Canada

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Look at this photo of the “Finnish pastors” at this year’s Suomi Conference in Sudbury. Seventeen smiling faces. Seventeen clergy who, for the most part, like each other, share jokes, help each other out, support each other, and share an eagerness to be the best leaders they can be, in a renewed, vital Finnish-Canadian church.

But as they say, a picture tells a thousand words. And this picture, taken in the closing minutes of the Suomi Conference 2018, says a lot about what the Canadian Finnish church is, and might become.

17-6= 11          17-3=14           14-3=11           14-7=7             17-4=13

To start with, six out of the seventeen “Finnish” pastors in this picture aren’t Finnish at all! Six are actually English-speaking pastors from Canada. Only one of the six “anglos” – Stanley Johnston – is fluent in spoken Finnish. The rest of us practice our pronunciation with varying degrees of success!

Three of the seventeen “Finnish” pastors who DO speak Finn were either born in Canada or the United States. Or moved here at a very early age. That means that nine out of the seventeen people in the photo are probably more culturally North American than European. That’s major. The Lutheran church in North America is not a state church. Lutherans have always been a minority here. When you’re a minority, living with small budgets, and relying heavily on volunteers, you tend to think and act differently (as North Americans do, in any case).

Three of the seventeen pastors are actually visitors from Finland. Olli Valtonen is founder of the Tuomasmessu (The Thomas Mass), an international movement, and a book author. Leila Valtonen is a book author as well, a group psychotherapist and an expert in the Enneagram personality test.  Mauri Vihko is the new Kirkon ulkosuomalaistyön johtaja, administrator of Finnish churches abroad. He says that the Finnish church is also shrinking, along with its budget. Since 90% of the Suomi Conference budget comes from Finland, that’s a concern! Mauri assures us that there is no immediate danger. But changes are ahead…. Mauri is very interested in how to reach out to Finns who are “global migrants”, travelling out of Finland for jobs, adventure, or relationships. This is EXACTLY the kind of Finn we’re seeing more and more of, in Montreal.

Fully half of the fourteen Canadian pastors in this photo are either retired, or within a few years of retirement. Nothing wrong with grey hair, but there’s a lot of it in this photo! Three of the seventeen serve part-time, mostly because the parishes have become so small they don’t need a full-time pastor. Only four of the seventeen are women. But notice – they are among the youngest in an otherwise aging group. The face of the Finnish presence, and the face of clergy, in Canada, is changing.

This photo says it all! (photo courtesy of Ismo Makkonen; missing from photo: Pat Dorland)

 

 

 

Between Candle and Bell

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All Saints’ is about a community bigger and better, more surprising, more joyful and more inclusive than we could possibly imagine. It’s about lighting a candle for someone who has died, and honouring the fact that there are lines that connect us with them that go on despite death, lines we can hardly guess at, but that our Creator knows intimately. Why? Because they were woven with gracious intent into our very fabric of being.

Estonians, the Red Army, and Unsettlement

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When I read Enn Raudsepp’s book Vändra, it was eye opening. The novel makes it very clear that Estonians have rarely been able to live on their own land. In the Middle Ages, German landowners came and took over everything, making the Estonians serfs and peasants. Then the Soviets came, again and again. Today is “Red Army Sunday”. If anyone knows about strangers taking over land, it should be Estonians. They know, as do the First Nations here in Canada, what it is to have foreigners pushing you out. Estonians know what an injustice that is. Estonians should, then, also know that the right thing, the loving and just thing, is to name that injustice for what it is, even here and now in Canada. So you, mortal, says Ezekial, you I have made a sentinel for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you should give a warning. I guess we who are Christians are not quite over the “should” stage. We should identify injustice, not just at the end of the Second World War, but also now. We SHOULD develop solidarity and empathy for people who are not like us. In that way, the reign of justice, of our God, begins already, in a very small way, here and now.

 

why the 16th century is still important

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The more things change, the more they’re the same. Some of us tend to idolize Luther. But scholars point out he’s only important because he came at a kind of tipping-point. Despite the significant, obvious differences, we live in a similar time. There is again, as there was during the European Reformation, a revolution happening in social media. There is again, as there was in the 16th century, a kind of apocalyptic feeling in the air, a shock-wave of anxiety at the rapid pace of change. There are again various forms of political uprisings and revolts among the disadvantaged. Remarkably, there is a similar fear of the Muslim world’s influence on Europe, a fear stoked for political reasons by leaders in the West. There is, again, an important wing of Christianity (this time found on television and online) that offers to the gullible and the afraid, salvation in exchange for money. Cities are still the crucibles of social, economic and technological transformation. And there is again, as at the time of the Reformation, a church caught in the middle, and unsure of the way forward.

Here’s to a positive, difficult non-rationality

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Voters these days seem more and more lazy and irrational. We are addicted to the easy sugar of slogans and of self-serving lies. Through history, to our shame, Christians have also been dangerously irrational. But always, thankfully, some of the faithful have also been NON-rational – not IRRational, – but non-rational, in a positive and difficult, discipleship, way; that is, revelatory, narrative and reaching for a dream that may never be realized, but makes life better in the meantime. Loving your neighbour, doing good for no return, giving up privilege for the sake of those who have none – these are also non-rational actions. They follow a dream of service, not selfishness. Luther wrote: ‘We are God’s work, and God’s poem. God himself is the Poet; we are the verses God creates (LW 7:366)”.  When we embrace this kind of non-rational openness, we open ourselves, not to slogans and lies, but to art, visions, and transformative dreams.

Long after the Thrill

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Way back in 1982 John Mellencamp came out with Jack and Diane. That song ALWAYS pops into my head when I read about the disciples after the crucifixion. They were so lost. Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of livin’ is gone. Which is to say: sometimes our dreams disappear before we do. I imagine Peter down by the water with the nets in his fingers, wondering what he’s supposed to do with his life, now that Jesus is gone. Yet the sacred word of the resurrection turned out to be that sometimes we shouldn’t try going back to normal. I miss lots of things about the ‘old days’ – my parents, my physical condition, my hair! But I don’t miss overt racism against First Nations, teachers smoking in the classroom, bullying encouraged in school, open sexism against women, gay-bashing and anti-Semitism. Some day soon, God willing, we’ll look back in equal horror at the ways the banks now make profits, the outsourcing of pollution, the obscene salaries of CEOs, and the gutting of our little towns and industries by the almighty dollar. Can we be prophets who call out injustice, hurt, and hate? The resurrected Jesus stands on the shoreline of our lives, calling to us in our little boats. Don’t go back to normal, he shouts out. That’s done. You can grieve it, if you need to, but it’s gone. Come sit, and be quiet, and have a little something to eat. And then together, let’s talk about what you’ll do next. Let’s sit and think and ponder and plan whatever resurrection is needed.

Recalibrating

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I remember the first time I drove with GPS. I heard a word I’d never heard before: Recalibrating. You’re going one way when maybe, you should have been going another. The machine doesn’t fuss, or fret, or blame you. You could go off a cliff and it would just…recalibrate. Do not be afraid, says the angel to the two Marys who had come to anoint the body. RECALIBRATE. THAT was the message to the women who came to the tomb. The path your life is about to take, the angels said, is different from the one you had planned. Something has happened. Something dangerously hopeful. Recalibrate. After Jesus dies, it says in Matthew’s Gospel that the city leaders ask for a guard for the tomb. Matthew’s the only Gospel to recount this. “We want to make sure that his disciples don’t come to steal the body,” they say, “Otherwise his disciples will claim that he’s been raised, so the last deception will be greater than the first.” That phrase has always stuck with me. How can we, who celebrate this day, answer people who believe that we ARE living a deception? How about this? What’s unrealistic is NOT Easter. What’s unrealistic is our death-denying, hiding-the-facts-from-ourselves society claiming we’re never get older, just better. Some deny resurrection. But then we swallow the big lie that there’s no death, period. What’s unrealistic is paying hundreds of dollars for creams to hide our aging, or living in a world where the contents of a dumpster are entertainment on TV. What’s unrealistic is people who call themselves Christian who celebrate the world’s biggest bomb and never think about the fact that all that shiny metal is designed to blow human bodies up. The Marys were on their way to anoint a dead body when they were surprised by life. Like my experience learning to drive with a GPS unit for the first time, our Creator sometimes knows the path better than we do. Life comes THROUGH death. Do not be afraid. Life can triumph. The way can be recalibrated. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.