I have been reflecting on the tension between specificity and generality in preaching.  How much of the sermon do you shape for a specific context, and how much of the sermon is universal truth?  I think of Revelation, where John first addresses 7 different specific churches, and then turns and says, “Now let me tell you about God,” in chapter 4.  Here the specific dimension of the letter is to the people, the general aspect of the message is concerning a universal truth of God.  Humans: specific, God: universal.  But then I thought about how even in the gospels there are different understandings of how God works in the world.  Theological propositions are not so universal after all...  “If you’re preaching John, preach John.”  Just how far does a preacher adjust their theology for a particular context?

I want to share a place with the class that has been just a joy for us to get to know.  It is called Prairie Oaks Institute.  Located relatively close to the Twin Cities, Prairie Oaks is a quiet and peaceful family farm that has been turned into a retreat center.  We stayed there for a weekend retreat: a chance to refresh and regroup in the midst of seminary.  For anyone in ministry in the Twin Cities: this is one of the best kept secrets in the area.  We walked through the hills of the valley, admired the horses and alpacas, and listened to the voice of silence.  For a recent article on the Institute, check out this piece from the Metro Lutheran.

As I have browsed through these three neat blogs happening in the church: PrayTell, Clayfire Curator, and Jonny Baker’s blog, I stumbled across a link to an older, but interesting article about a church administering communion to its members over Twitter. I think this is an appropriate place to draw the line of technological advancements in church.  When it comes to communion and baptism, that’s gotta be done in church.

While thinking about the limits of technology for worship, I experienced a frustrating service on Good Friday.  My church has two campuses- a 150 year old traditional building and a 5 year old church built to accommodate the growing numbers of people in Hudson, WI.  This new building is equipped with all the aspects of contemporary church including two large screens on each side of the front of the church.

The Good Friday service moved for the first time up to the new campus this year.  I was worried that we would sing, “Were You There” to the beat of an electric drum kit and a host of guitars, but fortunately it was just a piano.  The service journeyed through Jesus’ 7 last words by turning off a section of the lights after each Bible reading was concluded with a hymn.  This has always been a meaningful service for me, and I looked forward to it immensely.

This year, however, I was tremendously bothered by the powerpoint backgrounds.  The church has bought “the latest” in powerpoint technology, where the backgrounds are not only digital interpretations of Christ on the cross, but now they move.  Oh wow.  As we sang “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”, I looked up at a cross where clouds rapidly and obnoxiously flew by.  As we sang, “What Wondrous Love is This?”, I looked at a Jesus on the cross with digital rain pouring down on him.  Before the final light was extinguished, the screens showed digitalized candles in an attempt to “set the mood” that actually was already there.  

I just wanted to say, “stop!”  If you are going to use the powerpoints, what’s the harm of just having black backgrounds with white words on Good Friday?  In the attempt to bring the congregation closer to the suffering Christ on the cross, I actually was pushed away from the experience the service developed in and of itself.  Instead of meditating on the last words, I was wondering, “oh no, what is the next background going to be?”  

As caretakers for our apartment complex, my wife and I have been exposed to daily uses of cleaning products for the past two years.  Last semester, a systematic theology final paper forced us to connect theology with climate change: something neither of us had really researched before.  In our learning, we learned that your household cleaning products have known short-term adverse health effects, but the long term concerns are often not known.  “Many conventional cleaning products are made from petroleum, a nonrenewable resource, which takes its toll on the planet.  In terms of human health, they contain some of the most hazardous chemicals that most of us encounter on a daily basis” (Lori Bongiorno, GreenGreenerGreenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-Smart Choices a Part of Your Life (Penguin Group (USA) Inc.: New York, 2008), 177).  In an effort to reduce health risks, we have eliminated the majority of our cleaning products.  We are thankful for a manager who has allowed us to explore alternative methods of cleaning.  We are now using a new technology that I still find hard to believe.

We are cleaning with the amazing Triple S O3 Professional Cleaning system, which charges ordinary tap water with 4,500 volts of electricity, causing the H2O molecules to separate into unstable (O) atoms.  When sprayed, the unstable atoms desperately seek to reconnect with other oxygen molecules, and as they come together, they sweep up the dirt, dust, odor, mold, or mildew in the process.  Some whole food grocery stores in California are using this to clean their fresh vegetables, but this also cleans and sanitizes glass, floors, carpets, door handles, etc.: any surface safe for water.  This couldn’t be a safer, healthier, or “greener” cleaning option, and it is proven stronger than chlorine bleach! 

This morning, as I was walking outside from one building to the other, I smelled that incredible smell after a rainstorm.  You know the smell- of clean water, of the ground no longer thirsty, and of the slight odor of electric energy- a mixture of water and lightning.  That smell is what this Triple S O3 cleaning system smells like.  It makes you feel like you are walking into a clean room after a thunderstorm.  

I have been reflecting on this technology, and how this relates to our class.  It seems like humans have come full circle in a way, trusting our own technologies (toxic chemicals, VOC emitting ozone depriving air fresheners, etc.) but then realizing that the most natural way of cleaning is the most effective (and safest).  I know that our system uses only water, but when charged with electricity it sanitizes and cleans, being even more effective than bleach.  I wonder if a thunderstorm has the same sort of natural cleaning effect.  If so, how have other technological advancements brought us full circle to a place of divine awe, realizing God had the most effective solution in place already?

This week, my wife and I found out our internship sites.  We are heading to the beautiful state of Washington, and are both excited and terrified.  I remember earlier in our class people mentioning how much of an issue facebook was for them while they were on internship.  Some supervisors did not allow their interns to communicate via facebook, others made the interns delete those friends developed over the course of that year at the internship’s end.  I thought that this would be a reality I would have to confront starting at the end of summer, but the dilemma has already begun.

Immediately after hearing word of our internship site on Saturday afternoon, I was faced with the task of making sure I told the right people in the right order.  For instance, I thought it would be important to talk to our parents first, then our grandparents, and so on.  At the same time, it was imperative to tell our apartment manager (who also happens to be our boss) as soon as possible.  Since internship sites begin at different times in the summer, we were waiting to see when to end our lease, and I wanted that information to come from us directly to our manager first thing Monday morning.  Therefore, I did not want to post the information on facebook, convinced that she would hear of the news before Monday came around.  So we temporarily deactivated our facebook accounts.  

Then, after informing our manager of our intended move out date, and reactivated our accounts, I was faced with another dilemma.  How do I articulate this news through my facebook status?  If I am only “excited,” then I feel like I am bragging about my internship site to those who may have wished to be at the site I received.  If I reveal my fears about this great adventure, the site supervisor might mistake those words to be speaking about my hesitation with the site or the supervisor, not the cross country trip and new context that I actually am nervous about.  I don’t have the option of tailoring my post to a specific audience.  Somehow, what I say has to be appropriate and understandable to every person I know.  How many details should I include?  I ended up posting, “We're preparing for an adventure! Washington here we come!”  I thought the word “adventure” was a nice way to express both excitement and fear.  Soon enough, I was receiving too many inquiries to count with questions such as, “why?”  “where specifically?”  “for how long?”  “Can I visit?”  Simple questions turn into long conversations with distant friends: “so what’s new with you?....”   Grrrr......  

It was not too long after that post that I was faced with another reality: both my wife and I had a friend request from her site supervisor.  hmmm.  Am I ready for this person to have full access to all my photo albums and personal information?  We haven’t even met face to face.  If you rewind even ten years, it would seem hilarious for anyone you partially know to have permission to your inquire into your life’s story without your helpful comments and explanations.  It’s like being exposed to someone’s personal diary or text message history without knowing the contexts for which those pictures and comments were intended.  Am I thankful that this supervisor will already know quite a bit about me?  Or do I wish I could postpone his conceptions?  

Oh the joys of being a public leader I guess.  I would appreciate any advice from my classmates on how they navigated these kinds of questions during internship.  So if you can help me, please do!

Class- I need help.  Can you give me some guidance?  I am overwhelmed with today’s class period.  For this upcoming project, I want to get some footage of a meal that my teaching congregation serves to those in the community that are in need of food.  The meal is free.  I knew that I couldn’t video people that I do not have a permission slip for, so I was planning on just interviewing a couple of the key leaders who are leading this service to the community.  But after today, I don’t know what I can video legally.  For instance, we learned that even though someone may own something, they may not be able to use it for public purposes.  Like the school teacher, they may own a video, but technically they can’t show it to the class.  That’s the same for reading a book outloud.  Can a crock pot be used to serve a public meal without the written consent of the manufacturer?

So, what does that mean?  If I want to hang a sign, out of consideration, on the door of the church saying, “Don’t leave your valuables in the car,” could I include a picture of a laptop from the internet?  Probably not.  What about a picture that I took of my laptop?  Even though it’s my picture, and even though I bought the computer, can I take a picture of it and use it publicly?  If I can’t do that, can I make a drawing of my laptop, scan it into a computer, and use that as the image?

Can I take a picture of a parking lot?  If I can’t take pictures of people without their permission, can I take a picture of their cars without their permission?  If I can’t, because it’s their property, or for some other reason, can I take pictures of the food being cooked for the community meal?  Do I have to have the permission of the cooks of the food, and the owners of the crock pots, and in fact the manufacturers of the crock pots in order to include a picture of the food they are serving in my documentary?   

God speaks in Jesus the Christ.

God speaks through the believers telling the story of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

God speaks through the Bible.

A little while ago, I was thinking about the Word of God, and questioning whether or not we refer to Jesus, to proclamation, and to Scripture as the same.  I focused quite a bit on the Bible, and how it serves as a window to the Savior, as the manger to the babe, but is not ultimately synonymous with Jesus the Christ.

In the same way, I think it is worth sharing a couple observations regarding the Word of God through preaching.

After preaching lab yesterday, a student asked, “Do you believe you actually receive Jesus in communion?”  Of course.  “Then how can you not believe that if you pray, ‘let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you O God,’ that it is not the voice of God speaking when you preach?”  Initially, I appreciated the challenge, but then I realized that you cannot equate these two because preaching is not a sacrament.  This sparked food for thought for the rest of the day.

Here are a couple Luther quotes for your delight:

“It is pure invention that pope, bishop, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate, while princes, lords, artisans, and farmers are called the temporal estate. This is indeed a piece of deceit and hypocrisy. Yet no one need he intimidated by it, and for this reason: All Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office.”  Three Treatises, 12

“To ordain is not to consecrate. Therefore if we know a pious man, we bring him forward, and by the power of the Word which we have, we give him authority to preach the Word and to give the sacraments. This is to ordain. . .On the basis of ordination it is established as a result of election that, for the sake of order, not everyone should have the desire to preach. Thus they have the obligation to perform their ministry, but not perpetually. Today we can commit it to him, tomorrow we can take it away.”

-Sermon from 1524 in WA 15, 721 (3) Quoted in Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, p. 347, note 13

In many ways, the church has got to have someone run the service, for the sake of order.  So the church picks someone to preach.  Ordination is not a sacramental act.  

Therefore the pastor is not lifted up outside of the arena of the normal people- the pastor does not have a “higher calling.”  The pastor is simply one who the congregation chooses to be their representative for leading the service.  If after awhile it proves to be a bad fit, then the pastor can go back to the farm, and do the work of God there just the same.  I can go back to my work as a custodian, and do the work of God there just the same.  I personally think that this process of discerning one’s call overemphasizes the call to a specific ministry and underemphasizes the call to general faith through baptism.  This is the call that our Church isn’t taking seriously enough.  I’m skeptical of people who say they know God called them to the office of ordained ministry, simply because I feel like sometimes I hear a prideful self justification that looks at ordained ministry as something divine, and they are somehow qualified to be in those shoes.  Their relational suave, public speaking skills, theological prowess, or leadership experience are reasons for them to be considered for and worthy of a higher office.  But it is the congregation who chooses someone to lead them- we are not self chosen at all.  I wonder if we as a church haven’t strayed from a radically practical ordination process Luther proposed, and come to look a lot more like a 16th century Catholic understanding where pastors prefer to be indeed untouchable.  Who could blame them?  Wouldn’t we all prefer to be safe, never questioned, highly respected, holy...  Wouldn’t we all prefer to be a savior?

You could say that Luther had a low view of person, high view of office.  But I want to offer some challenges even to this idea.  Faithful people have always desired to have something to cling to.  First it was a king, then a temple.  When the temple fell, people started looking for something else to cling to.  What was their foundation with their temple gone?  For the first time the Scriptures were canonized.  They became the new temple.  Since the first century, I think we have tried to make temples out of priests, the church, the Bible, and I even think we try to make a temple out of the office of ordained ministry.  

I understand the highest importance and responsibility of being the one to interpret a biblical text for a group of people in a way that makes sense of the text, and speaks to the very lives of those in attendance.  But I am nervous when we begin to call this the Word of God.  In my preaching class, I am blessed to hear many sermons on the same text, but I quickly learned that just because one is preaching does not mean that what they say is right.  Just because someone is standing behind a pulpit, this does not make them non-human, or immune to mistakes.  Being in a room, talking about how we can make our sermons better has been revolutionary for me.  We can improve the Word of God?  So I’m left with the dilemma: either the Word of God is flawed, or the Word of God cannot be synonymous with preaching.

What constitutes proper preaching?  Is the Word of God a sermon that correctly gives the law and gospel?  Does that not mean then that God’s Word is dependent on our correct theology?  Who’s to say it is right?

I say this to raise the question of self disclosure in the pulpit.  In some cases, I have learned more about the pastor than the Christ in a sermon.  Clearly, Luther would have a fit.  But in response to this, could a pastor be self disclosing in a way that reveals their weaknesses, their sinful nature, and their utmost need for a Savior?  Or is the preacher responsible for upholding a certain expectation of the parishioners that their pastor is someone other than normal?  Would a realization of a human pastor and a professional (dare I say secular?) office be detrimental to the faith of the parishioners, or could it refocus our vision past and through a window to the true Christ?

To be clear, an incarnate God and an elusive Spirit make the Word of God unpredictable and alive.  I am not saying that God does not speak through the office, through the Bible, through all of these things we cling to.  That’s what is amazing about God: because we have difficulty trusting in a God who is beyond our comprehension, God comes to us through things normal: the bread, the wine, the water, community, speech.  But once we claim that power in ourselves or in an office, and not in Christ, we are mistaken.

Anything other than a death to the self is not true baptism.  Faith was and is not dependent on a human king or priest, an stationary temple, a book of faith, or an office of ministry.  We cannot fall into the trap of idolatry, and mistake any of these for Christ.

Meet Alan Park- a leader of mission and service at Bethel Lutheran Church in Hudson, WI.  Alan is one of a strong group of missionaries that really helped me see the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of people serving one another.  At Bethel, there are a growing number of opportunities to join Alan and others on significant overseas trips: Mission Tanzania, Mission Jamaica, New Orleans, and many just returned from Haiti.  But perhaps the most inspiring mission opportunities are those closest to home.  Bethel hosts a H.O.M.E. meal (Hudson Outreach Meal for Everyone)- a free meal two Thursdays a month.  A group of volunteers regularly serves at the Dorothy Day Center in Saint Paul.  Others go to Loaves and Fishes in Saint Paul.  As a kid, I got to know the people who make these things run as I learned that God is just as much at work in the church kitchen as in the sanctuary.  

I recently finished reading a book by Sara Miles titled, take this bread.  Miles is an adult convert to the Christian faith who opened a food pantry in her home congregation: St. Gregory’s of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Fransisco.  In it, I read not only her story, but I read the story of Alan and these Bethel volunteers, told in a different way.  She writes, “Homer, who’d been in the hospital the week before, limped over and hugged me.  Starlight came in from the baptismal font, where she’d been bagging rice.  Martha appeared, radiant, and she was carrying flowers for us.  Then came the Russian ladies with their carts, some Salvadoran families crossing themselves, two punked-out street kids, a confused-looking Chinese grandmother, and then somehow everyone was standing in a circle around the Table, singing the Eucharistic music with Steve leading the familiar, newly resonant prayer.  There was a smell of incense and wet cardboard and slightly rotten bell peppers; and fifty voices, out of tune, filled the rotunda; and some little kid was lifted up on a volunteer’s shoulders to see Donald break the English muffin.  I understood why Christians imagined the kingdom of heaven as a feast: a banquet where nobody was excluded, where the weakest and most broken, the worst sinners and outcasts, were honored guests who welcomed one another in peace and shared their food.” (158)

Mary Hess asks, “How in my daily life am I formed as ‘white’ in a raced society?  How do the images, the music, the rituals of liturgy, contribute to solidifying this identity, or resisting it?  How does my engagement online shape my identity?” (107)  Reading her chapter titled, Embodied Pedagogies: Engaging Racism in Theological Education and Digital Cultures in her book Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All That we Can’t Leave Behind, leaves the reader asking these penetrating, convicting questions, and forcing me to admit that I, too, benefit from racism.  This is proven true just by the fact that I am not being proactive enough to overcome the implicit and explicit manifestations of racism around me.

As I admit my own faults, I also thank God for those who are taking the initiative to overcome racism in our world, and in our church.  One such person who consistently demonstrates this commitment is Dave Scherer, who is known as the musician Agape.  Thank you Dave for your commitment to dismantling racism through volunteering your time in Isaiah, for your music which crosses barriers of race, and your humility that welcomes the voices of all.

Seminary can be difficult- especially when you feel like you don’t even understand the basics.  The Word of God- easy right?  Well I am utterly confused.  From a Lutheran perspective, I have learned that the Word of God means three things.  

God speaks in Jesus the Christ.

God speaks through the believers telling the story of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

God speaks through the Bible.

When I think of “words” in a plain sense- a word is a unit of language.  A word most often is meant to communicate something through either written or spoken.  Sometimes, however, words can be isolated, and don’t actually speak to something or someone else.  It makes sense that when God uses words, they ought to be for purposes of communication.  

One may say that God spoke in the creation story, but there were days God spoke before there was something living.  Is it possible to communicate with something that is not alive?  I’d argue that God speech has the capacity to make hearers out of even the waters and the sky, out of lightness and darkness.  They became hearers because God was a speaker.  You know God spoke because things were changed, transformed.  

Opening the book of faith is a book intended to be used to get more Lutherans into studying the Bible- the word of God.  This book is a collaboration of Diane Jacobson, Mark Allan Powell, and Stanley N. Olson, and gives basic Lutheran understandings of the Word of God.  This book states that “Lutherans say that the Bible has authority, because God engages us there” (2).  Humans can encounter God there, specifically in the story of Jesus of Nazareth.  “We encounter God through the Bible because it effectively conveys Jesus Christ to us.” (2)  

If only it were that easy.  

After reading this book, I am left with so many questions about the Word of God.  

Perhaps the climactic sentence is this: “Our foundational concern is that the Word be heard...  God invites us, individually and together, to listen expectantly to the words of the Bible, listening in the company of others who help us hear.  By the Spirit’s power, we will hear the Word of God.  Open Scripture.  Join the conversation” (19).

Notice that our participation in the “conversation” is marked by “listening.”  Since when is conversation one-sided?  Does not the word “conversation” demand participation from two parties?

However, this book supports this one-sided communication:

• “We can never think that we have determined precisely how Christians will live and organize.  Scripture is the source and norm, not our understandings of Scripture” (10).  
• “We never place our understandings of God’s Word on a par with Scripture.  We are not in control.  God speaks through individuals and through the church and its institutions, but only the Bible is the fully reliable standard” (10).
• “The Word of God is not something that we possess.  It always belongs to God” (11).
• “You cannot have a relationship with the Bible.  You can have a relationship with Jesus” (32). 

I fear that this book encourages a relationship where only one party can communicate honestly.  My role in the “conversation” can not be merely listening.  I know it’s hard for Lutherans to think of “doing” things, to be anything but passive receivers of grace.  I believe, however, that a journey of faith is something that I actively engage in, wrestle with, push back against, run away from, and am pulled back to.  I will not settle for a passive relationship with a text that God chooses to use as a medium for communication.  I will not wholeheartedly embrace everything everyone else says about the Bible while neglecting the honest messages I hear.  In Gen. 32, Jacob shows that a struggle is not an impediment to faith, it actually led him to faith.  The Christian faith is a relationship with God, not an obedience to a book. 

If the Word of God is only something that speaks, and doesn’t listen, what would be the point of prayer?  If God speaks through the Word of God, God’s gotta hear there too.  As the son of a teacher in Wisconsin, I’m not a big fan of leaders that refuse to listen and only speak.  I think God’s smarter than that.  Do we engage the Bible just to listen?  Or do we actually contribute something to the conversation?

When we say the “Word of God,” is it God speaking?  Or the Spirit?  Or Jesus?  Saying Jesus is the Word of God makes me wonder, “well isn’t the Spirit too?”  And isn’t a two natured (human and divine) Christ both divine and human?  Would I be going too far to say then that Jesus is not only the “Word of God”, but the “Word of humans” also?  Could Jesus speak to God?  Did Jesus tell God something about humanity that God couldn’t have known outside of the incarnation?  More specifically, when we read the Bible for the Word of God to speak to us, does the Bible open up communication to God too?  Or is this Word one-sided?

Does not the rhetorical triangle taught in Luther Seminary’s preaching classes teach students to equally listen to the Word (Jesus) the Pathos (audience), and also the Ethos (speaker)?  In the Lutheran Study Bible, a product of the Opening the book of Faith project, Winston D. Persaud writes an article titled, The Bible and God’s Mission.  He writes, “Neither the individual reader nor community can avoid reading Scripture through particular cultural lenses.  Every reader comes with a framework of interpretation, a tendency to see and understand the Bible in certain way.  So, it is important that we keep in mind that the biography of the reader-interpreter plays a critical role, sometimes the decisive role, in the interpretation of Scripture” (1547).  

I also fear that the Lutheran emphasis on sola scriptura has the potential to claim the Bible possesses authority apart from God.  Read these words from Jacobson, et. al.: “we know the Bible creates faith in those who hear it” (3). Who creates faith?  The Bible?  Or God?  In another place, Jacobson, et. al. reads: “The Bible does things to us.  In Scripture itself, we often hear about the Word of God as an active, dynamic force: the Word of God cleanses; it heals; it creates; it judges; it saves... The Bible reveals Christ to us.  It draws us into a living relationship with Jesus Christ, who is risen from the dead” (45).  The Bible does not do this.  The Bible has no authority apart from the God who speaks through it.  The Bible doesn’t do anything.  The Word of God does.  The Word of God is Jesus.  Jesus works through the Bible.  Jesus is not the Bible.  The Bible is not Jesus.  Jesus speaks those words to you when you read them.  That does something.  That’s why I have a difficulty saying the Word of God is threefold- Jesus and the Bible are not synonyms.

Darrell Jodock, my college advisor, also wrote an article in the Lutheran Study Bible: What Should We Expect When we Read the Bible?  He writes, “The Bible is like a window. It is not intended to call attention to itself.  It is intended to allow us to look through it and see what God is like” (1544).  In the previous article, Martin Luther on the Bible, Mary Jane Haemig writes, “Luther never simply equated the Word of God (both law and gospel) with the written Scriptures.  On the contrary, he taught that the word of God is essentially oral in character; it is a ‘living voice.’” (1523)

In the words of Martin Luther, “Here you will find the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies, and to which the angel points the shepherds [Luke 2:12].  Simple and lowly are these swaddling cloths, but dear is the treasure, Christ, who lies in them” (LW 35, 236).  The Bible is the manger which cradles the babe, but the Bible and the manger must not be mistaken for synonyms.  

When we equate the power of God’s speech with the Bible, we limit the God who created the whole world just by words.  We stop a voice that’s still speaking.  The Bible without being read is powerless, but once a reader opens the book, God speaks through the words on the page.  We treasure the manger, we treasure the Bible, because God speaks there.  But that manger is nothing other than a few boards taken from a fallen tree and assembled together by human hands to showcase the God who speaks even to us.

Why does this relate to Proactive Ministry in a Media Culture?

I have a hard time thinking that God can’t or doesn’t speak outside of the Bible, or a sermon on a Sunday.  I am suspicious of people who tell me places where God doesn’t speak.  The Word of God speaks through the bread and the wine.  The Word of God speaks through the waters of baptism.  The Word of God speaks through things mundane- and that is amazing.