October 28th, 2023

KNOW GOD, KNOW OURSELVES

This is a Sunday packed with beautiful images, deep-seeded ideas, and a rich history. For life-long Lutherans, these things can provoke a sense of pride in our denomination, but Reformation Sunday is not “Lutheran Pride Day.” Instead it is a day focused on knowing God truthfully and in the process understanding who we are as people of faith and children of God in light of God’s unbelievable grace.

Luther spent a great deal of time trying to know who God was and to find ways of expressing what he came to know and believe so that others would know God too. He used coarse language, drank beer, and wrote hymns using tunes people knew and recognized. When he wrote his catechism he used language his small son could understand. He even translated the Bible into the language people spoke. Truth about God and our faith, as complex as it is, should be something we can grasp and wrestle with.

Reformation Sunday is certainly a festival day where we celebrate and remember our history, but it should also be a day to reexamine our faith. Part of that is recognizing the truth about our inadequacies, our failings, and our sinfulness. The law is like a mirror in a room with intense fluorescent lights; it shows us who we are with every flaw and wrinkle. But God doesn’t look at us in that mirror. The truth about God brings us new knowledge about ourselves. God shines a new light on us, where iniquities are forgiven and sins forgotten.

The message of Reformation Sunday is God’s love for us. It is a love that frees us and redefines us as people of God and as members of the whole body of Christ. In God’s eyes, we are beautiful.   (From Introduction, Sundays and Seasons)

October 21st, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE CHILDREN OF GOD, WHO BEAR GOD’S IMAGE TO THE WORLD,

Our adult study focused on the Israel-Gaza Conflict: No End in Sight which was an article printed in May 2021.  The cycle has repeated and the creators of “The Wired Word” curriculum didn’t think they could add anything new, and the Bible references continued to stand firm.  They took this opportunity to consider intransigent problems in our own lives and look for what help the scriptures may offer on those issues. 

One of the first questions was, what does it mean to live by faith when surrounded by troubles that seem beyond solution?  My response is to pray and listen to God.  Our culture and fellow Christians often criticize this answer, at least the first part, prodding for more action than only prayer.  Walk the talk, do something.

And so, I pray with scriptures and listen to God as I listen to others.  Try praying with Habakkuk 1:2-3

 O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,
   and you will not listen?
Or cry to you "Violence!"
   and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
   and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
   strife and contention arise. (For context, read 1:1--2:3.)

God and Habakkuk were in conversation with each and God told him that he would continue to live in a time when justice would be hard to find and Habakkuk would have to wait in faith in a future yet to come.  Habakkuk response with this:

Though the fig tree does not blossom,
   and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
   and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
   and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD ... (3:17-19) 

Habakkuk bears witness to a difficult and painful relationship with God and the world he lives in.  He keeps his focus on God and trusting God.  And when it is a struggle to pray let the words of Romans 8:26 ring in our ears.

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. (For context, read 6:18-30.)

Prayer, conversation with God is the place to start but it is not the end.  Listening and acting on the Holy Spirit’s prodding comes next.  On Monday as I visited Lou Ann Myers, I was reminded to pray the Psalms and at staff on Tuesday, our devotions led by Kevin Edens encouraged praying the Psalms in response to news from Israel and the Gaza Strip. 

As I listen to God and continue to pray and continue to reflect on my time in Israel.  I want you to know that Israel’s population is 9.7 million people, 2 million in the Gaza strip and 3 million in the west bank all created in the image of God.  I want you to see more of Israel than just the news you hear.  Before I went to the Holy Land, I thought it a very dangerous place and I wondered how they could live daily with the threat of terrorism.  I was safe while I was there and I was treated well.  I saw a great diversity of people, living together trying to navigate in complexity and seeing the humanity of the other.  It is not easy, but they are strong and determined people and I pray for them all and trust God.  As for my action, I will continue to remind you that in the heaviness of what we hear in the news, there are so many people in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Israel trying to find a better way.  My hope is in these people who live each and every day in the Holy Land and who won’t make the news but yet strife for peace in their land.

As Paul, from prison encouraged the Philippians, so I encourage you – keep on doing the things we have learned and received and heard and seen and the God of peace will be with us.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

October 12th, 2023

GREETINGS,

Thank you for the many prayers and thoughts of concern and care as we heard of the horrendous terrorism attack by Hamas on the towns bordering the Gaza strip. I am terribly sad and hold the nation of Israel in prayer as they grieve and figure out how to move forward.

I am grateful that I had the opportunity to spend time in Israel and visit many places that are peace-filled where Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israeli, and Palestinian people live together.  These people are navigating a very difficult course and I, from my very limited experience, think they are doing it well, not perfect but well. I have hope for the people, these strong and determined people who live there.

My hope in sharing my experience of Israel and the Holy Land with you is to give you another voice along with the headline news and the history of this place.  The Middle East is a very different culture than the West.  One of our lecturers said that if you want to understand the West, you need to know Christianity because Christianity shaped and formed the West.  If you want to understand the Middle East you have to know many narratives and history and everyone has an opinion. It is a complicated place and we may want swift solutions but that says more about us than the reality of their culture. Remember this land has been occupied more than it has been ruled from within and outside influences including the United States as well as the Arab world are interested in what happens in the country of Israel.

I ask you to pray.  Pray for peace. Pray for wise leaders who use their knowledge to the best of their ability to love this world and the people God created.  Pray for the peoples of Israel. Pray for those who grieve and who wonder what has happened to their loved ones.  Pray for those who are held hostage.  Pray for our enemies, like Jesus did, “forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Pray for hearts to be open to God’s will, including our own hearts.

Pray giving thanks to God and remembering God’s faithfulness.  Pray, remembering all you know about how God works in this world, a world God deeply loves and cares for and pray knowing that God calls us to work with him.  Pray on your knees with humility before God who works patiently with us, even when we are bent on destruction, God doesn’t give up or give in but God works with us and through us.  This is God’s good news, and we get to be a part of it and we keep praying, listening well for God’s discerning ways.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

October 6th, 2023

IMAGINE A WORLD SET FREE

Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.

Moreover, it is required of stewards that they should be found trustworthy.

- 1 Cor 4: 1-2

Pastor Erika Uthe, Assistant to the Bishop of Southeast Iowa Synod has prepared stewardship resources for us.  The prayer of the Office of the Bishop is that this resource might spark imagination in our faith community about what it means to be stewards of God’s mysteries – and to be found trustworthy in them.  Reflecting on our gospel reading from Matthew 21:33-46 for this Sunday, Pastor Erika Uthe shares the following:

 God always finds a way. In the face of a vast expanse of sea, God parts the waters. In the den of lions their mouths are shut. In the exile wilderness God’s people make a new home. In the suffering and death of crucifixion God resurrects life. In the face of tenants who refuse to do what was accomplished, the land owner finds new tenants. In the face of a religious institution that has forgotten its purpose, God will find a new church. Put in such stark terms, the reciprocity of trust between God and disciple seems so clear and simple. God, having saved the world from sin and all evil, has entrusted the saved to behave accordingly: by proclaiming forgiveness, inviting others to the kingdom work, imagining new ways of reaching even more people, and stewarding the work of the harvest

You, a disciple, and we, the church, are stewards of the harvest, reaping that for which we did not sow. All too often though, we forget whose the harvest is, and how it is that we came to be the harvesters. Our egos quickly take over and we start to believe that the harvest was due to our own hard efforts, and as such, isn’t it our harvest to do with what we wish? It is an easy, slippery slope and all of a sudden not only do we believe it’s our harvest, but that we have the right to the harvest.

What does this mean in congregational life? Let’s take a look at how we talk about being church together. Parishioners often talk about ‘my church’, or pastors refer to congregants as, ‘my people.’ We talk about our desire to grow our congregations, to get more young families, to succeed at our ministries. Harmless, right? Except, is it really our church, our families, our ministries, or are we stewards of God’s church? And that is only the beginning. There are so many ways we have bought into the lie that we, the tenants of leased land, are in fact the owners. This results in, over time, the belief that the harvest of God’s church, the fruits of the kingdom, are completely up to us, and that we are somehow solely responsible for God’s mission to the exclusion of all others.

Imagine the freedom that comes with the acknowledgement that none of it is ours, nor is it up to us for God’s mission to succeed. What a gift! Perhaps when we remember that we are but stewards we can learn to hold gently the mission to which God has called us. Trusting in God to continually provide conditions for us to reap the fruits of the harvest, and God trusting us to continually follow and use what we have been given then becomes the focus of our efforts. In this way, and with imagination our only limit, we can see the ways God has prepared places for us to work, the people God has gifted for the work, and the truth that we are but stewards.

· What are the things you own that you cherish the most?

· What are things you are a part of that you cherish?

· What's the difference to you between ownership and being a part of something?

 · Does your involvement in this congregation feel like ownership?

· When are you asked to give things up? Or make sacrifices at home, church, work/school? Do you think you make sacrifices for your faith? If yes, why do you make those sacrifices?

· How might we be set free or free others? As we think about our congregational community? What about our community outside of this congregation? What are ways our community needs to be freed?

Pastor Erika Uthe

Assistant to the Bishop of the Southeast Iowa Synod

September 29th

IMAGINE A WORLD TRANSFORMED

Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.  Moreover, it is required of stewards that they should be found trustworthy.       1 Cor 4: 1-2

Pastor Erika Uthe, Assistant to the Bishop of Southeast Iowa Synod has prepared stewardship resources for us.  The prayer of the Office of the Bishop is that this resource might spark imagination in our faith community about what it means to be stewards of God’s mysteries – and to be found trustworthy in them.  Reflecting on our gospel reading from Matthew 21:23-32 for this Sunday, Pastor Erika Uthe shares the following:

Upper Midwest Lutherans often wear their stoic stubbornness as a badge – knowing full well that there is more than a kernel of truth in those Ole and Lena jokes or the Church Basement Ladies’ franchise of plays. IMPORTANT: This is of course a broad brush stereotype of Upper Midwest Lutherans – knowing full well that ‘Lutheran’ does not equate to Germanic or Scandinavian descent, and that ‘Lutheran’ is not a cultural identity complete with jello salad or hot dish. What is true, though, is that the large majority of Lutheran congregations in the Upper Midwest have their roots in that culture and the stubborn stoicism of our ancestors actually made it possible to survive in those early days of living here.

What matters here is that like it or not, we who now carry on the legacy of our church ancestors live with that sort of stoic stubbornness deeply rooted in congregation culture. Honestly, in a world that changes so much, it can be a balm to know that church is there. That year after year you can expect the annual festival, to welcome the community children for Vacation Bible School, or to end Christmas Eve by lighting candles and singing ‘Silent Night’. Yet as much as these traditions and rhythms provide a deep sense of anchor and life, the church is done a great disservice when we forget that we are stewards of change.

The Pharisees in the text today did not change their minds, and as such, they missed out on the fullness of the kingdom of God. Likewise, the two sons in the parable deal with a change of mind – or dare we say – change of heart. We as disciples, and the church as a body through which God works in the world, are stewards of change. Time and time again in scripture we hear stories of God and the people of God change in life-giving ways, and each time it is expressly because the change means that more people are able to experience the grace, love, and forgiveness of God.

Church as an institution, and individual disciples as members thereof, have been entrusted to steward change in order that as the time and world context changes, so does the method of proclaiming the gospel. Imagine how the world might be transformed if we took seriously the change which God has entrusted to us! Change for the sake of reaching those who feel unworthy to come into a church building, or for whom church buildings are harbors of bad memories and pain. Change for the sake of showing the world the abundance of God’s love and the depths of God’s desire that all experience life.

As stewards of change, you can encounter God in new ways – through prophets like John, and the risen Lord Jesus Christ who comes to us as our neighbors. As stewards of change, you can overcome the imagination-killing phrase, ‘We’ve never done it that way before.’ As stewards of change, you can imagine a world completely transformed in new ways by the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ. And, honestly, huge change takes time. So – as stewards – perhaps our work is to discern which change we can best steward at which time, and with which gifts. Regardless of how and what the change might be for you and your faith community, we trust that the change transforms the world through the love of God.

· What does it mean to you that you are a steward of change?

· Name a time that you changed something – your mind, your heart, your behavior, etc. How did you experience God in that change?

· Change goes beyond individuals. Name things in society that have changed. How have you experienced God’s presence in that change?

· What do you think God might be calling you to change – individually? As a faith community? How might that change serve as a witness of God’s love in the world?

Pastor Erika Uthe

Assistant to the Bishop of the Southeast Iowa Synod