November 12rd, 2023

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

Happy Thanksgiving!  It is a wonderful time to give thanks to God.  Chime in with Martin Luther’s litany of thanksgiving for God’s creative ability made known in us.

I believe that God has created me together with all that exists. God has given me and still preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and all mental faculties. In addition, God daily and abundantly provides shoes and clothing, food and drink, house and farm, spouse and children, fields, livestock, and all property—along with all the necessities and nourishment for this body and life. God protects me against all danger and shields and preserves me from all evil. And all this is done out of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine at all! For all of this I owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.

[“Small Catechism,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006), 1162.]

If we gathered for worship on Thanksgiving Day or Eve, this would be our Prayer of the Day:

Almighty God our Father,

your generous goodness comes to us new every day. By the work of your Spirit lead us to acknowledge your goodness, give thanks for your benefits, and serve you in willing obedience, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

And we would read Luke 17:11-19 where we find Jesus healing the 10 men with leprosy.  Our resource from Sundays and Seasons gives us this devotional thought to reflect and ponder with:

 The Only Home

In her book Carville’s Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice, Pam Fessler takes readers inside the grounds of a leprosarium, a former plantation in rural Louisiana where, beginning in the late nineteenth century, patients with leprosy were banished. Separated from their families, often taken away in handcuffs by police officers, these people with what we now know to be only a mildly communicative disease were imprisoned on the grounds. They were punished for escaping, had their mail sterilized, and in many cases never saw their families again.

But in 1999, when the government made plans to shut the facility’s doors and return the handful of patients to their communities, those who still called the place home were vocal in their opposition. Some had lived there for more than fifty years and knew no other home, no other companions. “Honor our choice to live out our lives in this, the only home we have ever known,” they petitioned President Bill Clinton (Carville’s Cure, New York, Liveright Publishing, 2020, p. 275). Imagine how the ten in today’s gospel reading might have felt upon being cleansed. How long had they had only one another for companionship and support? Perhaps fear of the unknown so filled their minds that most of them neglected to return and give thanks to Jesus.

For many people Thanksgiving is a time for family and renewing the ties of kinship. That makes it difficult for those who have no family or whose family bonds have become strained or even broken. Rather than focusing on the ingratitude of the nine who failed to thank Jesus, perhaps we might be attentive to those around us for whom this time of year is difficult. What can we do to provide healing?

I hope these bits and pctk Luther, liturgy, and reflection on the scripture help set the stage to shape your thanksgiving and preparation to celebrate Christ the King this coming Sunday.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

November 16th, 2023

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

This year the well known and favored hymn, “Amazing Grace” celebrates 250 years. The hymn was first titled, “Faith’s Review and Expectation” and was first sung on January 1, 1773.  John Newton (1725-1807) wrote the song reflecting on the times of his life and never heard the song with the tune that is so familiar to us.  The tune he selected is unknown to us as hymns of that day only had the words without the notes to accompany them.  In 1833 the text was paired with the tune we know today, “New Britain” and the melody is built on the pentatonic (five note) scale, also known as the “slave scale” played on the five black keys of the piano. John Newton took his life story and the Biblical story and weaved it together to shape the hymn, “Amazing Grace”.

A summary of his story is reprinted here from The Wired Word (11/12/23) and the blog, Music Scribe (2018, The Originals Amazing Grace) with slight adaptation.

The son of a sea captain who was away from home for extended periods of time and a devout mother who died just before Newton turned 7, the boy embarked on his first voyage with his father at the age of 10. His childhood trauma no doubt contributed to his immorality and self-indulgence during his youth, when he was given to drinking, gambling, profanity and mockery of those who held Christian beliefs. 

When he was 18, Newton was pressed into the Royal Navy, but left his post without permission, hoping his father could get him transferred to the Merchant Navy. The teen was caught, publicly stripped, flogged until he lost consciousness, and demoted. In his rage over his humiliation, Newton plotted to murder the captain and commit suicide by throwing himself overboard. 

Before he could carry out his plan, he was transferred to a slave ship headed for West Africa, where he was handed over to Amos Clow, a slave trader, in 1745. Clow enslaved him and gave him to his African wife, Princess Pey Ey, who abused and starved him, and withheld medical care from him after he contracted malaria. Clow also put him in irons at times. In 1748, Newton was rescued by a sea captain Newton's father had asked to search for him. 

On March 10, while Newton was sailing back to England, a violent storm arose. A crew member who relieved Newton was swept off the ship's deck moments later and drowned. Shaken, Newton prayed for God's mercy, and the wind and the waves settled down. Facing the powerful forces of nature, Newton felt his own helplessness, and realized that only God's grace could save him. 

After years dabbling in atheism, African paganism and moon worship, Newton began reading the Bible and other Christian literature. This incident marked what Newton would later describe in "Amazing Grace," as "the hour I first believed." In Acts 18:27, Luke writes about "those who through grace had become believers."

"I thought … there never was or could be a sinner as myself: and then … concluded at first, that my sins were too great to be forgiven," Newton wrote later. "I consider this as the beginning of my return to God, or rather His return to me: but I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full use of the word till a considerable time afterwards."

Like "millions of people at the time, … [who saw] no contradiction in their faith and their behavior toward Africans," said historian James Walvin,immediately see any conflict between his new beliefs and his employment as a captain of slave ships. While his own experience as a slave may have given him some empathy for the African slaves he transported, his conversion from slaver to abolitionist was not instantaneous. He continued to invest in the slave trade for a time even after poor health forced him to give up seafaring. 

As his faith matured, Newton repented of his involvement in the slave trade. He wrote, "I think I should have quitted sooner had I considered it as I now do to be unlawful and wrong."  Eventually Newton became a minister in the Church of England.

For 22 years, Newton mentored William Wilberforce, who led the campaign in Parliament to abolish the African slave trade. Newton sent copies of his pamphlet, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade describing the horrific conditions of the slave ships, to every member of the legislature. He wrote: "I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me … that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." 

Just before Newton's death in 1807, the Slave Trade Act was enacted, ending the English government's participation in the slave trade.

Newton shapes his life through biblical stories and characters.

When Newton penned his hymn, he described himself as "a wretch" saved by amazing grace, who once was lost but then was found, like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32, and who once was blind but who regained their sight, like the blind men Jesus healed (Matthew 20:20-29) and like Saul when he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9).

The second stanza offers another perspective on grace: "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear." There is a form of fear that is quite healthy -- the fear that arises when we face significant danger, the fear that causes us to take preventive measures. This verse says that God teaches us to fear, i.e., he plants within us the healthy alarm that rings inside our head when we are about to do some wrong thing. That is the active grace of God.

But then, Newton wrote, grace also relieved his fear. God's grace assures us our trust in him is not misplaced. It frees us from the paralyzing fear that keeps us from doing the right thing. That too is a gift of God.

On multiple occasions, Newton came "through many dangers, toils and snares" as stanza 3 of his hymn suggests. Once he was thrown from a horse, and just missed impalement on a row of sharp stakes. Another time, he arrived too late to join a boat tour of a warship, and watched, horrified, as the vessel carrying his companions overturned, drowning all its passengers. Newton affirms that just as grace has brought us through a host of troubles already, it will carry us home. 

The fourth stanza recalls God's promise of goodness, and that it is God's word that secures our hope. Grace is not something we do, but something God does for us.

The next two stanzas, which are not always included in hymnals, indicate that God provides grace not only in this life ("as long as life endures"), but for eternity. The last stanza was not written by John Newton but by someone else -- possibly John P. Rees in the mid-1800s. The first time it appears is in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Maybe that's a way of showing that the message of grace takes on life for new generations. Each generation finds its own way to rephrase grace, but its reality is always amazing.

How are we putting into words and action that amazing grace of our God? 

Grace Rightly Applied Changes Everything,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

 ctk 

November 2nd, 2023

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

In Confirmation class when we study Jesus’ resurrection, I share this handout with our students, inviting them to “Think deeply about what resurrection means to you.”  As we celebrate All Saints Sunday, I invited you also to think deeply about what the resurrection means to you. In the words of the Apostles’ Creed, the 3rd Article, we say we believe in the Holy Spirit, and we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. 

Part of what makes a Gospel, a Gospel is that it bears witness to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  And when you read the letters of the New Testament, resurrection is often a topic.  Take a look further at 1 Corinthians 15 and explore Paul’s teaching on the resurrection.

Fredrick Buechner in Wishful Thinking reminds us that we are a people who believe that God resurrects us body and soul.

Some believe that when a person dies, the body lies in the grave but the soul continues to live.  Bodies die, but souls do not.  The Biblical view differs in several ways.

The Bible reminds us that we don’t just have a body, we are a body, created by God, life breathed into humanity by God.  Our body and soul are not separate but one.  And that both body and soul die, completely.  As Buechner puts it, “when you kick the bucket, you kick it 100%.  All of you.  There is nothing left to go marching on with.”

Paraphrasing Buechner, the idea that the body dies and the soul doesn’t is an idea which implies that the body is something rather gross and embarrassing.  The Greeks spoke of it as the prison house of the soul. The bible on the other hand, speaks well of the body and world as God’s good creation. 

Those who believe in the immortality of the soul believe that life after death is natural, as natural a function as digestion after a meal.

The Bible instead speaks of resurrection as entirely unnatural.  Humans do not go on living beyond the grave because that’s how we are made.  Rather, we go to the grave dead and we are given our life back again by God (i.e., resurrected) just as we are given it by God in the first place, because that is the way God made us.

All major Christian creeds affirm belief in resurrection of the body.  In other words they affirm the belief that what God in spite of everything prizes enough to bring back to life is not just some disembodied echo of a human being but a new and revised version of all the things which makes a person a particular human being in the first place and which we need a body to express:  our personality, our looks, the sound of our voice, our peculiar capacity for creating and loving, and in some sense our face.

The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God’s unspeakable love. God loves us to infinity and beyond and that includes death and the grave.

I hope this gives you something to assist you in your deep thoughts on Jesus’ resurrection and the hope we have.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

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