April 25th, 2024

GREETINGS TO GOD’S IMAGE BEARERS,

In John’s gospel there are 7 times Jesus uses “I Am” statements.    

Here are the “I am” statements and with a frame of reference for context:

After the feeding of the 5000, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life” (6:35);

After the woman is not condemned for adultery, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world (8:12);

After the blind man is healed, Jesus says, “I am the door (10:7), and “I am the good shepherd.” (10:11, 14);

Before Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, he says, “I am the resurrection and the life (11:25);

And while Jesus bids his disciples farewell, preparing them for the days ahead, he says, “I am

the way the truth and the life (14:6) and I am the true vine” (15:1). 

It is only in this last “I am” statement where Jesus also says, “you are the branches”.  In all the others the relationship is assumed or we are invited into.

We are the ones who eat the life sustaining bread and we are given life.

We are the ones who flourish in Jesus' light.

We are the ones who pass through the threshold of the door in abundant life.

We are the sheep who follow the good shepherd.

We are the ones raised to life again and anew because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

We are the ones who follow Jesus' way, truth and life, a way leading through suffering, death, resurrection and ascension.

But in this I am statement, Jesus tells us clearly that we are branches.  We are the branches connected to Jesus, the vine.  This is plural.  Not I am the branch.  We are the branch.  The “you” throughout this text is all plural.   I am not a branch but we are the branch and we are intimately connected to Jesus the vine.  This is how Jesus thinks of his disciples.  This is how Jesus comforts and prepares his disciples.  This is the risen Christ and Christ’s relationship with us.  This is how connected Jesus is to us and if that’s not enough, God is the good gardener that tends to the vines and branches.  God is the master gardener who knows what he is doing and knows how to take care of us.  God knows what will bring us life and what will help us to grow tending to our relationship with Jesus as we abide all together.

Hold this intimate image before yourselves as you read John 15:1-8 trusting Jesus and trusting God so that we can hear these words of grace as we also hear the words of pruning, bearing fruit and branches being thrown into the fire.  Words heard as law.  We trust that God has a hold on us and that hold brings us through all the pruning, helping us bear fruit and God is glorified. 

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

April 19th, 2023

BELOVED PEOPLE OF GOD,

I think I’ve been “Sunkist” in response to sharing my eclipse story as I found a 6 pack of Orange Sunkist soda on my chair in the sanctuary.  At first, I thought it was for the acolyte, but it remained and I’m still not sure who it is from and what the intention is of the mysterious appearing of the six pack of pop.  It is a mystery, a mystery that I will understand to be a clever treat from the people of puns.  It took some planting of seeds from Gretchen Vigil who told me the one about a son who asks his father to explain the solar eclipse and the father replied, “No sun.”  And my mind was opened not necessarily to understand scripture but rather to wonder at the mystery gift giver and think that my eclipse experience was “sunkisted”.  I will take it as a delightful breath of the playful spirit among us until someone confesses or solves the mystery.

How are you seeing the delightful breath of the Holy Spirit play in your neck of the woods?  Are you smelling the signs of Spring in the blooming flowers and trees?  Hopefully you don’t have allergies and if you do, hopefully the play of the Holy Spirit draws your attention in another direction to see the signs of resurrection abound.  Or the sneezing and watery eyes are a fierce reminder of the power of the Holy Spirit to wrestle in our lives and keep us up all night. 

We want the gentle playful breath of the Spirit, the sunkisted one rather than the wild, mysterious and out of control one.  The Holy Spirit that Jesus breathes into the disciples helps them to reach out and see more, to see life beyond death, to see life anew.  We see the turmoil of fear and joy; of disbelief and belief as Jesus invites the disciples into the new reality of resurrection.  It is hard to trust Jesus and God’s way for us and creation.  God, our painstaking planner who sticks with us, trying all sorts of maneuvers to nurture in us a living relationship beyond anything we know.  God who uses puns and playfulness also uses wilderness and death to get our attention, hoping we will take another look and see more of what God is up to in our lives. 

And yet God is more than we can imagine or possibly know and understand or as one of our Advent hymns puts it in reference to God’s gentle grace, unexpected and mysterious.  The unexpected and mysterious appearance of a six pack of orange Sunkist on my chair brings a smile and another reflection on the sun, moon and earth aligning and getting to be a part of the experience of God’s magnificent and marvelous masterpiece always unfolding in our lives.  What a great treasure we have in God’s love lived out with us.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

April 12th, 2024

BELOVED PEOPLE OF GOD,

It was my husband’s birthday on Monday, April 8 and so about a month ago, I wondered if he wanted to go on a road trip to see the total eclipse of the sun for his birthday and soon plans were underway.  We left Sunday afternoon, stayed just south of St. Louis and drove on Monday to Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The earth, the moon, and the sun all in alignment for a brief moment in time and what was familiar, and routine changed dramatically.  Watching with special glasses allowed us to see what we couldn’t see on our own, as the moon moved between us and the sun.  We would swap back and forth between gazing up and looking around as the earth, moon and sun moved and light changed to that weird kind of translucent green before a storm.

But when the moon was right in front of the sun, we could look at the sun and see the corona.  We saw the sun in a new and very different way and it changed our familiar surroundings and our bearings; the temperature dropped, the sounds of crickets replaced the chirping birds, the blues of the horizon all the same no matter what direction we looked, dawn and dusk appearing simultaneously and two planets made their appearance as well. 

There was that moment of awe at the power and magnificence of our sun and moon and planet united in this way and spilling over into our  environment. God’s creativity in motion on a huge scale. And I got to see it but more than just see, I got to experience it. It was amazing and weird and strange. It was a holy moment.

Of course I am at a loss for words and pictures don’t do it justice but trying to capture what cannot be captured is a worthwhile endeavor no matter how clumsily I do it.  It is what we, people of faith, try to do all the time when we share our faith in what God is up to among us.  We keep at it struggling to find the words, the metaphors, the pictures to give shape to God’s mysterious presence and activity.

Experiencing the eclipse helps me understand Peter’s address to the people in Acts 3 when he says, “why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” And Jesus’ consistent words of peace to his disciples as he shows himself risen from the dead.  “Have you anything here to eat?”  Jesus asks.  Calling them into something they recognize like eating so that they can see and experience more of Jesus as they wrestle with their disbelief and belief, trying to trust the joy of the moment and the presence of Jesus. 

They are our witnesses that have spoken to us over the years.  They are like the special eyewear that protects our eyes while allowing us to see what we can’t see on our own.  And we are witnesses to each other as we move with each other, and God’s word and the Holy Spirit works with and among us to help us see Jesus.  We are witnesses of these things – God’s creativity in motion among us.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

April 4th, 2024

BELOVED PEOPLE OF GOD,

 Happy Easter. Blessed Pascha*.  We enter the season of great thanksgiving.  Jesus Christ is risen! Alleluia!  Seven weeks of feasting on the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. This is no 7 weeks mini-series of the gruesome walking dead or Frankenstein kind of life.  No, Jesus shows us this life after death as he carries the marks of his death with him meeting his disciples in the garden, through their locked doors or on the roadway.  Jesus speaks words of peace, gifts his disciples with the promised Holy Spirit, teaches them and eats with them. 

The resurrection of Jesus changes our lives and our deaths.  We are a people filled with promise and hope especially when we enter times of loneliness, suffering, and injustice.  In confirmation class with our 7th and 8th graders we talk about this as the paradoxical effect.  We encounter the crisis of crucifixion and greet the new life that emerges as Jesus greets his disciples.  This paradoxical effect is mirrored in the book of Acts.  The Jerusalem leaders become enraged and stone Stephen, which begins the persecution of Jesus’ followers, driving them out and into the lands of Judea and Samaria.  The tragedy of Stephen’s death and the persecution that followed made way for the good news of Jesus Christ to spread beyond Jerusalem.

This is the season, this is our time to search and seek for signs of Jesus' resurrection and new life.  We take what we have received and tell each other and our witness shines forth.  Theologian N.T. Wright says, “Modern Christians use the word ‘witness’ to mean, ‘tell someone else about your faith.’  The way [Scripture] seems to be using it is, ‘tell someone else that Jesus is the world’s true Lord.” (Simply Jesus, London: HarperCollins, 2011, Kindle ed. p. 214)

We get to be witnesses that Jesus is our true Lord.  We say it in our very name, Christ the King Lutheran Church.  Jesus is our #1, our captain, our shepherd, our leader.  He rules and reigns over life and death.  He rules and reigns in our lives and in our deaths.

As I shared with our children on Easter Sunday, by taking the things I love and shaping them into the hope of Easter where a cross becomes delicious chocolate and the place of death, the tomb becomes half a donut, half an Oreo and half a gram cracker, celebrating an empty tomb that does not hold Jesus.  The things I love get transformed to celebrate Jesus and how he goes absolutely everywhere.  The best thing about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is the empty tomb!  Jesus is risen.  Find what you love and Jesus finds you there.

 Nothing is more practical than

finding God, that is, than.

Falling in Love

in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with,

what seizes your imagination,

will affect everything.

It will decide

what will get you out of bed in the morning,

what you do with your evenings,

how you spend your weekends,

what you read, whom you know,

what breaks your heart,

and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love,

and it will decide everything.

-Fr. Pedro Arrupe

Looking forward to our 50 days of Pascha*, of Easter.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

March 28th, 2024

BELOVED PEOPLE OF GOD,

This little treasure greeted me after our Palm/Passion worship and was gifted to me by Abby Rothfuss and Laina Nelson.  They have shared with me some of the fruits of their Sunday School time.  Thank you. 

I’m so looking forward to celebrating this Holy Week with you and we are off to a wonderful beginning with Palm/Passion Sunday paving the way for Jesus to fulfill God’s promise and pave the way for us, always ahead of us, even in suffering and death.  Jesus knows the way.

We lean on each other as we remind one another and remember God’s promises.  We need each other to speak these promises to each other.  It is our story to tell and we love to tell God’s story.  For those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to tell God’s story and our need for God to save us.  It is a beautiful story full of hope and promise. 

I am so grateful for those of you who have walked in our immediate neighborhood and prayed for our neighbors.  I am grateful for the responses shared.  I know personally that walking and praying gave me an awareness that was not of me.  I think God drew my attention to our neighbors and invited me to participate more in the business and engage in conversation with the neighbors I came into direct contact with.  I think God is up to something and I wonder how it will unfold and I will keep praying and walking in our neighborhood, remembering Jesus goes ahead of us.

That is the shape of the cross that brings together God’s realm with ours.  Abby and Laina colored the base of the cross green which reminds me of a growing garden.  I am reminded through the shape of the cross that when I remember who God is and who I am, I am in a better place to reach out to my neighbors as I remember the horizontal cross beam.  The cross becomes that mysterious symbol that draws us to Jesus and to each other. 

My hope for you and all of us as a community of faith is that we would see Jesus and his cross becoming that life-giving tree through his suffering, death and resurrection as we grow to find ways to express how we see Jesus gift us with abundant life.  We who have experienced God’s mercy and grace and we get to tell the amazing story of God’s deep desire to be with us and make a way for us. This is our time to tell the story, God’s amazing story. Resurrection abounds all round us.  Open your eyes and look at what God is up to among us.

I am grateful for our speakers from the various agencies and how they are our neighbors who work with more of our neighbors.  They work with those who have been incarcerated, those who have mental disabilities and those needing access to medical care.  These are people who meet people at their greatest need.  They show us a bit of Jesus, who met people in their need.  These are good neighbors to know and I hope that if you can, you will volunteer your time to work with these neighbors. 

We have so much to grow into because Jesus Christ is risen.  Jesus goes ahead of us through life, death and new life.  Happy Easter.  Blessed Pascha.  Jesus Christ is risen!  Alleluia.  He has risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack