Pastor Erik

Sermon: Sunday, June 19, 2011: The Holy Trinity

Texts:  Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Psalm 8  •   2 Corinthians 13:11-13  •   Matthew 28:16-20

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Happy Father’s Day! It’s not so often that Father’s Day and the Sunday set aside on the church’s calendar for discussion of the Holy Trinity coincide. We’re usually well into the Sundays after Pentecost by now, but because of the late Easter, everything on the church calendar got pushed back my almost a month, and so we end up talking about Father, Son and Holy Spirit in church on a day when many are gathering to talk about fathers and children and families.

My own father is a church musician. He’s been one for about thirty-five years now, all served in the same place, at the church where I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. I learned plenty about theology and church history in seminary, but most of what I learned (and continue to learn) about music and worship, I’ve learned from my dad.

Some fathers and sons like to go fishing. Others like to golf. Me and my dad? Well, every year since I moved to Chicago almost five years ago, Dad and I have attended a worship conference at Valparaiso University. We spend two days with other Lutheran pastors and musicians from around the country attending lectures and workshops on topics like “Liturgy in the Public Square” or “Liturgy and Healing” or “Worship at the Time of Death.” This year it was, “the Psalms.”

Often there are workshops that seem more oriented toward church musicians, like reading sessions for new choral literature or hymnody, and others that seem more oriented toward pastors, like preaching seminars. Though they work side-by-side, pastors and church musicians don’t always see worship through the same lens, and there are plenty of horror stories floating around out there about what happens to worship when pastor and musician don’t see eye to eye. But in my family, we don’t even need to leave the dining room table to uncover that kind of conflict. Over the years my dad and I have argued about hymns, about instruments, about language and even about the tone of voice and diction appropriate for leading prayer and for participating in the assembly’s prayer. I half suspect we argue because we believe what we’re saying, but the other half thinks we argue because we argue.

So, we cooked up an idea for a blog we’d like to write together. We’d like to pick a series of topics and for each installment we’d each put our thoughts and opinions out there, but we’d also invite a third party in to add another perspective. A guest expert. If we were talking about language in worship, it might be a poet. If we were talking about healing in worship, it might be a doctor or a hospital chaplain. Someone whose work inspires us. And, what do you think we want to call our worship blog?

Wait for it…

“Father, Son and Holy Spirit”

Ba-dum-bum.

What do you think? Too much? Too pretentious? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. In fact, I suspect the doctrine of the Trinity might seem less mysterious and more useful if we imagined Father, Son and Holy Spirit;

Or: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer;

Or: God Around Us, God Toward Us, God Through Us

as a family. Parent and Child and Guest, all sitting around the dinner table, inviting others to join them for good food and a feisty conversation about things that matter.

That’s how I think about our friend Melissa, who will be heading back to Angola for the second summer in a row with RISE International to do teacher training and leadership development work in communities still putting themselves back together in a country that was devastated by a civil war that lasted the entire last quarter of the twentieth century. Her Christian faith propels her to go there, not in some sort of colonial missionary way, but because she has experienced around those dinner tables the kind of community that the Holy Trinity represents: life together around the things that matter.

That’s what I love about our new artist-in-residence, BackStage Theatre Company. Listen to their mission:

BackStage Theatre Company is a not-for-profit ensemble of theatre artists dedicated to the exploration of family. Through the creation of bold and eclectic productions, we question and examine what family means socially, spiritually, economically, politically, and culturally. Our BackStage family is committed to the growth of all families.

Wow! What a mission statement! I mean, that’s the sort of mission statement I’d like to hear more churches adopting. Questioning and examining what it means to be family, along all of the dimensions that characterize human life and community.

That, of course, is one of the ways that we describe baptism – as entrance into a new family, one with a new head-of-household, who is God. This is why we call each other sisters and brothers, because we believe that in our baptism we were initiated into a new way of seeing the world where everyone is connected by common bonds of love that require us to be involved in the healing and liberation of all who suffer – whether that suffering be social, spiritual, economic, political or cultural.

And I love that BackStage Theatre company does their work through story-telling. Again, this feels like church at its best to me. After all, we follow a teacher and prophet who used, as his primary teaching tool, stories and parables. And when we gather together as a community we read stories and tell stories as a way of remembering who we are, so that we can live out those stories, join those stories, to every moment of our lives.

Listen to the values that BackStage has named as its own:

• Connectivity: to consider the complex dynamics of human connectivity through the exploration of the idea of family.
• Closeness: to embrace and explore the medium of intimate theatre as a unique and essential mode of articulating our stories, gently erasing the lines between artists and audience.
• Courage: to challenge our audiences and our artists with complex thematic ideas, and to give artists and audiences a safe haven to consider those ideas.
• Delight: to captivate our audiences and artists alike; to respectfully engage the hearts and minds of those who produce and those who attend; to entertain with broad minds and open hearts; to produce with ambitious joy.

Again, wow! This is the kind of church I want to belong to. Actually, this is the kind of church I do belong to, and that you belong to, and that has invited BackStage Theatre to come and be in residence with us. I am so excited by the idea that we might explore some of these things together – what it means to be family, in all of the dimensions of human life. We have so many stories to tell.

Which is one of the main reasons why we have also invited Thaddaeus Elliott to be with us this morning. Thaddaeus is an undergraduate student from Northwestern University in Social Policy, and he is with us for twelve weeks this summer as our Community Development Intern. You’ll hear more about Thaddaeus’ internship later this morning, but the two projects he’s here to focus on this summer are our ecumenical collaboration with other churches in the neighborhood to address the childhood obesity epidemic that is becoming a national crisis, and to assist our new Communications Committee with transforming how we think about communicating our story to each other and to the world.

As an example, consider this: as I sat yesterday afternoon with members of the social justice committee here are some of the things they discussed:

• How to complete the one-on-one training for the five people in this congregation who will be meeting with all of the rest of you to invite you to share your stories of passion and commitment, to find out what your faith compels you to care about.
• Who would go to an upcoming Ward Night to meet with Alderman Colon and ask for his support of the “High H.O.P.E.S. Campaign” to reduce suspension and expulsion rates, to keep kids in school and out of prison.
• How to wrap up our clean water campaign, which began at the beginning of Lent as a project to raise $500 for Lutheran World Relief, which is what it costs to install a clean water filtration system that will improve the health of communities with insufficient access to clean water.
• And how to bring a speaker to St. Luke’s, possibly one of the former “Lost Boys” of Sudan, to help us understand the humanitarian crisis being created by massive population migrations that are happening right now in response to southern Sudan’s vote earlier this year to secede from the nation, which takes effect in less than three weeks.

That’s a lot of story to tell, St. Luke’s. And it’s not a story we need to be telling just to each other, like a “save the date” notice. It’s a story we need to be telling our whole neighborhood, and our whole city. A story about faith in action. And it’s not a story we need to tell as bait on a hook to get people in to the real saving work of our congregation. It is the real saving work of our congregation, and every congregation, and every community of faith gathered around the story that God is at work in the world, healing and setting free all who are aching and in prisons of every kind.

The worst way to talk about the Trinity is to try and figure out how three can be one, and one can be three, and how they all relate to each other. That’s like looking at the Tree of Life and photographs back in our narthex and thinking you now know who we are. No, the way you find out about a family is through its stories. And to hear the stories you have sit down over supper and listen. And to share that meal, you have to be invited. And that’s the Holy Trinity: an invitation to join the community, to learn the stories, to share the good news.

Happy Father, Son and Holy Spirit Day to you all.

Amen.

Sermon: Sunday, June 12, 2011: Day of Pentecost

Texts:   Numbers 11:24-30  •   Psalm 104:24-34, 35b  •   Acts 2:1-21  •   John 20:19-23

One of the best things about the festival of Pentecost, from my point of view, is that so far it seems to have remained completely the church’s. You don’t run across candy flames being marketed to children, you don’t hear of 3-day red sales at the department stores, and you don’t see pharmaceutical companies advertising Pentecostal pills guaranteed to produce visions and dreams . Pentecost, despite being known as the “birthday of the Church” doesn’t inspire many parties or, for that matter, birthday gifts.

Instead, Pentecost has remained for the church a celebration of the great gift that God has given us for the sake of the world’s healing and liberation – the gift of the Holy Spirit – which is one person of the Trinity, a mystery we spend some more time exploring next Sunday. It’s not quite accurate though, to say that God has given “us” the Holy Spirit, as though the Holy Spirit actually was a birthday gift given to us, the church, to hold on to and to keep.

Instead, we get stories like the one from Numbers, in which the Holy Spirit falls on the appointed seventy elders at the tent of meeting, but also on Eldad and Medad, who were not among the appointed people in the appointed place, because the Holy Spirit is like that – always anointing the unexpected people in unexpected places. Which is what Peter is getting at in his first sermon, delivered that first Pentecost, when he says,

In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women,

in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18)

Perhaps this is why consumer society has had such a hard time figuring out how to package this holiday. It can’t figure out how to sell a spirit of power and presence that God has already promised to give to everyone for free, so it stays quiet and hopes we’ll stay focused on Christmas and Easter, whose gifts are easier to wrap paper around. And for the most part we do.

True to the spirit of Pentecost, I’d been preparing one sermon all week long about the nature of Pentecost in an interfaith context and a pluralistic age, and then the Holy Spirit moved where it will, refusing to be owned or controlled by me or my writing process.

It moved for me on Friday morning, when I gathered with the family of James Deacon to celebrate his graduation from Northside Learning Center. Graduations are wonderful celebrations for the people graduating and their families, but the ceremonies themselves, I have to say, are typically not too memorable. Graduates sit restlessly in cap and gown, wondering if anyone will cheer for them as they cross the stage. The commencement speaker tries to say something noteworthy to a group of people who are through taking notes. Attention turns to the post-party before the thing itself is finished.

Not so at Northside Learning Center’s graduation. Located just to the north of Northeastern University and North Park University, Northside Learning Center is a Chicago Public School that serves students with cognitive disabilities, ages fourteen to twenty-two. Students there carry many labels. Some, like James, have cerebral palsy. Some have Down’s syndrome. Some move with the assistance of wheel chairs. Some have great difficulty speaking. For all of these reasons, this graduation could never be like every other graduation I’ve ever been to.

James Deacon processes into the auditorium as the commencement festivities begin.

As the ceremony began, students filed into the room one at a time in red and white cap and gown, the school colors, walking slowly or being carried forward by their chairs, with pride beaming from their faces. Each young person walked through the assembly of gathered family and friends, many of whom had come to know each other well over the years of raising their children together and who shared each other’s joy in reaching this day.

When all forty-two students were in place the school’s principal, Darlene McClendon, gave the graduates a charge. Keeping her students’ abilities in mind, she spoke slowly and said something to the effect of,

“This chapter of your life is ending, and a new one is beginning. Keep moving forward. Don’t turn on the television and let that become your life. Find a job and work hard at it. Do something good every day. Show the people in your life that you love them.”

Surely the shortest charge to a graduating class I’ve ever heard. Yet, in its simplicity, it communicated the essence of every commencement address I’ve ever heard – and obviously in a way that even I can remember two days later, which I can’t say of most of the commencement addresses for which I’ve been present.

As I sat there and listened to this principal give these students their charge, garbed in robes of red and white, with diamond shaped caps resting on their heads, the words that came suddenly to my mind were,

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

And as I was remembering these words, suddenly those red robes looked to me like fire and the white ones like baptism, and I saw the faces of so many people – children and adults – I have known with cognitive disabilities or developmental delays, beginning with my sister and young people in my schools; people I have worked with over the years; members of this congregation, and members of your families. As cameras snapped photos all around me I thought:

This is one image of Pentecost – that the Holy Spirit rests on all people, those inside the camp and those outside of it, poured out on all flesh, preaching its message in whatever ways it has to so that we can understand what it is trying to say.

Which is not so different from what Principal McClendon said. A chapter of your life is done. Jesus has already said and done what Jesus came to say and do. Or, as the messengers in their white robes reminded us last week, “why do you stand around looking up to the heavens?” Keep moving forward. Don’t let the television, or the internet, or the stories about other people’s lives you gather on the phone, or through gossip, distract you from the life that is happening to you right now, that God has given you as a gift. Use this one wild and precious life you’ve been given, and use it well. Wear out, don’t rust out. And whatever you do, do it with love.

I’d always thought of Pentecost as a birthday, not a commencement, though the two are not so dissimilar. So, in the grand tradition of many a commencement address that ends with words by a writer more talented than the one asked to give the speech, I will end today with these words by Mary Oliver from her poem, “What I Have Learned.”

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of – indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Amen.

Homily: Monday, June 6, 2011: Evening Prayer

This homily was preached at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square for the opening worship service for the Annual General Meeting of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in Chicago, Illinois March 6 – March 10, 2011.

Texts: Leviticus 9:1-11, 22-24   +   1 Peter 4:1-6

Friends, welcome once again to St. Luke’s, and for some of you, to Chicago. It is a real honor to host you this evening as you begin your meeting.

Actually, I didn’t know it was an honor to be hosting you when your colleague David Foster invited St. Luke’s to host this service. I just knew that I would happily do anything David asked me to do, and that if he was involved in your work, then I would be proud to be connected to you as well. And as I began to do a little bit of research on your organization, I was proven right.

Founded in the early 1970s as a faith-based response to apartheid in South Africa, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility has made a powerful dual witness to the faith traditions out of which it speaks and to the wider world in which we all live, and move and have our being. Your work provides the evidence of what Jim Wallis means when he says that “budgets are moral documents.” Where we spend our time and where we spend our money speak, particularly in an affluent nation such as ours, most powerfully to what we truly value and to what we are truly committed.

So, then it was my job to select texts for this evening’s service of evening prayer; and, being a good mainline Protestant, I went to the lectionary – in this case the daily lectionary – and saw that the texts appointed for this day come from Leviticus and First Peter, not books of the Bible that I often gravitate to in my preaching.

But, this is the wisdom of a lectionary – that it invites us to find wisdom outside our favorite sources and surprises us with evidence of God’s providence and justice where we might not always expect it.

So, this evening we hear from First Peter, the author of which was writing to the communities of Christians forming and gathering throughout Asia Minor in the first century after the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Many of the people in these communities had been Gentiles, so the practices of the followers of Jesus, rooted in the ethical vision of the prophets of Israel, were foreign and uncomfortable.

To these young, pluralistic assemblies of believers the author of this letter offers a word of encouragement as they practice a new set of values that run counter to the cultures in which they live. He says, “you have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry. They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme.”

This seems unexpectedly relevant to the work you are gathered to do here in Chicago this week. In the context of a global market still reeling from the financial crises of the last five years; still struggling to come to grips with its addiction to oil; still convinced that the middle-class housing crisis is morally equivalent to the AIDS crisis in Africa or the clean water crisis faced by over a billion people around the globe; you are gathering to make a public witness to what matters, literally putting the church’s money where its mouth is.

Thank you so much for the work you are doing.

Whether you represent denominational pensions or socially-responsible investment funds, you – like Aaron and Moses – are teaching the church what an acceptable offering looks like.

I was, not surprisingly, a little unsure of what to make of the passage from the ninth chapter of Leviticus, as preoccupied as it is with goats and calves and lambs and oxen. As I studied the commentaries though I realized that it’s really only my modern ears that were getting distracted by all the animals and sacrifices. Listening to the text from its own point of view, I discovered that it was not so much about what is being offered, and more about who was making the offering.

The nation of Israel was used to being led by Moses, but here it is Aaron who is making the offering. So the text points out again and again that Aaron is acting with Moses’ blessing and by his authority. Moses summons Aaron and tells him what to offer. Moses gives Aaron the words to speak to the community. Moses instructs Aaron in how to make the offering, and once he has done all that Moses has taught him, the evidence of God’s favor comes as the offerings are consumed by holy fire, and the people cry out and fall on their faces, recognizing the presence of the Holy.

You are people shaped by faith. You have been led into holy wisdom in the temples and churches and mosques and ashrams to which you belong. You come here, to Chicago, to do holy work, God’s work; and you come here tonight, to worship, and to dedicate this time that lies ahead of you to the glory of God, to the one from whom all gifts flow, and to whom we offer back all that we are, and all that we have, as an expression of gratitude and thanksgiving.

Brothers and sisters, as you gather tonight to give thanks for the light of the day that has passed and to pray for the light that will illumine your conversations in the days ahead, never forget that you too have been called and commissioned. The days and the dollars that you offer to the divine are a good gift. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sermon: Sunday, June 5, 2011: Ascension of Our Lord (transferred)

Texts:  Acts 1:1-11  •  Psalm 47  •  Ephesians 1:15-23  •  Luke 24:44-53

It’s a summer of superheroes. Kerry and I have already seen Thor and X-Men: First Class, and the previews running before each have whetted our appetite for more. Yet upcoming are Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger. The stuff of legends for a boy raised on comic books and Saturday morning cartoons.

Comic book heroes always have amazing origin stories. Thor came from Valhalla to Earth to learn humility. The X-Men’s powers set them apart at birth, making them strangers among their own people. Green Lantern was chosen by an alien community of peace-keepers and given the power to combine courage with imagination to recreate reality. Captain America was the runt of the litter who kept looking for a way to serve his neighbors, and was granted strength beyond that of other men.

I met with Danny and Amber Kelter earlier this week as part of the support and preparation we give to parents preparing to baptize a child, and I was reviewing the promises that parents make when they bring their children to the font. You’ve just heard them again this morning, so you remember what we ask:

As you bring your child to receive the gift of baptism, you are entrusted with responsibilities:

to live with her among God’s holy people,

bring her to the word of God and the holy supper,

teach her the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed & the Ten Commandments,

place in her hands the holy scriptures,

and nurture her in faith and prayer,

so that she may learn to trust God,

proclaim Christ through word and deed,

care for others and the world God made,

and work for justice and peace.

After I finished reviewing these responsibilities with Campbell’s parents, I asked them what was unfamiliar or surprising about these commitments. Danny said, “I like the part about caring for others and working for justice and peace. It sounds like she’s becoming a superhero.”

And that’s about right. Baptism is for the Christian what falling from the sky in a rocket ship was for Superman. It is our origin story. It’s where it all begins.

Too often, when we think about baptism, we get hung up on what baptism does for the one being baptized. We tend to think about baptism as somehow connected to being saved – even if we’re not sure what we’re being saved from, or how exactly it is that having some water splashed on your head saves you from anything.

When I was a hospital chaplain at Children’s Memorial, anxious parents would want to be sure their children were baptized, “just in case.” In those moments of anxiety, chaplains and pastors do their best to reassure worried parents that their child is already, and always has been, seen and known and loved by God, and often we do the baptisms as an act of pastoral care to the parents more than the children. But, since we’re not in a hospital this morning, and we’re not plagued by those sorts of doubts and insecurities, I just want to do a little bit of teaching about baptism here.

As we talked about Campbell’s baptism, her mother, Amber, said, “I just don’t believe that something happens in baptism that makes Campbell suddenly recognizable to God. Like, before baptism God did not know her, but after baptism God will.”

She’s absolutely right. As the book of Jeremiah says so eloquently in its opening verses, “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5). Baptism is not the beginning of our relationship with God, but it is absolutely a part of how God saves us – just not individually, not personally, not apart from the rest of the world that God also made and God also loves. Like God says to Jeremiah, “I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Often at baptisms the one being baptized, whether a child or an adult, will be given a white robe or garment to wear during the baptism as a symbol of the new identity that now rests on our shoulders. Think of it as the superhero’s cape, or the icon imprinted on their chest. The white robe is a sign of the purity that comes with forgiveness, but when we imagine that everyone in this room who has been baptized is also garbed in white, then we can see that we are like the Green Lantern Corps, but outfitted in a different hue. We are a forgiven people, sent to proclaim repentance and forgiveness.

This is what the lessons for Ascension Sunday are all pointing us toward. Jesus, the one we all assumed was the superhero, the Savior, the messiah, the first mover and ultimate shaker, has been killed. He confronted the powers and principalities of this world, and he paid for his courage with his life. But death could not hold the power of God down, and so it rose from the grave and immediately afterwards people dressed in white started showing up.

At the end of Matthew’s gospel, “as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel (a Greek word, which also translates as “messenger”) of the LORD, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.” And he said, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised” (Mt. 28:1-6)

And at the end of Mark’s gospel, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, arrive to anoint Jesus’ body, but instead of finding Jesus they find “a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised, he is not here” (Mark 16:5-6).

And in Luke’s gospel they come to the grave, but find no body there, and suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. I think this may be a case of competitiveness creeping into the gospels, like churches comparing the number of people worshipping with them on Sunday morning (“we had two messengers at the grave…”). And they said to the followers of Jesus, “why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Lk. 24:2-5)

Then Luke continues, later in that same chapter with the verses we heard read this morning, “the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed” – note, not that Jesus is going to do the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness, which he did all throughout his life, but now someone else has been commissioned to do that heroic work – “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

And finally, Luke continues in his account of the Acts of the Apostles, describing how the community of God gathered around Jesus would be baptized with water and the spirit and would receive God’s power to do the work of witnessing to God’s love and God’s justice. But as Jesus makes these final promises, he ascends one more time, and they are left looking up at the sky, waiting for something to happen. That’s when two more people in white robes show up and say what by now should be obvious, “people, why are you looking toward the heavens?”

Baptized people of God, you are wearing the white robes. You are the messengers. No need to look towards heaven. Look at each other. Look at Danny and Amber and Campbell. You have been called and you have been commissioned. The saving power of baptism is like this: the God who has known you since before you were born has entrusted you, and me, and all of us together, to be the ones we’ve been waiting for. Stop looking toward the skies for your superhero to fall from the heavens. The world is filled with violence and degradation, and we have the power to heal and to forgive.

The superhero stories say “with great power comes great responsibility,” and “use your powers wisely,” and “use the force,” and “truth, justice, and the American way.” But we say, “go in peace, serve the Lord” or “remember the poor” or “share the good news” or, most comforting of all “Christ is with you.”

People of God, the risen Christ has risen into you. Remember your baptism, the origins of your calling and your commissioning, and be not afraid – Christ is with you.

Amen.

Message: The Reign of God is Like…

These comments were prepared as introductory remarks for discussion of a memorial calling on the ELCA to commit itself to address bullying, harassment and violence at the 2011 Metro Chicago Synod Assembly, titled “The Reign of God is Like…”

A copy of the original version of the Resolution can be found here.

Reverend Chair,

My name is Erik Christensen. I am the pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square, and this is my first time addressing this assembly.

Trusting that we, as a church, stand against every form of bullying, harassment and violence; and knowing that this assembly will hear from educators and others who have witnessed and worked with those who bully and those who are bullied, let me simply offer this as a starting point:

The reign of God is like this: a child

some mother’s precious first-born who made her soul sing

some father’s beloved with whom he was well-pleased

a child who was born during a census

whose family fled from political torture

and were immigrants in a foreign land

who spoke a language other than the dominant culture’s

who had an accent

who was a religious minority

who grew up working with his hands and didn’t have much,

who hung around with a lot of men

and a lot of women

and behaved in ways people said were “gender-inappropriate”

who didn’t look like the officers of the law, the peace-keepers of the Empire

who was friends with all the wrong, unpopular people.

This child was called wonderful.

Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting head-of-household. Prince of Peace.

This child was mocked, was beaten up, was publicly humiliated and, ultimately, was bullied to death.

This child God raised up from the dead as a sign that God stands with,

and God dwells within,

every bullied person.

And, when we were baptized, we were brought into solidarity with every bullied body, each one a child of God, beloved, a pleasure in the heart of the Maker.

Sisters and brothers, as we discern how best to stand with, to serve and protect, all who are targets of bullying, harassment and violence, remember your baptism.

I urge the adoption of this resolution.