I always get a little sad about saying goodbye to summer.  I so appreciate the calmer pace, the longer days, the beauty of creation all around.  For me, summer is best spent on, in, or near “the lake,” and I get renewed with every trip there.  Already though, the northland is experiencing the earliest hints of fall.  Our Beautiful and Blessed study is winding down too.  All summer we explored the beautiful nature of our God, and the invitation to draw near was ever before us.  My prayer throughout was that you experienced God in some new or important way. 

“Where do we go from here?” someone asked recently.   It was a bigger question than it may appear…it was said with that worried look you get as you watch the news or read the paper.  It was an anxious response to unwelcome and uncomfortable events – a guarded way of asking if things were spinning out of control – a good grounding question, one I’ve been praying often lately.

Sometimes –  when you ask the right question, in just the right way, it starts providing a good answer: Where do we go from here?  We get going.  What better way to get going than with our Rally Weekend Car Show.  We’ve got a band new parking lot and a brand new entrance….let’s fill it up with classic cars, and Tov garden produce, crafts, music,  food and fun.  We want to let the neighborhood know our doors are wide open, and we’ve got places to go, and we would love to invite them along for the ride.

This fall we will be taking a road trip.  It starts with the All Church Retreat on Sept 6-8.  If anyone knows about traveling, it’s our recent immigrants!  They will start our fall by talking about their spiritual and physical journeys from Ghana and Nigeria.  See the website for more information.  Then, we will spend our Sundays with the “travel narratives of Jesus” as found in the Gospel of Luke.

Luke 9-19 are some of the most unique chapters in the gospels.  They document the final time Jesus traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem; they conclude with the final week of Jesus’ life.  The narrative begins like this:  As the time approached for him to be taken to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem (Luke 9: 51).  We are going on that road trip with Jesus, even though it requires going through hostile territory.  The end game will be his arrest and crucifixion.  Along the way Jesus speaks constantly  in Parables, many of which are recorded nowhere else. Why tell so many stories when the time is so short and the stakes are so high?  Each week we will use this context to look at the parables and locate our own faith journey along the road that Jesus walks. The stories Jesus tells are remarkably ordinary, but somehow they get under our skin and invite participation in kingdom life. As Eugene Peterson writes, this road trip is preparing them (and us) to “live in a world that neither knows nor wants to know Jesus.”  

So that’s where we go from here.  I’m packed and ready.  How about you?

Our year of Fresh Starts continues. We made it through a harsh and intense winter, and what once seemed impossible, that the snow would melt and the spring birds would come and sing again, it’s happened! Lent has had its way with us, a somber and serious time, and Easter is just around the corner. I think we’ll be ready! The building sure will be. It’s been a daily excitement to see the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new carpet project. For weeks the building has been full of workers, their radios blaring out classic rock and now baseball games! Alive, alive, this place has felt alive.

There’s so many people to thank for this latest face-lift, starting with the people who made the first decisions about style and colors and companies, then people who contributed generously and the people who asked them to do so, then people who did the heavy lifting, organized moves and shuffled furniture and boxes. It has been a joyful project, watching our dear old house get updated and renewed. It’s a statement of faith really, a belief that this house of the Lord has standing in the community and has a reason to be dressed and ready. It’s a physical statement of Vitality, a commitment to be who God calls us to be and serve who God calls us to serve and provide for who God asks us to provide.

But can I share one amusing side note? I found a little scrap paper belonging to my husband Tim. It had the lot numbers and names of the carpet that had been selected months ago. Both carpets are from the “Cool Calm” collection. Ever been here on a Bridgebuilders Wednesday night? We‘ve got plenty of cool, but calm would be an amazing addition! The downstairs carpet has a name: Perception. The upstairs carpet is named, Awareness. That’s too good to ignore. As some of my Pastor friends say, “that’ll preach!”

Perception and Awareness: I can turn that into a prayer, no problem.

Lord, every time our kids walk from classroom to classroom, let them perceive the presence of God through the love of their devoted teachers, mentors and friends. Let them know the power of God, hear the word of the Lord and receive the love of Jesus for each one of them.

Lord, every time we come into this building and enter your sanctuary may it be with full awareness that you are inviting us into worship and shared life with you. May we be fully aware of your transforming grace in our own lives and may we be relentless in sharing that love with others who are yet unaware of your love for them. Amen

You’ve heard me say it many times before: God is always speaking, always speaking, always speaking. Seems God can even speak through our new carpet.

I stumbled upon an article I wrote for the  Covenant Companion, in February 2010.  It felt oh so current as I reread it this week.  It was spot-on for Lent: heavy with themes of death and resurrection, and as is always true, the scriptures spoke deeply then and speak deeply today.  It’s Paul saying: We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.  So here I go again.

I have officiated or participated in 5 funerals in the past 10 weeks.  You do the math.

One was a father of the church in his 90’s, another was a mother of the church who almost reached her  90’s, both of them well known and much beloved.   One was a woman I only recently meet, but longed to know better, she too, in her 90’s, but had only been attending a few years.  One was a man who I had never met, but he had connections to the church from his childhood.   He lived with cognitive disabilities all his life. His was a very solitary existence as dementia further eroded his limited capacities.  The latest funeral was for a friend, a mother of a young child, he 12, she just 40.  We were the birthplace of her faith, this was her spiritual home.  Her husband wanted her to be honored here.  She had lived with the debilitating physical assaults of MD:  the symptoms first becoming evident as a teenager in our youth group.  But more importantly, she possessed  deep, enduring  spiritual faith and  the tenacity to allow her countless talents and personal skills to flourish.  Her influence was deep and wide.  Her service taxed every seat in the house, demanded that we open all the sanctuary doors so the overflow crowd in the narthex could participate. 

Four of these five services involved the whole church family.  The kitchen crew,  who should really be known as the Hospitality Ministry, do the hard work.  They cook and clean and prepare and serve, and then clean again.  As they do this, I know they pray that the peace and comfort of Christ will be poured out in coffee cups and eaten in the bars they cut and serve.  Inevitably, someone I don’t know seeks me out in the church basement, and over the muted conversations around various tables they thank me for what we all have done. In their own words they say something like how they sense a certain feel, or  atmosphere that pervades the church, both in the Service that happens upstairs, and the service that happens downstairs.  I know what they are feeling, I know what they are trying to describe.  They are noticing that they are surrounded by the love of Christ which is so powerfully  present in the face of grief. They are being ministered to, whether they know it or not, far beyond what a message or a simple refreshment can do.  They are being ministered to by the Holy Spirit.  Some can name that, some can’t. 

 As I said in my article many years ago: I know that holding funerals is NOT a church-growth strategy: but it surely is a faith-growth strategy.  The Apostle Paul wrote this: We always carry around in our body the  death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.  2 Cor.  4:10  

That’s the thing.  What our guests are trying to say I believe,  is that even in the face of painful and sometimes tragic loss, they feel, they experience,  the reality of the living Jesus revealed  in our midst.  Because we do.  We experience the life of Jesus revealed in our body. Upstairs, we remember the loved ones we have lost as we sing again their favorite hymn or hear their favorite scripture.  We remember them downstairs as we anticipate a cup that needs refilling, or as we make new connections in the sharing of simple food.  In this season we can’t help and wonder about our own deaths as we receive cross-shaped ashes on our foreheads.  We proclaim the victory of the cross, and the certain hope of the resurrection in word from the pulpit and in deed as we ready the food, or shovel the driveways, or set up and take down tables and chairs. After one of the services, which happened to coincide with one of our many snowstorms in February I watched as Tom and Mark went outside once more to shovel the walks.  They had already shoveled several times  because  the snow was piling up so fast.  We had to delay the start of the service because a family member just couldn’t make it through the storm.  “Thanks, Tom”, I said, and he simply replied,  “Well, you’ve got to do it for Arnie.”  How true.  We do it for love of who they were.  We do it with confidence in the mystery of who they have now become.  We do it because God breathes life back into our lungs, and we don’t have the luxury of taking that for granted.  We always carry the reality of death around, and this somehow feeds our desire for Christ’s life to be  present and active.  As we move through the season of Lent this year, dear family, may it stir in us the powerful longing for life!  Full, abundant, fruitful life.