Friday evening at the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights: clergy dinner with professor and author Drew Straight.
When Mennonite author and scholar Drew Strait comes to town, it makes sense to have breakfast with Pacific Northwest Mennonite Executive Conference Minister Eric Massanari, who before yesterday I had only spoken with online. Eric has been joining our southern Idaho ecumenical judicatory leader zoom calls for about six months Grateful for the conversation!
How to Challenge Christian Nationalism with Drew Strait in Boise. Saturday there was a full sanctuary at Boise First UCC.
First Call Theological Education at Seabeck with all of Region 1. Thanks to our amazing presenter, former Metro DC Synod Bishop Leila Ortiz. (FCTE is an ELCA requirement for pastors and deacons in their first three years of ministry)
I want to begin with today’s beautiful passage from Ephesians, particularly the verses often titled as the author’s prayer. “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” The sentence always makes me think of the saints in my own life and to give thanks for their lives and what they have given me.
I have remembered with deep gratitude week people like Jane Olsen, who was my fifth-grade teacher as well as a beloved member of the congregation I grew up in. Mrs. Olsen was that upper elementary teacher who was born to work with children and made so many of us life-long learners. But because she sat in the pews with us at church, because she knelt at the same Communion rail, we knew that her life was shaped by being a follower of Jesus.
I am convinced Mrs. Olsen taught me that an inquisitive mind and a love of learning were part of what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus. She never said this in words that I remember. But her very life displayed that a love for learning, far from being antithetical to the gospel, was totally consistent with the gospel and following Jesus. So, I give thanks for those gifts from this saint.
I also thought about Don and Dorothy Delicate, a couple in my congregation that my parents and everyone else’s parents deeply respected and admired. If my parents looked up to them, then they were people I was also meant to give respect to and learn from. They were loving, salt of the earth people, who epitomized the word generosity. They were generous with their time and skills and love and resources.
When I was in high school, they welcomed a college student from Uganda into their home. Simon became part of their family and part of the church family. Dorothy traveled with him back to Uganda twice. Don and Dorothy Delicate modeled the boundary crossing that Jesus himself modeled and taught. And they showed the whole community what it means to truly accompany someone. Simon was in their lives not just for a few weeks, not just for a good phot, but for the rest of their lives, messy as I am sure it sometimes was, and they learned as much from Simon as he learned from them. Don and Dorothy modeled love and real relationships throughout the entire community.
Today we celebrate Pastor James’ 25th anniversary of ordination. Anniversaries are a time to give thanks for the person or people, but also for the every day saints who have nurtured those we are celebrating. I have a hunch you have been a bit introspective this week—giving thanks for so many people who were part of your call to public ministry and the mentors along the way (pastors, deacons, and your parishioners) who have mentored you.
For all of you gathered here today, who are the saints in your lives and what inheritance have you received from them? Take a moment and bring to mind one or two saints from your own lives. Pause.
To remember the people who were saints in our lives is a gift. This is part of why funerals are one of the things I treasure doing as a pastor. Yes, we should of course honor and thank people while they are alive and not wait for their deaths. It’s a both/and. Thank people in life but also pause and give thanks to God after their death.
A Christian funeral is a holy pause. It makes us slow down and recognize the life that was lived and God’s working through that person’s life. We might even be encouraged to face our own mortality—perhaps uncomfortable but a good exercise.
To give thanks to God for the life that was lived, even if imperfect, to reflect on the gifts that life bestowed, to entrust the person to God’s keeping, to remember that this person remains part of the communion of saints, that is such a helpful practice for the living. We who are left behind need to pause and remember. We also need the ritual to help us begin moving through our grief. We need the holy pause to ponder, in the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda, “who lives, who dies, who tells our stories.”
A saint is one who we look to for how to live, how to bring in God’s reign. A saint is also one who is blessed by God. Jesus’ teaching in our gospel lesson underscores the peculiar, even radical understanding of blessing that animates the Christian tradition. According to Jesus, blessing is not about material abundance. Blessing is to enjoy the regard and favor of God. And the God of Israel to whom Jesus bears witness reserves special regard for the poor, the maligned, the downtrodden. This God shows particular favor to those in need.
While this may at first seem threatening to those of us who enjoy so much of the world’s bounty, it also clarifies our calling to identify and help those in need. And it promises that God stands also with us in our moments of loss, distress, and poverty. The heart of the God we hear described in these verses is full of mercy and compassion, abounding in steadfast love.
In today’s gospel, Jesus identifies the blessed in stunning particularity. Jesus’ words stand at the beginning of his “Sermon on the Plain.” This is Jesus’ second major policy statement of his reign. His direct speech compels the listener to ask, “Who me?” Jesus focuses first on his disciples within a great crowd. With the crowds, we overhear his words, wondering if he means it only for the twelve disciples.
Then we find ourselves specifically included in verse 27 among “you that listen.” Jesus is not delivering an abstract definition of discipleship or sainthood. He is not listing the qualifications to “get into heaven.” He is calling all who hear to become faithful and effective agents of God’s reign here and now.
The problem is not that Jesus’ words are hard to understand. The problem is that their clear meaning is so challenging. The “rules of engagement” of Jesus’ reign stand in sharp contrast to the presumed rights of the prosperous to wealth and good times, “because I earned it!” In their practice of non-violence, Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. enacted Jesus’ words as a social critique and strategy for change. Gandhi admired Jesus, but when asked his opinion of Christianity, he reportedly said, “Oh, it would be wonderful!” In hearing Jesus’ words, rich and poor alike glimpse a realm at odds with the way things are.
What do we make of the “woe” statements? One scholar [Skinner] says a better translation might be, “Yikes! … Jesus urges his hearers to reassess their lives in light of God’s unfolding reign. It seems to me that Jesus’ woe statements are revealing something—that the things we assume are advantages are actually illusory. What if money, comfort, self-won security, respectability, and the like are things that kill our souls—not just in some far-off afterlife but right here, right now? What a tragedy to mistake them for benefits given by God, then. As the passage continues, we get a better sense of how to keep our souls alive and not be tricked by counterfeit blessings.”
All Saints Day is a witness to God’s way of blessing the world. It is not simply reinforcing the entitlement of the privileged to the way things are. It reveals God’s justice fulfilled in mercy—right here and now. The Saints we recognize as the church and those we remembered today in our mind’s eye likely blessed the world with their very lives. We say, “thanks be to God.”
I love our hymn of the day by Ray Makeever. The first verse came to him in a dream after his own dearly departed wife died. He celebrates the saints and provides the crucial reminder that resurrection is real and certain, a promise affirmed by the bodily resurrection of Christ, “We walk in light of countless faces bright as beams of rising sun, certain as the morning chases night in endless ages run. Turning eyes to their shining mem’ry, to their faithful past, saints be now the truth divining: death be now but never last.”
In the third voice he offers thanks and praise, “When joy returns with laughter singing thanks to God for life’s sweet song, let us follow after bringing thanks to God for those now gone.” We cannot replace the saints who have gone before us. But we can remember those lives who blessed others, some who blessed our own lives. Thanks be to God.
After a week in Minneapolis Sept. 30-Oct 7 (ELCA Church Council, Installation of Presiding Bishop Curry, and Conference of Bishops) I had a day at home to wash some clothes and repack.
I set out to Seattle on a Thursday for my final Pacific Lutheran University board meeting Thursday and Friday. Afterwards, I reflected, “Honored to have served on the PLU Board of Regents for two years. It was a joy to serve on the task group (led by Scott Barnum) that led to the sunsetting of the corporation and the start of the Board of Regents Committee on Congregational Relations. I also served on the Admissions and Student Relations Committee, chaired by Jaynee Groseth and then Sheila Radford-Hill. Today, I got to have lunch with former Luther Heights camper and counselor Logan Denen, finishing his MSW and starring in the Instagram show Boyish Charm (teaching viewers how to make good meals with food pantry ingredients). Grateful to board president Pastor Mark Griffith for his leadership. My heart is full of gratitude. Now I hand off this board role and lean into ELCA Church Council Region 1 liason bishop.” I was surprised at how sad I was to leave this group of people. I am proud of PLU and hopeful for its future.
With Logan.
Bp Shelley Bryan Wee, also serving on the board and the colleague who’d kindly picked me up from the airport, and I continued our journey south to Olympia, WA for the installation of Southwestern WA Bishop Keith Marshall. We started Friday evening with a dinner with Keith, his family, and much of the synod staff. The installation was held at Gloria Dei Lutheran in Olympia with ELCA Presiding Bishop Yehiel Curry preaching and presiding, Bp Curry’s first installation of another bishop. The bishops all went to dinner on the water that evening. Then Bishop Tim Oslovich and his wife Sinje took me back to SeaTac Airport. They headed to Anchorage for Tim’s first installation of a pastor while serving as Alaska bishop and I flew to the Tri-Cities.
Sunday morning I drove over and presided at Immanuel Lutheran in Grandview, WA, served by Pastor Jake Schumacher. They have moved into a partnership with the PCUSA church in Sunnyside (Pastor Jake serves both churches) and this year they are an internship site for Luther Seminary student Lori Tharp. I was warmly welcomed and grateful to hear the gospel proclaimed.
Bishop’s Fall Convocation with Rev. Dr. Anthony Bateza, St. Olaf College, was Monday through Wednesday. We started with a beautiful worship service with Dr. Bateza preaching at First Lutheran, Pasco and then moved to a hotel on the Columbia River over in Richland. This is one of my favorite weeks of the year–just learning and spending time with the pastors and deacons in our synod and this year was no exception.
Opening Worship at First Lutheran, Pasco
The synod’s cluster deans stayed an extra night and we met at Lord of Life, Kennewick, with the synod’s Eco-faith Action Network meeting down the hall. After hearing updates from the various clusters, we spend a lot of time laying the groundwork for our 2026 in-person Synod Assembly at First Lutheran in Kennewick.
Deans and Staff
DEM Pastor Liv Larson Andrews drove us to Leavenworth for dinner and then we went on to the Grunewald Guild. Friday was a day to catch up on email, walk, and rest and do some laundry and then participants and leaders for our Preach, Pray, Preside, and Polity retreat started arriving. Liv put together a great group of teachers and the lay people showed up ready to learn. The Grunewald Guild was a great setting with amazing food!
Pastor Paul Hoffman leads a session on preaching
I preached and presided on Sunday with Grace Lutheran and St James Episcopal in Cashmere, WA. Pastor Rob Gohl serves both congregations but was at diocesan convention. The two congregations worship together every Sunday, alternating buildings.
After Liv finished up at the Guild, she picked me up in Cashmere and we headed to Spokane, home for her, and one night more for me. On Monday afternoon we had a gathering for retired pastors and deacons and spouses at Riverview Retirement Community in Spokane. It was a simple time of catching up with one another and hearing some updates from me about the synod and the larger ELCA. I flew back to Boise Monday evening. On Sunday and Monday, I started getting texts about an ICE raid in Wilder, Idaho.
This action, as I understand, was FBI led and ICE supported. I will keep my message brief to insure there is, to my knowledge, no misinformation.
The action created chaos and harm regardless of what the original scope of the action was intended to be (see KTVB and Statesman coverage for context and more): children targeted for the color of their skin and social location swept up and zip tied and terrified for their life. PODER and ACLU of Idaho are on the scene working to create safe conditions, to advocate for individuals’ legal rights, and try to relieve the trauma. Many partners in the advocacy and faith community are working on the ground and behind the scenes.
For the moment:
Pray for those in harms ways, for law enforcement, and for constructive dialogue with the legal authorities, local community, and advocates.
Call on our state elected leaders to have compassion towards immigrants.
Be critical thinkers of the varying messaging that is coming out and the misinformation among it and always seek to understand and amplify the voice of those people with less power in the situation.
Strategize alongside immigrants themselves; practice solidarity.
Donate to the Idaho Families Assistance Fund to be used to help families with any needs associated with immigration related separation.
In the late 1950s, my dad and three other guys bought a piece of property west of Custer, South Dakota. It was all my dad’s idea, and he was the one with the relationship with previous owner and widow Laura Behrens. My father had come to Lutheranism in his 20s through men he met while working at the downtown YMCA in St. Paul, MN. The Christianity of his childhood he would later call a fundamentalism of sorts. In leaving the faith of us childhood, he also separated from family. Later he separated from his first wife and married my mom. Maybe life for all of us is moving and growing within changing relationships, including our relationship with God, but that was certainly true for my father. We moved to that piece of land west of Custer when I was four years old, in 1980.
And so it is that every time I turned onto the mile-driveway leading up to our home, I read these words on the mounted wooden sign: Peniel Valley Ranch, named after our story from Genesis. I recently remarked to my mom that it was so good of dad to name a place where others could come and wrestle with their faith, wrestle with God, see the face of God, and my mom said, “It was really mostly about your dad’s wrestling.” I know she is right.
And yet, these last few days, as Dr. Bateza has talked so much about relationships, I couldn’t help but reflect on the gift it was to me to grow up knowing that wrestling with God was an acceptable part of the life of faith, of following Jesus. Similar but not identical to lament, when I have gone through difficult times, with relationships: familial, professional, and personal. I’m not a trickster like Jacob. My shadow side is that I am fiercely loyal, until I’m not (in personal relationships). This has caused plenty of wrestling with God. Through everything, I never felt like God abandoned me. I held on and wrestled, which usually manifested as waking up to my own tears as my subconscious and the divine worked out something. I learned only in my mid-30s that my exvangelical friends were never given such permission, and neither had my dad as he was growing up.
You know this story well, preaching it or teaching it to adults or confirmation students, but let’s still do some review. We encounter Jacob when he is terribly afraid that his twin brother Esau will kill him for taking his birthright. He has not heard back from his messengers; he does not know if Esau has accepted his gifts. He does not know if his servants are even still alive. And yet he sends his wives and children into the path of Esau and his riders — without him.
Jacob has evaded his greatest fear up to that point. The danger is across the water from him. He is safe, for a while; or so he thinks. But then, a person or personage he does not know (or does not recognize) grapples him to the ground. Jacob responds by fighting back and they wrestle for a long time.
There was a stalemate. And then, the wrestler did something to Jacob’s hip and put it out of joint. That part has always been a mystery to me. Is God, who has been named by now, taking a cheap shot? Surely not. Jacob himself demands a blessing. The wrestler asks Jacob’s name and then gives him a new name, “Israel.” Finally, as dawn is breaking on the Jabok Riverbank, God bestows the blessing itself. That is only the first part of the story, because Jacob does go on to meet Esau face-to-face.
God has and may encounter people in conflictual times by taking the very form of the anticipated difficulty—a broken relationship, a hard transition, a new experience we fear. Think of Moses arguing on Mount Sinai with God before going down to deal with the Israelites or picture Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying in agony even as he anticipates his death.
If we go through such a time with God, we experience a gracious rehearsal for the actual circumstance. In simplistic words, we practice. But of course, we can turn our back on God. To refuse to engage with God in that struggling moment denies oneself a God-given resource. But going through it with God before we go through it with others can be a blessing.
Jacob had a very real fear of his Brother Esau’s anger. Jacob’s deliverance from God does not resolve the conflict with Esau. Jacob still must face that. But it must have been different for him having already wrestled with God. In other words, Jacob was not just delivered from something. Deliverance, a new name, and a blessing are not ends in themselves. Jacob was also delivered for something—a new relationship with a human being.
Jacob’s later confrontation with Esau mirrors the encounter with God. Jacob testifies that seeing Esau’s face is like seeing God’s face. The opposite might be true in hindsight: Seeing God’s face is like seeing Esau’s face. What Jacob had expected from Esau was hostility; he got graciousness. What Jacob might have expected from God was graciousness. He did get that but only on the far side of the attack.
Even after his encounter with Esau, Jacob’s wrestling match is still with him. I think of Jacob’s limp as like the seal on our foreheads in the Sacrament of Baptism. We have died with Christ. That should forever change us. After my father died in December 2020, a friend whose own mom had died several years before wrote, “The hole is still there, but healing comes.” I think of what we heard yesterday between the difference between grief and melancholy. If you truly die with Christ in the waters of baptism, of course you are changed. You have your own limp, your own mark. You also have the freedom, forgiveness, and new life that are promised in baptism. And of course, You too have a new name, “child of God.”
In this moment, as we have been reflecting on together the past few days, we read and hear so much about our disagreements, our polarization, our ongoing resentments. Many of you are not just reading about polarization but living it in your various contexts. I have yet to see the signage or testimony or social media post from Christians admitting to wrestling with God. I think it’s likely we are wrestling with God, wrestling with our faith, but we’re too afraid to admit it to one another. It’s not something we talk about, even though it is quite natural. But you do that wrestling with one who has already been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit.
I love presiding at installations and ordinations and it has been an honor to be a symbol of Christian unity at three bishop’s installations in the last month. And yet, I find myself leaning on the promises made in holy baptism more than ever now. The renunciations of evil, the marks of discipleship named so clearly, and the promises made by God and the assembly are all gifts for the baptized, for you. Through water and the word, you were trusted by God and entrusted with God’s own love and mercy. You were sealed by the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that is with you still. It is that same Spirit that frees you today to see God in the face of the other: stranger, friend, neighbor. It’s that same Spirit that frees you today to see God in your own face—beloved child of God.
This past weekend, the Region 1 bishops and the bishop of Western ND traveled to Billings, MT for the installation of the Montana Synod’s new bishop: Bishop Ben Quanbeck. Several former Montana Synod bishops were present for the occasion and the Episcopal bishop attended as well.
American Lutheran in Billings
Bishop Eaton and Bishop Quanbeck in the center
I spent three summers working at Camp Christikon, north of Yellowstone National Park, on the Bolder River near the Absorka Beartooth Wilderness. In 1995, after finishing my Mat-term oversees, I spent 24 hours with my parents in Rochester, MN (they were interim camp directors at Good Earth Village that year) before joining a caravan of four cars heading from the Midwest to Montana. Heather Wigdhal, the new Executive Director of Christikon, was in that caravan.
Joe, one of Ben’s cousins, and I worked on staff together in 1998. Pastor Ken and I worked at camp at different times but served together in the Boise area for over eight years.
The Region 1 bishops Zoom every Wednesday. I always am grateful to be with them in person!
4 For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. Romans 12:4-5 (NRSVue)
Vice President Lisa leading us in discussion at All Saints Lutheran, Spokane
Pastor:
Since our spring meeting at Lutherhaven, I have visited the following congregations for Sunday worship or an ordination: Faith, Kamiah (at Community Presbyterian Church); St. John’s, American Falls; Trinity, Pullman; Zion, Deer Park; Immanuel, Boise; First, Ellensburg; Prince of Peace, Spokane; Grace, Mountain Home; St. Paul, Ontario; Christ, Walla Walla-Installation; Christ the King, Goldendale; and Grace Community, Potlach. Following the Council meeting I’ll visit Troy Lutheran and preside at UCC Pastor Ian McPherson’s rite of welcome at Salem, Spokane. I also visited our newest congregation, Christ the King, Milton Freewater on my trip home from the Walla Walla installation.
I have no idea under which of these headings Synod Assembly belongs, but we had a wonderful online assembly. Yes, it’s hard not to be in person every year, but the feedback I have received about who could participate because it was online and just one day, makes me grateful for our pivot. Pastor Phil pulled together a gifted team and followed through on so many details. Our synod worship team grounded us beautifully throughout the day.
Our synod currently has eight individuals somewhere in the ELCA Candidacy process with 2-4 more who could begin the process/Entrance at our February meeting!
Pastor Liv is pulling together our fall Preach, Pray, Preside, (and Polity) Retreat in October and reports that we’ll have around 12 participants. We hope to have a similar retreat in the spring in Southern Idaho.
Servant:
At our June Region 1 Bishops’ Retreat, anticipating two new bishops begin to serve in our region, we adjusted our assignments. My last PLU board meeting will be in October and this fall I will begin serving as the Region 1 liaison bishop to ELCA Church Council. I commissioned the summer staffs at Camp Lutherhaven and Luther Heights Bible Camp. I led devotions for Lutherhaven’s Wild Women Retreat at Shoshone Mountain Retreat. I attended ELCA Churchwide Assembly with the other six voting members from our synod—what a wonderful group of people we sent! I highlighted actions from CWA in my August newsletter column.
Symbol of our unity in Christ’s church:
I attended and preached at Montana’s Synod Assembly and attended the Southwestern WA Synod Assembly. I’ll return to both synods this fall for bishop installations. I will travel to Minneapolis in October for ELCA Church Council, Installation of Bishop Curry, and Conference of Bishops.
I recruited Lutherhaven’s Outdoor Ed Coordinator Josh Kramer (a Concordia, Moorhead alum who worked at Camp Metigoshe in ND) to be our synod’s ELCA Young Adult Network liaison. He will travel to Chicago in October for an orientation. I worked with NWIM’s ELCA World Hunger coordinator Pastor Ethan Bergman to recruit Diedre Jacobson (St. Mark’s), Ryan Lawrence (Cameron Emanuel), and Nick Tinker (King of Glory) to attend the ELCA World Hunger Gathering in Columbus, OH Sept. 18-21 (this gathering happens every 18 months).
Learn about our ecumenical work thanks to the CaSTLE grant later in this report. I also continue to meet with ecumenical leaders both up north (those covering N. Idaho and Eastern WA) and down south (covering S. Idaho and Oregon). I’ll be part of Boise Pride’s interfaith worship in September. In November, Mennonite Drew Straight (Liv’s friend) will be in Boise speaking about his book Strange Worship: Six Steps for Challenging Christian Nationalism. I worked with Spokane Alliance and the Spokane Episcopal Diocese to bring Foundations of Community Organizing Training to North Idaho Oct. 3-4.
CEO:
Thanks to everyone who helped prepare for Cathy Steiner’s sabbatical and gave the synod staff grace when we missed something. Thanks to Diana Abken for filling in. We have such an amazing staff. I chose the Romans 12 text because it is our theme verse for the United at the Font events, it’s a text I am leaning on during these hard times (we can each do and be something to heal the world now and it can look different for each person and even each community), and I think we truly live out these verses as a small and lean synod staff. I am so grateful for the gifts Cathy, Phil, and Liv bring to this ministry. Eugene Peterson translates a portion in The Message this way: So, since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
Each month I convene a group from across Region One to be a sounding board for Rudy Vazquez, our new Financial Services Office coordinator (the group includes Cathy and former Region 1 Coordinator retired Pastor Mark Nelson).
This summer we finally received and distributed gifts to ELCA recipients from Faith, Toppenish’s closing:
$15,000 to the NWIM Synod as an undesignated gift (Ex Committee followed our gift policy and designated 10% to churchwide $1500.00, 10% to Campus Ministry Endowment $1500.00, 10K to Bequest, and 2000.00 as a gift).
$15,000 to ELCA World Hunger
$15,000 to Lutheran Disaster Relief
$15,000 to Tumaini School in the Ulanga Kilombero Diocese (NWIM Synod Global Mission team designated: $5000 to scholarships, $5000 to flood relief, and $5000 set aside for hopes of the future solar kitchen at the school)
$15,000 to the NWIM Synod Fund for Leaders
$15,000 to NWIM’s WELCA chapter
$15,000 to Katie’s Fund (ministry of the national WELCA org)
$10,000 to the PLU Archives Department (holds all archives for Region One)
The Faith, Toppenish remnant still has some local distributions to make, and they gave a generous gift already to their neighbors at Our Saviour’s Lutheran, Sunnyside.
In late April I submitted a grant application to Wartburg Seminary’s CaSTLE Project for equipping rural and small-town ministries. We were one of two synods who applied for and received grant funds in the ecumenical experiments category. With our $20,000 we are holding three ecumenical events for church leaders this fall: Moses Lake, Clarkston, and Pocatello. We will also have a retreat in December for middle judicatory leaders from five denominations so we can better understand each other’s theologies and polities.
I am so grateful to be with you today Salem Lutheran. Human beings have always needed joy and real celebration and our need for such moments is heightened now. What’s more, I know that this day of celebrating this next chapter with your new pastor comes after a season of good and holy discernment.
Last Wednesday and Thursday I was in Boise with an ecumenical group of faith leaders for the Interfaith Countering Hate Summit hosted by Interfaith Alliance and Western States Center.Whether we call today’s service the fake installation or “Invitation to Extended Service,” what is clearer to me than ever is that our ecumenical and interfaith relationships are going to become increasingly important in the years ahead as we continue to proclaim and work collectively for God’s shalom.
I am delighted that Pastor McPherson selected these familiar verses from Matthew for today, because they mirror the ethos of Salem Lutheran in West Central and they inform the mutual ministry that a congregation and pastor share.
Matthew’s gospel submerges us in a series of encounters Jesus has with religious leaders who oppose him. First, he is asked about paying taxes to the Roman Emperor, then comes the question of whether or not the dead are resurrected, and next we overhear the question about the greatest commandment.
Jesus answers by quoting Deut. 6:5, the Shema of Israel. The commandment to love the Lord with all one’s heart, soul, and might is prefaced by “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God. The Lord alone.” The command to love God is a command that presumes God’s love of Israel. Such a love is no vague generality but rather is manifest in the concrete and daily care of God for God’s people. We know what it means to love God only because of God’s love for us through the law and the prophets, Stanley Hauerwas wisely writes. This love can be harsh and dreadful, because to be loved by God is to be forced to know ourselves truthfully.
Jesus continues by quoting Lev. 19:18, that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. On these two commandments, Jesus tells the lawyer, hang all the law and the prophets. This is the same Jesus who told us in the Sermon on the Mount that he came not to abolish the law and prophets and that not a letter of the law would pass away until all is accomplished.
If we have any questions about what neighbor love might look like, or if we want to write our own edition, we can look back at the same chapter of Leviticus where we are commanded not to steal, deal falsely, lie, swear falsely by God’s name, defraud, revile the deaf, put a stumbling block before the blind, or render unjust judgment.
Now here is a crucial layer of the text that I’m not sure I heard growing up in my Lutheran church in Western South Dakota but I am confident has been proclaimed from this pulpit or shared in Bible Studies at Salem: to learn to love our neighbor as ourselves, means me must learn to love ourselves as God has loved us (1 John 4:11). To learn to love ourselves truthfully is not easy because we most often desire to love ourselves on our own terms. The challenge that Jesus presents by joining these commandments it to learn that one is loved by God so that one is thus able to love God and others.
I think I finally understood the relationship between these loves when I first read Martin Luther’s Freedom of a Christian, in which he declares, “The Christian is a completely free lord of all, subject to none. The Christian is a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all (Freedom, 10). For Luther, everything begins with God’s actions towards human beings. We are loved. How then can we not spontaneously share that love with others?
I know that love is not just an intellectual exercise in this community of faith. Pastor Ian, you have probably kept learning, from the interview through today and into to tomorrow, that this is a space where love is truly embodied—from the Lord’s Supper to soup and bread brought to those hurting, putting your bodies in harms way, splashing in the font to remember your own belovedness, and the list goes on.
I’ll be honest, the reality of God’s love for me is something I have to keep learning and leaning into. Perhaps because I grew up in the forest and have spent hours in the out of doors, it was the stuff of faith that came with physicality that resonated with me most. I remain eternally grateful that the triune God we worship somehow understood that we human beings would need promises paired with simple water, bread, and wine to be reminded of Gods’ abundant love for us. The language we hear at the font and that we will hear today at the Lord’s Supper is pure gift and God’s love for creation. That love received, then is shared when we leave this place.
Salem Lutheran in West Central has been, is, and will be an incubator for love. Through sacred friendships, hearing the old old story of God’s love for you and all of creation, in the love feast that is the Lord’s Supper, you receive God’s love and are sent forth to love. You are freed from sin and brokenness and death and freed for love. And oh how desperately our world needs that love right now, as events each and every week remind us.
Any reflection on these two interconnected commandments Jesus points to is a reminder that we simply cannot follow Jesus on our own. To love well is really hard. To know we are loved can also be hard. We need the Holy Spirit and we need that Spirit moving through local expressions of the body of Christ, a congregation.
Today we rejoice that new mutual ministry between Pastor Ian McPherson and the people of Salem Lutheran is beginning. Congregations, like people can have multiple callings throughout their existence. As the world, nation, Spokane, the West Central neighborhood have changed, so have specific callings changed here, as some of your long-time members can recall. One of your tasks together is to faithfully carry out Word and Sacrament ministry so each of you is strengthened and nourished for ministry in your daily lives. The ELCA model constitution for congregations describes this in the purpose section: “Nurture its members in the Word of God so as to grow in faith and hope and love, to see daily life as the primary setting for the exercise of their Christian calling, and to use the gifts of the Spirit for their life together and for their calling in the world.”
You will also discern what your collective love is calling you into here and now for your community and the world. Again the constitution states that you will “Serve in response to God’s love to meet human needs, caring for the sick and the aged, advocating dignity, justice, and equity for all people, working for peace and reconciliation among the nations, caring for the marginalized, embracing and welcoming racially and ethnically diverse populations, and standing in solidarity with the poor and oppressed and committing itself to their needs.”
Thank you for your ministry for so many years in this neighborhood and thank you for the mutual ministry you have embarked on for the next chapter. As we will now sing, to God be the glory.
A few weeks ago, I attended an event at the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights in Boise. The Wassmuth Center is named after Bill Wassmuth, a priest at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Coeur d’Alene. In the 1980s he found himself confronted with the misuse of theology for hateful aims by white supremacists in northern Idaho. He lived through a vindictive bombing of his home and built coalitions to battle the Aryan Nations as a chair of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations.
The presenter at the Wassmuth Center was a retired librarian and junior high English teacher who talked about literature being a mirror, a window, or a sliding door, using the seminal 1990 essay by Rudine Sims Bishop. Has a book or movie every transported you to another world, let you walk in the shoes of someone whose life is so different from your own? That’s a window. When the lighting is right, a window can become a mirror. Have you ever read a book or article and felt so seen, like you could see so much of your own story in it? A mirror, right? Some windows can become sliding glass doors, where readers just have to walk through in their imagination to become part of whatever world has been created.
On the best days, the clearest days, I think the cross at the center of our faith is both a mirror and window. Let’s start with where we all are. Take a few moments and consider what the cross means to you personally? Pause. And what do you think it means to others, those in this sanctuary and those a world away? Pause.
Before exploring further what the cross means to us and our faith, I find it helpful to rule out what the cross is not. One of my favorite scholars lists several of the most common and harmful false crosses: “The cross of Constantine for 1,700 years justified war in the name of God.” Other false crosses she lists are the the cross of “‘bear your suffering meekly, like a lamb’ which drives abused women and others back into the hands of their abusers,” and the “medieval cross that retains Jesus nailed to it, forever dead or dying.” (Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, “Being Church as, in, and against White Privilege”).
What then is the true cross, the life-giving cross, that we celebrate today? As John 3:14–15 insists, abundant life comes to believers this way: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
In Numbers 21, poisonous serpents have been let loose in the camp of Israel as punishment for the people’s grumbling and unfaithfulness. The story tells us that the serpents bite the Israelites and many people die. Desperate, the people repent and ask Moses to talk to God on their behalf. Moses does so, and God commands Moses to raise up a bronze serpent for the people to look at. When they gaze upon the lifted serpent, the people who were poisoned live.
The word translated as “lift up” also means “exalt.” We are asked to hold these two meanings together simultaneously. As the serpent in the wilderness was lifted up, to the Son of Man must be lifted up on the cross. The double-meaning implies that physical act of lifting up is also a moment of exaltation. That is, it is in the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension that Jesus is exalted. The God we worship shows saving power where we least expect, in the form of power’s opposite—a cross.
When I see the cross, I am reminded that Christ is present in our brokenness and bondage to evil and draws forth power that we did not know we had. A favorite professor [Moe-Lobeda] writes, “This truth enables us to see the structural brutality of which we are a part without being destroyed by that knowledge. . . . In Martin Luther’s own words, when reality seems ‘distorted and sinful, and seemingly God-forsaken . . . a theologian of the cross is not afraid to recognize reality for what it is.’”
What does any of this mean in Troy, Idaho in 2025 after yet another week of violence in our nation and across the globe? I think sometimes we forget just how seemingly absurd the cross is in our culture. When Jesus walked on earth, the cross was an instrument of terror, torture, and death wielded by imperial power. It was used against all those who challenged the dominance and supremacy of the Roman Empire. In his love for the world, the whole world, including each of you, Jesus endured suffering and death on a cross.
This makes the cross a symbol of nonviolent resistance. Followers of Jesus respond to Jesus’ love by trusting in the non-violent love of God to work all things for good (even terrible things like suffering and death!). This is how God heals the world, and it’s the paradigm for how we work with God in the renewal of all things. When we gather for the Lord’s Supper today and eat the bread of life and the cup of salvation, we remember Jesus’ broken body and his blood spilled out for the life of the world, as we say during the distribution of Communion, “For you.”
The symbol of the cross and the name of Jesus Christ have been co-opted over and over throughout the centuries—Constantine, the Crusades, the removal of Indigenous peoples in this country under the guise of spread the gospel, and now in the form of Christian Nationalism. In this moment, communities of faith like yours which as faithfully passing on the abundant love and grace of Jesus through generations for decades, are needed more than ever. The world needs your welcome and hospitality, your rejection of evil, your care for those most vulnerable, your sharing of Jesus’ love for all people.
I’ve spent a lot of time here trying to help us think about what the cross means to us, to put up a mirror. I want to close with words from Reverdy Ransom, an African American Christian who lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania from 1861-1959. His experiences and those of the people he served as an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) bishop, were probably more like those of both Jesus and the Apostle Paul (whose words we heard in the First Corinthians reading) than our own. Let’s close with this window into another’s understanding of the cross of Christ:
“But our highest goal is not a unified church, a but a unified humanity in the bonds of brotherhood. The wise men from East were guided by a star, but wider men of our unfolding, coming from the four corners of the earth are guided by a higher vision. They seek not a manger but a cross where all men stand with equal footing on common ground. It is the final stand of humanity’s last retreat. All other meeting places have failed. For all ages men have tried the decisions of the battlefield, the prerogatives of kings, the decisions of courts, the enactments of parliaments, and union of great power seeking to underwrite the peace of the world. All these have left in their trail misery and chaos, division, and strife. But at the cross one man is lifted up so high above all other causes that divide, and his arms are extended so wide that they enfold in their loving embrace every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation, to bind them together with his wounded hands in the everlasting bonds of brotherhood and love,” Reverdy Ransom, “The Coming Vision.”
A Place at the Table 