Celebrate with Kid Wisdom (Reflection on Pentecost 6, Year A 2026)

 

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants…” (Matthew 11:25

I love the Fourth of July. When I was a little kid, this holiday was always special to my family because my maternal grandmother, the child of German immigrants, lived with us. She’d been born in the U.S. on July 4, 1884, so Independence Day at the Griffiths home always involved a celebration. I seem to remember a picnic meal on the back patio of our Long Beach, California home. At night our neighbor, Mr. Gallagher, would set off fireworks for all the kids on our street[i]. Some of the dearest memories I have were of events on or around the Fourth of July.

This particular Independence Day is pretty special for us. It’s America’s 250^th anniversary. We’ve lasted a quarter of a millennium, and representative democracy still has a beating heart. I think that’s kind of special, don’t you?

I’ll confess I’ve had a bit of a hard time getting my “whoopie!” on this year. My anxiety for America has been crowding out my enthusiasm for her birthday. There’s this god-awful debacle in the Middle East. We’re seeing climate disasters throughout our nation which no one seems to be doing anything to address. And, even if it’s come down a smidge, the price of gas is still way too high, and a huge chunk of my pay is still going into the tank of my 2017 Corolla.

Ambivalence, however, has always been with us. Even when I was a kid watching Mr. Gallagher’s fireworks, the grown-ups were taking sides over the direction of our nation, just as grown-ups have done since Jesus’ time and before. In our Gospel lesson for Pentecost 6, Year A (Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30), Jesus expresses his own pique with a bunch of folks who’ve seen the goodness of God with their own eyes but still have to whine and bitch about something. They criticized John the Baptist. I can just imagine them saying to each other, “What’s up with this loony-toon preacher? He keeps telling us to repent and give money to the poor. We’re not made of money! We’re doing the best we can. Not everyone can live off eating bugs like this guy. And why’s he always complaining about King Herod? He’s just going to start trouble!”

They weren’t that pleased with Jesus either. Can you hear them? “Who is this Jesus dude? He’s eating with tax collectors and sinners! Why, in my day, boy howdy, when a person was ritually impure, they stayed ritually impure! And nobody healed anyone on the Sabbath. Back then we had rules, by golly, and we followed them! What’s all this mercy and forgiveness crap? In the good old days, you pulled yourself up by your sandal straps!”

You get the idea. There are some folks who don’t like to hear John preach the law or Jesus preach the Gospel. Their happy place is in the quicksand of their own critical indignation. You may have met people like this (You may have met some of them in church!).

Jesus tells us in the Gospel that wisdom sometimes is revealed to children. I think it might be a good idea sometimes to recapture a bit of childhood wisdom. While watching Mr. Gallagher’s fountain blast a geyser of multi-colored sparks over Stevely Avenue, I wasn’t thinking about the war in Vietnam or whether Humphrey or Nixon would be a better president. I just thought the display looked really cool. The Fourth of July was America’s birthday party, and birthdays are fun.

Maybe this Independence Weekend I can try to recapture a little of the joy I felt as a kid. It’s our country’s birthday, and—by the grace of God—our Republic has lasted another year. Our neighbors are still our neighbors. Even if we disagree with them, they still love their children like we do. They still take their trash out to the curb like we do. They still pay their taxes (we hope!) like we do. And they still might give us a lift if our car breaks down and we ask them nicely.

We still have hope in the ideas which founded this wacky experiment in self-governance. Mr. Jefferson—slave holder that he was—put his quill to parchment and gave us these magnificent words:

“We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

However imperfectly this idea has been realized in our 250-year history, it remains our aspiration, and one worthy of celebrating.

The Hebrew scripture lesson for Pentecost 6 is from the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 9:9-12), a guy who found himself in a geo-political situation worse than anything we could imagine.[ii] Nevertheless, ol’ Zech had a child’s ability hope for tomorrow. He could look beyond the goat rodeo he was experiencing and see a time when peace and humility would be the order of the day, when a new King would come riding on a baby donkey. Like the prophet, let’s all keep that childhood dream alive, because God never stops being good even though we haven’t noticed the goodness. Let’s look beyond today and rejoice we are still “prisoners of hope.”

God bless America, and God bless you, my friend. Please come again.

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[i] The firework display was, technically speaking, illegal in Long Beach. Mr. Gallagher did it for years, and no one ever called the police to my knowledge.

[ii] Okay. If you’re a Bible nerd, you’ll know that the author of this lesson in chapter 9 of the book was probably writing about 100 years after the guy who penned the first eight chapters. Chapter 9 and following are known as “2^nd Zechariah.” I doubt one guy lived long enough to write both parts, and it wasn’t uncommon for writers to write in the name of their teacher or one who inspired them.

Father Knows (Reflections on Pentecost 4, Year A 2026)

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows." (Matthew 10: 29-31)

Most smart Bible scholar folks agree that the community to whom Matthew (whoever he really was) wrote his gospel was having a pretty sucky time of it. Matthew quotes Jesus a lot on the subject of persecution. In the Gospel appointed for Pentecost 4 Year A (Matthew (10:24-39), Jesus warns his friends that people won’t always take kindly to them. Hey! If people call your rabbi “Beelzebul,” just think what they might call you! “Beelzebub” was a reference to a Canaanite deity whom the Jews referred to as the “Lord of the Flies” or the “Lord of Dung.”

There’s been a lot of talk in the U.S. lately about “anti-Christian bias.” Frankly, whenever I hear that term, I want to say, “Oh just shut up!” The folks who say this have no idea what an anti-Christian bias is. Go to North Korea if you want to see anti-Christian bias. You can be imprisoned or executed for owning a Bible in that country. Same goes for Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and any number of countries in the Middle East or North Africa. You think it’s hard to be a Christian in America? Try being one in Palestine where you have to pass a checkpoint to get to church[i]. I’d say being a Christian in the U.S. is pretty easy.

Of course, there will always be those who will accuse the Church of hypocrisy or other acts or wrongdoing. Like trying to “Christianize” indigenous people and wipe out their culture, or being anti-LGBTQ+, or anti-woman[ii]. They may bring up some unpleasant things like the Crusades or the Inquisition or the Thirty-Years War or the Roman Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal. All I can say is we have been guilty as charged on all these counts, and some denominations still don’t seem to have grasped that basic “Love Thy Neighbor” thing. We should be honest about this. Jesus told us there is nothing that is covered up which will not be uncovered.

Nothing, however, should keep us from proclaiming the love of Jesus. It’s appropriate that we admit the errors of the past. An open discussion of the Church’s history could prove a very good opportunity to share the Jesus you know. The Church has managed to survive over the centuries in spite of ourselves. We’ve made it through real persecutions, barbarism, schisms, the Enlightenment, militant atheism, and our own uncanny ability to make stupid, self-serving choices. We’ve survived a whole lot of rotten stuff, but we can’t survive timid silence. Proclaiming from the housetops might be a little excessive for your average Lutheran, but a quiet discussion about what you believe and why it’s important to you might just be what someone else needs to hear.

Now let me switch gears.

In addition to being the Furth Sunday in Pentecost and the commemoration of Onesimos Nesib[iii], it’s also Father’s Day. The Gospel reading makes me think of a student a I had when I was a grad assistant at the University of Wisconsin. Brian’s dad was a lawyer, and in Madison, Wisconsin in those days for every citizen there were about four attorneys. Brian’s dad had left a government position to go into private practice, but his practice never flourished and he became depressed. Eventually he started up the family car inside a closed garage and asphyxiated himself. I have vivid memories of Brain crying on my shoulder when I came to his dad’s funeral. But Brian’s family tragedy made me more grateful for my own dad. He had his financial and employment woes too, yet, for all his faults—and he had plenty of them!—I have to give my father credit for never giving up. When he found himself laid off, he did everything he could to keep us in Fruit Loops and Hamburger Helper. He was an engineer, but he worked as a janitor. He tried a number of self-employment schemes, all of which ended rather disastrously. But, like Dickens’ Mr. Micawber, he had an unshakeable faith that something would always turn up. And it always did.

On this Father’s Day I give thanks for my illustrious Old Man whose faith and optimism often annoyed my more practical mother. I can picture him doing yard work or cooking something in the kitchen while lustily belting out one of the old gospel hymns from his Primitive Methodist childhood, and I am reminded that God knows what we need even before we know it ourselves. Even the hairs on our heads are numbered, and not a sparrow falls apart from our Heavenly Father. Our circumstances are temporary. Our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven is eternal.

There’s a whole lot to unpack in these fifteen verses from Matthew 10, and I could probably talk for an hour about each one (which would not set well with my congregation should I chose to do so. They have definite views about how long a sermon should be). I would sum it up, however, by saying we should be on our guard not to be lost  in the opinions of the world, but to find ourselves in the goodness of God. This we should proclaim with boldness.

Keep the faith, and come back and visit with me again.

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[i] Please pray for Natalie Abudayyah, a Palestinian Lutheran college student who was abducted from her college along with three other young women on June 1 by the IDF. She has--as far as we know—been imprisoned without any charge being filed against her and without access to an attorney. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land has demanded her immediate release.

[ii] Yup. Just check out what the Southern Baptist Convention has done to outlaw women pastors.

[iii] Onesimos Nesib (1856-1931) was  a Ethiopian Lutheran who translated the Bible into the Oromo tribal language. The Oromo are a people of Ethiopia and Northern Kenya.

It's a Scary Job (Reflections on Pentecost 3, Year A 2026)

 

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)

Did I ever tell you about this cat, Gordon Simmons? When I was a junior in seminary Pastor Gordon was held up as a paragon of evangelical ministry. He was the pastor of Reformation Lutheran Church in the East Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, which, at the time, was the best attended ELCA congregation in the city.

The way I heard it, Gordon had a cushy job on the Synod staff, but, feeling the Holy Spirit’s call to go back into parish ministry, he took the challenging call to revive Reformation. At the time, the little Lutheran church was attended by a small handful of maybe thirty or so Caucasian Lutherans whose average age was somewhere between seventy-five and deceased. East Mt. Airy’s demographics were rapidly changing. The elegant 19^th century single family homes were being purchased by upwardly mobile African Americans whose familiarity with the great leader of the Protestant Reformation may have been limited to familiarity with the Civil Rights leader named in his honor.

Like Jesus’ disciples in the Gospel appointed for Pentecost 3 (Matthew 9:35-10:23), Gordon set out on foot to bring the Good News to the neighbors of East Mt. Airy. His ambition was to knock on every door in the 19119 zip code, and—son of a gun!—he did it! Not once, but about three times. He greeted his neighbors and asked politely if they had a place of worship. If they said no, he asked permission to visit again to tell them a little about Reformation Church. There were many who became part of Reformation’s family because of Pastor Gordon’s door-to-door approach, and many more who came when invited by those he had invited.

I don’t know that I’d ever have the guts to do the kind of “cold calling” evangelism Gordon Simmons did. If I went banging on doors in the neighborhood around my parish, I’d be afraid someone would turn the garden hose on me or meet me at the door with a Smith & Wesson. I can’t imagine embarking on the freaky and dangerous evangelism mission on which Jesus sent his twelve buddies in our Gospel lesson. I mean, how would you feel if Jesus sent you out on a mission like that?

So you’re Peter or James or one of the other guys and Jesus tells you to go knock on doors in strange villages. Imagine Jesus saying to you, “By the way, guys, you can’t take any money with you or any provisions for the road. You can’t accept any pay but a place to sleep and something to eat—if you’re lucky enough to be offered either one! Oh! And you might get beaten up for your efforts. Or arrested. Or prosecuted. Your family is probably going to hate you for this, and you just may have to run for your life from time to time. It’s also very likely that you all will be put to a grizzly, painful death before this is over. You guys okay with that? Great! Well, off you go. Good luck my dudes!”

Compared to what the disciples were asked to do, Gordon Simmons’ efforts look like a day at Disneyworld.

Nobody ever said bearing the Gospel would be easy, but I think Jesus gives us some good tips in this reading. First, Jesus tells the boys to avoid the gentiles and the Samaritans. Now, we know that Jesus doesn’t have anything against gentiles or Samaritans, but he knows they’re not real keen to welcome or entertain these Galilean Jews. He’s saying, “Don’t try talking to folks who won’t be open to listening. Go to folks with whom you have a little something in common. Go to the people you already know.”

The best way we can start proclaiming God’s love is to proclaim it to one another. Strengthen our own relationships within the congregation. Stay for coffee hour and talk to someone you don’t know very well. Then be sure to greet every newcomer with love and welcome. That’s pretty easy, even for the shy people among us.

The scary thing might be starting a conversation about faith with a neighbor or family member or co-worker. You don’t have to invite them to church, but wouldn’t it be interesting to ask them what they believe? Just listen. Get to know them better. And, as Jesus suggests, let the Holy Spirit tell you what to say.

To be honest (and I try to be), I don’t think I believe in “Evangelism Programs.” Back in 2007, being too scared to knock on doors like Pastor Gordon, I initiated a program at Faith Lutheran and mailed out invitations to 22,000 households. Out of that number, we received exactly one family (who disappeared after the youngest child made Confirmation!). Some churches will open day care centers or pre-schools or offer other programs in hopes of attracting new members. I think that’s selfish and inwardly directed. If a church offers a cool VBS or a holds a neighborhood fair or starts a men’s fellowship, it should be because the neighborhood needs a place for kids, a chance to gather as a community, and an opportunity for men to share and make friends. If ministry isn’t done for its own sake, it’s not ministry. Real evangelism, I think, only comes from inter-personal relationships.

So, what’s the purpose, you ask? Jesus sent the twelve out to heal and cast out demons. If ever there was a time when folks needed healing, I’d say this is that time. In a society with its noses perpetually pointed at cell phone screens, we all need what Christ’s church can give. We need to offer people the gift of live, human community. We need to hear Christ’s words of love and charity, and experience being instruments of that compassion because there are far too many suffering people in this world. We desperately need moral guidance. And we need a time in our lives to experience the beauty of liturgy and music and hear the words assuring us of our value in God’s eyes. And, most of all, we need a place to pray and experience hope. We who are already in the church have these gifts. Let’s share them as we’re able with the harassed and helpless.

Thanks again for coming by. Share some love this week, won’t you?

                                                                                                                     

 

God Sees You (Reflections on Pentecost 2, Year A 2026)

 

Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” (Matthew9:22)

Some weeks back my wife suggested that we hold a healing service at church. I don’t know if her suggestion came from seeing the unusually long roster of folks on our prayer list, or because she’s got a number of ailments herself. Anyway, I thought it was a good idea, and I noticed the lessons appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 2 seem to lend themselves to the theme of healing.

If I’m honest (and I try to be) I’m not sure I’ve been feeling all that swift myself lately. Physically, I’m doing as well as any sixty-six-year-old dude can do. A few aches here and there, but pretty okay on the whole. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel we’ve all been living in a wounded society. You know what I mean. There’s just so much anger and discontentment around these days. And the wounds seem to be on both sides of the social and the religious arguments. I think what it comes down to is we’re all feeling a certain assault on our sense of identity. Folks on both sides of the divide are feeling neglected or betrayed or unseen. Others are feeling like their value system is getting flushed down the crapper. And that really bites. The result is feelings of anger or hopelessness or just plain disgust—none of which are particularly healthy.

On top of this, a lot of us, or a lot of the people we know and care about, have real physical or emotional conditions which make getting up and out of bed every day—assuming they can even do that—an act requiring some epic willpower. Sickness is also an assault on our identity. You can see the doctor, but the doctor may not see you. Doctor will see cancer, a knee replacement, diabetes, or any number of frustrating, frightening, or depressing ailments, but Doctor will not see a veteran, a retired school teacher, a great craftsman, a wonderful mom or dad, or any of the other things which make us who we are and give us identity and purpose.

I think this decent into anonymity is particularly true for cancer patients. The “Emperor of All Maladies” holds a trash-compactor grip on our imaginations, filling us with fear and blotting out any vestige of personhood for both the patient and his or her loved ones. I have to confess to being guilty of “cancer myopia” when my late sister was diagnosed some years ago. I think I began every conversation with her with inquiries about her health and state of treatment. I never asked about all the whimsically creative things she was doing or thinking or sharing while cage fighting with her disease.

The other thing which tends to wipe out our sense of who we are is grief. A deep, personal loss can put us in a bubble where we can see the rest of the world but not be part of it. Others can see only our suffering and so may tend to avoid us. After all, nobody wants to hang out with sad people, right?

But what does Jesus see? In the Gospel appointed for Pentecost 2, Year A (Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26) Jesus sees Matthew at the tax booth. He doesn’t see a slimeball tool of the occupying power ripping off his fellow countrymen. Nor does he see a Jewish guy defiling himself by touching pagan money with graven images on it. He sees God’s child, made in God’s image, a guy who is in need of the healing only God’s love and acceptance can bring. And Jesus says, “Follow me.” No judgment, no pre-conditions, no litmus test for purity or orthodoxy. When some bigshot begs Jesus to heal his child, Jesus doesn’t see a man of privilege or a religious hypocrite or an oppressor of the poor. He sees a dad who grieves for his little girl and who wants her to be restored—just as any of us would. When a bleeding woman touches his cloak, Jesus doesn’t see a sick, ritually impure, punished by God victim. He sees a daughter of God with phenomenal faith.

Last week the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA held its annual assembly with the theme Imago Dei—Latin for Image of God. We were reminded that God created all of us in God’s own image. We may be anxious, depressed, disheartened, sick, or grieving, but those things do not define us. Those things are not what God sees when God looks at God’s own children. These ephemeral states shouldn’t be the things we see when we look at ourselves, nor should they be what we see when we look at anyone else. We may be sick, but God has sent a physician to heal us.

Healing. It comes from a Greek word meaning “to be made whole.” Ultimately, none of us are curable. We will all die from something someday. Nevertheless, we are all healable. We can all go to our Maker knowing we have been loved and seen for who we truly are.

Father in Heaven, for Jesus’ sake, send your Holy Spirit upon your servants; drive away all sickness of body and spirit; make whole that which is broken; deliver your servants from evil; and preserve us in true faith, to share in the power of Christ’s resurrection and to serve you with all the saints now and evermore. Amen. 

Discipline (Reflections on the Feast of the Holy Trinity 2026)

 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

It was February 7, 1999 and I was in my new office at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia, nervously awaiting the start of my Ordination Mass. Two months prior I had been called to this parish by a unanimous vote of the congregation following a call sermon I’d practiced the night before at the Cowboy Church at the Cowtown Rodeo in Woodstown, New Jersey. As fellow pastors, seminary friends, and my rather lengthy list of invited guests came to greet me before the start of the service, Priscilla, a sweet little lady (now, alas, part of the Church Triumphant) serving as a greeter, came to inform me in what appeared to be a state of shock, “Pastor! A cowboy just came in!”

That cowboy was Paul Graham, known around the rodeo as “P.G.” He was a retired calf roper and husband of Susie, the rodeo photographer who coordinated worship services at the rodeo before the start of each night’s festivities. After one of these payer meetings held in a lean-to tent next to the rodeo office I mentioned to P.G. that we seemed to be praying for an unusually high number of injuries suffered by the rodeo contestants. He just shook his head and said, “It’s all about discipline. These boys don’t ride every day. They think they can come out here on a Saturday night and jump on a bucking horse or a bull without getting hurt, but they haven’t taken the time to develop their skills. You can’t just be a weekend warrior. You have to practice every day.”

I’d say that’s true of our faith, too. It’s not just for Sunday. It’s every day.

In the Gospel Lesson for Holy Trinity (Matthew 28:16-20), Jesus tells his followers (and us) to “go and make disciples of all nations.” He doesn’t tell them to go and make believers or make church members. He tells them to make disciples—a word which comes from the same root as the word “discipline.” He’s asking us to make and be people who live every day in the contemplation of the Holy Trinity.

I think we tend to think of discipline as something harsh and punitive. You know: Puritans sentencing people to the stocks and pillory for missing church, a six-foot nun wielding a ruler, or all the purity litmus tests of the American non-denominational evangelicals. I’d prefer to think of Christian discipline more like the way P.G. talked about rodeo riding. Like athletes who love a sport or musicians who love music, regular everyday practice is a necessity. But it also becomes a thing of joy.

The anonymous writers of our Celebrate inserts have summed it up very nicely:

“More than a doctrine, the Trinity expresses the heart of our faith: we have experienced the God of creation made known in Jesus Christ and with us always through the Holy Spirit. We celebrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity in word and sacrament, as we profess the creed, and as we are sent into the world to bear witness to our faith.”[i]

The Athanasian Creed[ii] reminds us to worship the Trinity in unity. That is, we recognize as holy sacred, and divine God’s creation, God’s word in Jesus Christ, and God’s presence in us and all living things through the Holy Spirit. Should I sin against my neighbor, I’ve also sinned against the Father God and against myself because it is all one. If I sin against God’s creation, I’ve sinned against myself and my neighbor—even those neighbors yet unborn and unbegot.

To see everyone and all things as an expression of the divine requires a sense of responsibility. It’s easy to compartmentalize our lives, but God can’t be put into a box. Discipleship means we don’t say “Love thy neighbor” on Sunday and “Every man for himself” the other six days. It takes discipline to see the sacred in all things.

Two things always amuse me. The first is when someone tells me they don’t like to mix religion and politics. Okay. As an American I acknowledge that we are not a theocracy, and our official public policy must not be governed by any one religious idea or interpretation. My faith, however, will still influence my vote, my advocacy, and my activities as a citizen. I will always support issues which support justice, fairness, and mercy because this is what Christ calls for. Not every religious matter is a matter of public policy, but every matter of public policy is a religious matter because everything is, ultimately, a religious matter.

The other thing which brings a smirk to my face is when young people tell me they are “spiritual” but not “religious.” I then ask them, “What is your spiritual discipline?” They often look at me as if I were speaking Latin with a bad stutter. They don’t understand that a spiritual life requires discipline—daily prayer, study, consistent kindness, forgiveness, and generosity. It requires contemplation of the mysteries of existence and the meaning and purpose of our lives. First and foremost, it requires awareness of God. This is love of God’s creation, devotion to God’s teaching in Jesus Christ, and appreciation of God’s presence in everyone and everything around us.

Admittedly, life is hard. P.G. might’ve said it’s like riding a bucking bull. It takes daily practice to stay on and to climb back on when you’re thrown into the dirt.

A blessed Holy Trinity Sunday to you, my friend. Please drop me a comment or question and do come by again. I love having you.

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[i]   If you’re unfamiliar, Celebrate is a 4-page truncated breviary published by Augsburg Fortress to be inserted into the weekly worship bulletins of ELCA Lutheran congregations. It contains the appointed weekly lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary, the week’s psaltery, the Prayers of Intercession, and a short gloss about each of the readings. It also lists appointed readings for daily devotions and the commemorations and saints’ days for the coming week. This quote is from the May 31, 2026 edition, Volume 57, Number 3.

 [ii] The Athanasian Creed is, along with the Nicene and Apostles Creeds, considered one of the three fundamental ecumenical creeds of Christendom. It’s named after Saint Athenasius, an early Christian bishop who fought heretics for the doctrine of the Trinity. The creed has been used since the early 500’s. It’s really too long for liturgical use, and we ELCA Lutherans get a little skittish with it because it includes anathemas. It’s sort of “believe this or go to Hell.” It also emphasizes works righteousness. We prefer to leave all that judgment up to God. It does, however, nail down our understanding of the Trinity.

Wait 'Til Next Pentecost (Reflections on Pentecost 2026)

 

When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” (John 20:22)

Although Hallmark makes cards for everything from Groundhog’s Day to your dog’s birthday, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a “Happy Pentecost!” card. That’s a shame because this holy feast really should be lifted up as a special celebration. It’s actually one of the six principal festivals on the Christian liturgical calendar. It’s the Feast of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. It’s also the birthday of the Christian Church. We tell the story every year of those twelve scared and confused followers of Jesus—cowering in their upper room—who suddenly burst out of their hiding place to proclaim to everyone in every language the Good News of the resurrected Jesus. Don’t you think we ought to shoot off some fireworks in honor of this? Or, at least, hold a weenie roast on the church lawn or something?

Of course, a lot of Lutheran congregations mark this day with the Rite of Confirmation. Unfortunately, we at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia don’t have any kids who are Confirmation age this year. That’s just as well. I’m starting to get a quirky, uneasy feeling about laying my hands on the heads of fourteen-year-olds, praying they receive the Holy Spirit, and then watching them flee the building like kindergarteners when the bell rings for recess…never to be seen again.

Martin Luther taught us a relationship with Christ comes when the Holy Spirit calls us through the Gospel[i]. The trouble is, not everyone gets a chance to really hear or experience the Gospel. They might not even know what the word “Gospel” means[ii]. The three young fellows who will be taking my Confirmation class starting this August do not attend church or Sunday school. No surprise. Neither do their parents. Nevertheless, Mom and Dad are going to subject these boys to the Purgatory of my weekly online pedagogy in order to fulfill some family traditions or obligations or whatever wacky reasons they have for doing so (Maybe just to keep the little desperados busy for forty minutes on a Tuesday afternoon. Who knows?).

Now, imagine me trying to pound Luther’s Small Catechism into these adolescent skulls. I suspect grasping the Great Reformer’s understanding of the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles Creed will prove a daunting if not completely Sisyphean task if these kids know neither creed, prayer, nor commandments and have no clue as to why they should be learning about them. I’m going to have to start with some really basic stuff like “What is religion?” “What is God?” “What is the Church?”

Since Pentecost is supposed to be the birthday of the Christian Church, I thought I’d spitball an explanation of this curious institution. But first, I have to start with a definition for religion itself. I’m thinking that as far as Western Christian thought goes, a religion is an attempt to answer seemingly unanswerable questions. You know—like “What is the soul?” “What is Creation and how do we relate to it?” “What is spirit?” “Is life eternal?” “What is good and evil?” Stuff like that. We Christians try to answer these questions through our shared mythology. By “mythology,” I don’t mean stories which aren’t true. I mean stories which contain universal truths and have the plasticity to be told throughout the generations over and over again with multiple interpretations—all of which could be right and speak to our human experience. They are stories which make us wonder and bring us into contact with God and into relationship with one another. These shared stories are reinforced by our rituals and festivals. The Church—the gathering together of all who love and believe these stories—is the vehicle for this reinforcement.

So what is the purpose of the Church? Ideally, the Church gathers us into community. The Church teaches and upholds our common values, reminding us to love one another, care for all God has made, and, when necessary, advocate for justice. And the Church is the provider of comfort. She provides comfort to the terrified and guilty conscience, interpersonal support, and unconditional love and acceptance. That is why the message on our LED sign now reads, “We haven’t met you, but we already love you.”

When I was about fourteen, after I’d made my Confirmation in an LCMS[iii] church and received my presentation Bible and a box of offering envelopes (“Congratulations, my son. You’re now an adult in the faith. Time to pony up the cash!”), my family started attending an LCA[iv] congregation. My mom enrolled the whole clan in a Bethel Bible Series[v] class. What struck me about this experience was not just the fact that I was learning the Bible along with my parents, but older members of the congregation—middle-aged folks—were treating me like a contemporary and allowing me to address them by their given names. I felt validated and appreciated by that congregation. This is a power the Church has if she will use it.

In the lessons the Revised Common Lectionary assigned for the Day of Pentecost, we have two different versions of how the apostles received the Holy Spirit. These stories were written by different authors to different communities, possibly a generation apart. Don’t try to reconcile them, just take each for its own sake. We usually lift up Luke’s version in Acts (Acts 2:1-21). We like the blast of the mighty wind, the tongues of fire, and the miraculous, godly speech gushing like a fire hose from the mouths of the formerly pusillanimous and dimwitted disciples. But John’s story (John 20:19-23) has a more subtle, gentle manifestation of the Spirit. Jesus meets the disciples personally, wishes them peace, and breathes on them. It’s almost like reviving them with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He’d have to be very close to them for them to feel his breath.

I think there’s been too much “violent wind” blowing about Christianity in America these days, and some folks think it scares people off[vi]. I’m going to suggest we go a little more with John’s story. No shouting, no speaking in tongues, no rallies on the National Mall. The world doesn’t need more of that. We need peaceful, loving, honest, person-to-person relationship. That’s something you can’t get from staring at your cell phone. That’s what I want to teach my confirmands.

Meet me here next Pentecost. I’ll let you know how well it worked.

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[i] See Luther’s Small Catechism. This is part of his explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles Creed.

[ii] “The word gospel literally means “good news” and occurs 93 times in the Bible, exclusively in the New Testament. In Greek, it is the word euaggelion, from which we get our English words evangelist, evangel, and evangelical. The gospel is, broadly speaking, the whole of Scripture; more narrowly, the gospel is the good news concerning Christ and the way of salvation.” This definition is thanks to gotquestions.org.

[iii] Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Once the biggest group of American Lutherans, the LCMS went uber conservative in the early 1970’s. No women clergy. No LGBTQ+ clergy either. You get the idea.

[iv] Lutheran Church in America. A predecessor body of the ELCA.

[v] This is a really cool series which teaches Bible concepts through pictures. It’s pretty thorough. You can learn about it at www.bethelbibleseries.org

[vi] You might think I’m referring to the ultra-right wing Christian Nationalist Movement. You’d be right.

Lord, Protect Us! (Reflections on Easter 7, Year A 2026)

 

“And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:11)

So, Jesus is gone. At least he’s not around in the flesh anymore. In the First Lesson for Easter 7 in the Revised Common Lectionary (Acts 1:6-14), Jesus takes off for the right hand of the Father leaving his buddies standing around on Mt. Olivet staring at the clouds with their mouths hanging open. A couple of angels show up, telling the disciples that Jesus will be back some day, and suggesting that, maybe, they have better things to do than stand around looking at the sky.

Our liturgical tradition gives us ten days between the celebration of Jesus’ ascension and the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I like that the disciples—as well as the BVM, Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ siblings, and all the other folks who loved Jesus and wanted to be his followers—get a little bit of downtime to decompress and pray and try to sort out what should come next (That’s healthy, don’t you think?). I’ll bet they missed Jesus even while they were still trying to get their brains around the idea that their crucified friend had been raised from the dead. But now, he’s really gone. Pretty soon the clock is going to start again, and they’re going to have to pick up the spiritual ball and try to move it down the field themselves.

In the appointed Gospel Lesson (John17:1-11), Jesus, just before his arrest and crucifixion, prays this “farewell prayer,” in which he asks the Father to protect the followers he’s going to be leaving behind. I have to wonder just what Jesus wants these boys protected from.

Look at the Second Lesson (1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11) for Easter 7. Peter (or, more likely, a disciple writing in the Apostle’s name several years after Peter’s death) is encouraging a Christian community that seems to be getting its butt kicked by society. The writer says the community to whom his letter is addressed is “sharing in Christ’s suffering,” and they are “reviled for the name of Christ.” Well, that sucks. Either the Father wasn’t listening when Jesus prayed for protection for his friends, or the insurance policy Jesus asked for wasn’t meant to be protection against persecution, marginalization, or any kind of earthly suffering. So, what was Jesus praying for?

Peter’s pseudepigraphal[i] letter writer warns his readers, “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering (vv.8-9).” Jesus prays his followers will know oneness, unity, brotherly love. I think this is a prayer to protect us from a loss of faith, a loss of solidarity, and assimilation to the ways of a sinful world.

In the world of the text, it was pretty understandable that some early Christians would want to fall away and avoid the oppression to which the rest of the community was subject. The cost of discipleship just seemed a little too high to pay. In our own time, when nobody gets kicked out of their neighborhood or put in jail for being a Christian, the roaring lion is a little more subtle.

We need protection from our own temptation to hate or despise other human beings. Face it: as Christ’s representatives, we in the Church have done a pretty crappy job with this unity thing. We are far from one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. We’ve battled, criticized, split up and—at times—gone to war with one another over arcane matters of doctrine. We’ve burned each other at the stake and denied the presence of the Holy Spirit in those we’ve opposed. It’s okay for us to disagree, but we’d better be on our guard against a desire to dominate, discriminate, or demonize others. It is unacceptable for any follower of Christ to see another human being—regardless of their faith tradition, race, sexual identity, nationality, or any other identifier—as less than a holy person created in the image of God. We can debate and argue, but we can’t ever fall prey to judging who is or isn’t worthy of God’s compassion or our own.

We also need, in these confusing, frustrating, and potentially frightening times, protection from the temptation to despair. I can see how someone could look at the colossal mess we’ve made of this world and just want to say, “Screw it! I give up!” and shut ourselves in our homes and play games on our phones. But despair is not an option for a Christian. Yeah, there’s plenty wrong out there, and we may not know which way to turn. So, we can always do what the disciples did: we can gather together in fellowship and devote ourselves to prayer. It’s okay to take a little downtime and wait on the Holy Spirit. But please remember we always need to be here for one another. 90% of caring for another is just showing up. We can let the Holy Spirit show us what that other 10% needs to be when the time comes.

The best witness we have to the love of Christ will be our love for one another and our undying desire to share this love—in generous compassion and patient understanding—with the rest of the world. That’s how the world will know we are Christians.

May God deliver you from the evils of anger, intolerance, despair, frustration and resignation this week and always. Thanks for coming by. We’ll talk again soon.

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[i] “Pseudepigrapha” refers to text which is attributed to a person other than the actual writer. I could’ve said “ghost writer,” but pseudepigraphal is a cool word, don’t you think?