Category: Faith

Oh boy.

It is finals time here at Chez LTSP which means my finals started before my last class begins. My first final was this afternoon for History of Christianity. It went fine – I wrote for 2.5 hours about whey the Lutheran church is doing a poor job with evangelicalism towards Mexican-Americans. The fact that the Spanish Language Worship resource released by the ELCA does not include Lady of Guadeloupe as a festival (I believe) was my whole theme. And I somehow connected that to the rise of Monasticism in the 200s CE, the Margburg Conference of 1529 between Luther and Zwingli, and the Missionary Conference of 1910. Why did I pick those 3 things to discuss? One of the requirements of the exam was to take one event in the “early”, “reformation”, and “modern” church period and write about it while reflecting on three different quotations. I also had fifteen minutes after receiving the question to look at my notes. After reading the entire 1.5 page question, the first three events I noticed in my notes for all three of those sections were the three I ended up writing about. How many people in that class wrote on the Marburg Conference? Yeah, that’s right – only me because I am that awesome. I just hope my argument in the exam was relatively plausible and made sense. I also decided to write in backward chronological order to try and be a little different. This is what I get for spending only 15 minutes studying for this exam. And I also just figured out that I misspelled Guadeloupe at least a dozen times in the exam. I am a terrible Mexican-American.

So why did I only spend 15 minutes studying for my history final? Well! I am glad you asked because I have been struggling with, and writing a paper, for my Old Testament course You think that writing 8000 words on 13.5 verses of Ruth would be hard but you would be wrong. I could have written more (because I am that long winded). I finished it and printed it out exactly 12 hours before it is due. And, while writing it, I realized that I do not understand how to use tenses correctly. This is something that I need to work on.

So the rest of my night will be devoted to learning hebrew verb paradigms, specifically 1-aleph weak verbs. And I might try to figure out imperatives as well. I really have no idea what those are. Eep.

Tonight I led an informal vespers service at the chapel at LTSP. My friend Dan took care of the prayers of intercession and other prayers. I handled the homily. I was nervous going into it and my homily underwent 5 draft changes (and I was making changes up to the moment of show time) but it went well! Tonight, our reading was from John 1:35-42 since today is the feast day of Saint Andrew. Our hymns were Rejoice, Rejoice, All Believers (ELW 244) and By All Your Saints (ELW 420). And I think it was the shortest tuesday night vespers so far – we were out in exactly 20 minutes. We were missing our usual 3rd hymn but, really, we just went through it. I hope all the people who need to write papers tonight appreciate that.

I’ll paste my homily/reflection/etc in this post. To be honest, I still haven’t figured out exactly what a homily is but I think I did okay.

Tuesday, November 30 St. Andrew’s Feast Day

I was a junior in college, in a dining hall, enjoying something extremely unhealthy, when my identical twin brother spotted me from across the room. With his tray of food, he hurried over, and I could see that he was dying to share something with me. He sat down and over greasy pizza, burgers, and fries, he broke down his new plan on what to do after graduation. He laid out, enthusiastically, and in detail, that we as a society are at the cusp of a revolution in food creation and production and he wanted to be involved in it. For him, this was a moment reminiscent of the “plastics” scene from the movie The Graduate. This new future ‚Äì a future where fish could be cheaper, more plentiful, and its production more ecologically sound than chicken ‚Äì was what he wanted to jump into. My brother spoke with passion, with drive, with energy, and with power. He had even sketched out a business plan! And as I chewed and munched on my food, it took everything in my power to not roll my eyes as hard as I could. This wasn’t the first dream or vision that my brother had shared with me. And it wasn’t the last. Since we were very little, this dreaming aspect of my brother has been a part of who he is. He is much more of the entrepreneur and the schemer than I am. So, in our gospel reading for today, when I see Andrew coming to his brother Simon, I cannot help but see this episode through the lens of my own experience as a brother, as a participant in the dreams of my own brother, and as a brother who has heard many stories, many dreams, and many many schemes about what is the next big revolution that we need to latch onto, right now. Was this really the first time that Andrew shared his passion with Simon? From my own experience, I find that difficult to believe because entrepreneurs and dreamers rarely ever have just one dream.

And, to me, this is who Andrew is. He is described by the author of John as a disciple of John the Baptist ‚Äì Andrew is listening to that voice in the wilderness, listening to that call from God, listening to that teacher crying out for a return to God to make right that relationship that was grounded in the experience of the Exodus, the prophets, the Torah, and the Writings of Scripture. And when John the Baptist speaks, Andrew listens. John sees Jesus and cries out that this Jesus is the Lamb of God! And Andrew pays attention. This announcement wakes him up and he, along with an unnamed disciple, follow Jesus from a distance. And when they are given the chance to meet with Jesus, to spend the day with him, to dwell with the Incarnated One, they do not turn it down. And Andrew doesn’t just stay with Jesus. Instead, he goes out to share what he has heard, what he has seen, and what he has witnessed. Andrew is the first named disciple of Christ and the first disciple to share the news of Jesus to others. And his first target of that sharing isn’t the King, it isn’t the Roman rulers or a learned religious teacher. He doesn’t return to his neighborhood synagogue or to John or to the gates of his city to talk to the passerby, the poor, or the mighty. Instead, he finds his brother and tells him to come and see Jesus.
And Simon does.

It is the dreamers who become the first disciples of Christ. It is these entrepenuering individuals who are first called by Jesus to come and stay with him. But Jesus doesn’t stay in that limited world. He is not to be merely circulated among those who are already looking for and striving for a different world. Andrew doesn’t stay with Jesus. He goes out and brings Simon! And this, to me, is the first step in the inclusiveness of God’s call and God’s grace. This is a grace that is not contained among one group of people but is open to others. It would be nice if I could identify with Andrew and imagine myself as being among those who would have been the very first called to Jesus Christ. But I know that this isn’t true. There is already an Andrew-type person in my life and even though we share the same DNA, the same parents, the same background, and many of the same experiences, I am not Andrew. My brother is. But Jesus is open to me too. This, for me, is part of the miracle that is grace ‚Äì that this grace is so big, so vast, and so wide, that I am included too.

So, on this feast day of Andrew the Apostle, after the holiday of Thanksgiving and at this start of Advent, as I and all of us await Christ’s entrance into the world in His birth through Mary, I thank God for the gift of brothers who are always scheming, dreaming, and who are never content with just everyday things. May they continue to call us and open us towards our Gracious God, towards God’s ways, and to teach us all to proclaim and dwell with God’s greatest gift ‚Äì our crucified and Risen Lord.

Amen.

Fellow seminarians, Laura, Kristen, and Moose sing “Beautiful Savior”, ELW 838.

Earlier this week, the bishops came to town.

The bishops represented four specific synods (and four larger regions) of the ELCA and came to interview seniors, meet with seminarians, and try to explain the “draft” in no-anxiety inducing ways. As a junior, many of the topics covered did not pertain to me but I did love hearing about the draft. Okay okay, the bishops do not like to call it a “draft” but it’s the only word that students use. The draft is really the assignment process – the process how seminarians are assigned to synods across the ELCA. Seminarians call it the draft in honor of the NFL draft (not the military draft I think). The anxiety inducing images are groups of bishops meeting at the churchwide offices in Chicago, putting all the available seminarians on a wall, and then haggling over them. I think the room is also suppose to be covered entirely in velvet and the walls resemble the billiard hall for landed gentry in the late 1800s. In the smoke filled room, students are traded for, against, and decisions are made. I never really thought this was a valid interpretation of the draft because if it really was a draft, I would like a signing bonus. And having Chris Berman narrating the event, going over our statistics, and describing how fast we can run the 40 yard dash, would be fantastic.

My bishop came down to visit and I had lunch with him and met up with him in a small group discussion. I also met with the bishop from the Northern Texas – Northern Louisiana Synod. Both discussions went really well and I asked quite a bit about the opportunities for latino pastors and whether latino pastors would end up being placed into only specific congregations (as the former head of a call committee, I am very familiar with the ways committees can reject candidates). Would I really only find a call in a multi-ethnic congregation, a hispanic congregation (even though I currently do not speak spanish), or would my opportunities to receive a first call be larger than that? I’m curious because I know that I will be restricted on where I will end up (sorry North Dakota! /sarcasm) and I really would like to not sit around for five years waiting to be called (though a bishop that visited did wait 5 years until his first call). I was told that I really should learn Spanish (the growth in the ELCA for a lot of congregations is among hispanics) but that I won’t be smacked into a narrow demographic when it comes to first call opportunities.

Though what first call opportunities will be there, the bishops were frank that the church is in a strange boat right now. Many churches cannot afford a full time pastor and many new models are being thought about to merge congregations or to create multi-point parishes were one pastor serves multiple churches. Whenever I heard the bishops talk like this, I think about the early Lutheran church in the United States which was served by many pastors who spent most of their time on horseback. I’ve only been horseback riding once and I remember being young and pleading with the horse, several times, to not jump because I was afraid I was going to fall off all the time. I was about ten years old and the horse had a sense of humor. And by sense of humor, I mean that the horse liked to messed with me because it would stop at ditches, pretend that it was going to jump across, and then walk over. That’s anxiety inducing right there. I hope the horses that served the frontier weren’t smartalecks too.

Besides the attempts to dissuade our fear of where we will eventually end up to do ministry, I enjoyed the bishops’ visit. I wish more had been able to make it and I think it’s very fitting that the bishop from New York is as towering figure as he is. For the city of skyscrapers, that just seems to make sense.

Taken on October 2, 2010. I enjoy being robed up.

ELCA Press Release pertaining to the Fund for Leaders Scholarship. This is why I was in Chicago last month.

It should not have taken me this long to post this.

I had an interesting seminary experience on Wednesday.

For those of you who are counting, I have one class on Wednesday – Introduction to Christian History. The class is in the afternoon and is 3 and one-half hours long. Basically, on Wednesdays, I eat lunch, go to class, and then go to dinner. I am never hungry at dinner time but the food is sometimes bad enough, I wouldn’t have eaten it anyways. It’s fun when the the world meshes like that.

Anyways, for the last three weeks, Dr. Timothy Wengert was the lecturer in my History class. Who is Dr. Wengert? Well, when it comes to Lutheran Academia, he’s pretty much THE GUY in the United States. His list of books is impressive, his track record being involved in ecumenical documents between the ELCA and other church bodies (including some future documents that will come out between the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church in 2017), involve him to some degree. And he’s the co-editor of the latest edition of the Book of Concord. He’s kind of a big deal and his specialty is with the Reformers, specifically Philip Melancthon (he’s the guy who wrote the founding confessional document for the Lutheran church, the Augsburg Confession). And so for his last lecture with the class, he asked us to write a paper for him. The topic was Martin Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian and we were asked to analyze what Martin Luther meant by freedom and compare that with either Calvin or the Council of Trent. And he’ll be grading the paper. I’m not gonna lie – I was a little intimated by this assignment.

So, after staying up way too late and spending Wednesday morning revising my paper, I printed it out in the Brossman center, stapled it in the library, and brought it, stains and all, to class on Wednesday. I tossed it on the pile of papers at the front of the room, sat down, pulled up my laptop, and tried to prepare for lecture (I was also heavily caffeinated because diet soda is my friend). I opened up the outline for the day’s lecture and noticed that it was only half a page long. This outline was too short for an expected 2.5 hour lecture. Inside, I panicked a little. Was I missing something? Were we going to have to play Jeopardy in class again (which I kicked butt in, tyvm)? Would I not be able to actually spend the entire time reading blogs? The questions seminarians can have prior to lecture knows no bounds. I failed to actually guess the right answer to my query. At the very start of class, Dr. Wengert stood in the front of the class, and after showing us a facsimile of an original copy of the German version of Freedom of a Christian, he took out his copy of the book, looked at the class and asked “So who started reading the translation from the very beginning? Raise your hand. It’s okay to admit it – your grades are sunk already so feel free to be honest. ” Dr. Wengert has a very academic sense of humor and, after a few people raise their hands, he shared “well, that was wrong. So who started at the translator’s introduction? Hands?” I rose my hand when we got to the part of the text that included Martin Luther’s letter to Leo X. That wasn’t right either and the first quote in my paper was from that section of the text. Le sigh.

For the next hour, the class watched (and participated) as Dr. Wengert did an extremely detailed walk through of Freedom of a Christian. I didn’t answer many of his questions because I was too busy keeping a running checklist in my head of the things I didn’t include (or got wrong) in the paper. Luckily, I did touch on a few big topics (I talked about the commands and promises of the Bible but forgot to actually use the phrase law and gospel) and I also made the mistake of not fully understanding what Martin Luther meant by his use of splitting the person into spiritual/new and worldly/old realms. If I had, it would have made my analysis of Calvin’s view of Christian freedom in Chapter 19 of his Institutes of Christian Religion a tad easier.

It was fascinating to see Dr. Wengert’s mind work and to see, and hear, how his reading of the text has evolved during the last thirty years that he has taught this text. But, after the discussion, I was left a little out of sorts and feeling just a tad weird about what just happened. I uess that this is part of the bootcamp aspect of Seminary. “You just spent a week analyzing these source documents and you think you know something? Here’s how you really do it.” And then BOOM BOOM BOOM! You are left in a daze as a brilliant mind illuminates the text, and shows HOW to illuminate the text. It’s breathtaking, fascinating, intimidating, and a little obnoxious all at the same time.

I’m looking forward to Lutheran Confessions with him next semester. This is going to be body building, Lutheran style. I should start bicep curling Lutheran Hymnals, bench pressing the Book of Concord, and taking performance enhancing versions of the sacraments now to get ready. Watch out world! I’m gonna get huge.