Pastor's reflections
Monthly faith reflections from the pastor.
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I grew up in a Christian tradition that took heaven and hell seriously. They were real places, full of glorious wonder and fiery punishment.
One night as a young child, I lay awake praying desperately. I was afraid that, in the night, Christ would return, and I would be found unworthy and thrown into hell. I was five years old. Maybe six or seven. Over and over I prayed, “Jesus, come into my heart.” But he didn’t. Finally exhausted, I fell asleep, the terrors of hell still burning within me. A few years later, my Sunday school teacher spoke with real affection to our young class. She encouraged each of us to find and memorize the date of our baptism. She said when Satan terrorized her with similar fears, she would gather her courage and say, “You get away from here, Satan! I was baptized on such-and-so day.” That’s what worked for her. What do you make of experiences like these? Many Christians find them strange, even flat-out wrong or dangerous. But I try to avoid theological snobbery. In vivid language, Martin Luther himself described his own terrors and encounters with the devil. Tim Wengert would know. He is a scholar of Reformation history, as well as a teacher and theologian. In an essay on Luther’s “theology of the cross,” in Theology Today, he called these experiences “the heavy weight of hell crossing the thin line of my soul.” He knows them personally and considers them universal in human experience. Suffering and terror are unavoidable in life. Wengert doesn’t cast blame on Christianity or on bad Christian theology. He simply points to Jesus and his cross. “…the cross of Jesus Christ forges the inescapable link between my suffering and God. Luther's soul experienced being stretched out with Christ on the cross, bones exposed, reduced to naked cries and groaning. There can be no voyeurism here—we view Christ's cross from the experience of our own God-forsaken lives.” Don’t take offense at his choice of “God-forsaken” to describe our lives. Wengert isn’t condemning, only describing. We all feel the heavy weight of hell crossing the thin line of our souls, even though we may hide it from each other and even from our own selves. In life, and ultimately on the cross, Christ himself experienced the God-forsaken weight of hell. So here is our salvation. You are not alone. From the cross, Christ sees and hears you when, burdened and suffering, you cry out. The Easter victory is yours. Christ crucified lives! You live with him. During Lent, St. Paul people will study Richard Beck’s Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted. In an interview, Beck said: “I like to think of the language of hell as God’s…emotional involvement in what happens. And that the language of blessing and grace and hell and damnation are the terms and the language of the prophets to communicate God’s deep investment with what’s happening right now in this world.” “And God’s deep investment with what’s happening with you personally,” I would add. Beck went onto say, without the language of hell, all we have is politics or psychology. “Something is either illegal or mentally ill”—which simply trivializes many experiences. We need more powerful language, he said. And thankfully, hell expresses “the deep, deep sense that creation has gone awry and things are not right and God in heaven cries out against these things.” With stories of exorcisms and temptation by the devil, the gospels describe a cosmic struggle against evil. Born human, God plunged headlong into this struggle, for love for you and for the world. By his cross, Jesus stormed the gates of hell and set us free from the devil and all his empty promises, from even the worst terrors the devil can muster. So maybe my Sunday school teacher was on to something. Remember your baptism. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). Thanks be to God. Pastor Clark Olson-Smith And let me suggest a definition different than the typical one. Politics is people living together, making decisions and acting together. Typically, when we don’t like certain decisions and actions, we slap on the label “politics.” So it’s become a word underlining the “bad” behavior of others, or the behavior of “bad” people. “Family politics.” “National politics.” “Church politics.” Doesn’t adding the word politics call to mind the worst of family, nation, and church? But what happens when we focus on the worst? It breeds cynicism and ingratitude. It creates learned helplessness. The typical view of politics feeds the problem. Consider the extreme. Rarely is it put into words, but action reveals truth. If all politics are bad, then good can only be found alone. By myself. I decide and act only in private. Because there is no such thing as a “common good,” I do best when I ignore public relationships and shared consequences. What happens in my family, nation, or church is literally not my problem. Because I’m a good guy, and I stay out of politics. Withdrawal from politics is withdrawal from community. You cannot have one without the other. Citizenship in a nation, membership in a church, birth into a family come with responsibility to the whole. And the word for exercising that responsibility is politics. Even more, the private depends on the public. As we build relationships, make decisions, and act together—politics!—we receive the gift of community. Paul wrote, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. … The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ … If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” Participating in politics expresses our need for one another. We all need all others—not just some as if we can withdraw from the rest, but all, with no exceptions. Paul’s are political words. In fact, they lead right into some of his most well-known words. His next words are often read at weddings, but Paul wrote them to a politically polarized community. They are political words too. “Love is patient. Love is kind,” Paul wrote. And many hear an invitation to retreat into private, ensconced in the illusion that the welfare of their neighbors is no concern of theirs. We must struggle against this temptation! The Jesus of the gospels preached, taught, and healed people in public. When Jesus healed people and cast out their demons, Jesus also restored them to community, to politics. Jesus led a diverse movement of people to march on the capital in Jerusalem! And Jesus died to create local gatherings of people who worship and who care for the orphan, widow, and stranger in their own neighborhoods—whether they came to worship or not. Jesus lived, died, and rose again for politics, which is community, which is love, which is life. Jesus’ kind of politics are impossible without faith and hope, and Jesus’ politics are fulfilled by love. By love, we evaluate politics. With and for love, we participate and transform politics. As messy and imperfect as it can be, we cannot follow Jesus apart from politics with our families, nation, church and beyond. And it’s not all messy and imperfect! All that is good and just and holy in them was also born through politics. Love leads to politics. Through politics, we get to express love. Thanks be to God. Pastor Clark It’s the new year! And it’s not the new year, at the same time.
We are the church, and we live by at least two calendars. One says the new year begins January 1st. Meanwhile, the new church year began on November 27th, the first Sunday in Advent. Keeping time In Davenport, we live near an elementary school, and in New Jersey, we did too. And when I was in between school—after I finished school, and before Susannah began preschool—I would be surprised twice a year every year. Where did all these cars suddenly come from? And then, where did everybody go? It was a reminder. Not everyone lived on my calendar. There are other ways of marking time. Take the creation story. “It was evening and morning, the first day,” says Genesis 1. Seems backwards, right? But there’s more than one way to count a day. For us, one day is sunrise to sunrise. For the ancient Hebrews, God’s people Israel who lived and wrote much of the bible, one day was sunset to sunset. Does it matter? Isn’t a day is a day no matter when you slice it? Maybe both are good but wholly different rhythms of life. The day beginning in the evening: with dinner and rest, perhaps gathered together as family, community. And only after, ending with work, time scattered and busy. Fighting for a day of rest When the people of Israel put the creation story to paper, it was a new time. After losing a devastating war, many were slaves in Babylon. They feared forgetting their homeland and their God. The same holy stories they’d always remembered out loud, they now told in new ways. In Babylon, they wrote. And so, the war raged on in competing stories about the divine…and competing calendars. Babylon worshipped other gods. Babylon’s gods created the world in an act of murderous violence. Humans were made to be slaves of those brutal gods and their earthly stand-in, the king of Babylon. Imagine the rhythm of their calendar. In Babylon, every day was a day of work. For the people of Israel, remembering their God’s creation story was an act of resistance. Built into the story was another way of marking time. Israel’s God created the world in love. On the seventh day, Israel’s God rested. And so may humans. What a gift! A full day, sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. It was a defiant symbol of a holy and humane way of living, a sharply contrasting vision of what life is for. Humans were made to be enjoyed by God and to enjoy loving community with God and all creation. Modern Sundays Early on, Christians began to worship on Sunday, with the sunrise on the day of the Sun a symbol for the resurrection. Early Christians called it the eighth day, the first day of a new creation. During the Reformation, Martin Luther said many times, Sabbath law no longer binds Christians. We modern people may consider it progress to say: Every day is holy, and all of life is holy, and practices that immerse us individually and as a community in God's holiness are good every day. True enough, but incomplete. When I go to a restaurant for Sunday brunch, someone else is working to serve me. And I wonder, when does my server rest? Two times, God said through the prophets, "I hate your worship and prayers and songs, because as you do them, you as a society cheat the poor and favor the rich" (Amos 5:21-24; Isaiah 1:12-17). Labor unions in this country organized and won a five-day work week—two whole days of rest. But as conservatives undermine unions, and jobs shift to non-unionized sectors, corporate calendars cheat people out of time. Many never get a day off. They can’t afford it. And yet, a day of rest is the birthright of all God’s children. In the language of Leviticus 23, you, your family, your livestock, the foreigners in your country, even your slaves must rest on the Sabbath. Everyone with no exceptions. At stake is what God wrote into the fabric of creation and won in the exodus from Egypt and the return from exile in Babylon: freedom for all. A new year True worship leads us, as an act of love, to begin changing our calendars and the calendar of society. January 1st is as good and holy a day as any to notice and wonder. How do I schedule work and rest? Who is working today and who is resting? And what work does our other calendar suggest, so all may rejoice and be glad for this day that God has made? Thanks be to God. Pastor Clark Olson-Smith |
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715 South Third Street, Clinton, IA 52732
at the foot of the south bridge
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