I didn’t get much done yesterday afternoon.  Following the staff meeting, I listened to the press conference of Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County District Attorney. At this press conference Mr. Freeman made his case for why he has decided not to charge two Minneapolis Police Officers in the shooting death of Jamar Clark, a young African American man. After listening to Mr. Freeman, I listened to the reaction of leaders of the African American Community. 
 
It appears the forensic evidence points to the District Attorney’s conclusion. I  heard that this was expected from many members of the African American community who were disappointed but not surprised. There is passion and heartbreak and the sense that justice is elusive on all sides of this most unfortunate incident. 
 
I had planned to read and write a little on my sermon but could not focus at all. I kept looking at news websites. I called both my kids, one who lives in NE Minneapolis and the other in Brooklyn Park. 
 
The most helpful thing I did was get into a Facebook conversation with a friend of mine who is white, my age and a pastor.  When I mentioned that I think I’m getting a little less radical in my old age, he responded with, That's okay. But we, and by we I mean we middle-class white guys, always need to look at situations like this from the perspective of African American people whose experience of the police is very different from ours. I found that word very helpful. 
 
By the time 6 o’clock rolled around and confirmation was an hour away, I finally let my focus on this issue recede a bit.  Life does go on and youth do show up for confirmation.  But let me just say that there was something important about the struggle.  I may not have gotten much done, but God did something with me.
 
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
 
 
 

Sunday is Easter Sunday.  It’s the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.  Easter and Christmas are the two days when many who are otherwise disinterested are compelled to come to worship or in some way to find their place in God’s story.
 
Each year I try to tell myself that it’s just another Sunday, but the truth is I prepare for Easter differently than other Sundays.  One person I was talking with about these preparations said, “Of course it’s different… it’s your Super Bowl.”  I guess if you consider the number of expectations and the expectations that we as a church and I as a pastor place on ourselves…Easter is something more than just another Sunday.
 
Higher expectations for special days like Easter are not an altogether bad thing.  Speaking for myself, days with different, sometimes higher expectations, often bring out a depth of experience I am otherwise unprepared to experience.  Perhaps the same can be said for our church and our worship on Easter.
 
All the flowers and the visuals can bring out the importance of beauty in our sanctuary and also within ourselves.  And I’m not talking about putting on our best clothes; it’s experiencing that the beauty that surrounds us is also always within us.
 
The music, which will be glorious, can also help us to reach down and experience that deeper measure of awe and wonder that so often eludes us.  You don’t have to be one who comes up to sing the Hallelujah Chorus with the choir to experience  those few minutes when we are all taken to a different glorious place.
 
And then there is the gospel of John and Mary… the loneliness of the early morning…the confusion, the rage… the mystery of the stone at his tomb having moved…the thrill of his presence.  In a cemetery, a graveyard, at the tomb, Mary experiences life… love… acceptance.
 
If you want to know what I really believe, I believe Easter is a day we all desire… we all have the expectation of experiencing what Mary experienced on that first Easter day.  We expect to know the fullness of life, the depth of love, the reality of divine acceptance…. as Mary says … we expect to “see the Lord.”  On Easter we expect to see Jesus, to believe, to find our place in God’s story.
 
That is a pretty tall order for any pastor or church on any day.  Thankfully it’s not up to us. The flowers, the music, all the people, all help and then in the miracle which is our faith…there will arise a glimmer like the light of the earliest dawn to some of us, to others a light as bright and full as the clearest morning.  CHRIST IS RISEN! is how we will put it into words. Believing that those words come from a deeper place within us and that all that is behind and underneath them, changes everything… transforms every day of our lives and is what it means to find our place in God’s story.

Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Holy Week, which begins this Sunday, means we will have several services.  Here is what they are, what they mean, what you can expect if you attend.
           
            Palm/Passion Sunday:  Jesus shows up in Jerusalem, and the people made a parade out of it.  They laid palm branches down in front of him as a sign of respect.  We will have palm branches for everyone. We will also teach you to say “Hosanna,” which means God help us…. or God save us, like you mean it. 
            About half way through the service we will switch from the parade to the arrest of Jesus. This is just in case you don’t get to one of the services below or forget that between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, there is a holy/hell week for Jesus.
             
            Maundy Thursday: In John 13:37 on that last night Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you.”  When you translate the phrase “new commandment” back to Latin (the language the Bible was originally translated into)  it comes out Mandatum Novum.  So it’s really “The new commandment to love one another as Jesus has loved us” Thursday.
            On this night Jesus eats what some call “The Last Supper.”  Others call it… the first “Lord’s Supper”; we call it “Holy Communion.”  We’ll have Holy Communion.
 
            Good Friday:  This is the day of Jesus’ trial and death. There are a lot of explanations for calling this “Good Friday” and they all come down to saying, bad for Jesus, good for us.
            At our service we will read the seven last words or phrases that Jesus speaks as his death approaches.  It is a very solemn reflective service with several anthems offered by our choir.
 
                                                EASTER DAY
You gotta be here for this day….It would be easier if we just called it…RESURRECTION SUNDAY because  we celebrate that Christ has risen.  Resurrection means death does not have power over God. God never gives up on us.
            6:30: Sunrise:  We meet at the Eden Prairie Cemetery rain or shine, snow or heat at 6:30.  People show up to have that visceral experience of the beginning of a new day… which is one way of describing what the resurrection means.
            8:30: Bring the kids, it’s okay to be a bit different at this service because it’s meant to reflect a party.  And like any good party, we’ll have a movie and something to eat.  This year the movie has two kids telling the Easter story, and we will have Holy Communion standing together at the altar table.
9:15: Easter Breakfast  Although it’s not a worship service, there is something about our church that says, “On a special day like Easter we have to have the opportunity to eat together.” Come early, stay late…eat what you want… drop a few bucks in a basket if you want…. have fun…
            10:00:  Our worship will be glorious.  The choir will be fantastic. And then at the very end, we invite anyone up to the choir to take part in singing the Hallelujah Chorus.  How can you beat that!
 
Keep the Faith,
 
Pastor Dan
           
 
 
 
 

Last night at our Wednesday night worship something amazing happened, and I don’t know what to call it. In case you don’t know, on Wednesdays during this season before Easter we call “Lent,” we have a brief, quiet, reflective worship service after the longer, much louder full-of-conversations soup suppers.  The soups have been great this year; the beef stew last night was gone in 10 minutes. 
 
At our worship we have been traveling with the ancient Hebrew people in their wanderings in the wilderness.  Last night we came to the part where they run out of food, are very hungry, and complain to Moses, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”  (Exodus 16)
 
Just after this whining, God provides that bread-like substance called “manna.”  The story is very clear that the people were only supposed to collect just enough for that day’s needs. Manna literally means ”What is it.” It’s called this because when the Hebrews first saw it they said, “What is that?”   The point of the story is that whatever it was, the manna was what God provided and it was enough.
 
So last night at our brief, quiet reflective worship service where our confirmation class is helping me lead worship, I had someone pass around a basket of crackers.  I asked each one of us to take a cracker.  I invited all of us then to eat a cracker as quietly as it’s possible to eat a cracker and to think of it as a way in which God is addressing or providing for a certain and specific need of our life. 
 
I was the last one to get a cracker and when I reached into the basket… there was one cracker left…..I showed  that minor little miracle to the quiet cracker-eating crowd and said, “What Is That!” 
 
Maybe it was just a coincidence, an odd alignment of who was in the sanctuary at 7 on a Wednesday night and took a cracker out of the basket. Some people will insist God was highlighting the scripture I had just read, reminding us as a congregation that whatever it is we need, God will provide enough and probably not a whole lot more. At my very liberal seminary we would call this “Weird Stuff.”  Whatever it was, it was something powerful, and I’m going with calling it one of those things that you had to be there to fully grasp.
 
You know something like this happens just about every time we are together at EPUMC.  Last fall we called it “Great Things Are Happening Here.” These days we are calling it “Finding our Place in God’s Story by Becoming Servants of Jesus Christ.” I really don’t care what you call what happened last night -- a miracle, the grace of God, a coincidence, weird stuff, or even manna from heaven…what I want to invite you to do is to be ready for whatever it is… when you show up at church.
 
 

 
 
On Tuesday night my wife tried to go to her caucus but got turned away by the long line while she was a mile away. This got me to thinking about how strongly many of us feel and think about this Presidential election. 
 
I believe our faith perspective should indeed inform our political positions and actions.  How can they not?  I also believe we can have different positions and still be faithful to Christ and to each other in community.
 
This leads me to the thought of how it is that in the last several years some of my best relationships are with people who are not like me and a few who think very differently than I do.  There is this guy who works and lives in Nashville; he is as deliberate and introverted as I am reactive and extroverted. And yet, not but, AND YET…  we have forged a friendship in the last several years that I value very much.  It helps that he rides a bike, but sometimes he is so deliberate on the uptake that it drives me nuts. 
 
There is another guy whom I’m a little more like, but he reads the Bible a bit differently than I do.  We have grown to respect each other, at least I very much respect how he is living out his faith.  We talk about once a week, and I can’t speak for him here but I look forward to our chats, even when they are ones where we are disagreeing.  We often find common ground, if nothing else in our respect for one another.  When we take the time to talk things through, we have what I experience as the presence of the Holy Spirit binding us together, not so much in our opinions, but in our love of Christ and the desire to share that love with others.
 
This second friend and I were chatting on line about how it is people who are different can still find a way to be in community together.  He wrote, “My favorite story lately was the friendship between Justices Scalia and Ginsberg, even vacationing together.  Two who were absolutely political opposites but able to see past their opinions and find true friendship.”  I could not have made my point any better.
 
If Justices of the Supreme Court can both disagree and be friends in community…..  it’s important for us to remember this as we enter this intense time in our culture, when so many of us feel so passionately about some very important issues of our lives. This doesn’t mean that we should lower the threshold of our passion for a particular issue, but that we should raise the bar when it comes to understanding each other’s heart.