This is another one of those weekends where our culture and (what I often call) our Church or liturgical calendar are in what I like to think of as a friendly rivalry with each other.  This year however they both mark a different kind of time.
 
In our culture it’s Memorial Day Weekend.  It’s the weekend when our country honors those who have served in the armed forces.  It’s a patriotic weekend that attempts to instill the values of our way of life in America.  I still remember as a Boy Scout marching in a parade in my small hometown. We marched all the way out to the edge of town to the cemetery. I remember the shock of seeing the men in something like uniforms shooting their guns.  As a boy I wondered why they were wiping tears from their eyes.  Now I know it wasn’t the smoke, but the memory of those they had loved and lost.  (We do this in the church on All Saints Sunday in November; not with the salute of guns but more by ringing our bell and singing “For All the Saints.)
 
Memorial weekend is also the start of summer, the weekend to take off your winter coat, put the snow shovels away, take out the suntan lotion, or like many of you at church we are stepping up things at the community garden. I get into this as Memorial weekend has become the weekend before the Annual Conference, (that weeklong, once-a-year meeting in St. Cloud with all the other United Methodist in Minnesota that I attend). For the last 10 years or so, I’ve been riding my bike from Minnetonka to St. Cloud with a couple of fellow pastor bike riding buddies for the start of Annual Conference and then at the end we ride back.  For me riding to St. Cloud has become like putting in the dock is for many you.
 
When this weekend occurs within our church changes with each year, it depends on when Easter occurs.  This Sunday, the 6th Sunday after this year’s Easter, is known as Ascension Sunday.  On Ascension Sunday, we read the story of Jesus’ final goodbye to the disciples after his resurrection.  Jesus ascends into the heavens.  He leaves earth, in a body we might recognize...for good.
 
Like Memorial Day weekend, Ascension Sunday marks the beginning of a new kind of time for Christians. Reading this scripture reminds us of the kind of in-between time we all live in. There are different ways to describe this time. Some of my more conservative friends describe it as the time between the Ascension and Jesus’ second coming.  Without getting into that “friendly rivalry” of interpretation, I think it’s more about the how we practice faith in a time in-between the time and in a culture that is different than the one Jesus lived in and practiced... and the time when that culture fully realizes God’s acceptance for all people.   How do we not so much do what Jesus did, but how do we trust that God in Christ has empowered us, which is another way of saying that God entrust us, or trust us enough to be the body of Christ for this time, for this world.
 
I’m going to practice both kinds of time this weekend.  And as you are up at the lake putting the dock in, or home putting the garden in (finally),  or at church putting yourself in that place and time to be with God… and as you do, I hope you can experience something of the trust that God has in you.

Jenga is a game where these rectangular pieces of wood are first stacked tightly together in a tower. Then players take turns one by one taking them out and restacking them.  The goal is of course not to be the player who happens to pull out the piece of the puzzle that causes it to fall. There are various strategies for doing this and they all involve making it hard for your opponent.

This year at confirmation we played Jenga a bit differently, we tried to see how high we could go; we made moves that supported each other.

We played Jenga….together.

This is a picture of our entire 2014 Confirmation class and myself at our last meeting last night playing our last game of Jenga…together. That’s right there are two of them Alex and Kate and they were a great team.  The Jenga you see in this picture is a Jenga set and a half and we got it almost twice as high as this picture.  We played Jenga together well in confirmation this year.

This Sunday we will celebrate the confirmation of faith for Kate and Alex.  I want to encourage you to attend both to support Alex and Kate and to reaffirm, to re – confirm your faith as well.  What is confirmed at confirmation are vows that you were made for you at your baptism.  Those vows have to do with believing that good is more powerful than evil; that Jesus is a pathway to God you recognize and that in the end Love wins. I guess you could say we have many confirmations in our life and that Confirmation Sunday is something like a first public confirmation.

If you can’t make it to worship this Sunday I want to still encourage you to take some time during the day to pause and in some way confirm or reconfirm you faith.  Here are a few suggestions I’ve come up with based upon our year in confirmation and some of the things we experienced.

• Light a Candle and turn off the lights and just look at it for a moment.  If you don’t have a match; place the candle on a glass table top, turn on the flashlight app on your phone, place the phone directly underneath the candle.
• Say the Lord’s Prayer in a whisper or with someone you love.
• Share out loud a high or a low of your week.  Preferably this does not include something about how good or bad you did on a test at school.
• Do something for someone in need.  If you can’t serve at a food shelf or go to Feed My Starving Children, how about calling a relative (think that reclusive uncle) who is lonely and could use a hello on a Sunday afternoon.
• Download and watch one of Rob Bell’s Nooma short films, really they are all under 13 minutes at nooma.com. “Life” “You” “Sunday” even “Lump” are good choices
• Read the Bible. Read the Bible in a translation you don’t usually use.  Try “The Message.”  We’ve got plenty of these Bibles at church you can borrow or have. Some suggestions are I Corinthians 12, the story of Jacob in Genesis starting in chapter 25. (This will be great preparation for worship this July)  Any story about Jesus start with the Good Samaritan.
• Eat a piece of Pizza (We did this most every week.  At the very least you can reconfirm how much you like pizza)
• And of course, Play Jenga…Together.

I want to thank Kate and Alex and their families for a wonderful experience this year. May your Jenga towers grow tall and steady and may our hearts always beat in rhythm with God’s heart.

 
This Sunday is Mother’s Day.  Often in an attempt to make things sound a bit more like church, we call it the Festival of the Christian Home. There are three things about celebrating Mother’s Day in church that concern me. The first is that although being a mom is a very important role in any woman’s life, for some the most important, it is not the only role. If this is the only day and the only role we recognize of women in our lives; that’s a problem.  The second is that not all women who desire to become mothers - will; nor do all women desire to become mothers; I’m concerned how we handle that.  And the third is that not all mothers - how do I say this – are remembered well. 
 
I often try to manage these concerns by saying that there is a sense in which all of us have experienced something like the direction, love and acceptance of a mother, even if the woman we remember was not our biological or adopted parent. This year, at least in the sermon, even with these concerns, I’m giving into Mother’s Day. 
 
I want to share this picture of my mom with you in advance. This is a picture of my mom (that one of my cousins in Illinois who is really into taking old family pictures and posting them on Facebook posted a few months ago). That’s me, with my head on her lap just below the coffee cup.
 
I was stunned when I first saw this picture.  I simply do not remember my mom being that young. I mean look at her, how old is she?  She was 26 when I was born so in this picture she must be what 27 maybe 28. And here is the other thing; I do not remember seeing my mom looking so relaxed, hassle free, even happy. She is not doing one of the three things she is doing in every other picture of her which are: holding a baby, or cooking dinner, or doing laundry. 
 
This is the happiest I have ever seen my mom. I know this picture was taken before life, took her life over. I’m the second of 5 boys and a year after the fifth one was born my father became disabled.  You would have thought somewhere in my memory there would be a moment of equal tranquility, but there is not. And my cousin has not posted a picture that even comes close to this one.
 
I was deeply moved when I first saw this picture because I realized how much I miss my mom - who died 11 years ago this October.  The emotion is also about how I regret not knowing the young woman in this picture.  I began to think about what I remember about my mom. Her name was Georgie and she was not an unhappy person but she was a bit anxious. I began to think about how it is that my mom gave up being the young woman in this picture to well...be my mom.
 
 
It’s that kind of focus on another in the midst of many roles in life that we will celebrate in worship this Sunday.  It’s important that we pay attention to the women in our lives and what they have done for us.  For when we look back into those faces, faces of the women who have in some way guided or nurtured us, challenged and tested us, loved and provided for us that we see the face of God.

The memo is off a by a day this week for a few reasons, the main one of which, is that I was under the weather yesterday. I had a lot of things on the calendar and some things going through my mind not on the calendar that I wanted to get to.   But when you can’t move your head off the pillow to take the CPAP mask off… well you quickly discover that what is on the calendar may have to wait. But there was one thing I had to do and so I rested for as long as I could to have enough wellness within me. 
 
A few weeks ago Kathy Jarvis had invited me to say a prayer, dedicating a bench in memory and honor of Mandy Matula at Brunswick Bowl in Eden Prairie. Mandy is the young woman who went missing a year ago yesterday.  Her body was not found until last fall. Kathy manages at Brunswick Bowl where Mandy had worked.  (Similarly, many of the youth from EPUMC have worked there as well.)
 
I experience these invitations as both a great privilege and something of an ominous task.  It’s one thing to preach sermons and be at funerals and other sacred events with people you know and who have certain expectations of what is going to happen. It’s quite another to bless a bench at a bowling alley.  And yet benches and bowling alleys are as sacred a space to some people as pews in churches are to some of us.  I have to remember that even though I’m the one who is feeling out of place, the need is the same.
 
That need, is of course, to connect with what is holy, with God.  I thought some of you might be interested in what I prayed. I share it with you as those who also grieve the tragic death of someone so young.
 
 
Mysterious God of Life and Death,
          Today, we remember Mandy
          Whose life touched all of us
          And added love and beauty and creativity
          Friendship and honesty,
          Courage and companionship
          To our lives.
 
Beloved Source of all that is,
   We come here to dedicate this bench
          in memory of Mandy and to her honor 
                at this one of her places of work.
                   
May this bench bring rest to those who seek it;
          As Mandy helped us to put down our burdens and listened to us.
May this bench revitalize those who sit here;
          As the memory of Mandy still refreshes our spirits and calls us to life.
May this bench be a place where friends meet and hold onto each other
          As the memory of Mandy still holds many of us in its Holy Purple Light.
 
Lord of Compassion as we dedicate this memorial to Mandy we also pray
          For all those who still grieve.
         
For Wayne and Lisa and Steven and all her family
                    send your angel of consolation for this pain is heavy and deep
                              one that no one can bear alone.
         
For her classmates and teammates and roommates and co-workers and friends
                    Send your hope for a new day when we will all embrace
                              in the ties that bind us forever together
                                        in this life and the life that is to come.
         
For all of us who will throughout our lives remember this as a day of morning
                    Send your peace that in your time O Holy One
                              transforms even our
                                        deepest fear
                                                  our hottest anger
                                                            our most intense despair
                              Into your eternal and everlasting peace.
                                        In which we trust
                                                  Mandy forever rest.