We’ve had a wonderful Christmas season at EPUMC.  And in case you missed it, I want to share a wonderful moment that should not be forgotten. 
 
At the 4:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service we invite children to help us tell the story of the birth of Jesus. As they come in, kids can choose to be Sheep or Shepherds or Angels or Stars.  Each group gets a different small prop.  Sheep get sheep ears, Shepherds get a headband, Angels get halos and Stars get a star on a stick. It’s all very precious, even when some of the stars figure out what you can do with a stick with a star on the end of it.
 
We also have a newborn and parents sitting up front for the characters in the story to come and “adore.”  I give each group instructions on what to do when they come up to see the baby Jesus.  Stars shine.  Angels fly.  Shepherds look surprised.  And sheep… well, sheep baaa. 
 
This year the baby Jesus did not make a peep the entire time.  So the sheep and shepherds come up last.  The sheep are often the toddlers and other little ones, but they do baaaa very well.  This year the sheep are baaaing away, and one of them says, “The baby Jesus is asleep.”  Without missing a beat, one of the shepherds says, she says this right next to me sort of into my microphone…she says, “Well, the baby Jesus must have been counting sheep.”  Do you get it, sheep in front of the baby baaing, the baby counting sheep and sleeping?  I can’t make stuff like this up.
 
The moment was cute and funny and so very appropriate.  How does a kid who I think is maybe a fourth grader know to say that and with just the right timing? And why is it that we all laughed so hard, that it felt like it came from a deeper place within us than the wit of a wisecracking shepherd warranted?
 
This time of year has a way of doing that, when we sit around with families and tell the stories and laugh a little louder or our eyes well up with tears a little more quickly than the new boyfriend or girlfriend who is hearing about the time this or that happened for the first time. 
 
Just what that is about may be a little different for every one of us, but the thing we share in common is that need to be connected….to share in a common bond… not so much to have a secret, but to have something that is between us that is priceless…something you just can’t make up if you tried.
 
This little story and our response tell me that we have that something here at EPUMC that you can’t make up. And in the months and years to come, I am so looking forward to experiencing more of these kinds of moments and trusting that although we can’t make this stuff up….that maybe God can.

Keep the Faith,

Pastor Dan
 
 
 
 

Last night after a week of begging and then threatening to go out and buy them, my lovely and talented wife gave in and made spritz cookies.  I helped by going downstairs to watch the hockey game.  I came up in time to have a few cookies fresh out of the oven.  One of my favorite things about having our children grown up and out of the house is that now I can scoop up some spritz cookie dough and put it on top of a “right out of the oven” spritz cookie without much of a reprimand.
 
Katie tells me that she has to hide most of the cookies to make sure there are some around for when the kids come over.  My response is simple: Why?  I love those cookies. I’ve always loved them and the dough too!  One of the great sources of love I have for my wife is that she lovingly makes spritz cookies and the dough to taste just like my mother's at Christmas.
 
Christmas is filled with things that are savored and intended to give us joy. What often confuses us is that what gives us joy is not so much the things we receive, it is that we rediscover the capacity to cherish, to hold something deeply, securely almost hidden in our hearts until something causes it to be uncovered.
 
I’m not kidding when I say that a “right out of the oven” spritz cookie with spritz cookie dough on top taste to me like nothing else I can describe.  And I don’t mean the combinations of too many types of sugar to count.  What I think I mean is that combination of past and present and future that at its best we call a longing for home. It’s that desire to re-encounter what ever it was that had a part in shaping and forming us into what we have become.
 
I know that may sound a little too nostalgic even for this time of year.  But let me try to tell you something.  My childhood was defined by the aneurysm my father experienced when I was 9. Although he survived, it was as if he became a sixth boy for my mother to raise with my 4 brothers and myself. With few resources and fewer skills, somehow she helped us all make it. 
 
At this time of year I look back as an adult on the sacrifice and devotion of my mother.  I learned as a young adult that she saved throughout the year in something called a Christmas club so that our Christmas was every bit as merry as the cousins I so envied.  She took in laundry and cleaned other people’s houses.  And at Christmas, she made a lot of spritz cookies and she let us eat the cookie dough!  Despite her struggles and limitations, she did not allow this defining moment in our lives to overwhelm us…she kept trying.   And that, my friends, is what I taste when I have a “right out of the oven” spritz cookie with spritz cookie dough on top.
 
Christmas is the time when we re-encounter the love that has shaped and formed all of us. This is of course the love of God that comes in the birth of the baby Jesus.  This Christmas may you rediscover… reclaim that love that is within you as you sing the familiar carols, light a candle in the darkness and stand with others who also long for home.
 
Keep the Faith,
 
Pastor Dan
 
 
 PHOTO by Roni used by permission, Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial, No Derivative License.

Sunday is Cantata Sunday at EPUMC.  This means that we will have a very full choir and a very nice orchestra offering in music the story of Jesus’ birth.  I really don’t know how Don, our worship director, does this every year.  In addition to making sure we have such an excellent variety in music every week, he is also preparing for Cantata Sunday from the beginning of October.   It will be a wonderful day.
 
One of the things about Cantata Sunday is that I don’t preach.  And so for the last several years I’ve taken the week beforehand to go away to my family’s cabin near Cross Lake, MN to prepare sermons for 2018.  Well, let me be clear, I don’t write sermons for a whole year, but I do try to map out scriptures and a theme we will follow throughout the coming year.  It’s a bit of a daunting task, but I’ve found that this sort of preparation inspires me. I hope it encourages Don and Deb and others to at least know what I’m thinking. I’ll tell you all about this at our Annual Meeting on January 20.
 
So that is where I am this Thursday morning… Well it’s actually Wednesday night that I’m writing this piece.  Up here I work until about 7or so and then go into town for something to eat.  Tonight I went to the Bourbon Room in Cross Lake, which as I’ve told you before, has some good eats in addition to a variety of its name sake’s libations.  I went expecting to get a chicken dinner, but tonight they had something new, a barbeque buffet. I could not resist.
 
To tell you the truth I enjoy being up here alone. You can here the wind blowing over the newly formed ice of the lake, the moon and stars light up the night so vividly. After a while though I just need to be with people, and when I go into town for dinner, it can be interesting.  Take tonight for example.  I went to the Bourbon Room because in addition to a chicken dinner for $12, I thought I was going in for, every Wednesday night they have a meet raffle. In case you didn’t get it… a meat raffle at a place called the Bourbon room spells “cheap entertainment,” and tonight it didn’t disappoint.
 
There were moans and groans from people who didn’t win the latest plastic bag of pork chops or wieners. It was just another cold lazy winter night up here at the Bourbon Room, and yet for me at least there were some things to reflect upon that are often lost in the business and routine of a week in EP.  Things like making sure you are at a place like this on the night they do something to get people out in the dead of winter in a resort town with no snow.  Not to mention the new barbeque buffet, two words I have never heard uttered one after the other.
 
Now I’m not trying to compare our church to the Bourbon Room by any stretch of even my imagination. There is a very big and important difference between someone’s “Cheers” and Church. What I guess I’m driving at is that we all have different communities that draw us to together and help us to feel a bit less alone in this sometimes-lonely world. 
 
Cantata Sunday EPUMC brings people together in a way that the hope of a good sermon cannot. I hope you invite a friend or member of your family who could use some companionship and something positive in their life.  Because maybe in the place you reach out to push out the loneliness, you will find the love and acceptance of God awaiting you. 

Keep the Faith,
​Pastor Dan