Sunday, September 26, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 16:41; sermon starts around 25:00)

I’ve talked a bit about my mom in my sermons and about how she was diagnosed with cancer around the time I was five or six. My whole childhood was significantly shaped by her illness and death; but yet, as an adult, I have been amazed to keep discovering just how little I understood about how hard and painful my mom’s battle with cancer really was. I knew that she had chemotherapy that made her hair fall out – I remember getting to play with some of the fun wigs that she had – but I had no idea how rough the chemo and the radiation treatments really were on her body. It was basically a race to try to kill the cancer before the cancer – or the treatment itself – killed her. 

And I knew that Mom had had a mastectomy.  As a kid, that part of it seemed pretty straightforward to me: that’s where the cancer is right there, so just – boom – chop it off and you should be good to go!  But now, as I’m getting close to the age my mom was when she was battling cancer, even that choice hits me kind of differently.  I’m still a relatively young person – and so was my mom – and I can’t imagine having to make that choice whether to literally cut off part of my own body.  That could not have been easy.

But in my mom’s case, that amputation was the most hopeful thing that they could do.  She was barely 40 and there was every reason to expect that she still had decades of life ahead of her.  She was a beloved elementary school teacher and had a huge community of support behind her, praying for her to get better.  And, of course, more than anything, she was a wife and a mother with three young kids at home all under the age of ten.  We needed her.  We loved her.  And so the doctors fought like hell to save her life.  They tried everything that they could to help her, exhausted all possible options, even experimental treatments.  And some of those treatments were extremely invasive and aggressive and painful, but the doctors decided it was worth it – because her life was worth saving, and it was their best chance of doing so.

Sunday, September 19, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 17:34; sermon starts around 23:13)

For the last several weeks, we’ve been reading a lot of passages from the book of James (Luther’s least favorite epistle, lol).  The letter of James belongs to a category of biblical writings known as “wisdom literature” – this also includes books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.  While wisdom literature can sound like something that would be really abstract and esoteric, one of the things that actually characterizes biblical wisdom literature is that it is often very practical and down to earth.  This is the tone that James sets in the very first verse of our second reading today.  He writes, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.”  For James, wisdom is more than just words – wisdom is about our actions.  The true test of wisdom is in how it is reflected – or not reflected – in our day-to-day lives.  

To help draw this out and make it clearer, James asks his readers to consider three questions:

1. Who is wise and understanding among you?
2. Where do all the conflicts and disputes among you come from?
3. What does God want?

These are important questions in the life of faith.  The first time I can remember really wrestling with these questions was way back when I was in sixth grade.  I’ve talked a little bit before about how unpopular I was growing up, how I was bullied a lot.  I grew up as a member of a small class in a K-12 school in a tiny town.  There weren’t exactly a lot of rungs on our social ladder back then, but you can bet your bottom dollar that whatever the lowest rung was, that’s where you’d find me.  

Sunday, September 12, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 20:02; sermon starts around 27:23)
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One morning, when I was in high school, I was hanging out in the school’s computer lab. I was about sixteen years old; it was my junior year, and I was by far the fastest typer in my class – because unlike many of the other students, I actually bothered to practice. I was deep in the middle of one of the typing lessons when one of my younger brother’s friends – Mason Kalin – came into the lab. He saw me sitting back in a corner of the lab and came over to talk to me. I was kind of annoyed by this – I was trying to concentrate on what I was doing! So I only kind of half-listened as Mason started going on and on about whatever it was he was talking about. It sounded like maybe he was talking about one of the video games he and my brother had been playing recently – all kinds of explosions and chaos and who knows what else – I was pretty sure I had already heard my brother going on and on about it at home, so I didn’t feel like I really needed to hear it again. 

Eventually Mason wandered off and I went back to my typing.  After a while, the bell rang, and I closed out of the computer and gathered my stuff and prepared to go to my next class.  But when I stepped out into the hallway, it was like a ghost town.  Nobody was at their lockers, nobody else was walking to their next class – it was weird.  So I walked down the hall a little ways to try to find out what was going on.   And I discovered that everyone – students, staff, faculty – the entire school was all crammed into the library; and they all had their eyes glued to the TV.  I walked in to see what was going on – and I got there just in time to watch the second tower fall.  

Sunday, September 5, 2021
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 15:10; sermon starts around 22:50)

On Tuesday afternoons, almost every week, I drive to Fremont to meet up with other clergy folks from around the area for text study (as I’ve mentioned many times before).  And for me, it’s become a bit of a habit after text study to hit up one of the many drive-thrus in Fremont and bring home something for supper.  It’s just nice to get home and have supper ready and not have to cook.  

My go-to is usually Raising Cane’s, but this last Tuesday I was in more of a taco kind of mood, so I decided to head to Taco Bell instead.  I pulled into the parking lot of Taco Bell and was about to get into the drive-thru lane when I noticed something odd.  A couple of other cars had pulled into the lot ahead of me, driving toward the drive-thru, but at the last minute, they veered away and drove out the other side of the parking lot.  I got closer and realized that there was one lone Taco Bell employee out sweating in the sun, standing at the end of the drive thru lane and waving cars away.