Sunday, December 18, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fourth Sunday of Advent
watch this service online (gospel reading starts around 26:44; sermon starts around 28:18 (audio was weird and skippy for some reason this day))

Thomas Anderson was a regular guy, just living his life. He worked in a mid-level job as a computer programmer, and pretty much every day for him was just get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, repeat. The spiciest thing about him was that he enjoyed hacking in his spare time. But one day, in the midst of his mundane life, Thomas is approached by a couple of mysterious people who tell him that basically everything he thinks he knows about the world is a lie – that there is much, much more to the reality of this world than what he has known.

One of the two people he meets, a man named after the Greek god of dreams, offers him a choice – two different pills that he can take: a blue pill that will return him to his life as he’s known it, where he can forget any of this ever happened; or a red pill that will wake him up to see the world around him as it truly is.

Most of you have probably clocked by now that I’m talking about the late 90s hit movie The Matrix. Heh, it’s not at all the most up-to-the-minute pop culture reference, but it’s still a great story. Thomas Anderson – AKA Neo – is pulled out of his ordinary life and “down the rabbit hole.” This choice he makes draws him into this whole epic adventure he could never have imagined.

Nowadays, this whole idea of being “red-pilled” has taken on some really unfortunate associations in popular culture, not intended by the filmmakers. But this is still a powerful scene. And I find that this choice that Neo makes resonates with our gospel reading for this morning in some interesting ways.

Sunday, December 11, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Third Sunday of Advent
watch this service online (readings start around 30:09; sermon starts around 36:24)

I went to a barbecue this summer that some old friends of mine were hosting to celebrate the fourth of July. Some of you might remember my friend Jacob, who was just ordained last weekend – this gathering was out at his folks’ place. It was a really fun time – we ate hamburgers and hotdogs and ran around their yard playing croquet. We all discovered together that even if a game only barely qualifies as a sport, I will still be terrible at it. We lit off a whole mess of fireworks and just generally had a good time hanging out together. 

However, what most sticks in my mind from the event is sitting and talking all evening with my dear friend Coco, Jacob’s wife. Coco is ordained as a deacon, and our conversation was particularly memorable, because while everyone was gathered there to celebrate and to blow stuff up and have a good time, Coco and I spent several hours talking almost nonstop… about funerals – and death. Heh, chalk that up to occupational hazard, I guess. 

Sunday, December 4, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Second Sunday of Advent
watch this service online (readings start around 25:00; sermon starts around 31:58; and yes, video is sideways and I don’t know how to fix it)

John has such harsh-sounding words for the Sadducees and the Pharisees in our gospel reading for this morning. He calls them out for being a bunch of hypocrites – calling them a “brood of vipers” which is even saltier in the original Greek – not exactly what you expect to hear in this joyful season leading up to Christmas!

However, the bulk of what John has to say isn’t actually about these leaders themselves; it’s a warning to them about what’s coming. It’s a warning about the radical changes that the kingdom of God will usher in – changes that will massively upset the balance of the status quo. 

Sunday, November 27, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
First Sunday of Advent
watch this service online (readings start around 25:52; sermon starts around 31:08)

I was having dinner recently with my good friend Heidi – and she was giving me grief because I spent a good 20 minutes digging through my bag, trying to get my hands on something I absolutely could not find. I tend to carry a lot of junk with me. But, you see, I have this goofy theory – which I had shared with Heidi – that at the end of the day, there are really two kinds of people in this world: there are the people who always walk around with their handbags and their pockets overflowing with stuff that might be useful… and there are the people who depend on the people with the pockets and the bags to be carrying the useful things that they need. Heh, I definitely belong to the first group – and so does Heidi, for that matter! – we’re sort of like aspiring Mary Poppinses, and I suppose it takes one to know one. 

Sunday, November 20, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Reign of Christ Sunday
watch this service online (readings start around 32:06; sermon starts around 38:32)

What comes to your mind when you hear a word like “power”? What is power? What does power look like? What does it look like to be powerful?

When we think about being powerful, most of us probably think about power in terms of authority and money, control and strength. We think about people who have the ability to impose their will on others, perhaps by persuasion, but usually by force – in the same vein, we probably think immediately of military might, people who have access to the nuclear codes. We see the leaders of nations as powerful: presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens and so on. 

Power is a major theme for us this morning, because today is the Sunday we celebrate the Reign of Christ – the last Sunday of the liturgical year. We celebrate that Christ is the king of all creation – now that’s some serious power! That’s a heavy business card right there. And our texts all reflect this power in various ways:

Sunday, November 13, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 21:31; sermon starts around 27:25)
(another reprise, but I hope it still speaks)

If you’ve been following any of the news lately about what’s been happening with social media – with Facebook and Twitter in particular – you know that there has been a lot of drama. It kind of feels like we’re seeing what happens some of the worst and most petty impulses that humans have are given free rein to cause havoc online.

But, admittedly, I spend a lot of time on social media, especially on Facebook – I basically live on Facebook, haha – and because of that, I know that there are also a lot of good things that social media can make possible, like networking with other clergy folks, doing ministry, and keeping up connections with my friends and family who live all over the country/globe. 

And every once in a while, I get to see some really beautiful and awesome things happen on social media. During the height of the pandemic especially, there was (and continues to be) this whole informal network of people online who have found ways to help each other out in times of need. I think of it as a sort of “Facebook Underground Railroad.” A friend of someone’s friend reaches out asking for help, usually needing money, and this network of people in all different places, from all different backgrounds, mobilizes to respond. One time, we helped a single mom in Chicago who was struggling after her car was impounded over a ticket. A while back, I put the word out on facebook to help a friend of mine who was trying to escape an abusive partner. We raised over $6,000 for her in a matter of weeks. 

There’s no formal organization at work here, no mission statement or central command. It’s just a bunch of regular people who are connected by compassion, by the recognition that as humans we need each other and that none of us is in this alone. And the folks who volunteer their time and resources don’t ask a lot of questions about the requests that come through for help. People just trust that the need is there and they give if they can. And I often see the same people stepping up again and again to chip in and/or spread the word. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times the Facebook community gets called on or what else people have going on in their lives – someone is always ready to step up and help however they can.

Sunday, November 6, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
All Saints Sunday
watch this service online (readings start around 23:51; sermon starts around 30:37 (my mic kept cutting out for some reason, so sound isn’t great))
image source

Many of you know this already, but back in January of this year, I was diagnosed with ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. I was diagnosed by the therapist I’ve been seeing for a little over three and a half years, and almost everyone I’ve shared this information with has had pretty much the same reaction, which is: “Huh… actually yeah… yeah, that makes a lot of sense.” 😅

For most people, ADHD is the kind of thing that you associate with hyperactive little boys who can’t sit still or pay attention – it’s not something you expect to find in an adult woman, so it’s often overlooked. Our hyperactivity tends to get internalized as anxiety (100% me), and we get pretty good at hiding the way we struggle with things like concentration and impulsivity and time management – largely because it’s embarrassing; there’s a lot of social stigma around struggling so much with these things. 

But just like those hyperactive little boys, our brains are literally wired differently. Our brain biology is different from the average person’s. My brain has neurological differences that affect things like: the way I perceive and experience time, the motivation and reward centers of my brain, and my ability to block out stimuli and resist impulses so that I can direct my focus where I want it to go. (As most folks with ADHD will tell you, it’s actually not really the case that we have a deficit of attention; on the contrary, we often have an overabundance of it – and in my case, at least, that abundance of attention behaves a lot like a large, poorly leash-trained golden retriever 😜)

Sunday, October 23, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 26:41; sermon starts around 32:12)

The parable that Jesus tells in our gospel text for this morning almost sounds like the setup to a joke: a tax collector and a Pharisee walk into a bar temple. But the punchline to Jesus’ parable is one that his listeners probably did not see coming. Two men go up to the temple to pray, but only one of them comes away justified – and it’s not the one you’d expect! It’s the tax collector, not the Pharisee. Scandalous!

Of course, this story hits a bit differently for us now, reading this in the 21^st century. We’ve gotten all of our ideas about what a Pharisee is from these texts written centuries ago by early Christians trying to distinguish themselves from Jewish religious leadership. So when we hear this Pharisee’s prayer, in which he actually thanks God that he is not like this scummy, tax collector guy, we are already primed to hear what a hypocrite he is and to have a poor opinion of him. And I mean, honestly, who prays like that?? It’s true we may not always be the most saintly of saints here – but at least we can be thankful that we’re not like that guy, right?

Ha! And there’s the punchline of the joke. Even for us, it’s almost impossible to hear this story and not go away thinking some version of, “God, I thank you that I am not like that pharisee!” It turns out, being judgmental and hypocritical is something that just seems to run deep in our human DNA. 

Sunday, October 16, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 23:27; sermon starts around 28:43)

(From outside the sanctuary)
MARCO!
[POLO!] 

MARCO!
[POLO!] 

(Gradually moving into the sanctuary)
MARCO!
[POLO!] 

Oh hey, there you all are! You guys really shouldn’t wander off like that; it’s so weird.

Hehe, evidently enough of you played that game as kids – or had kids of your own who played it – that you remembered how it goes. For the sake of anyone who might be totally confused right now, could someone offer an explanation of what this game is and how it’s played?

[Marco Polo: it’s a kids game named after a 13th century Italian explorer (for some reason), usually played in a swimming pool. A variety of tag – one kid is “it” and has to tag the others – but unlike regular tag, whoever’s “it” must keep their eyes closed; they locate the others by calling out, “MARCO!” to which other players must respond, “POLO!”]

Exactly – it’s kind of a call-and-response sort of game, a swimming pool version of tag or blind man’s bluff. I don’t know if kids still play it much these days, but when I was growing up, it was definitely a summertime staple. 

Sunday, September 25, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 16:53; sermon starts around 24:11)

Once upon a time, there once was a very rich man. He lived in a fine house and wore expensive clothes; his table never lacked for any good thing. He had amassed more money than he honestly knew what to do with. But rather than even entertain the idea of giving up some of his wealth in order to benefit others, this rich man chose to be tight-fisted and hoard all his money away. He didn’t care at all about the suffering of the neighbor (or the neighbors) literally at his doorstep – in fact, he hardly seemed even to notice they were there. This man is selfish and miserly and cruel. And his name is: Ebenezer Scrooge. 

Heh, I just can’t seem to read this particular parable of Jesus without being reminded of the familiar story of A Christmas Carol. There are just so many points of connection between these two tales. In Jesus’ story, the rich man is already dead, but he pleads with Abraham to try to save his five brothers by sending Lazarus to them back from the dead – what he’s asking for is basically the plot of A Christmas Carol: Scrooge’s whole ghostly adventure starts off when the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley, shows up to warn him about the damage he is doing to his own soul by his selfish behavior. 

Neither of these wealthy men in these two stories care about anyone but themselves. Just as the rich man ignores Lazarus begging and dying at his gate, Scrooge is completely indifferent to the struggles of his impoverished employee, Bob Cratchit, and his family (in fact, he is very much the reason they are impoverished to begin with!). But with Scrooge, we do get a glimpse a little deeper into the psyche. As mean and uncaring and just plain unlikable as Scrooge is, it’s hard not to also feel pity for him. He is clearly not a happy man. He has achieved the goal to which he has devoted his life – the goal of accumulating great wealth – but it has left him feeling empty inside, isolated from other people, miserable and alone.

Sunday, September 11, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 20:05; sermon starts around 26:32)

Whenever I’m introducing myself in churchy kinds of settings, I often describe myself as a “lifelong Lutheran” – but in truth, that’s not a completely accurate description. I mean, sure, I was born, baptized, raised, and confirmed in an ELCA church – there are even several Lutheran pastors in my family, going back at least as far as my great-great-grandfather Friederich Hefner. But for me personally, the relationship has been a bit more complex.

When I was quite young, my heart wandered away from the church out of anger at the idea of a God who thought He needed my mom more than nine-year-old me did… But then an experience of the Spirit I had at confirmation camp brought me back.

In college, I wandered away from the church in confusion when it seemed to me like I always heard Christians talk about stuff like condemning gay people or judging others they disagreed with way more than they talked about Jesus or about loving their neighbor… But then I went back to camp as a counselor, and the Spirit helped me see and experience that love really is at the center of faith. 

After college, I didn’t mean to leave the Lutheran church. Ironically, it was actually my zealous enthusiasm for reading the bible and for growing in faith that led me away again. It led me down a bizarre two-year path of study during which I nearly became a Jehovah’s Witness. Suffice it to say, it was a very weird period of my life, and I totally understand now why people join cults. That experience left my faith in such a twisted and broken and vulnerable state that it was several years before I could bring myself to go back to church at all.

Sunday, September 4, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 18:21; sermon starts around 24:58/25:17)
image source

I’m curious to know – nearly all of you here are parents – when your kids were growing up, did you set rules for them? (I’m guessing you definitely did.)  
What were some of the rules you gave your kids?
Why did you make these rules? What was your goal in setting these rules?

Good parenting involves setting healthy boundaries and guidelines for your kids. You make rules because you care. The purpose of making rules isn’t just to be arbitrary or controlling, or to suck the fun out of a kid’s life – it’s to keep them safe and healthy, to teach them values like responsibility and respect, and to help them grow into flourishing adults.

In our first reading, Moses is reminding the people of Israel about God’s rules. Almost the entire book of Deuteronomy is basically one long speech from Moses to the people of Israel as they are finally about to enter the promised land. And one point that Moses keeps hammering on again and again and again is the importance of abiding by God’s law – especially the ten commandments. It starts to sound kind of onerous. I don’t know about you, but I know for me, almost any time people start talking about the ten commandments, I tend to get this mental image of a distant, celestial, frowny-faced God, whose finger is perpetually hovering over the “SMITE” button, just waiting for us to screw things up.

Sunday, August 28, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 19:38; sermon starts around 25:36)
image source

As most of you probably know, I grew up north of here, in the tiny village of Coleridge, NE – it’s a community that’s quite a bit smaller than Schuyler. The school in town has since been consolidated, but while I was growing up, the school was K-12 – kindergarten through twelfth grade – all in the same building. I graduated with a class of 17 people; 14 of us had been there from the beginning and had known each other pretty much our whole lives.

But for most of the time, during those 13 years of school, it had actually only been 13 of us together, taking classes and going out for sports and other extracurricular activities. The 14th core member of our class was a girl named Ashley. Ashley was born with pretty severe cerebral palsy, which affected her mobility and also left her with significant cognitive impairments. Because of this, she wasn’t really able to progress much further than about a third grade level of education. So as the rest of our class progressed through middle school and high school, Ashley kind of got left behind.

But when the time came for our class to graduate, Ashley “graduated” alongside the rest of us as well. Even though she didn’t get an actual diploma, her family wanted to make sure that she also got to experience such a significant milestone. And to celebrate, they threw a huge graduation party for Ashley, and they invited absolutely everyone.

Sunday, August 21, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 22:50; sermon starts around 29:14)

As I was reading through our texts for this morning, I have to admit that I felt a little twinge of guilt. There’s all this language about being respectful of the sabbath, of taking sabbath rest – and yet I’m very, very aware that I myself have actually not taken a day completely off since the week before last… I’m also very aware of the fact that the final words of this very sermon were written no more than an hour or two ago. 😬 The words of Isaiah seem particularly to sting: stop “trampling the sabbath” and “pursuing your own interests on [God’s] holy day,” Isaiah says; “call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable”; “honor it” – instead of just “going your own ways, serving your own interests, [and] pursuing your own affairs.”

…oops. Sorry, God. My bad.

About a month ago, I preached a sermon about Martha and Mary – and I mentioned that this is something that pastors especially seem to struggle with. There are a whole lot of Marthas in ministry as clergy, people who pour a lot of themselves into what they do and who struggle to disconnect from their work. It’s also just kind of the nature of ministry that there’s almost never really a natural stopping point – there’s never a point at which you’re “done” with anything. At the end of every sermon, there’s always just another sermon to write. I can easily imagine that working in education is very similar – or even farming, to some extent – no matter when you decide to call it quits for the day and go home, there’s always more work to do.

Sunday, August 14, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 14:46; sermon starts around 21:11)
image source

Back when I was in college, I spent two summers working out at Camp Carol Joy Holling in Ashland. My first summer on staff there, I worked with kids as a regular counselor – but the second summer, I decided to apply for a position as the “Creative Arts Specialist.” I’m sure you’re all *shocked* that I had a job where I did crafts with kids all day, every day. 😜

By far the most ambitious craft project that kids got to do at camp was make pottery. If you have any experience at all with pottery, you probably know that it’s a process that tends to take a long time. First, you take your lump of wet clay and mold it into the shape you want, whether it’s a vessel of some kind, or a sculpture, or whatever. Then, before you can do anything else with your piece, you have to let it sit and dry out as much as possible – at least a day or two. And then you fire it in the kiln, which takes a good ten-twelve hours. Then you have to let it cool down. And then if you want to glaze it, that’s even more drying, and an even longer firing in the kiln, followed by an even longer cooling.

Thankfully, we didn’t do the full on glazing at camp – those kids are only out there a week at a time! But we did allow campers to paint their pottery after firing. So the whole week had to be timed just right – campers made their clay items first thing on Monday, and that left just enough time for them to dry out enough to be fired, and then juuust enough time for them to cool down enough that kids could handle them and paint them on Friday, right before they left.

Unfortunately for me, in order for the timing to work with the drying and the cooling, pottery absolutely *had* to be fired Wednesday night, overnight. And since the camp’s old kiln had manual controls for the heat, it meant that every Wednesday, I got to babysit the kiln aaalllll night, getting up every hour and a half or two hours to adjust the temperature up or down. 

Sunday, August 7, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Schuyler, NE
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
watch this service online (readings start around 23:02; sermon starts around 29:53)

If you’ve been in my office lately, or if you’ve glanced at the office windows from outside the church, something you already know about me is that I enjoy decorating my windows in fun and creative ways. Right now, they’re decked out with a bunch of colorful paper cutout designs meant to look summery, like suns and flowers and leaves. But for many months before that, my windows were covered in a whole blizzard of intricately cut out paper snowflakes. 

A number of people asked me how I managed to get my snowflakes to look so delicate and so detailed – and the simple, honest answer to that question is: practice. Lots and LOTS of practice.

Making snowflakes became almost a kind of spiritual practice for me back when I was living in the Dominican Republic. Mostly it was a way of dealing with overwhelming feelings of homesickness. I fully expected when I moved there that I would start to miss people – all my friends and family back home – and that I’d miss certain foods or certain places that I used to go. What I wasn’t expecting was how much I would also miss the weather! Hard to believe, I know – but I really missed the changing of the seasons. As far as I can tell, the DR really only has two seasons: it’s either hot and miserable, or it’s wet and miserable!