April 11, 2025

 

Dear Friends,


Holy Week starts this Sunday. As I do every year, I invite you to participate in the fullness of the liturgical celebration of Easter. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Easter Morning. It’s like Wagner’s Ring Cycle, or the Lord of the Rings—so much better if you do the whole thing.

Here’s the rundown:

Maundy Thursday: 7:30 pm (includes foot washing)
Good Friday: 7:30 pm
Easter Vigil: 7:30 pm (with a Peep s’mores gathering at 7pm)—champagne and strawberries after church!
Easter Day: 10 am Easter Egg Hunt
                    11 am Worship, followed by Potluck Pancake Brunch!

We will need some help setting up the sanctuary for Easter—so please come at 10 am on Saturday the 19th if you’d like to work on hanging, candles, pushing chairs around, and so on.

Easter is light in the darkness, joy in sorrow, the green shoots in the cold. Come and celebrate with us!


Pastor John

 

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April 4, 2025

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Dear Friends,


I was meeting with some colleagues to discuss this week’s texts, and a friend of mine said, “You know, it’s one of my dreams to have a choir sing ‘Press On’ by Bob Dylan,” because it’s from his evangelical days and based on the Philippians passage we’ll be reading this Sunday. I immediately said, “I’ve got a musician who can pull that off with our choir,” and sure enough, Keith Burton, our Music Director, is getting “Press On,” ready for Sunday. So if you’re a Bob Dylan fan, this is your chance—and we’ll all press on together.

“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” This is a description of an embrace. Imagine being hugged and then raising your own arms to hug back—that brief moment in time of raising your arms is the span of our lives in the eternity of our lives in God. We press on because Christ Jesus has wrapped us in his embrace—all things come from him and return to him. But we press on, we pull him closer, we embrace him, “we press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

As I write this, the stock market has crashed, corporate boards are panicking, and very powerful institutions are tripping over each other on the way to kiss the President's ring—things can feel so uncertain, so chaotic, so infuriating. And if you rely on your 401k for your livelihood, it’s even scary. 

Paul also says, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” The value of falling into those arms of Jesus Paul says is a “surpassing value.” And I think we know the value of that now: ironically, we know that value more when things are bad, and forget it when things are good. There is a steady presence, you might call him a rock, or the Son of God, your choice—but he has made you his own love. Paul knew that his life was the act of lifting his arms to return that love. 

The same is true of our neighbor. If we love Jesus, we will love our neighbor, because we will love them for his sake, and we will love because he loves them. I hope that makes sense—whether or not we like our neighbor, we can love them because Jesus does. Maybe we will see what Jesus sees, maybe not—but we can do it.

Jesus is a rock in a weary land, the old spiritual says, a shelter in a time of storm. I don’t want you to read this like a meme, with mom font that says, “You are loved.” I want to know that God’s arm really embrace you, that the arms on the hard wood of the cross opened so the whole world—yes, even you—could come into the reach of his saving embrace. Knowing that love gives us a foundation for life, no matter what comes. "Let this world's tyrant rage. In battle we'll engage. His might is doomed to fail. God's judgment must prevail. One little word subdues him.” That’s Luther’s paraphrase of Psalm 46 translated into English. That little word is murmured into our ear from the lips of Christ himself: I love you. I hold you. You are mine. Do not fear.


Pastor John

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March 28, 2025

 

Dear Friends,


It’s prodigal son week! This might be one of the most familiar stories in all of the Bible—I’m sure you’re remembering it right now. Son takes inheritance, squanders it in dissolute living, wakes up in a pig pen, and decides to return to his father’s house, beg for forgiveness, and live with the servants. But the father sees him from far off, and runs down the road to welcome him, and throws a big party for his return. The older son, meanwhile, who had never once done anything wrong, comes when the party is going on (why didn’t his dad tell him it was happening?) and complains, to which his dad says, “All I have is yours; but we had to celebrate. He was lost, but now is found.” Yes, we are singing "Amazing Grace" this Sunday.

One thing I never noticed about this story is the feeling of theft: the olderr son feels like something has been stolen from him. He feels like his father’s love has been stolen; he feels very threatened, that his inheritance will be given away in kind. He feels that the recognition his father owes him for being a good son has been stolen. He’s robbed; he’s angry. But the father consoles him simply by reminding him there’s no inheritance left for the brother, but there is love. There is love—and there’s an exquisite irony that the son with everything doesn’t have the one thing he wants, while the son with nothing has the thing he wants, and its the same thing: their father’s love.

What can you do when something is stolen from you? Some things can be returned, restored, paid back. Someone once stole a backpack from my office. I never got it or the things in it back. I replaced the backpack with a better one, but I couldn’t replace the journal in it. Whatever I wrote there, for good or ill, is gone forever, and there’s nothing that can replace it. And I’ve also felt lately that the good things of my society are being stolen. As you all know, I have Long Covid, which manifests itself in my case with chronic fatigue and dysautonomia. Thanks to some creative doctors, some meds, and time, I’ve been improving slowly over the past two years, but I’ve been watching the research on this condition closely. All the government funded research on it was shut down Tuesday, including the new project to research treatments and possible cures. I feel robbed; and I look at the millions of other people with this condition, many of them suffering much more than I do, and I can’t help but think they’ve been robbed as well. I don’t know why anyone would want to cut that research: it doesn’t just help people with Long Covid, but people who suffer from chronic illnesses of all kinds.

And then there’s the theft of personal autonomy. I lived in Argentina for a year, and I heard stories of people getting disappeared. That noun became verb because people kept disappearing. They walked down the street, and plainclothes police picked them up, and they were never seen again. Some went to prison; some got thrown out of a helicopter into the Rio de la Plata, some got shot. But there were no trials. Something eerily similar is happening now: students who protested the War in Gaza are being disappeared to a prison in Louisiana—they are not appearing before a judge, they are not getting due process. If they can disappear students like that, they will disappear anyone. It’s theft—theft of human rights, theft of security, theft of what America means to the rest of the world.

The point of the prodigal son is the return—the son returns. But the money is gone. It won’t come back. The inheritance is gone. There’s nothing left to give the younger son. The relationship between the brothers is gone. Can it be repaired? And without the returning, even the father’s love would have gone in vain. There’s a whole story waiting to be written after the prodigal son returns, a family drama of reconciliation and peacemaking. But none of it is possible without the returning.

Maybe we will wake up and return to our senses. I don’t know why, but the person that stole my backpack came one day to apologize for it. I’ll not get into the details, but when we see each other from time to time we say hi. I won’t say we have a relationship, but we’re not mad or mean. We coexist. But he came back. He turned around. I don’t know what it will take for our leaders to turn around, to say enough is enough, to say that they are tired of all the stealing—stealing the social security administration’s ability to help Americans while granting millions of dollars to billionaires. But I think there has to be an invitation to something better, to the Father’s table. The Father’s house has enough for all, everyone shares, and there are loving arms all too ready to embrace anyone who returns. Can’t we share that vision, at least? Can’t we say that we can do better?

I think we can.

See you soon,

Pastor John

 

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March 21, 2025

 

Dear Friends,

Is it spring? Is it not? We have just passed the vernal equinox, so the answer is yes it’s spring, but it doesn’t always feel like it. But if you walk by our garden you’ll see the daffodils standing tall, even if they haven’t opened to full flower. My kids have spotted the crocuses and a little yellow flower that have whispered that winter is past. But for me, spring really comes with the tulips, and I keep looking for them, for their bright colors. I love winter—I love snow and cold and driving sleet. They make me feel sharp and alive. But I’m not sure that any season brings as much joy as spring—just the pure joy of sunshine and green shoots and bird calls and laughter. The coats are coming off, and the beaches are going to open in a month or so. Spring is really coming—it’s already here.

One of my favorite Easter hymns is “Now the Green Blade Rises,” a French carol that I often use as the offertory during Easter. It’s a song about the shoot of wheat rising after the winter, the metaphor for the resurrection of Jesus after death. We have in nature a wonderful example of renewal, return, the stubborn will of life to persevere. I’ve often said that if it’s legal where I die, I’d like to become a tree—there are some places that allow burials that will allow the body to decompose and nurture the growth of a tree, called tree pod burials. I like the idea of helping something else live by death. It’s as close to the resurrection of Jesus that I’ll get until he comes again—and if the coming of leaves gives someone else joy while they are standing in the sun, then I will be satisfied.

I hope that we can take another bit of inspiration from the plants. On one hand there is the beauty of their blooming, but on the other there’s the cold scientific voice that you might hear on the Discovery Channel: it’s also a story of desperate struggle, of the inexorable urge to procreate, to keep the species going. An ecosystem is a beautiful thing, but’s also a desperate one, in fine balance, yet changing, sometimes slowly, sometimes in the blink of an eye. I find that striving inspiring: the plants do not give up. The bugs keep looking for food, as do the birds and groundhogs. The city is not the most cordial place for growing things, except perhaps financial portfolios. But even coyotes are learning to adapt. The green blades rise in the parks and in the cracks of the sidewalks. If we were all to disappear, nature would reclaim our city eventually.

We’ve been studying the citizenship of heaven for the past week, and I think of it like the urgent struggle of the grass and flowers. The kingdom of heaven is coming; nothing will prevent it. The Spirit’s work cannot be denied. We can try every method of paving it over, civilizing it, taming it, subduing it. But God will not be tamed or domesticated. And neither with the Spirit he imparts into our hearts, the spirit that continually longs for truth, searches for beauty, and loves this beautiful world and the people in it. Nothing can suppress that, not entirely. And eventually, it will break free and flower.


See you soon,


Pastor John

 

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March 14, 2025

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Dear Friends,

I love universities. I love what they do (teach and research), I love what they are (places for inquiry and debate and a repository for knowledge), what they have and hold (libraries, laboratories, students, researchers of sciences, law, and humanities), why they exist (to further human understanding). Universities, like all human endeavors can be deeply flawed institutions—see, for example, my beloved alma mater, the University of Chicago, home at some time or another of both John Dewey (yay!) and Milton Friedman (boo!), and of course the biggest landlord on the South Side of Chicago, with all the racial and societal injustice that comes with it.

But universities are one of the great human endeavors—great in the sense that they are wonderful, and powerful. The instigator of Protestantism, Martin Luther, was a professor at a backwater university at Wittenberg. He was trained in classical way, in rhetoric, philosophy, languages—what we call humanism today. Humanism because science and arts, language and storytelling are features of the human being and the means of human flourishing. The contribution to human society universities have given is probably incalculable, both for good and for ill. But I love them, and think they are precious, and ought to be given what they need to continue their mission.

Yesterday a disturbing letter came to light: threats from the United States Government to Columbia University. It reads like blackmail. It includes demands to put an entire study department into receivership, to change admissions, to impose greater rules on student groups, among many other things, or the university would lose federal funding.

It’s true that Columbia has had a lot of chaos over the past year. It’s true that the situations on some college campuses have felt downright scary, especially for the staff that keep the places running. Some students broke the law and should face consequences for that. But those are matters the universities need to address, not the federal government, and certainly not through a shakedown. Now the administration faces a shocking choice: refuse the shakedown and lose funding or take the funding and lose the very purpose of their university, turning it from a locus of free inquiry into a hive for the secret police. Lose the money or lose their soul—that’s the choice.

I believe that authoritarians will force this choice on everyone, if they can. They want, above all, loyalty to themselves, because they want ultimately to be the law. All of us, in every walk of our lives, will eventually be faced with the choice: choose the money (or the non-profit status, or the whatever the leverage may be) or choose the soul.

It’s time, therefore, to do some soul work, and to do it now. This week Paul tells the Philippians, most of whom were probably Roman citizens, that in pointed contrast the Lord Caesar, their citizenship is in heaven with the Lord Jesus. This is not meant to be a pie in the sky statement, but rather an insistence that they need to live like they were citizens of a place where Christ is the only Lord. It’s no coincidence that the devil tempts Jesus with wealth and power—all this will be yours if you just bow to me, the Devil says. But if you give in a little bit, you invite the ruin of the whole thing. In our workplaces, in our schools, in our daily life, the choice between our souls and the goods of this world will come.

Do the soul work now, so that when the test comes, we may prevail.


Pastor John

 

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