I’ve always loved Thanksgiving. In recent years, I’ve learned that much of what we know about the roots of the holiday are problematic or inaccurate. I don’t need all of the lore about pilgrims to enjoy the holiday, but instead, just like to gather together and express gratitude. 

I’ve been hosting Thanksgiving dinner for over 20 years. Throughout that time, the menu hasn’t changed much: there’s always turkey, dressing and stuffing, mashed and sweet potatoes, two kinds of cranberries, and lots of pie. Sometimes a guest will bring an unusual side dish or appetizer (chocolate brie anyone?). Since I’m hosting, I invite my husband Greg’s family who live here in town and my parents usually come from Pennsylvania. This allows us to squeeze in an ‘extra’ holiday with both, since we usually alternate where we spend time on the holidays. 

In addition to our immediate family, I always tell my guests to keep an eye out for anyone who doesn’t have plans; there’s always room for one more at the table. I decorate my house with fall foliage, pumpkins, and those retro fan-fold turkeys. I’ll get out my pine wreaths and twinkly lights on Friday, but not a moment sooner. 

This Thanksgiving, like the rest of 2020, will be different. I will cook the same food, but it will only be my immediate family around my dining room table. My father-in-law will unpack his dinner from the bag we set on his doormat. My parents will stay home, and so will the rest of my family and friends. I will miss the hugs, the laughter, and all the help washing dishes afterward. 

Intellectually, I know that one Thanksgiving apart isn’t a big deal. Emotionally and spiritually, I’m a little depleted by it and it’s hard to get past it. Do you know that feeling? It’s as if you’re reading a book or watching a movie, and the emotion is so strong, and you just need to read ahead or fast forward to get some relief.

This Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent. We will light the first candle on the Advent wreath for hope. We will acknowledge that there is a lot in this world that can be discouraging, debilitating, and stressful. We will sing “O Come Emmanuel.” Emmanuel, declaring that God is with us. We celebrate that we may be apart, but we are never alone. This year, along with serving up turkey and gratitude on Thanksgiving, I’ll look ahead to Sunday and light a candle for hope.

In hope,

Cara

For most of us, entrance into the church was marked by the waters of baptism, as a priest or pastor took you as an infant, poured water over your head and said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And from then onward, you were a new creation in Christ. Sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit, thenceforward, nothing of this world could separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Similarly, yet different, you were born into this world, and likely from then onward, nothing of this world could separate from the love of your parents, loving community, or simply your place in humanity.

For us Lutherans, new birth in the waters of baptism marks the beginning of a faith journey with Jesus Christ, just as our physical birth is an entrance into the world as a human being created in the image of God. What unravels from there is not so different, either.

Last week, I was being amused as I was thinking of how my siblings and I are so different from each other. We were raised by the same parents, and my sister and I are virtually twins (we are eight months apart as I was born at 27 weeks) and yet we have almost nothing in common, despite being inseparable in our early youth. I love politics and one of my siblings is not registered to vote. My brother loves sports, but I simply cheer for whatever team my family is cheering for so I can share in that common identity. We were raised in the suburbs, but when I returned from college I moved into the heart of Louisville, as I grew up going to school in the heart of Louisville. My sister, on the other hand, hates the city, does not know how to get around Louisville, and now lives in the country.

But my sister has my mother’s love for the countryside, along with her threatening grit attitude. My dad was a political science major in college but had to quit in order to raise three kids. I like to think that he gave me a baton in a relay race and I crossed the finish line thanks to his work. My brother’s love for sports comes from my dad, and now they participate in each other's fantasy football leagues and obsess over UK basketball and the Tampa Bay Bucs.

The church is not much different from my family. Though we are all claimed by Christ in the waters of baptism, all reconciled to God, all filled by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are not the same. That is one of the many beauties of the church. Just as my siblings and I are nothing alike, we each have our parent’s image shining through us. Though none of us are alike, the image of God is in all of us. And just as being family brings my siblings and I together, being the church, the baptized body of believers, brings us together.

Soon, we will be gathering around Thanksgiving dinner tables, whether virtually or in-person. You may notice that despite coming from the same tree, none of y’all are alike. Take comfort in the knowledge that not only your family draws people of differences together. The waters of baptism do the same as we are bound together and called God’s children.

Your Sibling in Christ,

Pastor Alec Brock, he/him/his
Seminary Intern

I recently rewatched Raiders of the Lost Ark with my youngest. What a thrill! Start to finish, this first film in the Indiana Jones series is packed with memorable, tense scenes which hold you on the edge of your seat as this adventurer/archeologist takes on the world one treasure and bad guy at a time.

The opening cave sequence, loaded with traps, remains stunning. According to Indiana Jones wiki, The Temple of the Chachapoyan Warriors was a dark, well-protected cave that housed a prized golden fertility idol [see photo]. The temple had many defenses, including spears, darts, a large boulder, and should the idol be disturbed, the collapse of the temple itself.” He knew that if you wanted the prize, all you could do was to grab the idol and run, letting the destruction fall in your wake.

These weeks have been – and continue to be – a treacherous path, littered with obstacles and challenges. This coronavirus, quarantine, election season has brought out the worst in many of us. Speaking for myself, I have been isolated and agitated more than usual, so my first response to a difficult conversation or tense situation isn’t always my best response. My words fall short of patience and grace.

James writes about the power of our words in the New Testament. “If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits… With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” (James 3:3 ff).

As children, we are corrected when we snipe at others or tell lies. (I can still taste the soap in my mouth from my childhood.) We chant the playground refrain, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” without realizing that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Words have power. Words can break someone’s spirit, derail a dream, or end a friendship.

As adults, we no longer have regulators, so when we are angry, frustrated, or tired, we tend to lash out.

Do we have a right to say what we want? Yes. Should we speak up against injustice and falsehood? Yes. But it is crucial that we choose and use our words carefully, interpreting everything a friend or stranger does in the best possible light.

Martin Luther, in his Small Catechism notes about The Eighth Commandment, agrees saying, “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.” I need to read this a few more times and let it sink deep into my soul. Part of not bearing false witness against our neighbor is holding our tongue. We are called to do everything in our power to guard their reputations.

Radio host Bernard Melzer, paraphrasing the poet and scholar Rumi, liked to say, “Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid.” The apostle Paul preferred to say it this way, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32).

This is a crucial and age-old message - for me, for you, for our nation, and for our world. May we be careful with our words. They not only have the power to hurt and harm, but also the muscle to encourage and empower. Let us continue to lead with hope, patience, and love. Will you join me?

Trying to choose love,

Pastor Lowell

image from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg, 1981, Film.

My elementary school gym class met outside on a fall day to begin a weeks-long session on soccer. The teacher blew her whistle and called everyone to attention, telling us to line up on the edge of the field. Two “captains” (read popular kids) were chosen by the teacher and then they began to pick teams.

We all know the anxiety of this moment. Maybe it wasn’t on the soccer field for you, but you know the unease of wondering if and when you’ll be picked. Will your name be called early in the team selection or will the line of players dwindle with you standing there until the brutal end? And if it isn’t you, then it will be someone else.

We all want to be chosen. We want to be included. We yearn to be part of something bigger and hope to share our gifts and skills as a way of contributing to the team.

God spends a lot of time choosing. Early in the pages of Scripture, God chose the Hebrew people and set them apart as holy. God went on to select locations where people would encounter God and named commandments which would enable deeper collaborations and relationships between God and humanity.

When Jesus’ ministry fired up, God chose a batch of diverse and unqualified disciples to learn his ways, held up women and children as examples of faith, and sought to align himself with the sick, the outcast, the refugee, and the sinner. He named cheaters and criminals, screw-ups and deserters as holy, chosen, and beloved.

Jesus declared that the blessing and favor of God was evident in those who were poor in spirit, mourning, humble, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, and making peace. The last, they will be the first. The ones who appear to be least, will be the greatest.

God’s choosing and invitation spills into our lives, too. 1 Peter 2:9 proclaims, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” You have been chosen in love to love. God has chosen you, loved you, and empowered you, so that the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – would spill out into the world.

As I write, our 2020 presidential election has yet to be decided. Sometime in the coming days, some will be chosen and others will not. Headlines will declare “winners” and “losers.” Our election cycle may be over for this fall, but every day is an opportunity for us to choose.

Who will you choose? How will you serve? What will fill your time? I pray that you and I stand with Joshua and declare, “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15).

We’re in this together,

Pastor Lowell

During a normal fall, by mid-October I would be near my wit’s end getting several ensembles prepared for one of our biggest feast days of the year. Reformation is one of the days I can always get a lot of people involved – handbell ringers, instrumentalists, adult singers, children, etc., and I don’t have to compete with holiday or spring break travel plans like I normally would for Christmas or Easter. And I love the opportunity to show off the massive amount of talent we have at Lord of Life!

Of course this fall, I haven’t been able to rehearse with any ensembles at all, and I wanted to find other ways to help make worship special. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I taught myself to sew so I could make myself some masks to wear. Since I had a new skill to work with, I thought I’d try my hand at making some new worship adornments for worship.

Every Sunday, one of the things our volunteers do to set up for communion is to make sure that the paraments – the fabric decorations that hang in front of the altar and lectern – match the Sunday and Season we are celebrating. During the long summer months, they are green. During Advent, they are blue, during Lent, they are purple. On Christ the King Sunday, Christmas, Easter and the following Sundays of Easter, they are White. There are a handful of Sundays and feast days throughout the church year in which the appropriate color is red. These include Palm Sunday, Pentecost, Saint days, and, for Lutherans, Reformation Sunday.

Red is the color we associate with the fire of Pentecost and the blood of Martyrs. As I thought about what that meant for a parament we would use throughout the year, I wanted to create an area focused on God – the white circle. You could think of it as a meditation or a contemplation point, and I tried to draw the eye into it with the spirals of rope. The inner white circle is surrounded by several interlocking circles of God’s incarnation in the world – the fire of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ. The resulting pattern is busy and complicated, just like the world, but I still wanted to add more.

As I thought of ways to add to the design and stay true to my theme, I thought of some of the artistic talent we have at Lord of Life – glass artist Rick Ponton and ceramic artist Maria Hupp. Both made beads in their respective mediums, which I thought beautifully represented the way we continue to be stewards of God’s creation and reform the world.

As our Share the Light campaign continues to reform our space, there will be more opportunities to bring our talents together to make our worship more meaningful. If you have talents you’d like to share, we’d love to know about them!

Yours in Christ,

John Johns, Music Director

I have a liking for mid-century modern furniture, yet, I don’t have the pocketbook for it. Instead, I own a couch that is older than me, and may even be older than my parents. It’s blue, dirt is one with the couch, and the seats are sunken in towards the middle. My boyfriend complains that it is too low and that I should get rid of it, but I refuse because I love the couch. In a seminary class, I was tasked with describing my ideal world where I find peace. It featured me, the boyfriend, my dog, and my couch. Yet all those things are either finite or temporary.

Just like the day in which I will have to get rid of my couch, finite is bad, as is getting to the bottom of a pint of ice cream and realizing that the pint does not have an infinite end. Yet, temporariness can be good. When temporary is awesome, it is the end of a workweek. We can go throughout our day or week pointing at the end of something and contemplate how its lack of permanence affects us. Temporariness is always around us, though we commonly do not take notice of the importance of temporary. 

The world has meaning because the world is finite. And we are accustomed to things having an end. Celebratory moments are dear to us because they do not last forever. Buying cotton candy (my sweet tooth again) is special because it is a once in a while purchase. 

Of course, the existence of my couch, eating cotton candy, and ice cream are small examples of finite moments, but the same lesson transfers over to irreplaceable moments and people in our lives. For all of us, we have or will experience the harsh reality of being in a world of non-permanency, whenever we lose someone we love, or go through dramatic and undesirable changes in our lives. But because we dwell in the reality of a world full of temporary, we cannot help but treasure what we have in our orbit. 

Scripture reminds us of being in a world of temporary with these words, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it,” Psalm 118:24. Though the rising of the sun seems destined, it is not guaranteed. Rather, it is a blessing from God. Take stock of what is temporary around you. You may be surprised by the reality that has not been given much thought. You may feel the need to reprioritize. Ice cream and cotton candy will taste sweeter, hugs will last longer, and the end of a work-week may actually be workless for once and awhile.

God's peace,

Pastor Alec Brock (he/him/his)