New Blog

Please check out my essays and thoughts about the massive energy transition that is coming in the near future. You can follow my updates at The Final Generation blog.

The Second Day of Advent

I was home sick again today, but things are looking up on that front, so I expect to be back in the --saddle-- office chair tomorrow.   If you have to be home sick, and can accommodate it into your life, I highly recommend having a puppy curled up at your feet while you sleep.  It makes the moment seem less unpleasant, no matter how loud you snore when thoroughly congested.

I'm looking forward to setting up our Advent wreath tomorrow (actually a reusable form in the shape of Noah's Ark, a gift from my mother).  I'm always amazed at how taking just a few minutes to light it before dinner and spend some time reflecting changes the character of our meals, even though we always pray before eating.

This week will bring one of my favourite Advent activities, the shopping party for the families of Concordia Lutheran Church.  Each year the youth groups of several churches gather for a big shopping trip.  We divide into groups and use donated funds to find gifts for several families, including parents and children.  We then wrap all of the gifts and load them into a truck for delivery.  It is one of the most popular events of the year.

I believe that this comes from the joy of pure giving.  These gifts are given to strangers, out of love and have almost no chance of being reciprocated.  It's the kind of giving that comes from the divine heart.

On the First Day of Advent

All the little mile markers have been passed.  The Halloween Candy and costumes were surreptitiously mutated into garlands and blinking icicles.  The slant of the advertising began to change ever so slightly, from "buy this, you need it!" to "buy this for someone, they need it, and you might need one too!"  There have been television spots featuring frightening men and women with an OCD like attraction to sales, and a manic longing to make Christmas a reality, sooner rather than later.  Finally, with Thanksgiving out of the way, our brief homage to gratitude has given way to a bacchanal of desire and the paradox of saving by means of spending.

I entered into this season sick; not some sort of high-minded world-weariness, but a honest to goodness respiratory infection, with coughing and aches and the like.  It's not a big deal, but it has kept me out of the stores for the large part.  It also seems to complement my own sense of impending disappointment.

Not disappointment with Advent, I love the season.  I love immersing myself in the hopeful language of the prayers, the call to reflection and introspection, the yearning and even begging for the Savior to come.  I love the songs which echo with strains of resurrection and redemption.  I crave the promises of an enduring peace they contain.  My disappointment seems to be rooted in the reality of what Advent will lead to, Christmas.

It's not that I'll be let down by the telling of the Christmas story, the children carrying the creche to its place, or the soaring anthems of the late-night Christmas Eve worship.  It's not as though I have onerous visits to make, I enjoy spending time with family and friends.  I'm certainly not dreading tacky and awful gifts, my circle of exchange is small and thoughtful.  I'll be let down by Christmas, because with all that Advent promises, all we'll get is Christmas.

The great trumpets to announce a new day, will probably not blow this year.  The quivering earth, the rattling stars, the falling of the heavens, the end of injustice and hate are all still off in the future.  We will sing Magnificats with gusto and put them away with a pile of wrapping paper on Christmas night.  If the greatest presents are presence, then when all the visiting is done, I will still be left wanting.

For if this Advent is leading to another Christmas, then the best I can hope for is a powerful rebirth of joy in my life.  A joy that comes from knowing that the first Advent had momentous consequences for the whole world because it ended with Incarnation.  It was that gift that makes me yearn so longingly that this Advent would end with Restoration.  That the Incarnate one would be that way, here, now with us.  And that all of God's waiting people, who long for the days when stars are falling, will see each other, face to face once more, and know just how impoverished our giving is compared to the gifts we have received.

Because in that great company of souls waits a dear brother named Gerald.  He was my father, and his presence would be greater than all presents combined.  Because if we could meet face to face, then I could do the same with the Christ we are all waiting for, and there would be no more occasion for tears ever again.

Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

Your kid's an All Star? Wow! Someday he'll be average like the rest of us.

Your kid's an All Star? Wow! Someday he'll be average like the rest of us.

Loved to Love: Experiencing Joy at the New England Youth Gathering

Gathering is what Christians do. It's what turns individual teenagers from Holden, Worcester and Whitinsville into a youth group, gathered in the name of the Holy Trinity. It's what turns our group of fifteen into a group of forty when the parishes of the Lutheran Interparish Youth Group (LIPY) assembling around the same campfire for bible study. It's what turns our forty into a moving, waving, dancing crowd of almost six hundred believers, praising God and eating forgiveness at God's table.

We gather to hear words of forgiveness and promise, to worship God because God is truly awesome, and to demonstrate that Christ indeed has a living, breathing body with numerous hands, feet, hearts and minds. We gather to sing, because musical praise is a long and storied part of being Lutheran, indeed of being disciples, who sang out even on Jesus' last night. Whether we pump our fists and cry out for God to “take it all”, surrendering our lives, or belt out harmonies on How Great Thou Art as though it were a modern rock tune, we gather to sing.

We gather because God is great, because the love of God is too big to be contained and not shared. Not just among the believers, but among all the people of the world. Our speaker for the weekend, Pastor Ralph Supper, himself a Hammo alumnus from his days at Emmanuel Lutheran in Warwick, RI, challenged us to see how unbounded God's love is. He encouraged the assembly to see this love spilling over from our lives into the lives around us. Not just among family and friends and fellow Christians. But to everyone whom we encounter.

We are called to love the way God loves. Crazy, risky, dangerous, world-upsetting, life-changing, seed-planting love. We are challenged to trust that the only thing that belongs on a poster that begins “God Hates...” are the words “...posters that claim that God is not Love.” When we are tempted to fill in some group of people, we have failed as followers of Jesus. For when we look to Jesus, whose Cross informs our best understanding of God, we see no hate. Only forgiveness, mercy and love are offered to meet the hate of the world.

We gather, because we need to look squarely at that Cross to be reminded. That it is among us, that it is on us, that is was for us. All alone, we are too tempted to pass it by without looking into the loving eyes that are looking down at us.

Our latest Worship Broadcast

TLC Service 09/05/2010 from Paul Gustafson on Vimeo.

Trinity Tweets!

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Come Follow Me

Attending a conference on sharing the Gospel in a 2.0 world has its share of thoroughly expectable moments. Photos of last night's forum live on Facebook this morning. Countless people, across the generations, are fact-checking, time-killing and cross-talking on high tech smartphones throughout the crowd. One of the presenters gets an audible text alert on stage. The lobby is full of lap-toppers, winging their way across the internet, writing articles (as I am this very moment) and networking with the person across the table and across the country all at the same time.

We're twitchy, twittery, super connected. Though never more connected than in a moment of mystery that takes place when all the blinking, beeping things are silenced. When we go off the grid to that sacred space where the only long-distance communication is from writers who are thousands of years dead, from prayers that were crafted by people who couldn't imagine a light bulb, much less a computer, from a God who longs for us to read this one instant message. “This is my body for you. Come and eat, you're going to need strength for this journey.”

Whether like like a sudden tumble or the upside-down doorway that alerts us to a dream, Eucharist is this powerful reminder that the seemingly dull world we make our way through is not all that there is. We may be asleep to who we are, to the needs of our neighbor, to the reign of God breaking through our defenses. When Jesus calls out our name, calls to us through our dreaming, stumbling existence, we are shaken awake. “This is me, here now for you, follow me.” Like a people walking around staring at our shoelaces, we get to look up and see the amazing world and the incredible people that surround us. And because its scary and daunting to really see the need all around, Christ provides us with sustenance.

Without worship, a conference on reaching young adults in a 2.0 world might is easily lost on diatribes on iPhones, real language, cultural commuting, evangelical tattoos, liturgically colored earrings and the like. With worship though, we are reminded that sharing the Gospel is at the heart of who we are. Regardless of whether we are running version 2.0, 1.0 or some beloved old 0.08. The Gospel is for all. After all, Jesus called you and called me. That was a pretty radical place to start, who knows who he might call through us.

The Power of Privilege

When we confess that we are captive to sin, it is not merely individual bad acts or moral lapses that we confess to. Instead, we also call to mind the systems and structures that we participate in that commit sin on our behalf and sometimes with our assent. It can be much harder to discern our involvement in these structures than to understand that we spoke crossly to our neighbor or failed to help a neighbor in need even when it was in our power to do so. Part of the reason that structures are so hard to perceive is the flow of good that comes from them. If we were all involved in a system of oppression that provided no material benefit, no comfort and no sense of human good, it would be assured that we would want to escape from it.

However, when systems of oppression provide easier routes for going on a business trip, traveling around the world on vacation, getting into highly selective schools, being hired, getting a loan, being tenured and the like, those of us who benefit from these advantages have a hard time seeing the downside. Consequently, the insistence of people who have been the victims of prejudicial violence, whether it be exclusion, name-calling, housing discrimination, being unable to bury your own spouse, or outright physical violence including government sponsored genocide, can seem like calling too much attention to themselves, or even asking for special attention and redress that is disproportionate to their complaint. We look for ways to cling to the idea of privilege, which at its heart suggests that while all people may be human in some sense, the fullest humanity resides in men more than women or transgendered people, in whites more than people of color, in the financially successful more than the poor, in heterosexuals more than gay, lesbian or bisexual people. We take solace that even if we do not meet all of the conditions for superiority, we are at least better than one of these "others".

As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Galatians:
27As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. Gal 3:27-29
I wonder how easily we might adopt such a radical baptismal formula in our own liturgy, or in our own welcome strategy. Could we even contextualize these thoughts to our own time to recapture the radical nature of them? Could we declare from the Font that "there is no longer American or Mexican, there us no longer straight or gay, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."?

The Law has destroyed the human instituted distinctions between us, for we have all been revealed as sinners, as unrighteous, as damnable, and as outright enemies of God. Confronted with our own shortcomings, we defiantly wave a banner in God's face, a banner older than any political entity, older than any state or tribe. We have the banner that bears images of the fruit we should not have eaten, and the fig leaves that express our shame at our own bodies. We cry out that we have stolen the power of judgment from God, and that we know what is "right and wrong" and will not hear of God leveling all of the structures we have built to keep things, and even people in their place. Ultimately we are left to despair in the face of what God is doing and to weep for ourselves.

The Gospel gives us hope in this very circumstance, that when we have assumed a world of limited good, and when we have participated in structures that have sought to ration out that limited good on the basis of race or gender, that God's forgiveness has invaded this thicket too. God has waded into the whole mess of human life, both our individual failings and the power dynamics that pervade the whole human race. In setting all of us on the same plane, rebellious and prideful children that we are, God has created the circumstances for forgiveness to be received as an equally undeserved gift and blessing by every human person. The cost for such a gift was nothing less than entering into these same power structures and enduring the deadly brunt of human judgment.

Jesus walked the earth as a poor Jew in an occupied nation under the sway of the most powerful nation of his age. He walked the earth as a laborer who though religious had no right to contend with the religious authorities. He walked the earth, derided as a fool, an evil wizard, a blasphemer, a destroyer of good society, a friend of drunks and whores, and a glutton and drunkard himself. He walked the earth under suspicion of being a bastard child, perhaps the product of fornication or the all too common practice of military rape. When he sought to proclaim a festival of Jubilee, a year of God's favor and a reign of God that was the source of unlimited good, we mocked him. When he told us how deep and wide and unbelievably awesome God's love was, we murdered him. Were this the end, we might conclude that God was foolish to contend with something as intractable as systems of human power. As Christians, we confess that God raised Christ from the dead, a sign of forgiveness for us, a declaration that even death is a feeble tool of domination, and that we have been caught up in the Holy Spirit's work of making the whole creation new. A creation where only one has privilege, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Tiptoeing onto the Web

Our first videocast on Vimeo:

Children's message 4/25/2010 from Paul Gustafson on Vimeo.

Mission to Philadelphia

Ecumania!

Though I'm very disappointed to be missing the National Workshop on Christian Unity this year, I'm hoping that the calendars will coordinate better next year. In the meantime, I've been very busy with this work in 2010 around the Synod.

In January, I attended the Massachusetts Council of Churches annual meeting which as held at Assumption College here in Worcester. I met a number of interesting colleagues and gathered some information about environmental auditing that our congregation could do.

Yesterday I was excited to be a part of coordinating the liturgy that celebrated the new Full Communion agreement between the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Bishop Margaret Payne of the ELCA New England Synod and Bishop Peter Weaver of the UMC New England Annual Conference led worship. Bishop Weaver's sermon was energetic and inspiring. The following statement was printed in the Worship Folder for the assembly to explain full communion.

"The Churchwide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) adopted a full communion agreement in August, 2009 with The United Methodist Church (UMC), following adoption of the same agreement by the UMC General Conference in 2008. It is the ELCA’s sixth full communion relationship and the first for the UMC.

Full communion is not a merger, but means that the two churches express a common confession of Christian faith and mutual recognition of Baptism and sharing Holy Communion; agree to mutual recognition of ordained ministers for service in either church; express a common commitment to evangelism, witness and service; engage in common decision-making on critical matters; and mutually lift criticism that may exist between the churches.

The two churches began formal theological dialogues together in 1977, which led to interim Eucharistic sharing in 2005.

The ELCA has 4.6 million baptized members, and the UMC has 8 million."

The next big event has a decidedly more somber tone. I will be representing the Synod at a Memorial Service on the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide at Our Savior's Armenian Church in Worcester. Though the occasion of remembrance is sad, it will be a powerful witness to join together with representatives and members of many churches in upholding the life and dignity of our neighbors.

On the Alleluia Side

Reposted from "Many But One"
http://manybutone.wordpress.com
Here it is Easter Wednesday and I'm still dwelling in the afterglow of the Vigil fire. I'm so grateful to my various colleagues for all of their hard work, especially John Weit, our new musician for jumping into the experience head first. I'm also grateful to the other writers here on this blog, your contributions provided great food for thought to use in my ministry settings and I know that several parishioners read Many But One during Lent after I publicized it in the newsletter.

As for me, I am always touched by the powerful drama and saving truth of Holy Week. For better or for worse, though I suspect largely for the better, my father reflected deeply and profoundly on the sufferings and the triumph of Christ during his own battle with terminal cancer. My cruciform witness comes from a hospital bedside as much as from the hill of Golgotha.

In our interfaith dialogues at Worcester Polytechnic Institute we discussed the troubling violence and suffering that permeates Holy Week. However, I would suggest that these very real trials are precisely what make the gospel so relatable to people in great distress of their own.

The passion and perhaps even the seeming "reboot" of the resurrection make us uncomfortable, because it is uncomfortable! We are brought face to face with death, our mortality and a radical promise of life that contradicts every bit of logic. We are invited into the pattern of the Paschal Mystery and what a joy that is, tears, shouts, joy and all. Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

On a Mission from God

We won't be wearing sunglasses, or driving around in a beat-up police cruiser, and we're not getting the band back together. However, this month our youth and their adult guides will be setting out on a mission to make a real difference in the lives of people in Greater Philadelphia. Youth from the congregations that participate in LIPY-CM (Lutheran Interparish Youth of Central Massachusetts) will travel to Philadelphia this month to engage in a week of service, fun and fellowship.

Already our group has collected and assembled food for the Upper Darby community pantry, and books and school supplies for the Drexel Hill after school program. These gifts are a way of saying thank you to Pastor Dave Shaheen and the people of Christ Church in Upper Darby, PA who helped organize our work sites.

We will be staying at Camp Inabah, a retreat center of our new full-communion partner, the United Methodist Church in Spring City, PA. Aside from lodging the camp will provide our food and our space for daily devotions and check-in. Each work day, a few of our youth will work on projects at the Camp as a way of thanking them for their hospitality.

During our work week, we will be serving in and around Philadelphia, particularly the West End and North Philadelphia neighborhoods. We will be volunteer for the following organizations: Share Food Bank, The Urban Tree Initiative, Upper Darby Weed & Seed, Cradles to Crayons, and The Upper Darby School District. Each of these sites will enable youth to have hands on service activities, engage with organizations that are committed to the well-being of their neighborhoods and meet new people from the local community.

No trip to Philadelphia would be complete without visiting our region's seminary, the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, for a tour and for worship. We have made arrangements to meet with the Admissions office to learn more about vocation. We will also hold our closing Eucharist in the seminary chapel, where our director of music, John Weit used to lead the assembly in song.

I am extremely excited about this year's trip and hope that you will prayer for the group as we travel, work, pray and laugh together during the week of April 19th to the 23rd. Your support means a great deal to the youth who are involved.

Does God Need a Guardian

“But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” -from Matthew 1:18-21

On March 19th, the church commemorates Joseph of Nazareth, a descendant of King David, a carpenter and builder (we might say construction worker today). Joseph was Mary’s husband, (probably arranged from an early age) and functioned as Jesus’ human stepfather through his childhood. The last we hear of Joseph in any of the Gospels is in Luke’s account of Jesus in the temple as a boy (age 12-13). He is also mentioned in Matthew and John as people question whether Jesus could possibly be Joseph’s son. It turns out that questioning the legitimacy of someone’s birth circumstances is indeed a very old tactic to discredit them

The bigger question for Christians is not about Joseph’s genetic relationship to Jesus, but really whether he is important in the story at all, especially since Jesus’ public ministry is clearly grounded in a profound sense that the God of the Torah is also his Abba. There are apocryphal stories of Jesus as a child that feature him doing some astoundingly divine and yet childlike things, making birds out of dirt, levitating or flying, and zapping a neighborhood bully with a bolt of retribution. Does a child with such power need a foster father?

Yet, our affirmation of the full humanity of Jesus means that like all other humans, he grew, learned, changed and experienced his life as all children do. Studies have shown how vital positive adults are in the lives of children. Matthew’s witness places the responsibility for the flight to Egypt and handling their stay there with Joseph. In some small part, Joseph’s patient willingness to be a dad to a child that was not his own, and to provide the love, protection and guidance needed was a harbinger of the longstanding Christian ministry of adoption and caring for orphans.

That is the power of all parenting, both birth and adoptive, that the child may surpass the parents precisely because of what they give to the child. For Mary, what an honor to give life in the flesh to the life-force that spawned the galaxies. For Joseph, what an honor and a privilege to be the protector and the rescuer of the one who would rescue and save us all. God’s ability to work through the most ordinary people, and to do the extraordinary amazes me every day.

Let us pray:

Loving God, for Joseph and for all parents who foster, adopt and protect the children who were not born to them, but who were entrusted to them, we give you thanks. Go with them and with all parents this day, who in sharing your unconditional love with a child, reveal the might of your love for your own Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

What to Remember, What to Forget

“Remember the wonderful works he has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he uttered,
O offspring of his servant Abraham,
children of Jacob, his chosen ones.” -Psalm 105:5-6

If salvation is a “done deal”, why do we keep going back to the well (or perhaps the font?) and remembering the deeds of God. Why spend half a year every year rehearsing the birth, life, passion and death of Jesus? Why spend another half of the year remembering the ministry of Jesus and the nascent church and recounting what the Holy Spirit has done? Can’t we just peg our hopes on the sure and certain hope we have in God’s Gracious nature and get on with it?

The answer to this quandary is both yes and no. Our faith does allow us to move forward, not to be paralyzed in re-enacting ancient ritual out of fear. On the other hand, we do well in Lent and throughout the year not to adopt a totally casual approach to God’s grace. We can easily forget the lengths God in Christ has Gone for us. Or we can remember God’s goodness in a way that is not central to our lives and wellbeing. God can end up in that glass box down the hallway with the sign that reads “in case of emergency, break glass”.

Today the psalmist calls us to recall the history of God’s dogged persistence with the children of Abraham. We see the pattern of challenge and struggle and God’s willingness to get involved. This very pattern will be recalled through Holy Week and especially at the Great Vigil of Easter. This pattern of retelling the salvation story forms the scriptural base of the Jewish celebration of Passover. We need to remember that God has not forgotten us. It helps us to remember who we are.

Come Dwell with us

During this season of Lent, I am participating in a multiuser weblog with six other Lutheran pastors from around the country. Each day, one or more of us will offer a brief devotional reading that is based on the ELCA's daily reading e-mail devotional. You can subscribe to the daily e-mail by visiting http://listserv.elca.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A0=BIBLE-READINGS and entering your address. You can visit the Lenten blog by surfing to http://manybutone.wordpress.com Not only can you check in daily to examine new reflections on the scriptures, but also participate in the conversation, leaving comments and asking questions of the authors. What follows are some samples of the work you will find there. Won't you stop by and check us out?

“I love Moses!  He is the only person throughout the history of the world to have actually received a burning bush from God.  In that bush he received a crystal clear message from God as to what he was to do with his life.  God told Moses that he was to go to Pharaoh to bring God’s people out of Egypt.  Moses was called by God to God’s work and God promised to provide him with all he needed to get that work done.  Really, does it get any better than this?”
Rev. Meredith Lovell Keseley

“This season starts with the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” and it leads us to the death of the cross. Yet despite the dust and death, this is a season of life … for in Lent the church takes an honest look at sin and death and dares, nonetheless, to speak a word of life. We can’t proclaim new life without also speaking about death. We can’t seek to draw close to God without first confessing our self-alienation from God. We can’t proclaim forgiveness without acknowledging the reality of sin.”
Rev. Chris Duckworth

“It was when the Israelites shared what they had that they were able to create a beautiful tabernacle.  And it is in sharing what we each have, whether physical gifts or spiritual gifts that we are able to come together as a Christian community to worship and serve the Lord.
Who are the skillful women and men in your lives? And how do you use your gifts and skills to worship and serve the Lord?”
Rev. Becca Middeke-Colin

Multiblogging!

For the season of Lent I will be cross-posting my writing from a collaborative blog called Many but One that I am writing with six colleagues from around the United States.

To the faithful assemblies gathered around Word and Sacrament, and apparently around the LCD flat screen, grace and peace be to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. I bring greetings from the church that meets at the corner of Salisbury and Lancaster streets in the city of Worcester. My name is John Longworth, and I serve as the Associate Pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. My call has a special focus on education, catechesis and young adults. As part of my work with young adults I spend some of my time each week ministering to students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a university in the same neighborhood as the church building.

I live in Worcester with my wife Sara. Sara's daily work involves driver examinations for the Central Massachusetts Safety Council Auto School, though her calling is centered around handmade clothing and fine arts. Fortunately, Worcester has a growing arts scene and is a very diverse immigrant destination. This makes two of our favorite activities, exotic cooking and exotic dining, quite possible.

Beyond its status as an immigrant and refugee destination, Worcester has a rich history as an industrial center, a medical/biotechnology hub, a college town, home to New England's only diner factory and to several classic diners, and a bastion of independent punk and hard rock, from the days of Wormtown radio and the shows at the Paris, Palladium and Tammany Hall to weekends at Ralph's Diner (Punk Dive Bar par excellence!)