Archives for July 2013

The Olive Branch, 7/10/13

July 10, 2013 By moadmin

Accent on Worship

When I talk about my neighbors, you know who I mean: the peole who live in my condo building or in my neighborhood. When you talk about your neighbors, I know who you mean: those with whom you share an alley, or those who live on the same street, or those with whom you share a zip code. My neighbors and I are pretty much alike. Same with you, I’d guess.

In the Gospel for this Sunday, a man asks Jesus a question: “Who is my neighbor?” You know the story, and since you also know Jesus you know that if you are going to ask him a question you’d better be prepared to have your view of the world changed.
So Jesus tells a story. A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. A Jewish man, most likely. A religious man, perhaps. A priest and a Levite pass by. Two of his own kind. People from his own zip code. They pass by and do not stop to help. You know the story. And then a Samaritan comes along. And since you know the story, you know that for the Jews of Jesus’ day, Samaritans were the lowest of the low, a people despised, a people with whom you had no dealings.

And the Samaritan stops, helps the man left for dead by the side of the road, and makes sure that the costs of his recuperation are covered. So who was the neighbor to this man? You know.

If Jesus were to tell the same story in answer to the same question in our time and place, it would not be a Samaritan who would come to the aid of the man beaten and left for dead on a south Minneapolis street. Who would it be? A welfare cheat? A serial rapist? A redneck bigot? A hardened gang member? A terrorist bomber? Who is most despised by you? That is who it would be. And that is your neighbor.

In fact, if Jesus is to be believed, everyone is your neighbor–maybe especially those you most despise. Since there is no one outside the circle of God’s love, there is no one who is NOT your neighbor. Mine, too.

So, what are we to do? Love God and love our neighbor. All of them. That’s what.

And so the world will know that we are disciples of Jesus.

– Warren Peterson

Sunday Readings

July 14, 2013 – Time after Pentecost: Sunday 15
Deuteronomy 30:9-14 + Psalm 25:1-10
Colossians 1:1-14 + Luke 10:25-37

July 21, 2013 – Time after Pentecost: Sunday 16
Genesis 18:1-10a + Psalm 15
Colossians 1:15-28 + Luke 10:38-42

Godly Play for Grownups

Join storyteller Diana Hellerman to experience Godly Play just as the children of Mount Olive do. On Sunday, July 14, come to the Godly Play room at 11:15am for the second story in a series of four. We’ll hear the story of The Great Family and our place in it. We’ll cross the threshold into the Godly Play space. We’ll build the circle one at a time, hear the story, wonder together about the story and share a feast. Enjoy a quick cup of coffee after liturgy if you wish, and then come downstairs to Godly Play Circle One.

Additional sessions: July 28: A Parable (you’ll have to wait and see which one) and August 18: The Faces of Jesus. Questions? Contact Diana at 612-581-5969 or diana.hellerman@gmail.com.

The Bargain Box

Each August, Mount Olive Neighborhood Ministries sponsors The Bargain Box, an affordable way for neighborhood families to obtain good quality clothing (new and gently used) for children of all ages to wear as they return to school in the fall. This year, the Bargain Box will be on August 3, from 8-11:30 a.m.

You can help by donating new or gently used children’s clothes or money to purchase clothes (please include “Bargain Box” in the memo line of your gift), before August 4.

If you have any questions about Bargain Box, please contact Irene Campbell at 651-230-3927.

Adopt a Plot

We need volunteers to help with the up keep of the planted areas and grounds. Can you help? With the abundant rain this spring, the weeds and grass are growing like crazy! William, our Sexton, does the mowing, but even with our relatively low maintenance landscaping there is a good deal to keep up. A sign up chart is in the gathering area with various plots mapped out for you to choose from. Eight gardeners have already signed up, but 5 more are needed! If you can help, we ask that you check the area you adopt weekly and attend to new weeds or other needs. Gardening tools and trash bags are available for your use along with instructions. For information call Carla Manuel (612-521-3952), Andrew Andersen (763-607-1689), or Steve Manuel (952-922-6367).

Book Discussion Group

Mount Olive’s Book Discussion group meets on the second Saturday of each month at 10:00 a.m. at church. For the July 13 meeting, they will read The Violent Bear It Away, by Flannery O’Connor. And advance notification (because of its length) and for August 10 we will discuss Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Meals on Wheels Thanks

Thanks to the following volunteers from Mount Olive who delivered Meals on Wheels for TRUST during the second quarter of 2013: Gary Flatgard, Art & Elaine Halbardier, Bob & Mary Lee, and Connie & Rod Olson.

New Pictorial Directory

Work has begun on a new Mount Olive Lutheran Church Pictorial Directory of members and friends.
With 21st century technology, we plan to develop a secure online edition located in the Members Only section of our website. There will be the option of requesting a print version for persons who do not have computer or internet access.

The Vestry, in approving the new online photo directory, included in the authorizing motion that the directory must be secure. The directory will be password protected. It will not be out on the web for just anyone to view or mine contact or family information.

Using the online digital method of producing a pictorial directory allows for continual updates throughout the year as new members join and as updated photos become available. It also reduces the cost of production significantly.

Our target date to roll out the directory is mid-autumn.
Members and friends will need to secure a password for access to the online edition. The passwords will be assigned through the church office. The date when members can start requesting passwords will be announced in an upcoming Olive Branch as the project proceeds.

Paul Nixdorf will take the lead on the photography portion of the project. Evangelism Director, Andrew Andersen, and Congregation Life Director, Sandra Pranschke, are working on scheduling times for taking photographs of members and friends. We have proposed that time slots to shoot photos be set up before and after Sunday liturgies with additional time slots scheduled as needed during the week.

If you are able to volunteer to help with scheduling and or assist with registration at the time of the photo shoots, please call the church office at 612-827-5919.

Watch upcoming Olive Branch publications for further information on this project.

Bring Your Pails and Bring Your Shovels!

Phase One of Project Bicycle Rack happens this Saturday, July 13! Starting at 8:30 a.m., the Property Committee invites you to take part in setting two small paver plots that will form the platforms for the bicycle racks. We will shovel dirt from the planter at the north parking lot and replace it with gravel base, sand and paver blocks. The two bicycle racks will be set in August. Many hands make light work – and we will be grateful for your help. If you have any questions, call Brenda Bartz at 612-824-7812 or 651-558-7979.

Common Hope

Mount Olive generously supported Common Hope’s Antigua Library and Reading Promotion Initiative with a gift from our congregation’s Capital Campaign Tithe. Our gift helped to launch this program and make a commitment to literacy and early childhood development in Guatemala. Here is a link to an article about the program: http://www.commonhope.org/2013/04/08/exploring-the-new-world-of-books/

One of the criteria our congregation thought important in determining the tithe recipients was that we maintain a relationship with the organization. Common Hope invites Vision Teams to come to Guatemala and spend eight days working at the project, building relationships and experiencing Guatemalan culture. If you might be interested in participating in a Vision Team, perhaps next summer, please email Lisa Ruff at jklmruff@msn.com.

Servant Schedule Request Deadline

I will be working on the Servant Schedule for 2013 4th Quarter (October-December) in early August. If you have requests for that period, please submit them to me by August 1, 2013 @ peggyrf70@gmail.com. Thanks!

– Peggy Hoeft

Intrepid USA Hospice Seeks Volunteers

You have an opportunity to give of your time, heart, and talents to hospice patients and their loved ones! Training sessions are now being scheduled for volunteers throughout the Twin Cities metro area by Intrepid USA Hospice in Roseville, MN. If you or someone you know is interested in volunteering, please call Karen Cherwien, Hospice Chaplain and Volunteer Coordinator, at 651-638-7899 for more information and an application.

Mark your calendar!
“God’s work. Our hands.”
Saturday & Sunday, September 7-8, 2013

For 25 years, the ELCA has been a church deeply rooted in faith and in sharing its passion for making positive changes in the world.

To celebrate our 25th anniversary and our church’s commitment to sharing God’s love with our neighbors, Mount Olive is called to take part in a dedicated weekend of service on September 7-8 known as “God’s work. Our hands.”

You work every day to welcome your neighbors and make your community a better place. Now let’s do it together as one body, using our hands to do God’s work in Jesus Christ’s name.

Imagine the nearly 10,000 congregations of our church serving meals, cleaning up neighborhoods, making quilts for refugees or simply visiting the neighbors who need us. We are a church that rolls up our sleeves and gets to work. Let’s harness that experience in a focused weekend of service to others. Maybe you want to work alone on a project that is near and dear to you.

Perhaps you want to join with others in the congregation for a larger project. Interested in trying something new? Meeting new people from the congregation? There’s a place for you in this weekend event.

Watch upcoming Olive Branch articles for suggestions about what you can do to pitch in.

“And the King said to them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40

Name Badges

We invite members to wear their name badges in the next couple of months. This will be helpful for the following reasons:

1) To help members learn the names of fellow members. When we go from two liturgies to one during the summer months, there are members from the liturgy that you don’t usually attend who may not know you or may not know your name.

2) During the summer months at Mount Olive, we have a larger than usual number of visitors at liturgies. Your name badge can serve as a welcome aid if someone is seeking information or needs assistance.

3) We have a new vicar, Emily Beckering, arriving in mid-August. There are over 500 of us for her to get to know and having a name spoken and printed helps with remembering who a person is.

4) We have been blessed with a number of new members during the past year. Like those of us who have been around for a while, they usually regularly attend one or the other of the liturgies. There are a number of folks who may be familiar but for whom a name is not known or remembered. Knowing a name can make it easier to initiate a conversation. A name badge can help with the process of getting comfortable in a new place.

5) As I am maturing, my memory is just not as good as it used to be. When I don’t remember a person’s name after three or four conversations, I am hesitant, or even embarrassed and sometimes hesitate to ask their name again. A name badge helps reduce the embarrassment by giving me a visual cure.

If you cannot find your name badge on the racks in the narthex, or if you have misplaced your name badge (as I have on three occasions), please give Cha a call at the church office, 612-827-5919, and she will print a new name badge for you.

– Andrew Andersen, Director of Evangelism

Pay Attention

July 7, 2013 By moadmin

We are baptized into a community that exists for each other and for the world, preparing the world to encounter Christ and the infinite, welcoming love of God Christ brings. Faith is only lived fully when it is lived in community and when all are included in God’s grace.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 14, year C; texts: Galatians 6:1-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

In one of her reflections for our spring hymn festival of the National Lutheran Choir, which we repeated again last weekend, Susan Cherwien quoted a familiar friend of Mount Olive, Jewish teacher Earl Schwartz, when he said that if the Hebrew Scriptures repeat something three times one would be wise to pay attention.

The lectionary’s plan of readings may not carry the same weight as the Old Testament itself when it comes to repetition, but we could go ahead and say that if the lectionary repeats a theme three times we might at least want to consider that there is something to which we need to pay attention. Last week from Paul’s letter to the Galatians we heard his declaration that to love one’s neighbor was to completely fulfill God’s law. Next week we will hear Jesus’ paramount “neighbor” parable, his story of the Good Samaritan. And in the middle today, Paul once more talks about fulfilling the law, this time the law of Christ, and says that is done when we “bear one another’s burdens.” So it looks like we need to consider this question of neighborliness a little bit, or at least try to pay attention to what we might need to learn.

I suppose the question is whether or not this is old stuff for us. We all know we are called to love our neighbor; goodness knows I’ve preached about it here, because God’s Word has spoken of it so often. Is there anything new here for us, any value to paying attention?

Well, there seems to be an obvious answer to that. The reason it comes up so often, even apart from this three week stretch, is that it is a pervasive and important theme for Jesus, for Paul, and really for the rest of the New Testament writers. To say nothing of the Hebrew prophets, for whom it also is a deep concern. The somewhat obvious answer is the great frequency with which this theme is repeated in Scripture suggests this is a message either we need to hear a lot or one in which we struggle to live a lot. Apparently the early believers needed this reminder early and often. So unless we’re certain that we’ve learned this lesson, incorporated it into our psyche and our faith and our actions as individuals and a congregation, we could at least hear Jesus and Paul out today.

There seem to be three key areas where we are asked to pay attention today, and so learn more about our discipleship.

Today we learn that we are paying attention to Christ Jesus when we recognize that salvation is only complete when all are welcome, all are included.

Luke is the only evangelist who tells of a second mission Jesus sends out, this time with more than the twelve. Seventy are sent out, and seventy was the traditional number for the nations of the world. So in effect Jesus is sending his followers to the whole world, and their job is to prepare people for their coming encounter with Jesus.

They are sent out with his authority, and they bring his gifts: healing, driving out of demons, and proclaiming the coming reign of God. As they go, they are his official envoys, almost as if he’s a head of state sending out diplomats; Luke even uses language which is suggestive of that status.

There’s great urgency to the sending, too. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and his death. And, in his words, the harvest is great. There are many who need to meet him, hear him, follow him. So the consistent message here is that this reign of God is not what it is supposed to be until all are included. And Jesus’ urgency shows how important it is to him that all are reached.

And that’s Paul’s point, too, as he concludes his letter to the churches of Galatia. There’s much he is saying in this letter, but what becomes clear in his conclusion is that life in Christ is not and cannot be lived alone.

To love one’s neighbor is to fulfill the law, he said in the part from last week. Now he spends time encouraging his congregations to stay together, to bear each other’s burdens, to not grow weary in doing right, even if it looks like things aren’t working.

Whenever we have the opportunity, Paul says, we work for the good of all. And especially for the family of faith, he adds. But isn’t that interesting? Working for the good of all is clearly bigger than the local congregation or he wouldn’t have to add that on. The family of Christ is called to be neighbor to all, and to each other, not either/or.

And this is the letter of grand inclusion, as well, isn’t it? Earlier Paul has declared that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. Like Jesus, Paul envisions a faith that is not individualistic but communal, where it is only lived fully when it is lived together. The community of faith is not an insider’s club, but a sign of God’s grace for the whole world.

We should pay attention to that.

We are also paying attention to Christ Jesus when we bear one another’s burdens.

Paul echoes Jesus when he claims in these last chapters that the only sign of discipleship is love of the other. Paul’s spent this letter describing new life in Christ, where all are included, and arguing against fulfilling an Old Testament law as way to be right with God, that is, circumcision. In the previous chapter Paul has said that the only thing that counts is faith active in love. Love of neighbor is the only sign of discipleship, Paul suggests, not any outward observance of God’s laws.

So you don’t follow Jewish law to be made right with God, Paul says. You are already made right with God, and the only thing that matters is that you live as if that’s the truth. This is because we are given new life freely in Christ, and are freed from the law of God, another great theme of Galatians.

It is in that new life that we find life lived according to God’s reign, a life where we are called by God and given the fruits of the Spirit to love our neighbor, and bear one another’s burdens.

In our Gospel we also have a reminder why the disciples and we need to hear this message again and again. Remember last week, when the disciples and Jesus are rejected by a town of Samaritans and James and John want to call down fire from heaven on those people? Luke says Jesus “rebuked them”. Three years into his ministry and they still aren’t getting him.

So today Jesus needs to make it clear when they go out on their own, the twelve and the other 58: do not punish those who reject you. Go into a town and proclaim the good news of the coming reign of God. Heal. Bestow God’s peace. If they welcome you, good.

If they don’t, then do two things. First, shake the dust off your feet as you leave, a symbolic prophetic gesture. Some who read Luke’s Gospel might imply from this that this town is seen as ritually unclean. But perhaps we might read something else into it: don’t carry away anything of this town to your next visit. Let it go and move on.

Because the other thing they’re supposed to do as they leave such a place is to once more solemnly declare that the reign of God has come near. They may have rejected Jesus’ envoys, but they are to hear once more the Good News before the envoys leave.

So the center of our life in faith is bearing the burdens of others, loving others in Jesus’ name, and nothing else.

We should pay attention to that.

And we are paying attention to Christ Jesus when we rejoice in the right things, and remember who’s really bringing life to the world.

This is kind of an interesting part of the Gospel, the disciples’ joy on their return, and Jesus’ correction. They come back from this mission thrilled that even demons submitted to them. Jesus’ authority in them had done what he promised it would.

Jesus turns it around on them, however, reminding them that it was he who gave them that authority. In effect, the reason they were successful is that Jesus’ power was with them. So they aren’t to rejoice in their skills, their brilliant mission, their saving power. That all belongs to God.

Rather, Jesus says, rejoice that you’re also someone who belongs to God. Your names are written in heaven. He focuses them away from the success of their mission after they return as much as he focuses them away from potential failure of their mission when they go out. In neither case are they to worry about results. They should simply continue to be glad they belong to God, are part of this new reign.

There’s something important in this for us. It can be easy for us to assume we know what it looks like to be successful as a Christian congregation, or even as individuals. And conversely, what it would look like if we failed.

That person, perhaps even a beloved member of our own family, who doesn’t see the need or joy for regular participation and mission in the life of a congregation, whom we just can’t seem to convince to come, or even to find their own church. Or that person whom we touch with an action of grace and who comes to faith as a result and whose life is changed, an occasion of great joy.

Neither ultimately are our concern, Jesus seems to suggest. They’re both God’s concern, God’s work, God’s salvation. Our job, our call, is to seek the fruits of the Spirit to become changed children of God who live a mission of love of neighbor in the world preparing the world for their encounter with Christ Jesus.

And in our own bodies and lives, they are in fact encountering Christ Jesus. That’s our joy: we belong in Christ and we have a mission to share. The rest is up to God. Which is why we can rejoice in our own salvation: it’s not our doing, so we can completely trust that it is real and true. And continue to do our calling in the world.

We should pay attention to this.

Maybe, in the end, Jesus and Paul and the others are repeating themselves a lot. But maybe, in the end, they need to.

Until we are able to embrace our true calling to be neighbor to the world and to each other, to be signs of God’s saving grace which includes all and which is not complete until all are included, until we are able to do that as second nature, we’ll need this message.

And so we pay attention to it, as to light in the darkness. And we pray that Christ our Lord would fill us with the same Spirit as the seventy, that we might go out into the world bringing healing, bestowing peace, and telling the world of God’s coming reign in which all are welcome and loved, all.

Because when that happens, there will truly be cause for rejoicing in heaven as well as on earth.

In the name of Jesus. Amen