Blog – Page 392

Olive Branch, 7/9/12

July 10, 2012 By moadmin

Accent on Worship

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” What if this postal carrier’s “creed” was about church and its worship?
Indeed – I see a variety of methods being put to use by churches these days – ways to entice people to fill the pews (if they have them). Ways to ensure convenience and comfort, and certainly a promise of a subjectively pleasing, favorable experience – certainly better than Competition Lutheran Church down the road. Then hopefully they will choose them and come back. Snow, rain, heat, or deep darkness would not be helpful to this approach.

Summer – especially with congregations like ours without air-conditioning – really puts that to test. What brings us here? Comfort/convenience can’t be it. I’m amazed that Sundays with snow, pouring rain, or even excessive heat, people come. They sing. They praise. They listen. They partake in the Holy Meal. There is a huge difference here – it is “who” these activities are about.

Summer points out that it clearly is not about us. It is indeed about God. It’s precisely that God calls us out of convenience – calls us out of our sense of narcissism into a sense of what God needs, and what our neighbor needs.

It is fun when you throw an open invitation party and lots of people come! And the collective experience does bond us together – including experiencing each other’s joys and woes. But when we gather for liturgy, it is not WE who threw the party, it is God. God is host – we are the grateful recipients of the tremendous gifts God has to offer to us and to the world. How do we respond? (“Could you make it a little more comfortable for me?” “Could you say this and that instead?” “Could you really just tell me what I want to hear?” “Can you serve Pinot Noir instead of Merlot?” “Could you sing the song my mom sang to me?”) It’s easy to come down with a bad case of “I, Me or My” disease.

How about responding with a sense of gratitude and excitement as WE spread GOD’s invitation to venture beyond ourselves? In spite of temperature.

It is reassuring to see us “sweat for Jesus one hour a week” (quoting saint Dorothy). It is reassuring that week after week, so many do respond and not just for themselves. It is reassuring that after crises like September 11, 2001, attendance in some places like here did not swell, because we are largely already always here. Our prayer and sense of need intensified, but we were already here. So was God.

Now don’t hear me saying we should never get air conditioning. Sometimes it can be physically dangerous and human bodies aren’t used to heat the way we were even 30 years ago. What I AM saying that it wouldn’t matter: we’ll still be here with or without it.

And for me it is not only reassuring to hear so many sing out like you do here – not for me, not for yourselves, but for God. God really matters to us, and that’s why we’re here. In spite of the heat.

Wow.

– Cantor David Cherwien

Sunday Readings

July 15, 2012 – Time after Pentecost, Sunday 15
Amos 7:7-15 + Psalm 85:8-13
Ephesians 1:3-14 + Mark 6:14-29

July 22, 2012 – St. Mary Magdalene, Apostle
Ruth 1:6-18 + Psalm 73:23-28
Acts 13:26-33a + John 20:1-2, 11-18

Missing the Font?

Mount Olive’s baptismal font is being restored and re-built. It will be back in the nave by mid-summer.

Attention Worship Assistants!

Here is the link to the most current version of this quarter’s Servant Schedule online:
https://www.mountolivechurch.org/worship_servants.html. Click on the large red bar that indicates “View Current Servant Schedule.”

Take a few minutes to note when you are scheduled to serve, and mark your calendars accordingly. Save this page as a bookmark or favorite in your browser, and you will always have the most current schedule available.

Hard copies of this schedule are available in the narthex, in the church office, and on the table next to the server’s albs in the back hall at church, if you would like to pick one up. If you would like a schedule mailed to you (via snail mail), please call the church office.

Garden Tour Fundraiser

See some beautiful gardens and support a worthwhile project!

This garden tour is a fund raiser to purchase a rolling overhead door for the serving window in the East Assembly Room. This would allow folks to work on the counter without disturbing those who may be meeting in that space.

The tour will take place on Sunday, July 22, after church. Participants will be served brunch at the first garden stop, travel to another garden or two, and end the tour with a garden party at the last stop. The charge for the tour will be $25.00 per person. More information will be available soon, but in the meantime, mark your calendar! We hope many will be able to attend. We had a great time with this fundraiser two years ago and we are sure that this year will be just as much fun.

Rides will be provided for those who need or want them. Please call the church office if you would like a ride, and someone will get back to you to make arrangements.

Book Discussion Group

Mount Olive’s Book Discussion group regularly meets on the second Saturday of each month at 10:00 a.m. For the July 14 meeting, they will read The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope, and for August 11 they will read The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham. All readers welcome!

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 4, 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.

Property Committee

The Property Committee will meet Sunday, July 29, at 11:00 a.m. in the Undercroft. Those experienced in maintaining the Mount Olive facility and those who would like to become part of the property team are invited and encouraged to attend. The meeting will be over by lunchtime. If you have any questions, please contact me at 651 558 7979.
– Brenda Bartz, Director of Properties

Adult Forum July 29, 2012

“All this is from God, who reconciled us through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:18

Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?

Join the conversation on Sunday, July 29. Our guest is Tim Feiertag, Grassroots Organizing and Training Coordinator at Lutherans Concerned North America headquarters (LC/NA) in St. Paul. Tim holds a degree in Social Work from Valparaiso University and a Master of Divinity degree from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. His involvement in Lutherans Concerned includes being co-chair of the Kansas City/Lawrence Chapter, serving on the national board of directors and as Regional Director for the Central Region. In 1998, he was elected co-chair of LC/NA, a position he held until 2002. Across time he has participated in and conducted various trainings, from I-Wheel to RIC and Building an Inclusive Church. He comes to LC/NA and St. Paul from the Missouri Children’s Division in Kansas City where he served as a caseworker for abused and neglected children and their families.

School Supplies Drive

Summer’s just begun and for the Neighborhood Ministries Committee that means looking forward to the beginning of …. school!? That’s right!

Summer is when we start thinking about gathering school supplies for distribution to 100 neighborhood children at the August 4 community meal. While this is an item in our budget, the generous contributions we receive each year from the congregation help us to provide as many supplies as possible. Please look for a Neighborhood Ministries Committee member during coffee hour on July 15, 22, and 29 and offer your support to this vital neighborhood ministry.

– Kathy Kruger, Neighborhood Ministries Committee member

Capital Campaign “Tithe” Update

The Tithe Task Force will meet over the summer to continue working on the process for capital campaign tithe allocations. We are pleased to report that Celia Ellingson volunteered to join the task force and was approved by the Vestry. The Task Force also wants to thank the congregation for suggesting worthy nonprofit organizations and initiatives that might be appropriate for the capital campaign tithe. Nearly 40 organizations or initiatives were suggested by congregation members or by the neighborhood ministries committee or by the missions committee. We will continue to update the congregation during the summer and fall about our progress in considering how Mount Olive can faithfully act as stewards of the capital campaign gifts.

Heat Advisory Volunteers Needed

We would like to open Mount Olive’s air conditioned building to those who need a break from the heat when it is extreme, like it was for most of last week. Volunteer hosts are needed. This task involves welcoming those who come, showing them to the west assembly area, and offering a cold drink and a place to sit for awhile.

We hope to provide this relief whenever a heat advisory is issued for Minneapolis. If you are interesting in being a heat relief host or if you have any questions at all about this project, please call Donna Neste at church (612-827-5919), or send her a note (d_nestea@yahoo.com). Hopefully we can find a few volunteers who might be able to make themselves available for a couple of hours at a time on short notice.

August Choral Ensembles

Women’s Ensemble
Interested women are invited to come and sing for the August 4 Eucharist at 9:30 am. There will be one rehearsal on Wednesday, August 1, at 7:00 for one hour. The group will sing several liturgical things and an anthem for women’s voices, conductor will be Christine Hazel.

Men’s Ensemble
Men are invited to join together to sing for the August 12 Eucharist. There will be one rehearsal, on THURSDAY, August 9, at 7:00 for one hour. This group will also sing several liturgical things and an anthem for men’s voices. Cantor Cherwien will lead this ensemble.

Thank You Very Much!

Mary and our family and I want to thank you, our sisters and brothers at Mount Olive, for making it possible for us to move from Northfield this past month. I don’t know how many of you were aware that when you called me, the Vestry set aside a budget for moving and decided to carry it over until we were able to sell and buy and get moved. It was incredibly kind and helpful of them to do that on your behalf, and we are very glad to be close by now. Our house in Northfield sold, which is a huge relief, and we’re pretty much all unpacked now. It feels much more “settled” for us in more than one way. There have been many who have asked over the past 20 months how my commute was going, but the truth is, Mary’s been commuting to Bloomington for nearly 13 years, so this is probably a greater gift for her than for me!

Our new address is 6821 W. 82nd Street, Bloomington, Minnesota 55438. It takes me only about 15-17 minutes to get to church now, and the remarkable thing is that this gives me at least 6 extra hours a week that I was previously using to drive. I should be able to catch up on some reading this summer!

Again, thank you all so much for all your kindness and support since we’ve come to be with you, and especially for this move. God’s blessings be with you all!

– Pastor Crippen

Meals on Wheels

According to Betsy Peregoy, Program Director for TRUST, Inc.’s Meals on Wheels program, the following people from Mount Olive delivered meals during the second quarter of 2012: Nancy & Gary Flatgard, Elaine & Art Halbardier, Bob Lee, and Connie & Rod Olson. In her note Betsy says, “All of us at TRUST are grateful for their dedicated service!”

And the members of Mount Olive are, too.

Sharing Weakness

July 8, 2012 By moadmin

It is easy to believe we are too weak, too ineffective, to share the Gospel with the world, with others; Jesus, however, has faith in us that we can do this, and sends us out, sharing our weakness, and so bringing his grace to the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Sunday 14, year B; texts: Mark 6:1-13; 2 Corinthians 12:(1) 2-10

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

“And he could do no deed of power there; . . . he was amazed at their unbelief.”

That’s a pretty astonishing sentence Mark writes. Because the people of Nazareth didn’t believe he could be who he was, Jesus was unable to do “deeds of power” among them, with a couple exceptions. How is it possible that anything wasn’t possible for Jesus? Matthew, whom we believe wrote his Gospel after Mark’s, and who used large parts of Mark as the basis for his writing, seemingly couldn’t bring himself to accept what Mark said. In his hand, the story reads that Jesus “did not” do any deeds of power. Not “could not.” And Luke, who likely wrote a little later than Matthew, simply omits the whole sentence and the question of whether or not Jesus did or did not do miracles in Nazareth, and why he did or did not.

But there is no escaping the reality in all three of the synoptic Gospels’ accounts of this homecoming of Jesus: it was an utter failure. Luke even says that after Jesus pushed back at their rejection they tried to throw him off a cliff, murder him. His own people! Remarkably, Jesus actually did some miracles before the rejection, because all three agree that the people were astonished at what he did, and by what he said, and at his reputation. But it was who he was that hindered them, a hometown boy whose family they knew, who now was teaching with wisdom, doing wonderful deeds, and carrying a growing reputation as a holy man. Their need to see him as the woodworker, the local, known to them, and have him be who he’d always been to them, was more powerful than their ability to believe in him. And so his visit home was a disaster.

Out of the ashes of this failure comes the last thing we might expect. Jesus decides to invest his 12 inner followers with his authority and send them out to do what he’s been doing. He sends them out to heal and to cast out demons. They even proclaim repentance, preaching the sermon he’s been preaching. Just when they see him fail, he sends them out to do the same mission.

I wonder if that was helpful or harmful to their sense of that mission. Did it make them more fearful (if Jesus can’t do it how can we?) or hopeful (even Jesus struggled sometimes so we can’t always expect to do well)? I don’t suppose we can know what it was like for them. But it seems to me that it’s very helpful to us, from our perspective two millennia away. Because there’s no escaping that we’ve been baptized into this mission, too, that we are sent to proclaim God’s Good News in our words and in our deeds, collectively and individually, in our homes, at our work, in our neighborhoods. And most days I don’t think I’ve got much chance to do a very good job of it. Or more accurately, most days I don’t think I do a very good job of it, chance or no. But if Jesus sometimes failed, too, well, maybe that’s a good thing. In fact, maybe that’s the best thing of all.

In sending them out after his Nazareth mess, Jesus seems to be telling them that success is not necessarily his standard. Faithfulness, however, is.

He tells them to expect rejection, in fact. But they are still to go, trusting God will be with them. In contrast to the people of Nazareth and their lack of faith in Jesus, Jesus here shows tremendous faith in his disciples, in us. He sends them out in pairs, suggesting that we are to work together to do our mission, we’re not expected to do this alone. And he sends them without supplies or support except staff and sandals, suggesting that we do this mission expecting that God will provide the resources we need.

But the important thing is, he sends them out. He trusts them. He trusts us.

And given that he’s just experienced the failure of rejection, he tells them they might want to expect that as well. But rather than keep them back out of fear of such rejection, he sends them out. And it’s Paul who today seems to say that is our normal state of mission as well.

Paul today makes it clear where we will be operating in terms of success and failure, and where God’s true power and grace are found.

The context is that Paul, absent from Corinth, is having his teaching and even his own person undermined and mocked by people Paul calls “superapostles.” These are folks preaching in Corinth who are rival missionaries to Paul, people who are elegant in manner and speech, people who boast of incredible spiritual powers and experiences. They’re flashy and fancy, and they’re making Paul look bad.

Intentionally, it seems. They’re contrasting their spiritual strength and knowledge and clever speaking with Paul’s apparent stumbling and less than polished approach. This is hard for someone with an ego like Paul’s, and that ego struggle shows throughout these chapters. But ultimately, Paul remembers that he is not relying on his own skills but on the grace of Jesus Christ.

You see, what’s interesting is that most scholars seem to agree that Paul is talking about himself here in these first verses of chapter 12. He’s the one who had the spiritual vision, where he was taken up into heaven in some mysterious way. He tells it in the third person because he’s trying not to be like the superapostles and boast about his spiritual prowess (though the boasting does sort of rear its head, especially in verse 6.)

But what he tries to make the Corinthians understand is this: whatever his spiritual strength is, whatever mystical experiences he’s had, even whatever his standing as a good Jewish person and teacher (which he outlines a little earlier), none of that is what gives him confidence.

In fact, he tells them that he’s struggled for a long time with a “thorn in his flesh,” some mysterious ailment, that makes his life harder, his work difficult, and that drags him down. He asked for it to be removed, but three times received a clear message from the Lord that it would not be.

And that, he says to them, is actually the gift. Whatever the weakness, the thorn, was is irrelevant: the gift is that in his weakness and pain he found the strength of God’s grace. “My grace is sufficient for you,” the Lord told him, “for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Remember what we learned some weeks ago about “perfect”? It means “completed, finished.” Paul has learned that when he is weakest, God is strongest. When he fails, God succeeds. When he struggles, God strengthens. And God’s power is perfected, completed, finished, in the depths of weakness, not in spiritual prowess.

It’s why the cross is so central to Paul: Jesus, the Son of God himself, found his greatest strength in becoming completely weak. He defeated death’s power itself by letting death’s power defeat him, and in that weakness brought life to the world. He set aside all power to be completely lost for us, that we might be found. And in our weakness, Jesus completes his power as well, and does God’s will.

So here’s what Paul seems to be saying, in the context of Jesus’ sending of the disciples: Don’t wonder whether or not you will fail, and worry if you do. Expect to fail. Expect to be rejected. Expect to be weak. That’s where you’ll find God’s grace.

So what are we given by Jesus and Paul as we go to serve, what staff and sandals are given us for our journey?

First, we are sent with the expectation that it’s not going to be easy. Sharing the Good News with others who expect us to be “normal” people may lead to exactly what Jesus and Paul experienced. It will likely be uncomfortable at times, sometimes we won’t know what to do, sometimes we won’t want to do what we know we are called to do. But Jesus knows just what that’s like, so does Paul, and they say that it will be OK.

Second, we are sent knowing that not all will accept us. It will be hard sometimes to stand in the world as a sign of God’s grace and love in Jesus, and face people’s inability to accept us. Our motives might be suspected, our best intentions misunderstood, and our attempts to do the loving thing, or to speak God’s word in a situation, might be seen as intrusive, as our attempt to seem better than others, or any number of other things. But Jesus knows just what that’s like, so does Paul, and they say that it will be OK.

Third, we are sent knowing we might fail. Trying to make a difference in the places we’ve been planted might meet with resistance, rejection, with failure. We might not be able to do anything where we are sent. In fact, it’s what we should expect. But Jesus also knows just what that’s like, so does Paul, and they say that it will be OK.

It will be OK, finally, because fourth, we are sent out knowing that we will find the power of our Lord Jesus Christ in the very heart of our weakness. In the times we most struggle, that is where we will find our Lord, who’s been there before and changed everything. In the times we most fear, that is where we will find our Lord, who faced the most frightening things and transformed them in love. In the times we are rejected, that is where we will find our Lord, who in being rejected found a way to accept all of God’s people into abundant life.

Here is our Good News: we are sent to be God’s Good News in the world in our weakness, in our failing, in our feeble attempts to be of service, and that is just fine.

The point is not that any of us become superapostles, glibly and beautifully succeeding in sharing the Good News, drawing huge crowds, saving the entire world from disease and hunger, evangelizing all people.

The point is that we go out and put our lives on the line wherever God has planted us, telling in our words and in our bodies that God’s love is for all people, that God’s grace is sufficient for all, that God’s goodness is in all. That we bring healing and life in the name of Jesus because we are sent to do so. And if we fail, if we struggle, if we forget, if we cower, if we hide – all this is our weakness.

And Jesus knows what to do with weakness. He shares it, transforms it with the power of his life and love, and brings grace. Because as he has said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So we go from here to serve the Lord, rejoicing with Paul and the disciples that we can do that mission we were baptized to do. We know we can do it because Jesus has faith in us that we can. And that in his completed power, God’s grace will heal the world.

In the name of Jesus. Amen