What keeps you up at night? – Pastor Thoughts

March 17, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker 1 Comment

“What keeps you up at night?”

I was listening to a leadership podcast from Luther Seminary in St. Paul that asked this question. (Find the podcast here)

“What keeps you up at night?”

Once I get past Ukraine, the Pandemic, inflation and economic inequality the thing that keeps me up at night is the present and future of the church. Sherwood Park, the MNO Synod, the ELCIC and Christianity around the world.

But lately, it has been on my mind about how pivotal this moment in history is for us. It is a moment that I have been anticipating for quite some time and a moment that I expect to be looking back at in 15 years and reflecting on the choices made and courses of action followed now.

I say this often, so excuse me if I have written it before: In my first few weeks of being pastor, it hit me like a ton of bricks, the overwhelming sense that I would be spending my entire career in ministry helping congregations navigating change. In fact, at that time my exact thoughts were “I am going to be cleaning up the messes of predecessors for the next 40 years.”

Of course by now, I know that things aren’t that cut and dry. The “messes” have really more to do with a rapidly changing world and church than the failures of those who have served before me.

In the same podcast, the main theme of the episode was on challenges. I talked with council this week about this idea. We usually think that we have a pretty good idea of what the challenges we face are, whether at home, in the neighbourhood, at work, at church, in our country and in our world. I asked council to quickly identify the challenges facing Sherwood Park.

We immediately came up with financial challenges, declining and aging membership challenges, building and maintenance challenges, transition out of pandemic (or into the next phase) challenges. I named that the MNO Synod is looking at clergy shortage challenge (we have to call from outside Manitoba to fill vacancies and have few or no candidates of our own – even Courtenay and I are not original Manitoba clergy).

But the podcast episode pushed back at the idea that we actually do know the challenges we face. We are very good at identifying surface challenges, we know what our presenting issues are. But often our deep challenges are not that clear to us.

For Sherwood Park and Lutherans in the MNO Synod, financial problems and declining membership is the story everywhere. And we have all been chasing after these problems for a long time. The church I grew up in, with 250 attending on Sundays, 50 to 100 kids in Sunday School, 75 college and careers that also attended every Sunday…. They too in the mid-90s were convinced that they had a finances and declining membership problem!

The deeper issue we face is about our identity as a community of faith. It was getting hard to continue being a community in 2019. Today, it is just that much harder.

The deeper challenge is whether the way we choose to be a church and do ministry still makes sense. Does Winnipeg need 14 Lutheran churches (and more than twice that in Anglican churches) all working mostly independently from one another? Our shared youth program, which is certainly the largest in Winnipeg, if not the ELCIC, suggests that there is a significant benefit to working together.

The deeper question is how committed are we to continuing to be a community of faith, followers of Jesus together in the longer term?

When I think about our challenges in this way, finances and people stop really being concerns in my mind. Yes, the budget is tight and it is going to take work to remember how to come together again.

But as I sat at our council meeting, I was struck by just how committed the 9 of us were to the ministry of Sherwood Park. And know there are so many others beyond council who feel the same. I know that we have the capacity within our community to meet our budget this year, to fill our volunteer roles, and to continue to provide all the different kinds of ministry and community opportunities that have been central for us.

Our deeper challenges, about understanding and knowing who we are and what we are about as a community is the more difficult question. But it is a question that comes with an opportunity. A survey came out this week saying that overwhelmingly Canadians feel more disconnected and divided than ever. Our sense of belonging and community has been degraded during these past 2 years.

Well, hold on! Isn’t that exactly what we as the church are best at? Being a place where people can find community? Being a place where people can belong?

As we find ourselves in the pivotal moment for the future of the church, there ARE deep challenges that we face. But challenges also bring opportunities. And I think God is calling us to step into these new places: To explore who and what we are as a community of faith; to invite the world around us into that community of hope and promise, that community of belonging.

I thought at first that discerning our challenges would be scary. But taking the time to unpack what the challenges are that we actually face, reveals whole new ways to approach our common life together as people of faith. Things stop being scary and start becoming exciting.

God is calling us into the challenging but exciting world, with an unknown but promise-filled future.

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Jesus in the Wilderness and Temptations that aren’t Temptations.

March 8, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker 1 Comment

GOSPEL: Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ”…

Here we are, on the doorstep of the mysterious season of Lent. Mysterious because unlike Christmas and Easter, Lent is mostly a non-event outside the walls of the church. Beginning with Ash Wednesday – a Wednesday hardly noticed by the world – we enter into this strange springtime season when we know that we are supposed to be more solemn, more serious than usual.

When I first started as a pastor, the congregation I served only vaguely knew about Lent. The colours changed at the front of the church according to some kind of calendar, but for what reason wasn’t known.

And at times in my time in ministry, people have pushed back against observing Lent.

“Can’t we just have one song with an Alleluia Pastor?”

“Do we have to give something up?”

“Can’t be a little less serious and more happy?”

Of course we *can* do those things, it isn’t about what we can and cannot do. Rather the question is what ought we to do as ones who belong to the Body of Christ, as a world -wide community of practitioners of this common faith in Jesus and how we walk together through the different seasons of our life and witness.

And so, as we step into this season of Lent, we so do following paths trodden by the faithful over centuries. Paths towards a deeper understanding of faith, towards a growing awareness of God’s mercy to be poured out for us in Christ.

Each year on the first Sunday in Lent we journey into the wilderness with Jesus. We hear how Jesus is tempted by the Devil. This is the place where our Lenten journeys begins. In the wilderness, on the road to Jerusalem and Good Friday. We are being made ready for a transformed life in Christ. But this is only the beginning.

We stand by while Jesus and the devil interact. We watch as Jesus is offered things that the devil hopes will divert Jesus from his mission.

As we watch Jesus, the model resistor, this familiar story is often upheld as a formula for Christian living. Jesus’ responses are said to be sure-proof ways to avoid temptation, as if two people slapping each other with bible verses prevented anything.

Of course there is no manual and this is not a video guide demonstrating the right techniques of temptation avoidance.

In fact, as we hear this familiar story today there is a strange tension about these temptations. They are things that have caused all the prophets who have come before to fall:

Moses committed murder,

Elijah stuck his neck out and then last all hope,

And Abaraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

And King David and Solomon…

even God’s chosen prophets, especially God’s chosen prophets and kings fell for one reason or another.

And yet, Jesus is different. It isn’t that Jesus has some kind of super human will power, it is that these temptations for Jesus, the son of God, the prophet of the most high God, are not really temptations at all.

The Devil has forgotten or doesn’t really understand just who he is speaking with.

Jesus has been declared God’s chosen, God’s son. The Devil thinks he is dealing with another prophet, he does not understand that this Prophet is not only one who speaks with God’s voice, but is the very Word of God made flesh.

The devil is trying to sell power that the devil does not have to give and Jesus knows it. The devil is really doing something that we do on a regular basis. The devil is trying to act as God, trying to be God in God’s place. To control and handle God. To make his will, God’s will.

The devil asks God to bend to creaturely concerns, to the whims and desires of the finite and created. The devil’s temptations are not offers of power, but demands that God act according to the devil’s desires.

And if we are honest… the temptations that the devil offers aren’t really temptations to us either, because we all too often seek them our shamelessly.

If we could command the angels, we would! It would be a virtue, we would feel like superheroes. We would wish this pandemic way, we would send them into the hospitals and grocery stores, to provide childcare and senior-care we would find a million places to put them to work.

If we had the power over kingdoms… we know well the pursuit of power in this world. Power on any scale from families, neighbourhoods, workplaces all the way up to cities and nations requires controlling others, taking away their power. We are watching the worst of it unfold before our very eyes Ukraine. The Power over Kingdoms and armies sought by one unstable dictator means violence, destruction, war and death. It means sending our young to sit behind tanks and guns to destroy cousins and neighbours.

If we could turn stones into bread… it is the most seductive temptation of them all. The temptation to survive at all costs, to seek our own satisfaction, to put ourself first above all others. A temptation that looked like convoys rolling down Portage Avenue in protest of masks and vaccine passports, while at the Jets game the Hoosli choir sang for freedom in front of Winnipeg and the whole world.

These temptations that are presented to Jesus are things our world simply strives for, often at all costs, often proclaiming the virtuousness of power, control, of being satiated and comfortable, of putting ourselves first.

At their core, these temptations are about getting Jesus to set aside his mission. To set it aside in favour of just being, just striving, just existing. But at the cost of giving up something of himself, to be less than the full Son of God, less than the full Messiah sent to save.

The same thing that these temptations do to us…by asking us to set aside our callings and purposes, in order to just be, to just exist, to just take up space without moving forward.

And yet, there in the hot, dry, sandy landscape of the wilderness, there tired, hungry, thirsty, chapped lip, windblown, and dusty Jesus sticks to the mission.

As the Devil says to the same God who spoke all of creation into being from nothing… If you are God, turn this rock into bread and Jesus says, “One does not live by bread alone”. God in Christ reminds the devil that the Word is standing there in the flesh.

And then on top of world, the devil offers Jesus power over all nations if he would only bow down to chaos and confusion personified. The devil offers earthly power to the same God who has just been born in a manger as powerless baby, who has come to live in the created world, to play in the mud and sleep over at the neighbour’s house, to stub his toes and hug his parents, to go to weddings and learn the torah in the temple as a teenager.

Then the Devil says worship me, and Jesus says “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” God in Christ reminds the devil that being God is not about power, but rather about giving up power in order to love and to love deeply. That being worshiped is not about being on top, but how God comes down to us.

And then from the top of the world to the temple of Jerusalem. The devil asks Jesus to prove who is. The devil asks Yahweh Elohim, the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Jacob, and Joseph. The God of Moses and Elijah. The devil asks this God to prove who he is on top of his own house, on top of the place that God’s chosen people come to worship the one true God.

The Devil says throw yourself from this temple, and Jesus says, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”. God in Christ reminds the devil that there is no need to prove who he is… that this whole mission, that incarnation, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection are about God showing us who we are – God’s beloved children.

Jesus sticks to the mission. Because Jesus has come to fulfill God’s love and mercy given for us, to bring us back from being less than and to reclaim in us our calling and purpose. Jesus has come to pull us back from the brink of temptation and set us again on the way. The way to God.

And so we begin each Lent in this same way. This mysterious, mostly unobserved season meets us in the messy world. In the world where we are seeking the satisfaction of bread, reaching for all power, looking to worship and follow the wrong things… and this year especially in all the worst ways.

And Jesus reminds us that he has come into our world for a purpose. For a purpose revealed last week on the mountain of transfiguration, but soon to be revealed again on the mountain of Golgotha. Jesus has come not to prove who God is to us, but remind us again and again and again who God says we are.

So as we set out on our Lenten journey today, God in Christ sets out with us knowing that we will forget who Jesus really is, but God never forgets who we are.

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts

Why we need this 3rd Pandemic Lent – Pastor Thoughts

March 7, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

The season of Lent began this week with Ash Wednesday. This is the 3rd Lent to take place during the pandemic.

There are many similarities between Advent and Lent, both are seasons of preparation that culminate with one of the two most important celebrations or feast days of the church year.

I love Advent. Everything about it speaks to me. The shades of blue, big and small stories from the bible, images of light and dark, the hopeful anticipation in the midst of struggle. Advent is an exercise in contrasts.

Lent on the other hand is not nearly as playful or vivid… sigh…

While Advent arrives with winter when it is new and exciting, Lent usually comes when we are ready to say goodbye to the snow. And before Lent takes us to Easter, we have to go through Holy Week. Holy Week which is intense, emotional and draining.

Lent is less like preparing for the Holidays and more of a spiritual spring cleaning or exercise regime.

Last year, as our second pandemic Lent arrived, many commented on how it felt like Lent had never ended. We had simply wandered in the wilderness for most of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.

Yet today in March of 2022 when the pandemic that has dominated our attention for the better part of 2 years, it is about 4th place in terms of headline news right now.

Someone on Twitter commented that if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were in a horse race, Famine and Death would have been strong for a long time. But Pestilence made a big comeback 2 years ago, only to have War surprise everyone in this homestretch.

With all that is happening in our world these days – war, protests, economic disaster, disease and more – it can be hard to feel like our small Lenten practices are of any impact. It is a lot easier to watch, listen to, or read the news and feel hopeless about the world.

And yet, I wonder if taking on a Lenten practice this year might be just what we need more than ever. It can look like giving something up like chocolate, coffee, tv or meat. It can be taking something on like daily prayer and scripture reading, giving alms, or watching mid-week Lenten services (Wednesdays at 7PM on the Facebook Page).

Having something small and out of our usual routines to focus on each day as a way to draw our attention back to God may be just what is needed these days. When the problems of the world are too much to bear, those small reminders that we do not walk in this wilderness alone can carry us through to the promise of Easter.

In the early church, Lent wasn’t just a season to wallow in the wilderness waiting for Good Friday. Lent was (and is) the season when catechumens (essentially adult confirmation students) would finalize their preparation for baptism at the Easter Vigil. And usually all those already baptized would join in the preparation as a reminder of their own baptism.

Lent and its seasonal practices are meant to provide little disruptions in our lives. Moments and practices that wake us up from the rest of life, and turn us back to God. Turns us back to the promises of God found in baptism of forgiveness, life and salvation.

Promises that we certainly need reminding of right now, week to week and day to day.

And so I invite you to consider what your Lent will look like this year and what it might include for you.

Pastor Erik+

Theology & Culture

Omicron, Bruno and The Freedom to Change

March 6, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ujz6a-11c491f

In episode 2 of season 2, Pastor Courtenay and Pastor Erik talk about Omicron, We Don’t Talk About Bruno the hit song from Disney’s Encanto and what it means for churches to adapt and change in the face of this ongoing pandemic (recorded prior to the war in Ukraine).

Check out The Millennial Pastor blog.

This podcast is sponsored by the Manitoba Northwestern Ontario Synodof the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).

Music by Audionautix.com

Theme Song – “Jesus Loves Me” by Lutheran Outdoor Ministries in Alberta and the North (LOMAN)

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Practicing life and death with the ashes – A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

March 2, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker 1 Comment

GOSPEL: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Jesus said to the disciples:] 1“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven…
5“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you….

Growing up my family was committed to being in church every Sunday, and often another night of the week for youth or orchestra practice or another church event.

But Ash Wednesday was one of those days that seemed to get lost in the shuffle of family life. The way it moved around because of Easter, it sometimes landed on the same night as sports or music practice, some years its was during reading week at University.

Yet, on the years when we did make it, it felt like it came out of nowhere.

Church has just been merrily humming along through Christmas and the new year. Stories of Jesus’ miracles and the memorable story of Jesus going up the mountain, being transformed into dazzling white. A story that I can remember occupying my imagination as a child.

Then all of sudden, the brightness of that moment is gone and rather than a mountain top, Jesus is giving a dinner table lecture on pride and boastfulness. Jesus’ instruction to pray behind locked doors invoked the image of praying in the closet to my mind as a child.

But then the year that I did my pastoral internship, my supervisor had me help him burn the palms from the palm Sunday the year before. And a strand of connection materialized, a circle from humanity’s act of welcoming and then crucifying Messiah was made. This Ash Wednesday confession both rooted us in our great sin of trying to be God in God’s place both before the day of ashes and in the time to come as we retold the story of Holy Week soon again.

In my first years as a pastor, the weight of Ash Wednesday would eventually hit me like never before. Ash Wednesday in its pacing and words feels like a funeral liturgy. Funerals which can come at any time and out of nowhere, interrupting any season of life.

A good friend and seminary classmate wound up serving neighbouring coigretaion, and so we shared Ash Wednesday worship. As we stood together at front of the church, while worshippers came forward to receive ashes, the blessing took on more weight.

“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” takes on all kinds of new meaning when you have stood over a casket being lowered into a grave, and while dirt made the sign of the cross while declaring “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.” Especially so when you are imposing ashes onto the foreheads of spouses and siblings and cousins and friends of those whom you have blessed into the earth.

As we made the sign of the cross in ashes on those that we served, finally it came time for my friend’s eldest son to receive ashes, maybe 5 or 6 years old at the time. I remember my friend stumbling back as if hit by a wall. He tried to compose himself to reach forward with his ashy thumb to mark his son. But he was barely able to choke out the words, “Remember you are dust…”

It is a pleasure to bless those whom we love. But it is a terrible burden to make that same sign of the cross in ash, to receive that sign of the cross in ash from those that we love – a souse, a child, a parent, a friend or even any cherished sibling in Christ.

I could not help but think of that Ash Wednesday moment this week when I saw the video of Ukrainian father weeping as he hugged his young daughter goodbye. It was an Ash Wednesday moment seen around the world.

For you see, Ash Wednesday truly the acknowledgement of the realities of sin and death in our world. WE confess both the truth of our sinfulness and the truth of our mortality.

And we practice.

Just like in Nighttime Prayer, when we entrust our selves into God’s care through the night, it is an echo of the same blessing of entrusting ourselves to God that is said at funerals, the same blessing repeated at grave sides just before “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” On Ash Wednesday we rehearse having ashes and dirt put on us in the sign of the cross.

But even if we do not make it to Ash Wednesday each year the Ashes – the signs and symbols of sin and death – are still all around us. The signs of humanity’s sin, and suffering, the signs of our morality and dying are all around us.

What is the pandemic if not Ashes?

What were the convoy protests if not Ashes?

What is this war in Ukraine if not ashes?

And yet…

And yet even though the Ashes dominate the day, even though they seem to ever surround us…

The ashes are not the real point of the day.

The Ashes are a symbol that blows away in the wind, that washes off without a problem, that disappears as easily as they appear. Their impermanence is the point.

The Ashes only ever reveal what is already and was always there – what is underneath the sign they mark.

The mark of the One who has claimed us from the beginning.

The sign of the One of will not leave us to our morality, who will not leave us to the ashes and dust.

The cross of the One who turns the Ashes into something new, who turns us into someones made new.

Just as the ashes are all around, so to is the sign of the one in whom we are made new.

The Ashes remind us that we are finite beings on our way to death AND they also remind us that One whose Cross they are marked in is the God of Life.

The One who is also all around, found among the ashes wherever they are.

The One is comes to us in Word, Holy Baths and Holy Meals.

Who does not abandon us in the time to trial and tribulation, who holds pandemics, occupations and even war in God’s hands.

The One whose cross marks our bodies forever a sign that while we practice for the time when we die… we also rehearse and practice the promise that we too, on the 3rd will be called forth from our graves, as the ashes fall away, into resurrection and new life.