Remember You are Dust

I am in my 50s now and very aware that I probably have fewer years left than I have lived.   I pay attention to how old people are when I hear of their deaths and compare that to my own age.

Remember that you are dust and to dust, you shall return.

There are many pastors who want to add something to those words like “Remember that God loves you and forgives you”.  

Well yes, God does love you,  but this body is still going to return to dust.  It is only because of God’s love and forgiveness that I have a chance of something beyond this dusty life, but dust is where I am destined.

Christianity today is very influenced by ancient Greek philosophy which said we are all immortal souls trapped in bodies on earth.  “I am just a stranger here, heaven is my home”

Well, the bible says something a little different.  

Heaven is not our home, earth is our home.  

God created us out of the earth and placed on the earth.  Our bodies are designed to live on earth, not in heaven.   We do not become angels when we die; we go to the dust when we die.

Of course like most other Christians, I long for something more than this broken, lost and often unkind world.  

But rather than a promise of an escape from this earth, the great biblical Christian hope is a redeemed world, not an escape from the world.  

We hope for resurrected bodies, not escape from our bodies.

I am made from and for this world and yet this world will not be like this forever.

I try to let this truth give me perspective.   

So that I enjoy and care for and give thanks for all the worldly blessings I have.  So that I do what God has given me to do so that others benefit more in this world from this world. 

But that I don’t cling to the things of this world so tightly that I lose trust in God to bring me to something better.

And so when those ashes are rubbed on my forehead, I need no other words to give me both humility and hope –

 “Remember you are dust and dust you shall return.

Day 5 of the Great Lenten Purge - Sewing

In order to get rid of stuff, you have to acknowledge who you are now. 

I used to sew quite a bit.  I don't sew anymore.  That's okay.   What is not okay is hanging on to spools of threads of every color, zippers, and buttons that I will never use.

My mother was an amazing seamstress.  (Lord if I'd known how much this was going to be about my mother I doubt I'd have taken this on) She never had much money but she dressed like she did.   She made most of my clothes which I did not appreciate.  Because we did not have a lot of money and I dressed like I did.  I think the last thing she made for me was my wedding dress. 

Because she sewed for me and because she was so good at it and because she had no patience for teaching me anything (She paid for me to have private driving lessons because she couldn't stand to be in the car with me driving)  I did not learn to sew from her. 

Sarah in a typical Easter Dress and matching

doll dress.  How about that hat?

When my kids were little I just bought some fabric and a pattern and started making clothes for my kids. 

I never was as good as she was.  I'm not good with detail so my seams are never straight and the zipper never quite right, but it was good enough for them.  


Every Easter I made my daughter a dress with a petticoat, pinafore, matching bow AND matching dress for her doll.  Until she was eight and asked "Mom could I have a dress that's not poofy?"

I used to make really loud and gaudy matching shirts that we all wore when we went on family vacations.  It was a good way of keeping track of everyone.  If the kids wandered off, other people around knew who they belonged to.  My husband, bless his heart, wore those crazy shirts I made without complaint.  In fact,  I think he liked wearing them. 

I think the last thing I made was a gown for my daughter to wear to her winter formal.  It was very stressful because I did not want her to go to a dance looking like she was wearing a home-made gown.  She seemed happy with it but it was not enjoyable.

I haven't sewn other than to hem or take in or repair clothing for years.  I'm not interested in sewing anymore.  I don't need all that sewing stuff anymore.  I don't need to pass them by in the room I still call the sewing room  and feel guilty that I don't sew anymore.  I don't have to sew.  If I want to sew something again I'll buy another spool of thread.

I wonder if one of the difficulties of letting go of stuff is admitting that you have changed.  

You don't like what you used to like.  You don't do what you used to do.  And that's okay.  Life changes.  I'm not a young wife and mother going on family vacations with young kids anymore.  Keeping the stuff around doesn't change that.  

Keeping stuff around doesn't make time stand still, nor would I want time to stand still.  

Like I (and I imagine every other pastor in town) said on Transfiguration Sunday, you can't build those tents on the mountain top and stay there forever.

I think there's a lot here about change, letting go of the past, and making room for the future involved in getting rid of stuff. 

 I wish I could lead a lot of churches I know through this discipline.  It would help.

What's in YOUR Refridgerator?

I've renamed my Lenten Discipline to the "Great Lenten Purge" rather than Giveaway.  

It's about getting rid of stuff I don't need.  Some of the stuff I don't need - nobody needs.

Today it was the refrigerator.  Seems like a pretty mundane job we all have to do every once in a while.  

There's a wonderful little book "Father Melancholy's Daughter" about the daughter of a widowed Episcopalian priest who suffers from depression.  

She cleans out the refrigerator on Maundy Thursday.  This was not a mundane job for her:

I decided to honor Maundy Thursday by cleaning the kitchen. This was the day for getting clean and starting over. In ancient times penitents prostrated themselves before the congregation, and after prayers were read over them and hands laid on them, they were readmitted to communion.

If you were high and mighty, it was your especial duty to humble yourself on this day, in keeping with the mandatum of Christ, "that you love one another even as I have loved you." Queen Elizabeth the First, "kept her Maundy" in the great hall at Westminster by washing the feet of twenty poor women.

In monasteries all over Christendom today, abbots and superiors knelt down on bare floors, washing and patting dry the feet of the lowliest kitchen monks....

I attacked the spice shelf, unscrewing each bottle and sniffing; if there wasn't a definite smell of an herb or a spice, it went sailing into the trash bag. Better to have a clean space filled with nothing, than a cluttered space filled with things that were of no use to you anymore. My rubric for getting through this day.

I did a ruthless number on the refrigerator. Out went the rest of Miriam Stacy's tuna and noodle casserole, plastic container and all, .... We had far too many plastic and metal-foil containers that jammed drawers when we tried to open them or clattered down on our heads from top cabinets, when we were looking for something else....

The big black plastic garbage bag was filling fast. One must purify one's refrigerator with the same rigor as one purified one's heart.

 Gail Godwin, Father Melancholy's Daughter

Cleaning the refrigerator can be a profound activity.

We all have those containers pushed to the back corner.  
Inside they contain stuff that at one time was wonderful but now it could kill you if you ate it.  

That's true of so much of our lives.  

It's not just the bad habits we always had.  There are things in our lives, in the way we think, the way we approach life, that were good for us at one time.  

Now they don't work anymore and hanging on to them is killing us.  

That's true of the church.  It's true of me personally.  

Why do I let them get so bad, back there in the corner of the refrigerator?  

Well at first I think I'm going to eat it one of these days.  

Then it dawns on me that I'm not not, and it's going bad.  

And I don't want to deal with it.  Push it further behind the other stuff.  Out of sight, out of mind.  

But it doesn't go away.  

It gets worse and stinks up the refrigerator.  Eventually it's best not even to open it up and look at it.  Throw the whole thing away. 

Not every wound needs to be opened up and looked at and relived and analyzed.  

There's a lot in our lives we can just throw out, unopened.  Let it go.  Forget about it. 

I'm celebrating my clean refrigerator by making some bacon wrapped, cream cheese stuffed jalapenos.  I can smell them baking now.  Tomorrow we will go through some books.

The Great Lenten Give Away

I'm not one for Lenten discipline.  

It always seems to turn into being all about "ME" and what I've given up, or how I'm going to be more healthy or be a better Christian.  Whatever ME ME ME.  Kind of not what Lent is supposed to be about I think.

But an idea on Facebook captured my attention.  Forty Days, give away 40 items of "stuff".  I'd been thinking I need to get rid of more stuff before I move.  

I think it would be good to do this in a deliberate, prayerful and reflective way.  It will be a lot about me.  That's okay because it can be just as problematical avoiding thinking about yourself.  Sometimes it needs to me about me.

I've already decided I'm not going to just give away 40 things.  Because I have more than 40 things I don't need.  I'm going to do it thematically, and do some de-cluttering every day.  Except for Sunday.  And if I just can't.  

Because I'm much more into grace than discipline. 

Hanging on to stuff is an issue for me.  I attach sentimental value to things.  I like to collect things.  I like to think someday I'm going to use things I haven't used for years.  

When I watched the TV show Hoarders I saw seriously disturbed people living in horrendous conditions use some of the very same excuses for not getting rid of stuff that I have used.  That is scary stuff.

I first became convicted of this when I moved by myself in 2005.  I had an attic.  I had so much stuff I hadn't used or worn in five years.  Good stuff. Stuff other people could have used.  I realized how selfish it was to keep in the attic.  Downright sinful in fact.   

I got better but it's still a struggle.  So this is not just about cleaning house, it's a spiritual task as well. (I would have said "journey" but all the folk on the clergy Facebook page are making fun of people who use "journey" in Lent talk)

My bedroom closet

So today I started with clothes.  

I like clothes.  

I have a lot of clothes. I don't feel bad about liking and having nice clothes.  I do feel bad that I have perfectly nice clothes other people could wear hanging in the closet unworn. 

another closet just for jackets

So I went through the closets (yes plural) pretty ruthlessly.  I've done this before so I know the drill.  If it doesn't fit right or I haven't worn it in a year, it needs to go.  

There were these two jackets my Mom made for me when I was in my 20s that break both those rules.  They've escaped every other purge.  Not today.  

I think I used to keep them because they were supposed to prove my mom cared about me.  They just proved my mom liked to sew. 

 They are old but still look good and someone else will enjoy them.  They are not doing any good in my closet.  

At least I don't do the "Sometime I'll lose weight and it will fit" I used to do.  I've long gotten rid of clothes too small and I haven't gained weight in several years.  But why would I want to keep clothes that remind me I've gained weight?  And if I do lose weight, of course, I'll want to buy new clothes!  

I do have some clothes that I didn't realize till I got home that they didn't really fit right.  I thought it was frugal to wear them anyway.  

No.  It's not good to wear ill-fitting clothes for any reason.  

Out they went.

Tomorrow I'll go through the linen closet.  I actually need new sheets.  I keep using old ones that don't fit the mattress and slide off.  I have lots of old comforters that are stained with cat puke and wine.  I think I will give those to an animal rescue.  

Other items to go through, Christmas decorations I never take out, books, kitchen items that I haven't unpacked in a year so why do I need them?  

Sewing equipment, probably all my counted cross stitch yarn, my eyes aren't good enough for that anymore.  

I will have to go through my shoes but that's going to be hard.  I do wear all my shoes.  But I have a lot of them.  I'm going to need to build up some spiritual strength before tackling that.

What do you have in your closet you haven't used in years that someone else would use?

King Cake

I don't make this very often.  

I do serve pancakes on Fat Tuesday.  It's funny (well it's not funny) how many people do these things having no idea why.  
Of course pancakes were a good way to make sure you didn't waste any left over eggs, milk and oil that you would have to give up for your Lenten fast.  

Fast?  What's that?  

And why would anyone think it was a sacrifice to give up eggs and milk.  We take those for granted and consider them staples not the luxuries they were to many long ago and millions even today.

Doesn't seem right  celebrating Mardi Gras, if you aren't intending to go without anything in Lent.  I should talk though, I never was one for giving up stuff for Lent.

Anyway - King Cake:  

King Cake is really appropriate anytime in Epiphany (Names after the Three Kings)  but it's also become a tradition during Carnival. It's really more a sweet bread, than a cake. 

Cake

1 Cup Milk

1/4 Cup butter meleted

2 packets yeast

1/2 Cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

4 cups (more or less) flour

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Scald the milk and take it off the fire, add butter.  Let it cool a  little, pour in a food processor, add yeast and sugar and pulse.  Add salt, nutmeg, 1 egg and half  a cup of flour.  Pulse until blended, then add egg and keep adding flour a half cup at a time until it pulls all together.  

Take it out, put it on a flour board, knead it in flour until it's elastic.  

Note:  you really should have some experience with bread making to do this.  If that scares you, I think you could make this with frozen sweet roll dough.  

(Baking and kneading bread is not hard, just takes a little practice) 

Pour a little oil in a large bowl,  coat the dough with oil, cover, leave in a warm place for about 2 hours.  It should rise to about twice it's size.

While that's rising, make the filling:

• 1 Cup Golden  raisins
• 1 cup dried cranberries (this is my idea - I had some and I thought they were pretty good)
• 1/2  Cup brown sugar.  
• 1/4 Cup melted butter
• 1/2 Cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 Cup Bourbon

Soak the raisins and cranberries in the bourbon while the dough is rising.  Mix it all together except for the butter

After the dough is risen, divide it in two balls.  Roll them out into a large rectangles.  Spoon the filling in the middle, then pour melted butter over the filling.  Roll them up into two logs and put them together to make a ring.  Cover and let them rise again about 40 minutes.

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

Mix Two cups of powdered sugar,  a tablespoon of bourbon and a few tablespoons of water.  Brush the glaze on the cake while still warm, then sprinkle alternating colored sugar - purple, gold and green. Pour any left over glaze over that.  

The Plastic Baby.  

It's traditional to stick a plastic baby (the baby Jesus) in the cake.  Who ever gets it has to make the cake next time.  

I put it in the filling.  Some people feel weird about baking plastic in a cake and stick in through  the bottom after it's done backing.  

If you buy a cake, they give you the baby separate. 

Blogging for Lent

Pastor Clint over at Lutheran Confessions has made a commitment to blog every day during Lent and he even has a plan for each day.  I have liked the idea of having a theme for each day.  I fear I'm just not disciplined enough for that.  I couldn't even keep up the Monday afternoon skating videos!

I have found writing to come very hard to me lately.  I haven't even kept up my Tues-Friday  email devotions.  Part of it is that I'm so public I fear I cannot be truthful about what I'm really thinking and feeling.  And if I cannot be truthful how can I write?

Perhaps during Lent I will find my courage to speak my truth.  And the hell with consequences.

Sermon's Done

I really struggled with this one -

Third Sunday In Lent

Mid-Lent Check In

The gang at RevGalBlogPals are doing a Mid-Lent Check In:

1. Did you give up, or take on, anything special for Lent this year?

Nope. I don't do that anymore. Only once did I find that helpful and I gave up evening TV and went to bed early and was able to get up early and have some time away from the children to study and pray. Now my kids are gone and I get up at 4 am to skate so going to bed early isn't that big a deal. I recognize these Lenten disciplines are helpful for a lot of people but there is a danger of turning it into some kind of spiritual self-improvement program which I think kind of misses the point. It can become all about what "I'm" going to do. I'm Lutheran enough to realize that any kind of spirituality that is about me and what I'm going to do to be a better Christian/person and get closer to God is not going to end well. So I just live in Lent. I like to emphasize the tradition of Lent that was about catechisis and am reading a little more. I'm very excited about my Lenten mid week sermon series that is very didactic on the Apostle's Creed. I've think the folks appreciate it. At least some have said they have.

2. Have you been able to stay with your original plans, or has life gotten in the way?

Ah see, that's the beauty of just living in Lent. Life doesn't get in the way because life IS the way!

3. Has God had any surprising blessings for you during this Lent?

Well I feel blessed and surprised that I'm not putting people to sleep with my Lenten sermon/lectures on the Apostle's Creed. Seriously it is a blessing to eat supper on Wednesday nights with the folks and that they come to church and received and let me proclaim the Word.

4. What is on your inner and/or outer agenda for the remainder of Lent and Holy Week?

It really doesn't matter what "my" agenda is - inner or outer. It's not about me. Once you really get that, there's the blessing. I mean I make plans and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. I believe deeply in Grace and the work of the Holy Spirit and the best I can do is not get in the way of what the Holy Spirit is trying to so in, with and through me.

5. Where do you most long to see resurrection, in your life and/or in the world, this Easter?

I really feel like I've lived much of my life on the Good Friday side of the Pascal Mystery. But I have also experienced Resurrection. Right now I feel so deeply for those who are still in Good Friday. The walk of faith is the way of the Cross and faith is not assurance that everything is going to work out okay in this life. Sometimes alcoholics never stop drinking. Grandma dies of cancer. The teenage daughter you wait up all night for never comes home. People live their entire lives in grinding poverty and oppression. And yet I have to believe and trust that the "communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting" begins today, on this side of heaven so my prayer is that everyone who is suffering will know the presence of God and "and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.⁵" (Romans 5:5)

This isn't really a favorite hymn but as I wrote this I thought of the words to "The Church of Christ in Every Age" by F Pratt Green Tune: Wareham

The church of Christ in every age,
beset by change but Spirit-led,
must claim and test its heritage
and keep on rising from the dead.

Across the world, across the street,
the victims of injustice cry
for shelter and for bread to eat,
and never live until they die.

The let the servant church arise,
a caring church that longs to be
a partner in Christ's sacrifice,
and clothed in Christ's humanity.

For he alone, whose blood was shed,
can cure the fever in our blood,
and teach us how to share our bread
and feed the starving multitude.

We have no mission but to serve
in full obedience to our Lord:
to care for all, without reserve,
and spread his liberating word.

And just because - here is the Amazing Mahalia Jackson singing a "Abide With Me" that never fails to touch me and many others:

Lenten Theme - The Apostles Creed - God the Father

My Lenten theme this year is the Apostle's Creed. I've never done the Apostles Creed before nor heard of anyone else doing it. But we were covering it in Confirmation and I was thinking there is some really good stuff here. And being that Lent is traditionally a time of catechesis in the church, I thought I could get away with a more didactic approach for my midweek sermons.

I did God the Father tonight. Then I'll do two weeks on the Son, next week Who is Jesus? and then "What did Jesus do?" and then the last week for the Holy Spirit. I'm using the explanation from Luther's Small Catechism as a litany for each article.

Tonight I took the three adjectives for the First Person - Almighty, Creator and Father.

Almighty - I talked about the utter holiness and "otherness" of God, which I think we lose sight of in this culture. Especially with all the guests on Oprah telling us we are part of God and God is part of us. Nope, actually we are not part of God. We are created by God. But we are not in God or of God. If we look inside ourselves we will not find God.

Creator - Again this also emphasizes how we are not God. God is the Creator. We are the created. But we are not here by some random fluke. We are here because God wants us to be here. Also as Luther's explanation points out - God did not just create us and go off to Starbucks for latte and forget about us. God continues to care for us and sustain us and provide for us. I could have talked about our role in caring for creation but this sermon was not about us. It was about God. It's good to take our focus off ourselves once in a while.

Father: I think it's important to first understand God as Almighty and Creator so that we can appreciate what amazing love that God who is not only the Father of Jesus, but as Paul writes in the first chapter of Ephesians 

“He has destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ”. So even though in ourselves there is nothing that makes us part of God--we are part of God because he has made us so through adoption. It’s important though to start by understanding how far away we were from God so that we can really appreciate what God has done by bringing us into him through his Son Jesus. God the Father Almighty, the Creator and Ruler of the universe has come down to us and reconciled us to him in Christ. And every time we confess “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth” we are doing more than just acknowledging that God exists, we are expressing our trust and faith in the One who not only gave us life, but who sustains us and provides and cares for us and who loves us enough to invite us to call him Father. And as Martin Luther teaches us in our small catechism,

All this is done out of pure, fatherly and divine goodness and mercy without any merit or worthiness of mine at all. For all of this I owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.