October 30, 2026

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Dear Friends,


It’s hard to believe that it will be November this weekend. It’s time to set your clocks back to standard time this week, the blessed Fall Back weekend that happens once a year. There’s been some movement to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, so that the clocks don’t switch. That’s been tried several times and has failed every time when winter mornings arrive. But I suspect there may be a confusion issue around what we call the time change. I think most people want year-round Standard Time, but we always call whatever switch, forward or backward, Daylight Savings. Whatever happens, and whatever we call it, make sure you set your clocks back an hour Saturday night.

Please also come to the Fall Ball! It’s going to be a little different this year, a little more focus on food and music, a little less on silent auctions and so on. The music will be quieter, but we’ll be able to focus on it more, and there will also be some community building activities. It’s going to be really fun, and it’s also a steal: for the food you’ve come to love and the music, you’ll only pay $40—and $15 for childcare. Please come, and please bring your friends (especially the ones that like food and music).

Finally, this Sunday is All Saints! I can never tell if it’s with an apostrophe (as in All Saint’s Sunday, implying that this Sunday belongs to the saints) or All Saints Sunday without an apostrophe (as in the Sunday that we celebrate all the saints). I prefer the latter, since for me it shows us that God makes us holy, and that there are so many of us that God makes holy we cannot name them all. We employ the custom of remembering the dead by name at our worship service, commending them to God’s loving arms.

A word about heaven: it is not a place in the sense that your favorite place is a place. Heaven is wherever God is—so it is both a fleeting moment and the endurance of love beyond the life of the universe. Whatever we think about heaven is probably wrong—how could we think of an eternal, timeless, place that is nowhere and yet everywhere? It is also a place of love—where every love we have ever felt, every disappointment, every relationship, are now felt, seen, and experienced in union with God. We will not become angels in heaven, but we will be, in some way, one with God, one with one another, while maintaining individuality. It’s basically a bliss beyond telling, and so we had better not talk about it much. But we can be grateful that one day we will feast (that is, partake in the beauty of God) together with all the saints in glory. And so, we celebrate that hope and rest in that trust this Sunday. 

See you soon,


Pastor John

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October 23, 2026

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Dear Friends,


This Sunday we will celebrate the Reformation. Reformation Day itself is better known as Halloween: I have yet to dress up as Martin Luther for Halloween, but perhaps I should. I look at Reformation like you might look at an old Tupperware in the refrigerator: what is in it once was good, but now it may be festering, or mouldering. You have to tread carefully, and count the days from when it was put there on the shelf, a promise of delicious meals, forgotten or ignored for newer treats until it becomes a history project.

I feel like the Reformation is like that. I am grateful for the Reformation, delighted to be a Lutheran. I like that as a clergyman I can marry and raise a family, that no Pope or Bishop can command me as if I were a medieval vassal, and I really like our hymnody, liturgy, and tradition of scholarship and service. I like that the Lutheran church is a global church, with nearly 90 million members across the globe. 

So, across the globe this Sunday churches will be celebrating the Reformation, the century or so after 1517, when Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church (he actually probably affixed them with wax, but there’s not much drama in stickies). This was a bloody and tumultuous time, full of wars, and also social experiments. It gave birth to series of theologians well worth reading, most especially Martin Luther and John Calvin (but don’t sleep on Philip Melancthon and his little book Loci Communes, which is as useful a theological handbook as there is). 

The problem, to continue with slightly malodorous Tupperware metaphor, is that we can’t let the Reformation sit on the shelf and fester. We can’t go around nudging and saying how great that meal was without eating the leftovers. It’ll just spoil. And more than that, chefs will tell you that the best thing to do is to take leftovers and make something new out of them. Take your Thanksgiving turkey and make a turkey pot pie or casserole, for example. Take your leftover greens and make a quiche. Do something with the stuff in your fridge, or all you’ll be left with is something poisonous that will make you sick. 

In other words, keep reforming. 

The Reformation was a lot of things: returning worship to the vernacular, lifting up the education of the common people and even girls (gasp!), educating the laity in the basics of Christian thought without mummery and superstition, and so on. But principally it was about the Word of God, the person of Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Jesus, embraced in faith for freedom—freedom of life, freedom from fear of sin and death and the devil, freedom for worship and service. To do this it was also about returning to Scripture, the witness of God in history, the bearer of the story of Jesus and his death and resurrection.

“In times of church renewal holy scripture naturally becomes richer in content for us,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote at a crisis moment which the church of his nation largely failed to meet. “Behind the daily catchwords and battle cries…a more intense, questioning search arises for the one who is our sole concern, for Jesus himself. What did Jesus want to say to us? What does he want from us today? How does he help us be faithful Christians today? It is not ultimately important to us to know what this or that church leader wants. Rather, we want to know what Jesus wants.”

That’s a Reformation question, a Reformation frame of mind. It is a timely, pressing, immediate call to trust the Lord Jesus now. What is the Word of God saying to the people? What happens when we break open the bread of the Scriptures? 

I guess we’ll all find out Sunday. See you soon!

Pastor John

P.S. If you’re coming to church, don’t forget to wear red!

 

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October 16, 2026

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Dear Friends,


Somewhere in one of the dusty old books in my library sits a work by Dr. M. Reu, a theologian and professor who taught both my grandfather and great-grandfather. My grandfather had memories of Dr. Reu taking the train to Colorado to meet with his grandfather, whereupon the two men would shut themselves in his grandfather’s study and speak to each other about theological things in God’s theological language (namely, German), until they’d burst out of the study and say to my grandfather, “Elwin, go down into the basement and bring us some beer.” And he’d go down to the basement where there was tub of beer and he’d bring up two steins of it for them. So I’ve come into possession, or perhaps guardianship, of some of Dr. Reu’s works, many of which were written just for seminary classes, all of which are very late 19th-Century Germanically inflected: proper, purposeful, and proclamatory. One instance is Dr. Reu saying, without any irony at all, that “any unbiased reading of Scripture will come to the conclusion that the Lutheran interpretation is the correct one.”

I am obliged through family history to respect Dr. Reu, (although I think my grandfather caused him trouble once he stared bringing up Teilhard de Chardin, evolutionary theory, and so on in the classroom), but my respect for his unswerving dedication to the education of America’s clergymen does falter a bit when I read the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew, it is clear to me, was no Lutheran. 

We have an example of this given to us in Sunday’s Gospel, one of the more famous passages in the Gospels. You probably know it: Jesus is in Jerusalem, days away from death, and the religious leaders are trying to trap him into saying something that will get him in trouble (the times, they are not a-changin, are they). So they ask him if it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. Jesus asks for a coin, and he says, “Whose image and inscription are on this coin?” And the religious leaders say, “Caesar’s.” And Jesus says, “Return to Caesar’s what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.” 

Now, Protestants and in particular Lutherans, used this story to uplift the State and what is called temporal authority. And of course, this passage does say that you need to obey the law—pay taxes, as it were, to Caesar. Some people of Jesus’s time thought this was abominable—some people in today’s time think the same way. But where Lutherans err is on the emphasis of the story. Jesus asks us to consider what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. We bear the image of God; the coin bears the image of Caesar. God gives us everything and asks us for praise, prayer, and loving conduct; Caesar takes a lot and asks us to pay taxes. All we owe, we owe to Jesus, as the hymn says. It doesn’t mean that we don’t also owe taxes, but one is a much lesser concern. Governments, and indeed nations, come and go, but God’s Word will stand forever.

The typical Protestant emphasis on good order, and so on, is correct insofar as whatever temporal arrangement we have can be reformed, endured, or celebrated. But temporal arrangements come to an end. And the life of discipleship, which is an eternal road, crosses the temporal ways, well—the disciple must give to God what is God’s, and that is everything. 

This is true for loving neighbors as well. There’s a reason our denomination is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We are in, not of. The borders of the US are not the borders of the church. The ECLA is itself a temporal arrangement. Our neighbors are from everywhere, of every tribe and nationality. In the show Andor, the rebels have a watchword: “I have friends everywhere.” For the church this is not a watchword but a public affirmation that the love of God reaches beyond Caesar, drawing all in its compass.

See you soon,

Pastor John

 

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October 9, 2026 

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Dear Friends,


You find Jesus in the crowds, telling stories, debating, and where he goes the world shifts. This Sunday he tells the crowd a story about a King's wedding feast for his son. The guests refused the invitations and killed his emissaries. So the king sends his soldiers to clean things up and then sends his other servants to bring the outsiders, the marginalized, the people one the outskirts to his wedding banquet, and they come, dressed to the nines. Except for one person. One person comes to the wedding but doesn’t wear his wedding robe. And the king throws him out—why did he come without a robe?

I used to have trouble understanding this parable. Maybe the guy didn’t have time. Maybe he was too poor to have a wedding robe. Why not let him munch his canapés in peace? I myself have worn the wrong clothes to a wedding, and it’s an uncomfortable experience.

But since last night, I think I understand it a bit better now.

As you have no doubt heard by now, ICE shot and wounded a man while he was in his car with his five-year-old son. This happened yesterday afternoon on a block that has a metro rail station, a subway station, a high school, and several shops and apartment buildings. In other words, ICE opened fire on a child and his father in one of the busiest blocks in our neighborhood. No one died, but the community came out to protest. And last night I saw the NYPD shove protesters to the side to allow ICE to race their cars down the street. Luckily, no one died there either. I don’t understand why the NYPD felt it was necessary to make a way for ICE. But it demonstrated clear coordination between the two bodies. And it makes me wonder: who was the NYPD was there to protect--us, or ICE? Because at this point, while families in our neighborhood lock themselves in their apartments for months out fear of the very thing that happened yesterday, it is clear you can’t work for both. 

You have to either put on the wedding garment or not got to the wedding. You can’t do both. The man without a wedding robe tried to stay aloof, perhaps simply out of fear or embarrassment. Perhaps he thought his poor robe wasn’t fit for a palace, or perhaps he was scared that it was all a big joke and that he was going to be mocked. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to offend, didn’t want to choose. But he was at the wedding of the king’s son. He can be at the wedding or absent, but he can’t be both.

Classical Christian interpretation has called the wedding robe the works of Christian love. Those are clear, as Paul told us in Galatians: For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself”... the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. The parable reminds us that faith and works go together, and the beautiful adornments God wants to see are not jewels and gold, but love and kindness and service. Those are freedom—there is no law against those things.

There’s a protest song that goes, “Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?” Originally written by Florence Reece during the union struggles in Kentucky.  It has passed through a lot of versions. The one I linked to comes from the Civil Rights movement, and every verse asks if you’re on the side of freedom or not. And right now, in our community, we have a similar choice. Yes, there is crime, there is the need for law enforcement. But there is law, and there is lawlessness. There is community and there is ICE. 

Which side are we on?


See you soon, 

Pastor John

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October 4, 2026

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Dear Friends,


Have you ever heard of survival of the friendliest? It’s a bit of a subversion of the evolutional ideal of survival of the fittest. I first heard it applied to dogs and wolves. There’s always a lot of talk about alpha wolves and beta wolves, alpha dogs and beta dogs. The common belief is that alpha dogs and wolves fight it out to see who gets to be on top, but it turns out that’s not true. Wolves live in families, and biologists have abandoned the terminology of alpha males. And dogs, it’s pretty clear, evolved to be friendly, that their friendliness is the trait that allows them to survive.

Of course, nowadays in male circles you hear the idea of being an alpha male: strong, virile, in charge. We were unfortunately afflicted with such talk from our Secretary of Defense this past week in one particularly egregious  example. But YouTube is a great resource if you’d like to internalize a lot disinformation and misinformation about male identity, if you’d like to research it more. But the alpha male is mostly a myth in canines—only rarely does it apply.

The wolf pack is nuclear family of a father, mother, and children, and the children grow up and move away. It is in its own way a community of care and nurturing. If a member of the pack dies, the cortisol levels of the other wolves rise, indicating stress and perhaps even grief. There are no struggles for dominance, except in the rare cases in very large packs. There it may be accurate to talk at least of alpha females, but even then in a different way than the popular culture does. Even then the pack is a cooperative structure where working together means the survival of all.

I am thinking about wolves because this Sunday happens to be St. Francis of Assisi Day, which marks the conclusion of the new Season of Creation. We are celebrating with a blessing of the pets, which will include our dog Poppy and perhaps many other dogs, and hopefully many other animals besides. Dogs descended from wolves, and there’s a legend of Saint Francis who, through compassion and the grace of God, turned a murderous wolf into a village companion. It’s a fun little story to read, and it essentially hinges on Francis’s understanding of and empathy for the wolf: he knew the wolf was hungry, lonely, frightened. But striking a deal between the wolf and the village, the wolf found a pack and the village a friend. It’s a lovely story, a fable with a lesson.

The lesson of course is compassion, empathy, reason, and a willingness to work together across differences means a better life for all. It feels radically silly to say such a thing in this time and place, but if you can shake off the cobwebs of the internet algorithms and look through the sad bravado of the era’s political leaders, you can see it. Jesus tells his followers he didn’t  come to be a King as they know it; he came to build a church. A pack, as it were, working together for the good of all.

Bring your pet to church this Sunday! Let God make a pack of all his creatures.

See you soon,

Pastor John

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