June 27, 2025

 

Dear Friends,

I’ll be out of town for a week. I’m really happy to welcome Raquel Busa to preach this Sunday. She’s a student at United Lutheran Seminary, a Washington Heights native, and illustrator. Please come!

I think it’s so important to hear different voices in worship. Sometimes, as a solo pastor, I get tired of hearing myself preach. When I am able to worship at other churches, or with my colleagues during retreats or other church events, I often feel so blessed. When it’s a good sermon, with an insightful intrepretation, I even get jealous. I have to stop and think about that, and remind myself that I’m jealous because it’s good, and this is not a competition.

This Sunday we’re celebrating St. Peter and St. Paul. I remember, very dimly, a dimly lit miniseries about Peter and Paul, positing them as frenemies of the early church. And indeed there was some tension: Paul preached that Gentiles could become part of the the Jesus movement without circumcision, while Peter waffled back and forth. But Peter is remembered as the rock because of his confession that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and Paul is remembered as the great evangelist. They agreed on the same message, but one was a fisherman and the other a Pharisee. One imagines they had different preaching styles. I can imagine Peter as a plain-spoken, straightforward speaker, who hits the main notes and sits down. I imagine that he spoke with enthusiasm and intensity, and probably knocked things over from time to time. Paul probably preached with really long sentences, alluding to different philosophers and schools of thought, and running off on tangents and winding them back to his main point. Paul says he doesn’t have a great speaking voice, and you get the impression from his letters that he’s actually not that great of a public speaker—like a lot of academics, he may have gotten too deep in the weeds for a general audience.

But I’m sure different people latched on to different styles. I enjoy academics that can’t stick to their notes and end up yelling in the footnotes—people who talk with three simple points sometimes annoy me. I think I’d be pretty stoked to hear Paul preach, and polite enough to listen to Peter. But other people would have different reactions.

It’s another reminder that we all need one another in the church. Tolerance for difference, acceptance of others, so long as we agree on the basic fundamental things—this is the way the church should operate. Openness for interpretations, employing appreciation as much as you can, to restrain judgment—these are the things that keep the church together. I have heard great sermons from people I did not like at all; I can only hope that people who haven’t liked me have heard good words from my preaching.

So, you’ll be hearing a new voice this Sunday. I pray you hear good news.


See you when I get back!


Pastor John

 

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June 21, 2025

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Dear Friends,

Please respond to the Book Club survey by clicking here. We have two choices that are tied! Every vote counts!


The holidays of the church year are past--now we begin the long stretch of summer and into the fall called Ordinary Time. It's a terrible name, because all time is sacred, blessed, and we are to always make the most of the time. But ordinary, in this sense, means belonging to the regular, usual course of order. 

I don't know when this came into the Protestant lexicon--probably it was one of the things that come and go. I'm sure that the Anglicans have been using this term for a long time. When I grew up, we counted the Sundays after Pentecost until Christ the King. When my great-grandfather grew up, they counted the Sundays after Trinity until Advent. The most ordinary day--the day that always comes in order--is Sunday. I try never to make anyone feel bad for missing church, and I have a standard joke that Sunday is always coming. A joke that sometimes feels all too real when I'm behind on sermon prep and wondering if I should have made communion bread just in case.

But all the counting, where it's the X Sunday after Pentecost or the Y Sunday in Ordinary Time, can sometimes obscure the place we started: that all time is holy, and God asks us to make the most of the time. God's time is always now. "Now is the acceptable time. Now is the time of salvation," Paul wrote, and that's true. Now is the only time we have.

This Sunday we hear one of the stories of Ordinary time, one of the most extraordinary stories of Jesus in the Bible. It's so extraordinary, it was one of the stories that Bertrand Russell used in his classic work, "Why I am Not a Christian." But we hear just on a random Sunday in early summer now--hopefully, though, we hear it as living hearers, ones who will be thrilled somehow by what we hear. The Gerasene demoniac was restored to his ordinary self, but in that restoration, we see how holy it is to be human, to be free, to be in community. I hope that is what the Gospel does to us: we are here to be transformed. Now is the acceptable time: now is the time of salvation.

Sunday is the day for stopping and being present with God in community. But you don't have to wait for Sunday. I suggest thanking God--thank God for the day. Thank God for the time. And ask God how best to make use of it. 

See you soon,

Pastor John

 

 

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June 13, 2025

 

Hey Folks,

These are the days we hoped we’d left in the past, in the grainy black and white footage of last century’s struggles. But dark days have come again, and this time they have come home. Our forbears managed, by the skin of their teeth, to avoid a strongman form of government, but by the skin of ours, the strongman has returned to power in our country. And now the strongman proves and tests his boundaries: can he frame the narrative? Will there be any consequences for what he’s doing? Can anyone stop him?

The military’s presence in Los Angeles is simply the first foray of small, weak people, trying to take control. I wish I could say the courts will protect us, but the real truth is that no one will protect us except ourselves. But that is also the good news. A whole lot of people from every walk of life enjoy the fruits of democracy and wish to live in peace. Nobody wants troops in the streets. If we all get together and reuse to obey, refuse to give in, refuse to bend the knee, then the strongman can be stopped.

I am hopeful today. I am hopeful that finally our elected officials understand that they are not safe, that our media understands it is not safe, that most people who would prefer to live their lives ignoring “what’s going on” will not be safe until we say we refuse authoritarianism. Just as due process denied some people is due process denied anyone, so too is the federal exercise of control over state and local governments control over everyone.

There’s a march tomorrow—consider going. But you can do more than march. You can talk to your neighbors, your friends, your loved ones. You can share your concerns, you can speak openly about your fears, and you can encourage each other. We can prevent the worst; we really can.

I think it’s also important to expand community. Come and help with our tag sale set up tonight, come by the tag sale (gong on from 10-4) on your way to or from the march. Invite friends to accompany you. Do good things together. At the same time, come to the Open Studios to see art and beauty and make community around free expression.

And come to church on Sunday, when we celebrate the Holy Trinity, the God who is Three Persons united completely in love. There’s a hymn called, “Come and Join the Dance of Trinity,” and that’s a really good summons to us. Imagine God as this beautiful conversation, fully open, fully loving, and full—where perfect love has cast out fear, where all are equal, where all participate. That’s the Holy Trinity. It’s the exact opposite of a strongman—there’s no dictatorship in the Trinity. God does not rule by force, but by love.

God loves you—let God’s love be your strength and your shield and your message.


Pastor John

 

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June 6, 2025

 

Have you ever been on hold? “Your call is really important us, and we will answer it in the order it was received.” Or, my favorite, “Due to higher than normal call volumes…” But there are always higher than normal call volumes, it seems.

I sometimes think prayer can feel like you’re on hold.

Hello, God?
Thank you for contacting the Master and Maker of the Universe. Your prayer is really important to me. It will be answered in the order it was received. There are 899,265,123 people in front of you.

Prayer sometimes feels like that. Sometimes it feels like speaking into the phone receiver while no on is listening.

The disciples on Pentecost were on hold. They were waiting in the upper room, hiding in fear, waiting for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, some breakthrough, some sign. They weren’t sure what it was. They didn’t know what it would do. So they waited, until the Spirit came and could not be denied. Then they went out, and in a few years, there was a global church.

What to do with the feeling of being on hold? If I wanted to sell books, I could try to put a positive spin on it, telling you how waiting makes you spiritually stronger, and so on. But I can’t do that—the best I can say is that God answers according his own will and time and way, but nevertheless, God hears your prayers, knows your sorrows and joys, and is with you in all things. So I can say it’s ok to be frustrated when you feel like you are on hold—after all, what is space and time to God? But don’t forget that the Spirit comes as a surprise, like breath, like wind. As Jesus says, “The wind blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” You discover that you’re not on hold anymore, and so many things have changed.

The book of Acts is a book full of surprises: some disciples eat unclean foods, the persecutor Saul becomes the apostle Paul, there are shipwrecks, escapes from prison, staying put in prison, and baptisms all over the place. That’s the way the Spirit works—a wind gathers seeds from the fruit bearing plants and scatters them about, and like the hardiest of weeds, the church springs up. 

I look out at our congregation on Sundays, and I see evidence of that. I see people who are surprised to find themselves worshipping here, but like seeds upon the wind have landed and are bearing fruit. I look at our history and see so many points where the odds stacked up against us, and yet here we are. There are times indeed when we feel like we’re on hold—but unlike so many automated services, there really is someone on the other side of the line, somebody full of joy, with sparkling eyes and a sharp wit—the Holy Spirit, ready to move.


See you soon,

Pastor John

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May 9, 2025

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Dear Friends, 


We come already to the Fourth Sunday of Easter this weekend—colloquially known as Good Shepherd Sunday in the Lutheran church. That’s not an official title, but we call it that because the lectionary prescribes readings that depict Jesus as the Good Shepherd—the shepherd that lays down his life for the sheep, the shepherd that calls each of his sheep by name, the shepherd that loses none of the sheep given to him. Pope Francis (may his memory be a blessing) said once that pastors and bishops need to smell like the sheep—that is, they need to be close to the people, with the people, alongside the people. I will always love Pope Francis for that reminder, and for the way he himself tried to live out his advice.

I got to spend most of last weekend locked in a room—sometimes literally!—with the sheep of the Metropolitan New York Synod at our Synod Assembly. The assembly is a biannual congregation of clergy and laity from a 150 or so congregations in our synod, and we conduct business. We receive reports from committees, vote to staff committees, receive reports from our Bishop and the national church, and sometimes, as we did last weekend, we elect a bishop. We elected Katrina Foster as our next bishop, who was once an intern here at Our Saviour’s Atonement. It’ll be sad to say goodbye to Bishop Paul Egensteiner, who tried to make the synod office and staff to smell more like the sheep—and we pray that Pastor Foster, when she becomes Bishop Foster, will do the same. 

One of the topics of the synod assembly, and something the Bishop has raised more generally, is that church is hard to do. There are fewer and fewer people in the pews, fewer and fewer people going to seminary, fewer and fewer people giving their hard-earned money. It feels like we have to do more with less. This is an all-too-familiar story for anyone who is associated with mainline Protestantism, and it’s becoming true for Latter-Day Saints, Black Protestants, and even the Catholic church. It’s gotten so familiar that you’ll hear people say things like, “We need to operate from a perspective of abundance, not scarcity,” or “I’m tired of all the bad news.” But then you hear a bishop say that there are twenty openings for clergy in the synod and only five viable candidates, and one feels a bit like we’re whistling past the graveyard. Even our Synod Assembly, with its Roberts Rules of Order, committee reports, resolutions, and so on, feels like the hallmark of a previous century. I think it’s a beautiful democratic process—but it assumes a flock with deep-rooted habits, and that is a rapidly disappearing flock.

There’s a new book out by one of the nation’s leading sociologists of religion, Christian Smith, called Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America. I’ve been reading it over the past week, and it seems to confirm some of my worst hunches: we’re not in a period of anti-religion, but rather a period where the faith that I profess and the church that I love has stopped smelling like the sheep. It seems to have become obsolete. I feel this when I try to do pre-marital counseling and hear reactions to scripture, or when I hear people refer to themselves as consumers and their activity as consumption—I once heard someone say, "as a consumer of science fiction, I…” and that troubled me. I don’t want anyone to be a consumer of Jesus, or of faith. I would like to be a disciple, and I hope that others can be, too.

Smith has no plan for the revitalization of traditional American religion. He is a sociologist, after all, and his task is to describe context. But the one thing he does say is that religious groups are going to have to ask themselves tough questions and decide to focus on the things that are really important to them.

I think that means our faith in the Holy Trinity, and in our way of life following Jesus. I think it means Christianity has to get weirder—we have to train ourselves to think of ourselves and creators instead of consumers, as disciples. And I think it also means that we need to recall the holy transcendence of encountering mystery that is at the heart of our faith: that the holy love of God is an incredible gift that we experience both as individuals and as community. 

To be honest, I am well aware that I also don’t have any other answer than Jesus. Jesus in the morning, Jesus in the noontime, Jesus when the sun goes down. But I also know that Jesus smelled, he smelled heavily like the sheep, and that somehow I don’t smell nearly enough.

But, to quote Paul: “I press on to make it my own, because Jesus has made me his own….forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus.” 

I hope I’ll find you there with me along that road.


See you soon,


Pastor John

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April 24,2025

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Dear Friends,

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!

That's it. That's the blurb. That reality is the whole thing.

Well, maybe not. 

There's a moment in some of our Eucharistic prayers when we proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. We live in the 'is'--and in the hope of the 'will'. The hope impels us forward, but the 'is' keeps us in the present. Of course, the 'has' is the proof of it all, the road we walk. But at any given moment, the 'is'--Christ is risen--governs our reality. 

In the Game of Thrones series, there's a little catch phrase that crops up from time to time and has evolved into an internet meme: "What do we say to the God of Death? Not today." It's a slogan of resistance and courage. I can understand why it's attractive: it's dramatic and guarantees a further confrontation, and as a narrative device, it will result in a delicious scene when, finally, somebody welcomes the God of Death, probably in a swordfight, probably implying dying for the sake of somebody else.

But the Christian story is a little different because of the 'is'. God is the god of life and death; so to him we say, "Come closer. We are willing to die. Christ has died. Christ is risen. I want to follow him and see him when he comes again." To this God we say, "Today."

What does that mean for us? We invite God to help us die to sin and death, to live believing that God is Lord even over death, to choose love, which is stronger than death. As Saint Paul said, "We want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. We want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another we will experience the resurrection from the dead!"

Take the battle now: take the victory now. As Christ has died, so shall we; as he is risen, so shall we. We've been singing a new Gospel Acclamation: Dying, he destroyed our death; rising, he restored our life. Christ Jesus, come in glory!

See you soon,

Pastor John

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April 18, 2025

 

Dear Friends,


Today is Good Friday, the day the western church commemorates Jesus’ death. I was doing some planting in the garden and as I was cleaning up, I started thinking about planting when I have a whole ton of other things to do: worship services, blurbs, sermons, visiting people—the whole panoply of Holy Week duties and tasks. And yet there I was, covered in dirt, trying to get hostas into the ground.

I was thinking about noonday services, Good Friday services, and what it would mean to make Good Friday really good—and the best thing I could think of in the moment was to not go to work. Just write in and say, “It’s Good Friday, I need to observe this day, have a great time.” In many ways that’s a privileged point of view—assuming, for instance that you have personal days, or maybe don’t get paid by the hour or the task, that you can afford a day off. But if you can, what does an afternoon mean? Take some time to observe the day—go to a service, read the passion account in a Gospel, reconcile yourself with someone after a long estrangement. Do something worthy of a story. 

Good Friday reminds us of Jesus’ death in order to remind us how to live—what kind of story we want to share when it’s all said and done. Jesus died for us—scholars and theologians dispute what that means, but in any event, it’s for us, on our behalf, for our benefit. It’s meant to free us, liberate us, empower us to do good, to be good. We can value our lives in a whole new way now—not by work, but by purpose, and by what we are able to give. 

I happen to really love my job. Again, I recognize how privileged I am. But even in this great job I turn out the lights at night in anger, thinking that I could have done something better. At the bottom of that usually isn’t work performance, but rather a failure to live up to the gift that Christ has given me, the gift that I am meant to share with everyone: the freedom that comes from knowing Christ, the good news of his death and resurrection, the faith I have been given that in Christ the victory over evil and sin and death is won. One day, I should take Good Friday off, just to observe the day. 

Christ died for us—for us. For our sake. It is a gift, freely given, a gift to share with everyone. 

If you’d like to observe the day, I recommend going outside, into the sunshine, and take with you Pope Francis’s Meditations on the Stations of the Cross for this year. Let the cross, let the gift sink in. Come to worship tonight at 7:30, or come tomorrow, at 7pm to make Peep S’mores, 7:30 to begin the great vigil of Easter. Or come Sunday, 10 am for the Easter Egg Hunt, 11 am for Worship and a potluck. When you come, as you are able, lose your chains, shout for joy, and taste freedom. Observe the day—we are not bound to evil, but bound for good.

See you soon,

Pastor John

Good Friday: April 18 @ 7:30PM
Easter Vigil S'mores in the garden: April 19 @ 7PM
Easter Vigil: April 19 @ 7:30PM
Easter Morning Egg Hunt in the Garden: April 20 @ 10AM
Easter Sunday Worship: April 20 @ 11AM
Easter Brunch: April 20 after worship

 

 

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April 11, 2025

 

Dear Friends,


Holy Week starts this Sunday. As I do every year, I invite you to participate in the fullness of the liturgical celebration of Easter. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Easter Morning. It’s like Wagner’s Ring Cycle, or the Lord of the Rings—so much better if you do the whole thing.

Here’s the rundown:

Maundy Thursday: 7:30 pm (includes foot washing)
Good Friday: 7:30 pm
Easter Vigil: 7:30 pm (with a Peep s’mores gathering at 7pm)—champagne and strawberries after church!
Easter Day: 10 am Easter Egg Hunt
                    11 am Worship, followed by Potluck Pancake Brunch!

We will need some help setting up the sanctuary for Easter—so please come at 10 am on Saturday the 19th if you’d like to work on hanging, candles, pushing chairs around, and so on.

Easter is light in the darkness, joy in sorrow, the green shoots in the cold. Come and celebrate with us!


Pastor John

 

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April 4, 2025

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Dear Friends,


I was meeting with some colleagues to discuss this week’s texts, and a friend of mine said, “You know, it’s one of my dreams to have a choir sing ‘Press On’ by Bob Dylan,” because it’s from his evangelical days and based on the Philippians passage we’ll be reading this Sunday. I immediately said, “I’ve got a musician who can pull that off with our choir,” and sure enough, Keith Burton, our Music Director, is getting “Press On,” ready for Sunday. So if you’re a Bob Dylan fan, this is your chance—and we’ll all press on together.

“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” This is a description of an embrace. Imagine being hugged and then raising your own arms to hug back—that brief moment in time of raising your arms is the span of our lives in the eternity of our lives in God. We press on because Christ Jesus has wrapped us in his embrace—all things come from him and return to him. But we press on, we pull him closer, we embrace him, “we press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

As I write this, the stock market has crashed, corporate boards are panicking, and very powerful institutions are tripping over each other on the way to kiss the President's ring—things can feel so uncertain, so chaotic, so infuriating. And if you rely on your 401k for your livelihood, it’s even scary. 

Paul also says, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” The value of falling into those arms of Jesus Paul says is a “surpassing value.” And I think we know the value of that now: ironically, we know that value more when things are bad, and forget it when things are good. There is a steady presence, you might call him a rock, or the Son of God, your choice—but he has made you his own love. Paul knew that his life was the act of lifting his arms to return that love. 

The same is true of our neighbor. If we love Jesus, we will love our neighbor, because we will love them for his sake, and we will love because he loves them. I hope that makes sense—whether or not we like our neighbor, we can love them because Jesus does. Maybe we will see what Jesus sees, maybe not—but we can do it.

Jesus is a rock in a weary land, the old spiritual says, a shelter in a time of storm. I don’t want you to read this like a meme, with mom font that says, “You are loved.” I want to know that God’s arm really embrace you, that the arms on the hard wood of the cross opened so the whole world—yes, even you—could come into the reach of his saving embrace. Knowing that love gives us a foundation for life, no matter what comes. "Let this world's tyrant rage. In battle we'll engage. His might is doomed to fail. God's judgment must prevail. One little word subdues him.” That’s Luther’s paraphrase of Psalm 46 translated into English. That little word is murmured into our ear from the lips of Christ himself: I love you. I hold you. You are mine. Do not fear.


Pastor John

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