The story goes.
That a year ago, or so.
On a Sunday not unlike this one,
late in the semester,
A congregation – A church –
gathered at this very time and in this very space,
that was made up entirely,
of the Jansson family,
a small choir,
our student managers,
and a guest preacher.
The details are not all that important,
but suffice it to say that this congregation,
this church,
had hit a rough patch,
and not for the first time.
Pushing the boundaries of Jesus’ assurance,
regarding 2 or 3 being gathered.
I came to interview around that time,
and it wasn’t clear to me then,
that this church was a sustainable enterprise.
Most universities in on the East Coast and Midwest,
were founded by churches,
and most of them held Sunday services,
through most of their history,
but most have similarly abandoned the practice.
I’m glad we did not,
Category: Uncategorized
My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?
PSALM 22, Sunday 10/27/19
Have you ever been to an HR training?
Or a leadership development session?
They tell you.
if you are seeking to give someone “Constructive Feedback”
which is HR speak for critique,
they say you’re supposed to make a “compliment sandwich.”
Like, “Eric, three things:
1. great work on the year-end report last week.
2. Your verbal abuse of your deskmates is proving a distraction.
3. I’m loving the office birthday parties you plan.
There are many ways to interpret Psalm 22.
Which seemingly takes a dramatic turn
around verse 25:
Individual and then communal
past and then present.
present and then future.
But I like to think of it as a compliment sandwich for God:
God:
What Should I Do Then?
A Sermon for our Gospel Choir Sunday,
Rooke Chapel Congregation, 10/6/19
Our semester’s theme,
as many of you know by now,
is big questions.
And it’s likely, upon reading our text today from
1 Corinthians,
that you had a few questions of your own,
including, perhaps,
“What is Paul prattling on about?”
And, perhaps also,
“Why would Kurt choose this text?”
And finally, I imagine,
“Can’t we get back to the music?”
To the last of these questions I say, “Yes, very shortly.”
But I do wish to address the first two ever-so-briefly first,
if you’ll allow me.
The Corinthian Church –
which Paul loved, and also probably hated,
had a problem.
Actually, they had a lot of problems.
If God is for us, who is against us?
Romans 8: 26-39
9/8/19, Rooke Chapel, Bucknell University
At first blush,
the answer to today’s question might seem obvious:
If god is for us, who is against us?
No one.
or nothing of consequence anyway.
If the source and summit of the universe,
the fount of love and understanding is for us –
and I believe deeply that God is for us –
What could possibly be against us?
Of course there are those who see resistance
as evidence that we are being truly faithful in a fallen world.
but more prevalent, in my experience is a certain kind of belief that says
everything will be alright in the end.
We’re just passin’ through this life anyway.
God is for us,
and nothing else matters.
But,
suffering exists,
and evil is real,
and bad things happen to good people.
These seem self-evidently true.
Not so many years ago,
I might have needed to defend those statements in certain audiences,
but I rarely do these days.
And the more we try to deny suffering and sin and evil, I think,
the worse it gets for us.
Another week, we’ll take up the problem of evil,
the question, “why do we suffer?”
for which I most assuredly do not have an easy answer.
But for me,
the question, “If god is for us?”
leads in a straight line to the question,
What gives us hope?
What are we here for?
Rooke Chapel, Bucknell University
Sunday, September 1, 2019
1 Peter 4: 8-11
We gather each week to sing, pray, and build a community,
which attempts to respond to the immense gifts we’ve been given.
We gather each month,
to share bread and wine,
and remember the great feast to which we’ve all been invited.
And we gather this week,
having lost a great light in our community.
Carmen Gillespie – professor of English and founding director of the Griot institute,
was a scholar, teacher, poet, and visionary of the highest order.
And she will be missed desperately.
We hold Carmen’s daughters in the light,
and honor the grief that passes throughout our community when such a great tree falls,
we gather knowing that life is fragile,
and hoping that love is not.
And knowing it can turn to grief when mixed with loss.
And in the meantime, let’s to our work, of loving one another the best we can.
Welcome
As we mentioned last week,
we’re going to try a theme, this semester.
Big questions.
Because, I argue,
it is in sitting with the big questions of our scripture,
our faith, and our lives,
that we (or at least I)
experience God most fully.
Our scriptures are rich with narrative and poetry and questions,
and offer precious few simple, easy answers –
which is both wonderful and frustrating.
But this semester,
we will repose together in the questions.
And as always, I want to hear about your questions:
Both big and small.
Our question today:
“what are we here for?
is the question of purpose,
of calling.
Of vocation.
An old, and unfashionable, and lovely word,
which is drawn from the Latin vocare, voce,
meaning call and voice.
Which always made me wonder,
If God wouldn’t tell me,
over the divine loudspeaker,
what I was meant to be doing.
Who Is My Neighbor?
Rooke Chapel Congregation, Sunday August 25, 2019.
I have chosen for our theme, this semester,
“Big Questions.”
because it is in the asking of life’s biggest questions,
living in the biggest mysteries,
that I experience God most fully.
Our scripture is full of big questions,
And I hope you have some too,
And I want to hear about them.
Though you should know from the outset:
I don’t have a bunch of easy, big answers for you,
it’s I think good to be suspicious of anyone who does.
So we’ll gather this morning and this semester to sit with the questions,
and sing and pray,
and maybe from time to time, get a glimmer of an answer.
And I hope you find this place to be a home for you,
but either way, I want to get to know you,
and if we can help you connect to another community,
that’s what I’m here for too.
You may have noticed,
that two big questions were posed to Jesus in today’s text:
What must I do to inherit eternal life,
and who is my neighbor?
And he responds,
with two questions of his own, a story,
and an injunction: Go and do likewise.
Classic, right?
Couldn’t he have just told us exactly what to do?
But that’s not Jesus’ way.
And I hope it’s the asking of big questions,
that brings you to a place like Bucknell,
Wondering big wonderings is,
in essence,
our job while we are here.
And questions matter, I think,
as much as answers, in our life of faith.
It is, of course, possible to avoid big questions.
Either with our attention jumping,
like Doug the dog from the movie Up,
from one issue to the next: “Forest Fires!”
Lost and Found
Lost and Found
Luke 15: 1-10
3/31/19
As we wade deeper into the season of Lent,
A season set apart for reflection and repentance,
The lectionary puts before us the story of the Prodigal Son –
Which we will save, annually, for parent’s weekend,
For obvious reasons.
And instead ponder those two little parables
About lost sheep and coins,
That pave the prodigal’s way.
I don’t know a lot about shepherding,
I’ll admit.
but it seems to me a poor shepherding choice to abandon 99 sheep,
for the sake of one who was lost.
That’s just bad math.
“Which one of you?”
Jesus’ asked, “wouldn’t do the same?”
None. No one.
Who does that?
His audience probably thought.
I think these parables are meant to make us laugh a little bit.
To ponder to the absurd,
To poke funny at the stodgy Pharisees and scribes.
The lay and professional religious leaders of his day.
as we ponder the ridiculous possibility,
of an all-forgiving God,
an actual all-loving, all-forgiving God.
This pair of parables is but a prelude,
to perhaps Jesus’ most famous –
the story of the Prodigal Son,
Charles Dickens called it the “best short story ever told.”
And so naturally, most weeks,
We skim over the sheep
And the coins.
In favor of those insufferable sons,
With whom it’s a bit more palatable to identify. Continue reading “Lost and Found”
Perfect
Matthew 5:38-48
2/17/19
“Perfect”
We will delve a little deeper this morning into the sermon on the mount,
we will wrestle with Jesus’ bold, clear, and seemingly impossible command:
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
I think about this section of our scripture,
more or less constantly,
in this season of polarization and injustice.
For it – like much of what he says –
carries both personal,
and also collective.
dare I say, political, in the small p sense –
meaning and challenge and encouragement.
And as we wade deeper into Black History Month,
I also want you to know a little of the story of the Rev. James Lawson.
Who believed this bit from Jesus,
as much as anyone ever has.
Lawson is not a household name,
but he was one of the intellectual architects of the nonviolent movement for Civil Rights,
He supervised, with Diane Nash,
the lunch counter sit ins in Nashville,
which sparked a national movement.
When Lawson was once spat upon by an angry white counterprotester,
he responded by asking his spitter if he had a handkerchief,
and if he might borrow it.
Which began a relationship.
Lawson traveled to India to study Gandhi’s movement,
and returned to the American South,
and taught Martin Luther King Jr.,
and organized with him, and many others.
And he is,
and the movement for nonviolence direct action are I think,
what Jesus had in mind,
when he spoke these words.
That responding in love,
without violence,
is both a spiritual task,
and is also how we win hearts,
and win movements.
Lawson is a giant of American intellectual history,
and his life is rooted in our text for today.
So, we’re onto our second week,
of wrestling with Jesus sermon on the mount,
and we’re getting into the really messy, meaty, gritty, world-changing stuff.
but if you’re anything like me,
before you can even begin to take this passage seriously,
before we can even think about loving our enemies,
or turning our cheeks
we have to address that very last line.
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Or in the unforgettable King James:
Be Ye, therefore, Perfect. Continue reading “Perfect”
The best is yet to come.
Rooke Chapel Congregation
Kurt Nelson
Sunday 1/20/19
John 2: 1-11
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth…From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
Thus begins the Gospel of John.
The word “Grace”
which you’ll soon learn is my favorite word,
appears 4 times in John’s dense prologue,
and then never gain.
Unlike – for instance Paul
who’s always trying to tell us what grace means –
John tries to show us.
in one sense,
the Gospel of John is a simple text.
When you take a course on biblical Greek,
you read John,
The language is clear, uncomplicated
and unlike so much of the Greek New Testament,
grammatical.
John is well considered and coherent,
and not a word is wasted.
It’s poetry.
Indeed, it’s theology,
in story form.
But the simple language belies
a deeper complexity.
beneath it all,
you sense layers.
you sense magic.
You sense he’s trying to point you to something great,
and big and mysterious.
Did you notice how today’s story began?
“On the third day…”
This is not an accident.
John’s readers and hearers know the story,
and he’s trying to take them deeper,
to show them what grace is,
to show them who God is.
And remind them that scarcity and abundance,
death and resurrection,
are all woven intimately together. Continue reading “The best is yet to come.”