Still?

Posted on by kdn004

Psalm 46

I have long wanted to take up today’s question,
which comes in many forms,
but I believe I heard posed first thusly by our very own,
Professor Peter Jansson.
“when were you last still?”

Stillness feels to me an urgent concern,
in a world in which we’re constantly connected,
constantly comparing ourselves to another.
in a community in which there’s literally always something we ought to be doing:
an assignment, an email, a paper, a proposal.
in a world that values us for our output and production,
in the midst of a newscycle,
in which there’s always somethings that commands our attention,
our anger, our grief, and action.
Stillness is a bold and countercultural thing.
And hard to achieve. 

And my answer to this question,
when was I last still?,
tends to be when I am set apart.

Continue reading “Still?”

What Should I Do Then?

Posted on by kdn004

A Sermon for our Gospel Choir Sunday,
Rooke Chapel Congregation, 10/6/19

1 Corinthians 14: 1-15

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.

Continue reading “What Should I Do Then?”

What is Family?

Posted on by kdn004

Luke 15: 1- 32, Sunday 9/29/19, Rooke Chapel Congregation

Family is a big word.
A sticky word.
For many of us, a given.
A rock.
Perhaps for you,
the word brings up memories of loud dinners around shared tables,
or quiet moments, vacations, sporting events,
love and connection and joy.
Perhaps for you,
the concept is more fraught,
strained and complicated and hard.
Perhaps painful,
or full of longing,
or regret.

For the students among us,
there are, I’m sure, manifold changes in your relationships
to parents and siblings.
New experiences of mature connection,
new possibilities,
new difficulties,

and, of course, for many during the college years,
we experience grief first-hand for the first time,
when we lose a close friend, professor, grandparent, or parent.
This, too, is family.

And it turns out,
our scripture’s story about family,
is more nuanced than we might care to think.

Continue reading “What is Family?”

If God is for us, who is against us?

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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?

Continue reading “If God is for us, who is against us?”

What are we here for?

Posted on by kdn004

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.

Continue reading “What are we here for?”

Who Is My Neighbor?

Posted on by kdn004

Rooke Chapel Congregation, Sunday August 25, 2019.

Luke 10: 25-37

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!” 

Continue reading “Who Is My Neighbor?”

A Word of Encouragement

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Rooke Chapel, Sunday May 5, 2019

Mark 12:28-34

It’s been many years since my last final.
And many years before that,
that I finished,
and promptly abandoned,
my pre-med requirements.

Which means I was finished,
with Chemistry labs,
and calculus courses.
and the exams that come with them.
Long ago.

And yet still,
to this day,
almost every finals season,
and exclusively within finals season,
like clockwork,
In the middle of some night,
I’m awoken by that stress dream
in which I show up to a class I’ve never attended,
for an exam I’m bound to fail.
And it’s always Chemistry or Math.

It is a strange and stressful time,
and I can empathize with your struggles.
And am confident you will survive.

In addition to the mundane challenges of this season –
like getting the work done,
time management, memorization,
finding a few moments to sleep,
looking for jobs or internships –
I remember occasionally being overcome,
my a much more substantive challenge.
A deep-seated question,
which made it hard, sometimes, to study and write –
Does any of this actually matter? Continue reading “A Word of Encouragement”

Come As You Are – Hannah Rickertsen ’19

Posted on by kdn004

Come As You Are
Galatians 3: 26-29

Good Morning everyone! My name is Hannah Rickertsen, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. I am a senior geology major and Posse Scholar originally from North Hollywood, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. I’ve been singing with the Rooke Chapel Vocal Ensemble off and on for a total of 5 semesters out of the 8 that it has existed. In addition to Vocal Ensemble, I also work as assistant general manager at Uptown, where I’ve worked since spring 2017, and undergraduate research student with Dr. Rob Jacob in the geology department since last May, and as the geophysics TA for this spring. Past jobs I’ve had on campus include an Admissions Ambassador (a fancy way of saying tour guide) for the past two summers, a summer RA in 2017, and as a Junior Fellow for the Discovery Residential College in the summer and fall of 2015. Also during the summer of 2015 I worked at the camp organization, Lutheran Retreats, Camps, and Conferences, where I had previously worked in high school. These camp experiences, both as a camper and as a staff member, were really where I connected with my faith. Yeah, my grandfather was a Lutheran pastor, and we all went to church every Sunday, but it was camp which made faith real for me.

One of the reasons I loved camp, and still do, is because of one of the major themes: “come as you are”. The way our camp teaches kids ages 6-12 is what we jokingly call “theology lite”: we don’t get into all the heavy nuanced details, but we do teach the main themes, like the 10 Commandments, the Golden Rule, and “Jesus loves you and everyone, regardless”. For the 12-18 year olds, we do go into some more details and touch on some theological debate, but we teach love first and foremost. We tell them about how God meets everyone where they are, just as they are. They don’t have to dye their hair, or get contacts, have perfectly clear skin, get rid of their braces, or anything like that. They just simply have to be, simply exist, and however they exist, is enough for God. Continue reading “Come As You Are – Hannah Rickertsen ’19”

6 Words.

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Easter Sunday. Rooke Chapel. 4/21/19
Luke 24: 1-12

Christ is Risen!

We gather this morning to proclaim and celebrate the resurrection.
And we gather with our eyes open.
There is no Resurrection without death in our tradition
and there is no celebration without mourning in our lives.
Most notably this morning,
with the people of Sri Lanka in the wake of violence there.
We gather unable and unwilling to turn our eyes from such tragedies,
and our hearts break,
as they should.
and yet we are unwilling to allow them to be the last word.
We gather to proclaim life and love,
amidst the reality of violence and death
This is the story of Easter,
and it is alive and well in our midst,
and as needed as ever.
And it is good to be together.
Let us open our ears afresh to the story.

There’s an apocryphal story out there,
About Ernest Hemmingway,
Sitting at a bar with a bunch of his writing buddies.
And he bets them
that he could write an excellent story,
in fewer than 10 words.
foolishly, they take the bet,
And he wrote, on a cocktail napkin:
“For sale, baby shoes, never used.”
And he went home with the 10 dollars.

Continue reading “6 Words.”

Another Way

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Rooke Chapel Congregation
4.14.19
Luke 19: 29-44

Rick Szuecs vos, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/april-web-only/jonathan-merritt-palm-sunday-gift-disillusionment.html?fbclid=IwAR0pztfrMFUPxAszQTQJ6I6Nlxluavy5y5auxBHdB9F-wfQ5RV9SayF9h8s

Some of you, like me,
Probably went to a church that read the Passion narrative on Palm Sunday.
[indeed, that might be the tradition here]
As Maundy Thursday and Good Friday become less popular,
It’s important to take time,
To mark and honor the story of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and death.
So we’ve stuck it on the Sunday before easter.
That Jesus died,
Is rather important to the story.
And reading that story together,
Reading ourselves into that story
d shouting “crucify him!”
Is certainly meaningful.

But I want us to linger here, this morning.
On the so-called “triumphal entry.”
Because it has much for us.
Surrounded as we are,
By empire and evil and injustice.
Which mostly just wants us to give up,
To despair.
This morning wave our little palms and say, simply,
We’re part of a different story,
And eager to see it unfold and participate in its telling.
We are headed another way.

There were really two processions into Jerusalem that day, Continue reading “Another Way”