Summer “Light” 

by the Rev. Barbara Mraz

Everyone in lighter clothes due to the heat (well except for Cameron, Jayan and me who aren’t about to abandon our black!); hymns that are easier to sing (more “Amazing Grace” and less “Hail Thee Festival Day”), sermons with more jokes and lighter theology (more “Jesus loves everyone” and less “Five Objections to the Atonement”), maybe even you sneaking a few radishes out of your bag from the Farmer’s Market to munch discretely during the sermon… 

These may be part of your associations with summer church. 

Unfortunately, this week’s lessons are not exactly “light.” Jesus seems to be in a bad mood talking to his disciples; Paul is disgruntled (which isn’t that unusual for Paul); and I still haven’t figured what’s up with Elijah and Elisha but I think it has something to do with grilled oxen for lunch. 

Mostly, we will consider if Jesus can possibly be serious about what he is asking from his potential followers, and then move on to a debate I am having with myself about Church 2022 (Post-Covid, sort of) in which I will daringly pose the question about the church and boredom.

Yeah, I know. 

When scouring the Internet for ideas, I came across the work of “The Undercover Pastor,” a clergyperson who assumes a disguise to find out what people are “really thinking” in his congregation.  This is about as light as you can get.

See you in church,
Barbara

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“Where Did Ukraine Come From?”

By the Rev. Barbara Mraz

It’s a strange spring. 

A country that hadn’t been on our radar has emerged as the site of heartbreaking sorrow as another mad man in power smashes a peaceful country and the whole world is threatened.

Covid has receded — and now is gaining force again in Europe

In Minneapolis, teachers are still striking because they feel they must — and kids are out of school again. 

It’s Lent and Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and the Cross, as millions of other crucifixions take place in the world as the good are punished for no legitimate reason.

In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus is asked if God punishes people according to the degree of their sins. A ludicrous question, yet we have all wondered if there is some rhyme or reason as to why such terrible things happen to good people …and good things happen to “bad” people. 

Speaking of ludicrous, in a mail order catalog I received this week, this item was for sale — “Holy Bible Book Wallet — Looks just like a real Bible! $19.95.” In this heartbreaking spring, somehow I’m now surprised.

Easter is coming… and spring is, too. Meanwhile, “Let’s go out and see what Love can do.” (Sister Julien, Call the Midwife).

See you in church.

Barbara

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“Mic drop”

By the Rev. Barbara Mraz

At his final dinner with the White House news correspondents in 1999, President Barak Obama ended his speech with two words and a gesture: “Obama out.” Then he dropped the mike. 

Since then, “mic drop” has been defined as “an instance of deliberately dropping or tossing aside your microphone at the end of a performance or speech one considers to have been particularly good.”

(Actually, the gesture originated with the comedian Eddie Murphy at the end of a stand-up routine in 1983. He dropped the mike at the end of the performance before walking offstage. His last comment had been about the progress that had been made in the theater where he was appearing since the time when the black singer Marian Anderson was kept out, and that day when he was onstage, a 23- year-old black comedian.)

I can’t resist pointing out that there is the equivalent of a “mic drop” in this Sunday’s Gospel. 

Jesus has returned to the synagogue in Nazareth where he grew up and is asked to read the Torah portion. He finds the place he wants in the scroll from Isaiah which is handed to him. He reads: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to bring good new to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of the sight to the blind
to let the oppressed go free….”  

He rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant, and sits down.  Everyone’s eyes are locked on him. 

Then he says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

TOTAL MIC DROP.

See you Sunday in virtual church when you will hear what follows and why it’s important to each one of us.

Barbara

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I Confess

By the Rev. Barbara Mraz

I am out of ideas so I scroll through some my old blogs, wondering if I can recycle one of them. There’s one on FDR, several directly or indirectly about Trump, and many about flowers (lilacs as immigrants, the bliss of gardens), one about feet (mine) and one about house layouts (floor plans). Yes, they were all discussed in a theological framework, and yes, I’m a deacon so I have one foot in the church and one in the world (SO in the world) but they all seem so irrelevant now. Naïve. Clueless about real pain and what can really happen. Each one of them pre-Covid and pre-George Floyd.

To be sure a lot has changed: The belief that the country is immune from massive pandemic and that a woman’s right to choose is an issue that’s been settled. The belief that the people with a record of sexual harassment will not be appointed to the Supreme Court and that masks are only for Halloween or costume parties. The certainty that the nation’s capital will not be stormed by gun-toting, flag-bearing maniacs, spurred on by a sitting president. The idea that we would have no physical contact within our families for twelve months. Virtual church.

It’s no wonder we can’t seem to calm down. At least I can’t.

Some themes endure, like the reality of those who scorn reason and evidence and the insistence by some evangelical Christians that prayer belongs in schools and that law enforcement belongs in the hands of vigilantes.

What you read on epistlesesandepiphanies does not pretend to be an opinion piece in the New York Times or an essay in the New Yorker. Instead these pieces attempt to draw attention to important issues and suggest a connection to the faith. Some provide links to exquisite music (thank you, Craig) while others highlight important events in our community. And okay, so many of my blogs are mini-commercials for coming to church the following Sunday! I admit it! So shoot me! (whoa that expression has to go….)

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples (who often appear to be dunderheads) that they shouldn’t be afraid to asks questions; the Epistle from James warns of the cravings that can destroy us; Proverbs gives the recipe for a perfect wife! (“A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” It is actually a wonderful description).

So yay! Church! You should come! Jered, Craig, Jay, Cameron and I will be there to teach you and greet you and Richard has chosen some lovely music. The sermon will contain two pieces of exquisite poetry. Feed your heart. Let go of the demands on your time and just give in to your impulse to simply worship what is bigger and better than you are. Whose very definition is Love.

See you in church.

Barbara

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Jesus Says No to Handwashing

“No subject is too difficult to talk about. You just have to know where the pain is.” Leonard Bernstein.

Just when we thought it was over, it isn’t. The disappointment is palpable.

Kids will still mask in school — and the poor teachers will have to enforce it, and the rest of us are back to masks, distancing, and hand sanitizer.

There is a visceral shudder from constantly hearing words like “Delta variant.” I am even tired of dear Dr. Fauci and of those endless, droning statistical reports about hospitalizations and deaths at 2:00 on MPR.

Thirty percent of the workforce says that they will either seek a new job or need massive alterations in the one they are to stay.

Air travel is done more reluctantly and more expensively than ever before.

Virtual healthcare is a reality.

The Great Minnesota Get Together seems as dangerous as Sturgis.

The people who are still “waiting” to get vaccinated keep hurting all the rest of us and our rage grows.

And for many of us, church just feels different.

In person, it’s the masks and how difficult they can make it to have conversations and just to breathe. It’s good to see people but we can’t really SEE them. And we have no service sheets and offering plates are way in the back of the sanctuary. And the peace is passed with elbow bumps or with names from the UTube link that Craig reads off his phone. You need to sign in with your address in case contact tracing is necessary. And little kids who are as yet unvaccinated — we miss them.

We even miss funerals and the opportunity to celebrate a life and grieve the loss.

And of course, zooming the service is different in pretty much every way. (But the breakdowns are less frequent now).

If you go to church to escape all topics Covid, good luck because what we have in this Sunday’s Gospel reading: A DISCUSSION OF HANDWASHING.

I kid you not.

Of course, it’s a lot more than that. The Pharisees basically ask Jesus, “Who do you think you are to mess with TRADITION?” We will consider what the traditions are that we most value — and what we would be willing to give up for something bigger. This is exciting but dangerous ground because what we love we usually love a lot.

It is critical that we keep talking to each other in every way we can and that we keep showing up for it is the unvoiced opinion, the hidden grudge or hurt that often causes people to take drastic action and to leave a relationship, an institution, a job, or a church.

Bishop Mariann Budde points out that “the person walking away from you can’t hear you.” I would add that in some sense the silent person, the passive person, always “wins” the argument because there is nothing you can do with failure to engage. It ends everything.

Yes, church is different but that is also a good thing. It is a time when traditions can be examined and embraced or discarded and when we need those beautiful faces behind the wretched masks more than ever.

But we have to stay in the game, talk to each other even in our pain and frustration, and keep washing our hands! Oh wait, in the Gospel Jesus says not to… well, of course there’s more. …

See you in church.

Barbara

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BREAD AND ROSES

By The Rev. Barbara Mraz

I went into Kowalski’s Market on Thursday and bought some things for a luncheon I was having the next day: chicken, bread, walnuts, half and half, lettuce, and proceeded to have an experience that serves as the basis for the sermon on Sunday. It has to do, in part, with bread and roses. 

The phrase “bread and roses” is commonly associated with a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts from January to March of 1912, which united dozens of immigrant communities under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World (led to a large extent by women). Eventually the workers won pay increases, time-and-a-quarter pay for overtime, and a promise of no-discrimination against strikers.

Supposedly, one of the women strikers carried a sign saying, “We want bread, but we want roses, too!” Subsequently this phrase became a signature song for the labor movement and for many women’s colleges, too: We want to eat but we need beauty, too.

I cannot encourage you strongly enough to watch a wonderful British movie called “Pride,” based on a true story of a group of Gays and Lesbians in 1986 who decided to go to a small town in England and support miners who were on strike. They went there to help because they hated Margaret Thatcher and because they understood what it was to be unfairly treated. 

You can imagine the reception at first. (“Aren’t all lesbians vegetarian?”  someone asks).

Connections will be made on Sunday, I promise, but here is a clip from the film where the miners and their supporters finally come together. “Bread and Roses” from Pride – YouTube.

See you in church.

Barbara

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When We Knew We Were Loved

I have a new knee.

It’s been a month now and I am doing well, although I am continually amazed and grateful at the skill of medical science who put a piece of metal in my leg!

I have had to be more quiet – less running around, having lunches out, shopping, or messing around in the garden. Perhaps it’s because it’s fall, a paradoxical time of new beginnings and also losses as well as the shadow of ice and cold looming. I have been nostalgic for….. I’m not sure what. The Epistle from James for next Sunday suggest that unease comes from “your cravings that are at war within you.”

Maybe so.

The Gospel says that the Disciples “were afraid to ask” Jesus questions when they didn’t understand what he was trying to teach them — which was the essence of Christian faith. This “essence” reflects the rhythms of human life which include suffering and loss followed by rebirth or transformation.

Sometimes we become nostalgic for what preceded our suffering – a time when we remember life as being easier, more rewarding, even more loving…. before the diagnosis, before the kids left home, or when our parents were still alive.

I hope I’m not the only fan of the iconic television series Mad Men, about a New York advertising agency in the Sixties. In this video, ad man Donald Draper is pitching an advertising campaign to two executives from Kodak who want to market their new slide projector as a wheel. Don has some things to say about that. (Ignore the annoying ad at the beginning, if one plays on your computer).

And I’ll see you in church

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WOUNDS

 

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;
courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

 Winston Churchill 

 

 

I can’t keep my mind on my work today. The atmosphere is electric.

The President’s vile slurs keep ringing in my ears. A crude damnation of a country and a continent.

Is this really happening?

And then there’s Oprah’s speech? Imperfect, to be sure but a rousing call to personal responsibility and to working for a better world.

And Martin Luther King Day next Monday – honoring the inspired leadership and vision of one of the greatest of Americans.

And the lessons for Sunday asking how do we know things? Jesus? God? What to do next? What to say and not say?

Maybe more attention than ever has to be given to gestures of decency and respect. As Nancy invited me to consult with her about hymns for Sunday, we two white women had a difficult conversation about race and respect: Should the congregation sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (called “The Black National Anthem”) on Sunday, in honor of King? Or is it more disrespectful and even silly to have a group of mainly white people sing about oppression and the battle for racial equality that they haven’t experienced? If we sing it, should we sing it slowly – as it is done in many black congregations – or should it be speeded up so as not to” drag”? Should we ask one of our black members about this? Or is that condescending and inappropriate by asking them to speak for their race? Is it worse to sing “Lift Every Voice” only once a year or not at all?

Nancy made the call and said no. I agreed but still am not sure.

Are good intentions enough?

To sing or not to sing? To speak or not to speak? How to call out the name-callers, even the President? These are urgent questions.

No matter how wounded we feel – because of racial slurs, gender shaming, personal insults, political affiliations, or the fear that our attempts to be respectful might be labeled inappropriate, there is no choice really but to move ahead by speaking the truth as we know it. To go with our gut. To put our own stories and experiences out there and trust our listeners.

See you in church.

Barbara

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The Invitation

It was fifteen below zero January 25 — thirty years ago tonight –  and after an intense two years of preparation, I was going to be ordained a deacon at St. Mark’s Cathedral.

Just three weeks earlier, my husband had moved out, unilaterally terminating our twelve-year marriage.Memory has filtered what I remember of that freezing cold winter night: my darling little girls, four and six years old, sitting with my dazed parents; Bishop Robert Anderson and his kind spirit; “I Bind Unto My Heart Today,” a red stole, a collar, and an internal battle against the deep sadness and embarrassment that threatened to take over if I let it. 

The poet Emily Dickenson describes such moments: 

“This is the Hour of Lead— Remembered if outlived,

 As Freezing persons recollect the Snow—

First—Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go—“

Of course, the letting go part didn’t happen for a long time.In the subsequent years, I forged a form of ministry that worked for me and, usually, for the church.  For the sake of my kids, I tried to “model resilience”.  In therapy and in other ways, I “did the work”.  Like all of us, I did the best I could.  And like all of us, I was not to get off with just one crisis.

Today, I dug out the invitation to my ordination. Never missing a chance to make a statement, I remember that for the front of it, I wanted an image that was feminine as well as Christian.  I searched the art books and found a picture like the one above.  It decorates the ornate tomb of Galla Placida, Christian half-sister of the Roman Emperor Honorius, 420 A.D.  The eight-pointed figures pay tribute to the eight Beatitudes and to the eighth day of creation: the Resurrection.I could find out little about Galla Placida except the information above, so I put that on the back of the invitation and the snow-flake images above on the front. The beautiful design, the blue color, all spoke to me and somehow I wanted a connection with this woman as I began my official life in the Church. I wanted to affirm her and  I wanted her on my side.  I didn’t realize the connection was more than I thought.

Given the miracle of Google, I thought I’d check on Galla today.  I found a treasure-trove of information about her, including this sentence: “Justina, Galla Placida and Pulcheria are three women who were trying to keep their heads above water while under the influence of men.”

Laughter is healing.

Over the years, it is often in retrospect that I see

God’s handprints, and the ways I have been held up, so very many times.

As usual, the poets say it best.  This is from Mary Oliver’s poem, “Heavy”:

                              “That time

                             I thought I could not

                             go any closer to grief

                             without dying                            

                            I went closer,                            

                            and I did not die.

                             Surely God

                             had His hand in this

                             as well as friends…” 

It is a privilege to be with all of you, taking this part of our amazing journeys together.

See you in church.
Barbara

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Choice

Two of the best things in my life occurred because I was not given a choice: growing up in the Fifties, and living for eighteen years as a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran.

To understate in massive terms, there were downsides to each of these.  The Fifties were a relatively innocent, cozy, family-gathered-around-the-black-and-white-television time – at least on the surface — when I felt safe walking around town alone, when  “drugs” meant penicillin or aspirin, and when having beer at a high school party was only for the very wildest kids (we called them “the Hoods” (rhymes with woods) — I’m still not sure what the reference was but I know I wasn’t one of them.) This was also a time of repression, sexism and racism but I truly didn’t get that then.

I wasn’t given a choice about going to church and church activities. My mom dropped me off most Sundays, and the fact is, my life wasn’t so saturated with other activities that I minded.

During services, I sat by my best friend Pam and we passed notes or played Hangman during most of the service, but I’m pretty sure I absorbed something.

I was way into Sunday School and then Confirmation classes. The major challenge here was to memorize stuff and I was good at that so got lots of gold stars (literally).

Youth group was a social event for me.  I wouldn’t have gotten to go on hayrides otherwise, or meet kids from other schools.  In our formal meetings, we talked about the Bible, certainly about nothing racy or directly “relevant” to the massive longings and confusion brewing in the heads of most of us.  (The Hoods didn’t come to St. James Lutheran.  To be honest, almost all of them were Catholic – I’m just saying – which increased their Dangerousness Factor even more and, for the boys, their attractiveness).

In terms of the musical “Grease,” I remained an eternal Sandy – the blonde, Olivia Newton-John character — a sundress-wearing, bow-in-hair, innocent.  (By the way, “Grease” was not produced until 1971 – it would have been pornography in the late ‘50s’s and early ‘60’s!)

I wised up in college.

While I am, frankly, astounded at the theology of the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans now, it didn’t matter until I was older.  The Church served me well as a kid and young person.  Like the era itself, it was safe, bland, and a great community for a lonely kid.  (Plus, I learned a lot about the Bible – a great legacy I continue to appreciate).

I was baptized at St. James when I was one.  Twenty-nine years later, away from any church for many years, I only came back because my mother wouldn’t let up on me until I had my kids baptized.  The initial impetus was to get her off my back. When I relented, I said it wasn’t going to be at St. James Lutheran!

The Baptisms ended up being at an Episcopal church I had “stumbled into” in Minneapolis.  The rector said that we couldn’t just get the kids “done” but had to be part of the community first and see if we wanted to buy into it. His refusal to give us a choice on this requirement for Baptism formed my reentry into the Church and became the foundation for my ordination some years later.

My entry and re-entry into the Church were both marked by Baptism – my own and my kids’.  My mom followed through on the commitment she made at my Baptism to support me in the faith.  Going to church and Bible study weren’t presented as a choice, and she pestered me into Baptism for my kids.

I failed in my commitment with my own daughters.  I was divorced, “alone,” and serving at the altar myself many Sundays.  At the church I served, the Sunday School was little more than daycare; there was no youth group; and by the time my girls were teenagers I had given up and they just stayed home, as they wanted to.

Ironically, it was the ELCA Lutherans who gave them their main church experience.  Many of their friends went to nearby Mount Olivet and my girls joined them and went to a weekly youth group and to Cathedral of the Pines camp in the summer.  They loved it.

My story proves nothing if not that the Spirit of God can work despite the hindrances we place in its way.  But some times, too much choice can be one of them – for our kids and even for ourselves.

See you in church.

Barbara

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