The Lutheran Review

Getting Close to God

 

Ephesians 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Sometimes people talk about feeling close to God.  Our closeness to God has to do with Christ.  We, that is we Gentiles, were separated from Christ, alienated and strangers to the covenants of promise having no hope and without God in the world. (v.12.)  Now that’s a serious situation.  At one time we were hopeless, godless or should it be Godless (?) not part of God’s people and ignorant of the promise God had given to Israel of a Messiah.  In facrt there was great animosity between Jews and Gentiles.

Christ brought peace between Jew and Gentile.  Jews were not saved by adherence to commandments and ordinances, but by faith in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.  His blood did away with all the sacrifices.  Gentiles are freed from doing the sacrifices by the blood of Christ.  Since both Jew and Gentile are saved through Jesus Christ, the source of our peace is in Christ.  Both are reconciled to God in Jesus’ body. Through the cross.  Thus Gentiles are as much a part of the household of God as the Jews.  Both are united in one body.  Both are built together “into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”  Both have access to the heavenly Father through the same Holy Spirit.

None of us has any blamelessness to bring before God.  Christ gives us his blamelessness.  So the Old Testament reading ends with Jeremiah 23:6, “The Lord is our righteousness”, our salvation, our security.  So as Psalm confesses, “Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

The Real Zedekiah

 

I was waiting in the Dr.’s office this morning with a number of other people.  One of the staff people came and called “Dawn.” A woman and her daughter got up but so did a man.  “Did you say Don?” he asked.  “No, it was ‘Dawn’ I called”  “Oh,” said the man and returned to his chair.  Soon another staff person out and called, “Ronald.”  I got up, but so did Donald.  The staff person said, “Ronald, with an R.”  I said to the man, “You’re not having any luck at all this morning.”  He smiled and went back to his chair.  When I saw doctor and was leaving the, I notice Donald had finally made it in.

In the Old Testament lesson for last Sunday (Jeremiah 23:1-6, the kings were held responsible for the welfare of the people.  However, the kings have neglected the people and the people had been scattered to places like Babylon and Egypt.  One of those kings took the throne name Zedekiah, “The Lord is my righteousness.  However, like many of the other kings he was pathetically weak.  Jeremiah hoped for the day when a ruler would live up to the name Zedekiah.

God’s grace comes to the rescue.  God will raise up a righteous –blameless, branch from the family tree of David.  In the New Testament, Jesus is the one from the tree of David, whom God raised up and who lived up to the name, ”The Lord is our Righteousness.”  Since we have no righteousness of our own, God gives us Christ’s righteousness.  Thus Paul wrote in Romans 5:20-21, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal through Jesus Christ.

So when someone calls, “Zedekiah” the one who did not live up to the name he took for himself needs to back to his chair and sit down.  For Christ is the one who answered the call and he is the one who truly is our blamelessness, the true Zedekiah.

The Shepherd Provides Places of Tranquility

 

Where is the place of “green pastures” and “still waters” for you?  When I was growing up on the farm my place was beside the meandering Apple River which ran through the pasture.  Particularly, the area shaded by elm trees and containing the remains of a 19^th century logging camp.  However, the elm trees died long ago and the evidence of a logging camp have disappeared and I live hundreds of miles away.  So now one tranquil spot is walking through the cemetery near our home.  Reading in the sun room is another or doing what I am doing right now sitting at the computer and seeing where this blog will lead me.

Yesterday, Becky and I were up to St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Prairietown, Il. where I led Bible Class and had the service. There was something calming to look out the window during Bible Class and see a soybean field.  After we got back home we spent the afternoon watching inning after inning of the Cardinals game.  Somehow there was a contentment to the day, even the time spent watching baseball.  As a local news anchor said this morning, “It used up a  huge chunk of my life.”

I don’t know if the psalmist had these things in mind when he wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters.  He restores my soul.”

At least yesterday afternoon and evening and this morning, it is good to just let the Word simply wash over me without trying to think too deeply about them.     

The Compassionate Shepherd's Banquet

Pentecost 8, 2015 Prairetown, Il. Mark 6:30-444

Mark 6:34, When he went ashore he saw the great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

A painting in our oldest son’s high school religion book from 30 years ago depicted a flock of sheep grazing their way toward the edge of a cliff which drops down into a valley below.  A couple of sheep have already fallen to a ledge several feet down.  More sheep coming up from behind will soon crowd those already standing on the edge over the precipice.  There is no shepherd in sight to move the flock to safety away from the edge.

This morning, we the Lord’s people; the sheep of God’s pasture have returned to Jesus. Though you and I don’t really know each other, we come not as strangers but as fellow members of God’s flock together with all the saints who gather this morning in Staunton, and Collinsville and Sunset Hills, Mo. where Becky and I are members of Resurrection Lutheran Church and Christ Lutheran in Pipe Lake, Wis. where my family attends.  We come as people blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing already in place for us in the heavenly places.  We come as people who are sheltered under the care of the three in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We have heard already that Christ died for our failures this past week and that once again we are forgiven because, he shed his blood for us according to God’s grace - filled plan to unite all thing in heaven and on earth.  We have a guarantee of all these blessings through the Holy Spirit who in baptism established its residence in you and me.  Within the hour, we will go from our retreat from the busyness of our lives with the blessing of the Lord who upon us in graciousness and peace this next week.

In our Gospel lesson, the disciples have returned to Jesus to report on their missionary journey through the towns of Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God’s Kingdom, healing the sick and casting out many demons.  The time for God’s plan to tear down the walls of hostility which you and I have built up between ourselves and God and between one another has arrived.  Therefore, we are urged to turn away from business as usual; turn away from our guilt over not being all that we could be; turn away from our animosity toward the person who may have sinned against us; turn away from our shame for our sins against another person; turn away from our fears of just where our nation is headed; turn away from wondering where is God in this world, turn, turn, turn and “believe in the gospel.”  In the midst of all manner of bad news, believe the good news of God in Jesus Christ.  So we pray, “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Jesus took his disciples on a retreat to rest and be restored. The coming and goings of people who were hungering for something and perhaps not knowing what, left Jesus and his fledgling church, not for the first time, with no time to eat.  However, those plans were thwarted.  Mark tells us, “Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they RAN there on foot from all the towns.” I must admit that my first reaction would have been, “I need a break.”  However, Jesus first reaction was compassion, his heart went out to them, “because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”  In Amy Bloom’s book “AWAY” the central character Lillian is in the Yukon wilderness.   She helps a man bury his wife who had died between the cabin and the outhouse while he was checking his trap line.  Three young children found themselves alone.  The man prays and then recites the 23^rd psalm, “Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”  Lillian thinks, “My life has been one of forever walking in the valley of death and I fear everything.”

  Lillian in Amy Bloom’s masterful book is representative of many who are constantly in the dark dangerous and deadly valley and fear is a constant companion in the pit of their stomach.  They are like the lost sheep in Jesus’ parable whom the shepherd goes out to find.  Sometimes, despite having all the blessings of God; despite having the Lord as our shepherd and therefore we have nothing to want or fear, we find ourselves fearfully walking through a haunting shadowy valley.

So what does Jesus do?  He taught them.  Mark does not tell us what Jesus taught them; however, I think we can make a good guess. In the Old Testament lesson God says of the leaders of Israel, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture.”  Since they have not taken care of the flock of God’s people, God will take care of them; sent into exile, never see their land again.  But then God promises, “I will raise up a righteous Branch from the royal family of David.  He will take care of the people and act with honesty and integrity toward God’s people.”  The name of that person will be “The Lord is our Righteousness.”  The Lord will be our integrity, our blamelessness before God.  Elsewhere in Jeremiah God promises, “And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.”  Jesus likely taught these things and much more such as “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  As Jesus told the Tempter in the wilderness, “Man shall not live be bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Peter will tell Jesus, “Lord you have the words of eternal life, to whom shall we go?”  The people who ran to Jesus came to the right source, the One who had and is the Word of eternal life.

But of course it is also true that people do need bread. In addition to the Kingdom of God and forgiveness of sins; we will also pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” As the afternoon waned toward evening the disciples, remind Jesus that he had filled his audience with knowledge and understanding. Now it’s time to, “Pronounce a benediction and send them home so they can get some supper.”  Jesus said, “You fix them Supper.”  “What?  It’ll cost a fortune.  We don’t have that kind of money.”  “Well what do you have?”  “Five loaves and two fish.” 

Remember the 23^rd psalm? “You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies, my cup overflows.”  Jesus commanded the people to sit down in groups of fifty and hundreds, like Moses did in the wilderness.  They sit on green grass.  Do you see it?  “The Lord is my shepherd…he makes me lie down in green pastures beside still waters.”  Actually, they reclined in the green grass beside the still waters of the Sea of Galilee because they were at a banquet.  Their shepherd Jesus becomes the host. He took the loaves and fish, looked up to heaven said a blessing and broke the bread and gave them to the disciples, now turned dining room servers, and they took the entrée of fish and bread and set it before the banqueters.  And what happened that day on the shores of the Sea of Galilee will happen right here at St. Peter’s this morning.  A spokesman for Jesus, this morning it’s me, will say, “On the same night in which He was betrayed, our Lord took bread, broke and gave it to his disciples saying, “Take eat this is my body, given for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  Jesus is the host here today as we gather in groups to receive the food that satisfies us unto eternal life.

  And of that banquet in the green grass beside the still waters, we read, “And they all ate and were satisfied.”  Christ will satisfy our hungering and thirsting for blamelessness in his Holy meal in which he is the host and he is the entrée.  We will once again go with the goodness and the mercy of the Lord following us all week and all our life and shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.         

 

      

  

When Herod Heard of Jesus

When Herod Heard of Jesus

Mark: 6:14, King Herod heard of it, for Jesus name had become known.

Commentators don’t quite know why the story of Herod’s beheading of John the Baptist is inserted into Mark’s Gospel between the sending and the return of the apostles.  The horrible, terrible birthday party is a flashback to a previous time.  But what the text tells us is that word of Jesus mighty works had arrived at the Palace.  As the question of Jesus’ identity was debated, some said he was John the Baptist risen from the dead.

The death dealing banquet among the powers that be is in stark contrast to the banquet Jesus hosts on the green grass by the Sea of Galilee, the account of which following the report of Herod’s banquet.

First of all Herod was not a king, though he certainly campaigned to Rome that he be given the title.  He was a Tetrach over the area we know as Galilee.  He is not Herod the Great who ruled in Judea and threatened the infant Jesus life.  Nor is he Herod Archelaus who followed his father to the throne of Judea.  However, he is the Hero mentioned in connection with Jesus crucifixion.

Commentator James R. Edwards writes of the Herodian family.  “The Herodian family tree was as twisted as the trunk of an olive tree.”  Herod Antipas ruled Galilee and Perea from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39.  His wife, Herodias, was the daughter of Aristobulus his half-brother.  Aristobulus had been murdered by his father.  Herod, “the Great” had ten wives.  Thus Herodias was Herod the Great’s granddaughter and the niece of Herod Antipas, the Tetrach who ruled as king of Galilee, though he was not a king.  Jesus refers to Herod Antipas as “that fox” referring to his cunning and malice.  He persuaded Herodias, wife of another half-brother, Philip, to divorce her husband and marry him.  In order to marry Herodias, he had to jilt his own wife, who was the daughter of Aretus king of Nabataea which was east of the Dead Sea.  In reprisal, Aretas attacked and inflicted a crushing defeat on Antipas in A.D. 36.  In A.D. 39 Antipas and Herodias were banished to Gaul (France) by Emperor Caligula. Julius Caesar had completed his conquest of Gaul in 51 B.C.        

 Now I hope I can keep this all straight for at least five minutes after I post it.

Herod: Attracted, yet Perplexed

 

In the gospel lesson (Mark 6:14-29) Herod's birthday party turns into a Death day for the forerunner of the Kingdom God. But in the middle of the account we have an interesting statement, “(v.20b) When Herod heard John the Baptist, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly.”

 Herod feared John because he was an upright and holy man. He needed to control the situation and still keep John safe. So he had him arrested. However, his plan for limited injustice back fired and an even greater injustice resulted in the beheading of John.

 Lamar Williamson Jr wrote in his commentary in the Interpretation series. “This passage tells the story of John's condemnation to death by Herod Archelaus (a fact confirmed by Josephus) in a way that parallels Jesus' condemnation to death by Pontius Pilate (Mark 15:1-15). Both rulers are favorably impressed by the Jewish religious figures (John and Jesus) whose lives they therefore prefer to spare; both wish to please the crowd by a gesture of magnanimity; both are manipulated to carry out the deadly hostility of a third party; both, though seemingly in charge, become unwilling actors in a drama beyond their control.

 By means of these parallels, the Markan account depicts the death of John foreshadowng that of Jesus...The figure of John will stand forth as the forerunner par excellence.

 The account of John's death is in the context of Jesus sending out the apostles who will also face opposition to the message of the Kingdom of God. If the forerunner of the kingdom faced great opposition from the powers that be and the bringer of the Kingdom (Jesus) faced deadly opposition of those same powers, then as the church goes out with its Kingdom message into the community, it too, out not to expect to be above its Master.   

People are People

 

I was meeting last Friday with the pastor of the congregation where Becky and I hold membership. We were discussing how my might be or assistance, teaching, doing liturgy and preaching once in a while. I haven't been around that much since Becky and I have been traveling to different churches this summer where I fill in while the pastor is on vacation.

 Our pastor commented that he didn't see how I do it. “Do what?” I asked. How I go to preach at places where I don't know the people or their situation. I thought about that over the weekend. I think the short answer is, “People are people.” Everyone pretty much has the same needs, same sins, and the same need for the Gospel. For instance, in Amos 7:7-8, God shows Amos a plumb line. It doesn't matter where are or who we are, we know that if God were to drop a plumb line into our lives or into the midst of our congregation, we would not quite square up to what God expected of us and held us responsible to be. So the only way to get square with God is through Jesus Christ who always lived up to God's expectations and in his death and resurrection made us square with God.

 

When we come to the epistle for Sunday, Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul tells us that what Christ did was planned before God ever said “Let there be...” Christ shed his blood to unite all things in the universe in Him. So when it looks like is coming apart at the seams we can look to Paul's word in Ephesians and learn that in Christ we have the good news of our salvation and have been sealed in that salvation by the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of what we will someday come into full possession of, namely all those spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. That is our inheritance which we are predestined to receive according to God's plan.

 So when we face things as represented by Herod horrible birthday banquet turned into a death day, it may not be all wine and roses for us, but have far more life and a far greater kingdom than the paltry power plays going on in our world. Thus we prayed in the Prayer of the Day that God would “Give us pure hearts and minds to follow Your Son faithfully even into suffering and death.” We pray that “through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.”

 People are people and the Gospel provides the promises we all are able to count on both now and forever.      

Let Me Hear

 

Pentecost 7, 2015 Staunton, Il. Psalm 85

85:8 Let me hear what the Lord God would speak when He speaks peace to his people and to His faithful, that they turn not back to folly.

I come from a long line of Jansens who are gifted in wood working. Me? Not so much. I took shop in high school. One of the items we were to make was a bird feeder. I just couldn't get the sides to match up. I cut a little more off one end and then the other, until I thought, “If I keep this up I'm not going to have anything left.” So I forced it together. Nailed a tin roof on it and called it done.

That's how we come here this morning. Our lives are not quite square with what God holds us responsible to be. We may not have felt like poor miserable sinners this morning, nevertheless, our lives are like Lance Lynn's pitching Friday night for the Cardinals, out of sync. We come not quite up to par. We come, with hands not quite as clean as we would like. Choose your picture, but in small and large ways, in actions unseen and seen, in words unheard and heard, we, the workmanship of God in Christ, arrived here burdened with those pesky things we call sins, we just haven't measured up.

However, it didn't take long to unload all those shortcomings which we confess deserve God's wrath and punishment both now and forever. Early on you heard, “In the name and in the stead of of our Lord Jesus Christ I announce the grace of God to all of you and forgive all your sins.” Or, in the opening verses of Psalm 85, “God, you favored us, You restored us, You forgave Your people's crimes.” Crimes? Well if we break God's law what does that make us before God? But God has cleared our criminal record through the criminal death of his Son Jesus Christ. The psalm continues, “You covered all their offenses.” St. Paul told us in the Epistle, “In Christ, God's Beloved, we are redeemed through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Our sins are covered by his blood and we don't have to worry that God will ever dig into our past, pull out those failures, and wave them in our face, asking how we could have done or said such a thing. As psalmist says, “You laid aside all Your wrath, You turned back from Your blazing fury.”

But there are times when we have difficulty focusing on the abundance of his grace that we possess through faith. We take our eyes off God's grace in Christ and fix them on the state of affairs in our world; or whatever problems with which we may be contending in our daily life. We wonder, “Why is God displeased? What have I done?” From Isiah we hear, “It pleased God to bruise (Christ), instead of you.” We think, “Oh, Oh, God is going to get me for that.” God is not going to do any such thing. We have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Why would God do that if he was going to turn around and get us for something which displeases him? That's foolishness. Yet even the faithful suffer from such thinking when we look only at our surroundings and see the distance between ourselves and God; instead of the nearness of His grace, which is ever present, no matter our circumstances, or feelings.

And yet when things appear to be against us, we may find ourselves in agreement with the psalmist: “Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us! Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger forever? Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.” A shorter version of the prayer came from the lips of a father whose son was afflicted with a spirit that threw him into convulsions and frothing at the mouth. And after his son was cleansed the father prayed, “I believe. Help my unbelief.”

Help with his unbelief is what the Psalmist is waiting for. He calls out, “Let me hear what the Lord God would speak when He speaks peace to his people, that they turn not back to folly.” The English actress Helen Mirren said in a recent interview that she loves to perform in our country. She said the English audience sits back and says, “What are you going to do for us?” The American audience leans forward and says, “What are you going to do for us?” The psalmist is leaning forward.

He and the whole congregation gathered for worship hears one word,

“Salvation.” “Surely his salvation is near.” His victory is at hand. Jesus coming was a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” God lavished his grace upon us in Christ that this divided world and universe would be put back together again. Next week we will hear St. Paul tell us that in Jesus flesh God has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between one another and between Himself and you and me. You see, that word “Salvation” in the Hebrew is Yeshua. We know Yeshua as Jesus. What did the angel tell Joseph? “She (Mary) will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Now sometimes it doesn't look like things are being united. Consider the Gospel lesson and Herod's birthday banquet that went horribly wrong. The drunken affair in his palace became a deathday for John the Baptist, the forerunner of our Savior. In his novel, Crusader's Cross James Lee Burke, writes, “Any street cop, homicide investigator...carries images in his head that never go away....But what if the problem is not him...? What if the problem is that there is something bestial and cruel at work in the human race? What if his view is not jaded, but an accurate one.” What if Herod and Herodias are representative of humanity?

Next week we will read of Jesus, the compassionate shepherd who feeds 5,000 ordinary people at a banquet in the green pastures beside the still waters of the Sea of Galilee. The likes of Herod, Herodias and Isis may throw fear into our hearts, but in the end Christ's death and resurrection leads to those words often read at funerals, “Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death where is your victory? Oh death where is your sting?” We say those words even as we are laying our loved one in a grave.

But the writer of psalm 85 goes on to tell us what powers God's salvation. “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet.” It's like two friends meeting on the street. Steadfast love is God's loyalty to us and his favor upon us, Martin Luther called it, “goodness in action.” Faithfulness is God's reliability. Steadfast love and Faithfulness meet. Steadfast love says, “Faithfulness. Where you going?” Faithfulness responds, “I'm going to take up residence in Jesus.” “What a coincidence,” said Steadfast love, “I'm headed in the same direction. So I guess we are going to be spending some time together.” “Yes, we will be dwelling in Jesus and in his followers for eternity as I understand it.” James Lee Burke says of God's nature, “He has a sense of humor and because He's a gentleman, he always keeps his word.”

The psalmist reports further, “Righteousness and Peace kiss each other.” Righteousness is blamelessness, honesty, good order. God created the world and forgives our sin making us new creations, in the midst of the mess and disorder of the world. Peace is God's pronouncement of very good over his creation and our salvation. And even before he had created the world and all that is in it, he had a plan in His Son to make us blameless, whole and complete again; to restore and revive us. Thus when we leave today we will not be told that we had better behave ourselves because God is watching. We will be able to leave with the promise that God is looking upon us to keep us and give us peace. He will go before during the week with righteousness breaking a path for us and salvation following behind.

 

 

 

 

Grace for Repentance

 

I often find that the Collect or Prayer of the Day for a particular Sunday are worth studying in their own right.

Prayer for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost or Proper 9 from LSB:

 

O God, Your almighty power is made known chiefly in showing mercy. Grant us the fullness of Your grace that we may be called to repentance and made partakers of your heavenly treasures; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 

If you are reading this, you have already experienced God's chief display of his omnipotence. He has refrained from using his power to deliver to you the punishment you confessed that you deserved both at the present time and carrying over into eternity. Instead, you have received his mercy in covering your sins with the blood of Christ. And as Martin Luther wrote, that “only out of fatherly, divine, goodness and mercy,” He has provided you with all that you need to support your body and life.

 

In the next line we asked that God would “Grant us the fullness of Your grace.” Now we know we need grace for salvation, but that is not what we asked for. No, we asked for the full measure of His grace, “that we may be called to repentance.” I must admit that startled me a bit. However, repentance is the task of God's mercy and grace. We are given the chance to examine our life today and ask God to turn us from whatever hinders us from following Him with complete commitment to Him and one another.

 

Now comes the ultimate “prize.” Through the power of God's mercy and the gift of grace for repentance we are called to faith in Christ and “made partakers of Your heavenly treasures. And as Luther writes, “not with gold or silver, but with his Holy, precious blood and innocent suffering and death,” I have the strength to believe in Jesus Christ and will on the last day give me and all believers eternal life.

All of this through God's Son Jesus Christ who is our Lord and lives and rules with God and the Holy Spirit now and forever.

 

Too Elated? Grace Sufficient

 

Our Sunday readings through Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians end with chapter 12:1-10.  It’s actually a continuation of chapter 11 in which Paul recounts all the beatings and near death experiences which befell him.  There he introduces the subject of boasting of his weaknesses.  In chapter 12 he believes he could legitimately boast of the experience of being transported into the third heaven where he saw and heard things which words fail in his attempt to convey his experience.

“So,” he writes in verse 7, “to keep me from being too elated…a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated.”  I can imagine what Garrison Keillor would do with this verse when speaking about the people in Lake Wobegon.  If anything describes the people of that fabled community, it is striving to not be too elated, because they will pay for their excitement later.  It’s best to be on an even keel because then the letdown, which is sure to come, will not be a fall from the heights, but more of a coast down a small hillock.

There is much truth to his depiction of the Norwegian Lutherans which applies to many of us who grew up in the upper Midwest, Scandinavian or not.  But that is not quite what Paul is writing about.  Not being over elated by spiritual experiences, allows God’s message to come through.  “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…for when I am weak then I am strong.”

Representative of many of us, the people of Lake Wobegon may resist being too elated, but also resist allowing God’s grace to be enough.  One man told me, “Can’t isn’t in my dictionary.”  At some point “can’t” will be added to our dictionary.  We hope that before that moment arrives, we discover what it means that “My grace is sufficient for you.”