Worship and Preaching: It’s summertime, and contrary to the Gershwin song, the livin’ is very far from easy for most folks these days. But it’s at least a time to do things a little differently. In my first Texas summer I am learning the value of conserving effort! If you’ve been with us on the Sunday livestream, you may have noticed that we’ve removed a few optional elements from the liturgy for a simpler, shorter worship service. I’m also holding myself to sermons that are very brief by my standards. Starting last month and going through July, we’re talking about the Ten Commandments and the Small Catechism. This is a way for all of us to return and ponder some basic elements of our faith. Outdoor Holy Communion is set to start June 21 and will hopefully continue without incident on Sundays at 10:45 a.m. Stay tuned as we adapt to circumstances and do our best to extend God’s saving grace to our worshipers and community! 
 
Simple and Dignified: Many thanks to Cheryl Kowalczik for securing new communion ware to replace our battered vessels. We’ve shared some photos of it on Facebook. Unpacking them was a strange joy for me, partly because it reminded me of my desire for the Sacrament which I have not received since Easter. But also because, even though communion vessels are not the most important part of the liturgy by any means, they express something important. The vessels we found are simple—not gaudy, ornate, or attention-seeking—but they are beautiful. They made me think about what I strive for in worship, that everything we do should point to Christ and not to ourselves. It should be clear and simple, rather than elaborate or showy, but it should be worthy and dignified, too.  

Whose lives matter? Important and difficult conversations are happening right now in churches (and everywhere else) about our relationship to racial injustice. An editor recently asked me to write about the claim that the recent anti-police brutality protests had become “religious” in nature, even a new religion of its own. So I did my best. My short answer is that this not a new religion but it has some religious dimensions that we need to pay attention to. One of them is the “confessional” quality of certain phrases, especially “Black Lives Matter.” I’ve had friends and colleagues get hate mail or vandalism for putting these words on a church sign or website, which probably explains why people are so adamant about the importance of saying them. What we say often has a meaning beyond the literal sense of the words. This is a conversation we’ll be having, inside and outside of church, for some time to come—especially as the process of re-opening during a viral outbreak leads to greater and greater risks for more people whose lives matter but are at risk of being discounted.  
 
Staying in touch: It’s been wonderful to hear from our community, whether you’re here in Dallas or sitting tight somewhere far away. Thank you for the emails, texts, phone calls, and messages. Please be in touch any time, and remember to keep in touch with each other!  
 
Grace and peace, 
Pastor Ben

Now that we're in the season after Pentecost, we're making Sunday worship a little shorter and easier for folks participating at home. And to do my part, I'm going to preach a little shorter too. For the next several weeks we'll be spending some time on the Ten Commandments. Until fairly recently, the Ten Commandments were a regular part of Lutheran worship. They were recited as part of Confession services, set to hymns in the Sunday liturgy, and frequently preached on.

In the Small Catechism we get brief, simple, and sometimes quite profound explanations of their meaning. "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God," goes the Second. What does this mean? Luther answers, "We are to fear and love God, so that we do not curse, swear, practice magic, lie, or deceive using God's name, but instead use that very name in every time of need to call on, pray to, praise, and give thanks to God." I have always loved that duality Luther finds in the commandments: fear and love; do not do this, but instead do that.

This week I'm going to talk about the first two commandments. It's important to recognize that the Commandments are not the Gospel. They do not reveal the grace and mercy of God to us, at least not directly. But we learn them and treasure them to understand who we are, what God requires of us, and how our actions can build up or damage the world around us.

This coming Sunday is the festival of Pentecost, the day on which the Holy Spirit descends upon the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit doesn't get as much attention in our (ok, in my) preaching and theology as the Father and the Son,  most often appearing as a means to some purpose or as the solution to a problem rather than as a co-equal Person of the Holy Trinity. But we do have this lovely festival, and with it the invitation to hear again what our own words and stories mean. Here's part of the passage from Acts we hear each year on this day:

A few verses down, the incredulous festival crowd mistakes the display of foreign tongues for drunkenness (though it's not in this passage, the English use of "spirit" for distilled liquor points to the close kinship of alcohol and inspiration). We hear this in a different way in Paul's letter to the Corinthians:

People in the ancient world understood that a variety of external powers spoke through human beings. The first lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the most important works of literature in the Graeco-Roman world, consist of the poet asking the "goddess" or the "muse" to tell the story that he will then relay to the audience. An "inspired" person wasn't digging up treasures from within her own mind, but speaking as a medium for something or someone else.

For Jews and early Christians, these "spirits" were typically hostile or deceptive powers. Consulting them was a dangerous business. So the coming of the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God, can be heard as a contest between these hostile (or "demonic") spirits and the power of God to produce truth, faith, and virtue in us. In Luther's version of the baptism rite, the pastor says "Depart, unclean spirit, and make way for the Holy Spirit." We aren't empty vessels waiting for God to fill us up; we're the site of many influences working through our words and actions.

Paul suggests something a little different. You were "led astray by idols that could not speak," he tells his hearers. The pagan gods aren't voices at all; they're silent blocks of wood and stone that human beings fill up with their own words and meanings. This is not a new idea (we see an entertaining version of this view in the Greek version of the Book of Daniel, in a story called 'Bel and the Dragon'). But it is a powerful one. People looking for a message from an oracle or a soothsayer will be willing to believe even the shoddiest human ventriloquism. By contrast, the Spirit of God reveals and confirms the truth, and activates "gifts" within the believer that she would not otherwise have. If the idols merely speak some version of human conventional wisdom back to us, the Holy Spirit speaks unexpected power.

So as we approach this festival, it's worth asking ourselves: what voices speak through us? It can be as simple and obvious as an internet 'meme' that we repeat or vary, pushing along a fragment of thought without weighing it ourselves. Or it can be as subtle and profound as a whole system of assumptions and stereotypes that we pick up little by little and often aren't even aware of. It may also be the voice of charity, mercy, and grace that we know comes from outside and beyond us--the Holy Spirit. And at the same time, we can ask what words do we seek from idols? What are we willing to believe? What gifts do we seek at hands other than God's?