It was about 15 years ago, that I came down with the flu.  I had moved to Minneapolis a few months earlier and was trying to make a new start.  I was 27 and still not sure about what I wanted to do.  (Not that anyone who 27 knows what they want to do in life.  At 42, I don’t know if I know any better now than I did back then, but that’s another story.)

Anyway, I came down with the flu.  I was sick for a few days, but like most people, I got better from my little illness.  I went back to work and things looked like they were getting back to normal.

Except they didn’t.

I got sick again, and this time things were worse than before.  What had started as the normal flu, became pneumonia.  I don’t think I’ve ever been that sick before.  I remember my parents calling me to see how I was.  Mom asked me if she and dad should make the 12 hour journey from Michigan to see me.  At first I said no.  I mean, I was a grown man and could take care of myself.

But I couldn’t.

About 12 hours later, I had gotten worse.  The medicine I was given at emergency wasn’t working.  I dialed the phone and called Mom late at night.  All I had to say was to come and within hours, they were on their way to take care of their son, who couldn’t take care of himself.

As I read the gospel text for Palm Sunday, I am fixated on one word, the word “hosanna.”  We only hear this word one time during the year, Palm Sunday.  It’s the word we hear the crowd as Jesus made his entry into Jerusalem.  We can imagine little kids marching up and down the isles of a sanctuary shouting Hosanna over and over again.  I used to think this was just a word of praise and in some ways, it is.  But I did some checking and found out that the word means in Greek “save or pray.”  So, the word the people were shouting was not as much shouts of joy as much as it was a distress call.

I wonder about the people shouting those words.  They were looking for help from God.  The Jews were living under the rather cruel boot of Rome and wanted freedom.  So here comes this guy on a pretty humble animal (a donkey) and the people shout for help.  But the help that arrives is not that appealing.  I mean, it looked rather silly to see this grown man on a short animal that is used more for hauling things than it was for carrying people.

Help was on way, but not in the form they expected.

Palm Sunday is normally seen as the last gasp of happy times before Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  But maybe it’s not such a high point as it is reminding us that we are all looking for salvation and wholeness.  Maybe it’s about hitting bottom, as those in recovery say.  Maybe we realize that we can’t do it on our own and look for someone to come and save us- even if it is a fool on a donkey.

Hosanna, Hosanna. Save me, save me.  Truer words never spoken.

Go and be church.

Dennis Sanders

Fifth Sunday of Lent
Psalm 51
March 25, 2012

One of my favorite television shows is the science fiction/horror series “Being Human.” The series is based on a British TV show of the same name and features a vampire, werewolf and a ghost living together in an apartment in Boston. The whole premise of the show sounds like the start of a joke and at times, there is a lot of humor as the three try to live life as humans even though they are no longer human. But the main thrust of the show is how hard it is for them to be normal. Time and time again, they get thrown into situations where they are confronted with what they have become and how hard it is to live life as it was before they left the human race. This little campy television show tells a story of the supernatural, but at its core the message is very human: we are not always who we seem to be or even who we want to be. Sooner or later, we will face the reality of how far we have fallen and how hard it is to get back up.

Cast of "Being Human"

Psalm 51 is the passage we hear every Ash Wednesday. If there ever was a downer passage, this it is. “Have mercy on me, God,according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion!” writes the psalmist. This is a guy who realizes that he’s been caught. He’s not offering a simple or formal apology, he’s being incredibly honest. He messed up. He got himself into a mess that he can’t get himself out of. He asks God for help because only God can get this writer out of the pickle that he constructed.

Our culture doesn’t really like to talk about sin. I’m not talking about sin in the I-ate-too-much-chocolate kind of way. I’m talking about how we are able to get ourselves into messes even when we don’t mean to. We want to think that we can solve any problem that comes our way and if we can’t, well, then weren’t smart enough. But the psalmist knew better. All of the pretense had gone away and the writer is left with the fact that no matter what, she will make mistakes that will hurt others and hurt God. She realize that it is only God that can make her clean and can right the relationship which has been broken.

As we journey towards the cross, we are reminded that salvation comes only not through us trying to make things right, though we will try. Salvation comes in the one that washes us daily, that makes us able to praise God with a right and renewed spirit. It is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that we can become healed and human.

Go and be church.

Dennis Sanders

By Dennis Sanders

Ten years ago during Ash Wednesday of 2002, I was a chaplain at Luther Hall in Minneapolis.  Luther Hall was what you would probably call a nursing home, though the people there were at various stages in their lives; some were transitioning from surgery, back to home or to another facility; but some were there for the long haul, or short haul as it might happen.  There were people there who were basically at death’s door.  Some died immediately, others had a longer leave taking.

It was during that Ash Wednesday, that I, a seminarian finishing up the last requirement before ordination was helping in the administration of the ashes.  We had a service on that day in the chapel and then the two chaplains and I split up the complex and went room by room to those who couldn’t make it to the service.  We had a list of people to go to and visit, and we went room by room to place ashes on their heads. Some of the folks were awake and ready to receive the ashes, and some people were asleep or not just present at this moment.  Over and over again, I said the words that will be said again and again today…”Remember You Are Dust, and to Dust You Shall Return.”

I remember thinking how powerful it was to say this to people who in many cases were dying.  Saying those words were not in the abstract for me, they became very real.

Methodist pastor Alan Bevere has noted on how this day is a sober reminder of our mortality.  He notes:

I don’t spend much time thinking about my own death, though I know it will come sooner or later. I am well aware of the aging process going on within me and being noticed by me (and others) on the outside. Such aging is a reminder of my own mortality, which I pray will come much later than sooner, only because there is much more in life I want to experience, and because I believe God has not yet finished with me. But I know that there is no guarantee of anything. And in the big picture of things, that’s OK.

In one sense my creeping mortality is a blessing. It serves to remind me of what’s important. The older I get the things that seemed so trivial when I was younger, are more important. I have a sense of urgency to accomplish things I did not when I was thirty. I am more impatient when it comes to some matters and more patient with others. My aging reminds me of my mortality, and in so doing it also serves as a teacher. There is no age when one is too old to learn. Sadly, there are too many persons who die before they get to experience their creeping mortality; taken away much too early. So, I must remember to be thankful for the experience of aging. Not all get to journey with their mortality into old age.

I’m seven years younger than Alan and I’ve started to realize that I’m not a young thing anymore.  I see my parents who are in their early 80s and late 70s and see how they move slower and can’t do the things they used to anymore.  I am reminded day after day that I am facing my own mortality, my own sense of being limited by time and space.

Sometimes, Ash Wednesday is looked on as a day of being dour and focused on our sin.  That is part of it, but it is so much more than that.  Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are finite persons and yet, we are remembered by God.  For some reason, God wants to be in relationship with us even though in God’s view we last as much as a blooming flower.

Ash Wednesday is a dose of realism in our lives.  We are reminded that no matter how much we try to create our monuments to self, we will end up as worm food.  No one gets to escape that.

But it can also be a source of hope.  We are loved by God even though we are mortal.  But we also know that Christ has defeated death and we have a future hope beyond the grave.

So today, we are dust.  We will become dust.  But through the grace of Christ we also have hope beyond the dust.

Thanks be to God.

Crossposted at Questor Pastor.

The following sermon was preached by Associate Pastor Dennis Sanders on January 22, 2012.

This April will mark five years since my partner Daniel and I moved into our home in North Minneapolis.  Like a lot of folks I don’t like moving.  And like a lot of folks, there comes a time when you stop putting things neatly in boxes.  You just want to move and get things done so, all this junk gets placed in a box and you put somewhere in your house where you won’t ever look at it again.

And it is in some cases stuff you don’t need to keep.  In my case, I still had papers from seminary and college that followed me from house to house to house.  I had things that followed me from Michigan to Washington, DC and then to Minnesota.  I had junk that I had accumulated over 20 years that was going to take up space in my new home’s basement.  I really didn’t want to have a basement full of stuff I wasn’t going to use anymore, so I decided that the collection of old term papers and knick knacks had to be dealt with.  Slowly, but surely, I got rid of stuff.  I looked at every thing and I thought I was pretty ruthless in putting things aside and to the trash bin.  I felt in someway that these things were weighing me down and I needed to get rid of them so that I could move forward.

The texts today are pretty familiar to some of you.  A number of us have heard the old story of Jonah in the belly of a big fish or whale or what have you.  He is asked by God to go and preach a word of repentance to the folks in Nineveh.  Jonah wasn’t particularly eager to do what God called him to do.  So, instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah decided to get lost.  He took the first ship out of town far, far away from Nineveh.  Jonah was not interested in preaching to Nineveh.  He knew God was going to save them if they repented, something they ultimately did.  Nineveh was the big power that threatened tiny places like Israel.  Jonah wanted them to face God’s wrath.

In the gospels, we see Jesus opening his public ministry.  He comes preaching a familiar message of repentance; “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Jesus passes along and finds two sets of brothers who were fishermen.  He calls both sets to follow him and the text says they immediately drop what they are doing and follow Jesus on an amazing journey.

Whenever I’ve heard people talk about this text, people are always amazed how Peter, Andrew, James and John just give up their ways of living to follow Jesus.  Some folks say we need to emulate them.  We don’t know what they were thinking, but at some point they had to wonder what in the world they had done.  Why would anyone in their right mind give up a job to follow some strange guy claiming to be the Son of God?  Did it ever sink in how much they were giving up?

This Sunday is our Commitment Sunday and it is also the first full Sunday that we as a community are in our new place.  Unlike the disciples, we didn’t come at this “immediately.”  It took years for us to discern we need to sell our old building, to figure what were our next steps, to decide to join the partnership, and then to make all the decisions that take place during construction.  We made all those decisions and now here we are, sitting in this new room.

We are on a new path and we probably feel the same excitement the disciples felt when they decided to follow Jesus.  But we also feel some of the same fear and dread that Jonah felt.  We have been used to doing things a certain way in a certain place for half a century.  It will take time to establish the new rythyms of life around here.

This sermon is supposed to be a sermon about stewardship.  It’s supposed to be about persuading you all to make pledges for the coming to help this gathered community to God’s work in the world.  But this is also about commitment and about discipleship, about how we should follow Christ in good and bad times.

Following Christ means at times that we have to let go of things.  For the disciples it meant leaving their jobs.  For Jonah, he had to learn to give up his hatred of Nineveh and preach a word of repentance.

But letting go, committing ourselves to follow God is never an easy thing.  It’s far easier to remain in our comfort zones, because having to let go means pain and it hurts.  As a faith community, First Christian has made a bold move in deciding to follow Christ wherever we are led.  But it’s not without cost.  We have left our own nets by the seashore, but we don’t feel good leaving our old way of life tossed aside.

But letting go also opens us up to new possibilities.  Jonah preached to the Ninevites to get right with God and they did.  The disciples went on the found the church and spread the good news of Christ around the known world.

First Christian has learned to give up and let go of its past to face an unknown future.  What’s ahead of us?  I don’t know; that story is just being written.  What I do know is that in following Jesus we will be sharing the Good News of salvation to all who encounter us.  What I do know is that just like the disciples, God is right there with us as we do God’s work in the world.  We can commit to God because we know God will never, ever let us down.

There is a Central American hymn that seems to fit today:  It’s called “Tu has venido a la Orilla” or “Lord You’ve Come Down to the Lakeshore.”  Here are some of the words:

Tú has venido a la orilla,

no has buscado ni a sabios ni a ricos.

Tan sólo quieres que yo te siga.

Señor, me has mirado a los ojos,

sonriendo has dicho mi nombre.

En la arena he dejado mi barca:

junto a Ti buscaré otro mar.

Lord, you have come to the lakeshore

looking neither for wealthy nor wise ones.

You only asked me to follow humbly. 1

Refrain

O Lord, with your eyes you have searched me,

kindly smiling, have spoken my name.

Now my boat’s left on the shoreline behind me;

by your side I will seek other seas.

So, here we are.  We have left our boats of familiarity and security heading down a road we don’t know.  But we have a hope in the good news: in Jesus Christ.  We leave things behind, but look forward to so much more.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

January 15 will be a bittersweet day for us.  First Christian is leaving its large home of 56 years to move to a smaller footprint.  We pastors like to remind people that a church is not a building, but it is a people and that is true, of course.  But those buildings are also places where memories take place.  For me, this place has been instrumental in my formation as a pastor.  This was where I was ordained as a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 2002.  In 2006, I performed my first funeral here.  In 2010, rain forced my cousin to cancel his outdoor wedding at the last minute and it was rescheduled…well, you can guess where.

No doubt a lot of people connected with First Christian have memories associated with the building.  For some of you, it’s where you got married, or dedicated your child, or got baptized or buried a loved one.  The church is a people and we shouldn’t confuse a building with a community, but places hold significance in the human heart and mind.  Throughout the Bible, we find stories where place wasn’t just a building  or a rock, but it was a place where people met God and each other.

So, we leave with some sadness, but we also give thanks for what God has done at 2201.  And we move forward to what God will do at SpringHouse Ministry Center.  It will take time for us to get our bearings, but over time, new memories will be made, new stories where we will connect with God and each other.

Bob Hope used to sing the song, “Thanks for the Memories” at the close of his specials and he would thank people who took part in the event.  So, I will say, thanks for the memories, 2201.  Thanks for helping me see how God is active in the world.
-Dennis Sanders, Associate Pastor

George Haggard

There’s a story in the lore of First Christian that involves one Dr. George Haggard.  Dr. Haggard was already pretty advanced in years when the story begins, but his spirit was still young.  Portland Avenue Church (we became First Christian Church-again-in 1955) was then thinking about building a new church facility, but there was a bit of hesitancy—the sting of the Great Depression was still present in the collective memory.  And yet, this octogenarian pressed onward, stating to the congregation that they must start raising the money for a new building.  “We must look to the future,” he said.

“We must look to the future” became the rallying cry for the next decade as Portland embarked on a building campaign.  By 1955, the dream was complete- a gleaming new building for a growing church.

A decade later, FCC was still talking about looking towards the future.  I chanced upon a newsletter from 1962 that talked about the plans to add on an educational wing.  Dr. Haggard had recently passed away at age 104, but his spirit lived on.

The good doctor’s words fit the mood of the times, a dark time in American history, and they pointed towards a future hope, which was realized in the 1950s. Progress was the key word then and looking towards the future, things were only getting better.

Dr. Haggard’s words might seem odd to us here at First these days.  We are a smaller church than when Dr. Haggard’s dream became reality with this building.  As we prepare to move from here to our new home at SpringHouse, our future may feel uncertain and scary.  When the future is uncertain, it’s easy to get trapped in a past when the church hallways were filled with the sounds of laughing children and when the sanctuary was packed with people.

One of the lectionary readings for Dec. 18 is from 2 Samuel 7.  In it God tells King David through the prophet Nathan that God would establish David’s legacy, a royal lineage, forever.

But it did end.  Centuries later, the Babylonians swept in and defeated Israel.  The age of David’s royal lineage was over.

But the first chapter of Luke relates that an angel come to a young girl named Mary.  The angel tells her that she will give birth to a son, called Jesus.  David’s line is restored by the King of Kings.  God did not give up on God’s people. God is Emmanuel, always with us.

We must still look to the future.  Maybe it won’t be the future of big buildings and big memberships, but it will be a future where God is present with us, especially when the future seems cloudy.  As we move into SpringHouse, let’s remember that God is with us in the future, with us as we work with our partner congregations, with us as celebrate communion and preach the gospel.

We must look to the future, because that’s where God is.  And it’s where we will be as well.

One of the things that are always interesting are the manger scenes. Like most folks, people tend to decorate the mangers with all the central characters; the wise men (even though they weren’t at the manger), the shepherds, Joseph, Mary and yes, Jesus. One my favorite mangers at church is one that is basically made for kids. The characters are all dolls and you can imagine a kid picking it up and squeezing it.

That manger scene is a bit different. One of the young mothers set it up in front of the communion table. Mary and Joseph are there at the stable, but you have the shepherd on the steps leading down from the chancel and the wise men are all the way in the back of the church near the narthex. What missing is Jesus. There’s no baby Jesus to be found. The young mother explained to me that it’s not Christmas yet, so the characters in the birth story are still aways off. As Christmas draws closer, they will move in closer and closer.

What I was fixated on was the fact that there was no Jesus. She did a good job of hiding Jesus, because I could not find the baby Jesus any where in the sanctuary.

Where’s Jesus?

Where indeed. Advent is about waiting and expectation, but I wonder if sometimes it’s also about this scary feeling that hope will never come, that things will never change.

Recently, I found out that a friend of mine lost their job. This person and his partner are facing an uncertain holiday season, not to mention and uncertain future. I am reminded of my own struggles of being fired from a job several years ago near Christmas. That season was not one for the recordbooks. It’s in those dark times that people feel that hope is not present and that Jesus is nowhere to be found. We might pray and pray and for whatever reason, it feels like the phone line is dead.

Where’s Jesus?

Isaiah 61 tells the returning Israelites that hope is on the way. The holy city of Jerusalem that had been destroyed decades earlier, would be rebuilt better than ever. It’s a great story and would be even better if it just stopped there. But we learned that some of the background reveals that Jerusalem was never rebuilt in the way the writer of Isaiah 61 said it would-at least not in their lifetime.

And yet, this passage is still one of hope. Actually it’s not just about hope, but also about faith. We have faith that hope will prevail even if we can’t see it.

As I said earlier, one of the Christmas trees is located in the lounge. It’s decorated with lights and an angel at the top…and socks.

We’re collecting socks to donate to the Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Services, to help newcomers have warm feet in the winter, since most of them are coming from tropical countries to chilly Minnesota.

I think that in Advent we learn that Jesus can take the form of…well, socks. It’s hard when you are in pain or suffering to see Jesus anywhere, but maybe we can have hope that Jesus is the giving of socks to the stranger, or in the kind word we give to someone grieving or simply standing by a friend as they battle cancer. Maybe it’s in these small acts that we have hope and faith that God is here with us…and maybe it’s where Jesus is found.

Image of Bus courtesy of Metro Transit.

When that tray passes by you on Sunday mornings, do you ever wonder to yourself where all the money goes?

Of course some it goes where you expect: to pay salaries for the staff or to pay for building upkeep.  But your offerings also go to actually reach out in love to the least of these both here and around the world.

One such ministry that we fund is the Bus Card Ministry.  Did you know that we give out bus cards to folks each month?

We have many people in the neighborhoods surrounding the church that do not have access to basic transportation.  Many are homeless, which means more often than not, they don’t have the money to pay for bus fares.  Each month, we give away $10 bus cards to persons who come by the church to request one.  Each recipient gets only one card per month and we don’t give one out to those who are obviously intoxicated by alcohol or drugs.

This isn’t a big ministry, but it is a vital ministry.  Being able to get from point A to point B is something most of us don’t have to think about.  But for those struggling in poverty, not having money makes it that much harder to move around, and much harder to make it to doctor’s appointments or job interviews.

As a self-professed “transportation geek,” I am happy when I’m able give someone a bus card so that they can get to where the need to be going.

I give thanks to Transitional Pastor Bob Brite and Office Manager Chris Wogaman for their work in the program and for making it such a success.

If you want to help support this program, you can donate to the program directly by making a check out to First Christian with the word “bus ministry” in the memo line.

Go and be church.

Part of being a pastor is trying to create relationships that hopefully will bring people into the doors of a church or gathered community.  I’ve been fascinated to see how Steve and Rebecca Haney who are leading a new Disciples church plant in Rochester, Minnesota are growing their community.  Steve has told me about how he has gone to various community meetings to strike up conversations that then lead at some point to faith. 

I look on all that with envy, because it’s not something I can do.  I’ve said this time and time again, but being autistic makes the kind of social engagement that Steve does very hard for me.  I don’t want to give the impression that I’m blaming Asperger’s for everything, I’m just stating what I know.  But I don’t think it’s impossible for someone with Aspergers to be able to talk about their faith: it’s just harder.

But this all means trying to learn the artform of talking and sharing that seems so foreign to me.  What I’m good at is sharing information, which is what I do for a living.  But sharing information and sharing your life with someone are two different things.  I think I’m learning to share my life with others, but it’s still an uphill climb.

This all leads to inviting someone to come to First Christian in Minneapolis.  Again, I’m not good at the art of persuasion, just sharing information.  But I think I can use my information, my observations to paint a story on why this church is special, so here goes.

First Christian is not a big church.  We are a small church of about 100-120 members.  We were a big church a long time ago, but people left and the church has grown smaller.  So, we aren’t the big, downtown church.  We are the small, urban church.

If you come to our present building on a Sunday morning you will see about 80 people gathered in a sanctuary that seats about 800.  That might seem rather pathetic and I know it saddens a lot of the long time members.

But I think that this church still rocks and I think you should come to this church.  And it’s not because it has two, slammin’ pastors.

First are the kids.  We don’t have a lot of kids, but these kids are special to us.  They are the “little theologians” who teach us how to be followers of Jesus.  They aren’t just trotted out during a service to show off how cute they are, but they are becoming a part of our worship and formational life.  In their simple words of faith, they can run circles around those of us with advanced degrees in church stuff.

Second, is the mission.  This church likes to think it is not engaged in mission- not like the big churches down the street.  No, we don’t do mission that way.  But I’ve never seen a more engaged bunch of folks willing to “get dirty for Jesus.”  When I ask people to pack food for hungry kids around the world, people show up.  When I ask them to spend a day at food pantry or donate items for former homeless persons, they are present and accounted for.  When asked to help a ministry half-way around the world, they do so.  This church has people involved in refugee resettlement, prayer shawl ministry and other works of compassion.  They tend to “punch above their weight” in how many people in the church participate in acts of mercy and justice.

Third, is the committment to inclusivity.  A lot of churches talk about being inclusive, especially to gay and lesbian folk, but this church really practices it.  There aren’t a lot of churches that would accept having an openly gay person as one of their pastors and yet this church has.  But it’s not just me- this is the kind of church where a kid who grew up in the congregation can feel safe enough come out at the Christmas Eve service.  True story.  This is the kind of church where a straight woman who loves kids decides to start a ministry for gay youth and the church allows her to follow where she feels God is leading.  And they even throw some money at her to help. 

This isn’t a “program” church.  First was a program kind of congregation years ago, but it at its present size, it’s far more pastoral than program.  So if you come to visit, don’t expect a youth program or outreach program.  Instead, you will find a woman who is excitied to teach one or two teens or the young adults coming together to make cookies for persons with HIV/AIDS and the like.

First Christian isn’t going to be a church for everyone.  If you want a church with  programs and lot of people your age, then we aren’t going to be your church.  If you want a church that’s packed with people, then we aren’t your church.  There are lots of other churches in the Twin Cities to fulfill those purposes.

But, if you want a church where people will welcome you not just to be nice, but because they really want to know you, this can be a church for you.  If you want to get active in ministies of justice and have ideas, this might be your church.  If you want a community that cares for each other and welcomes those outside its small circle, then this is your place.  If you are a gay person that hasn’t felt loved by a church before, this can be your church.  If you are autistic and wonder if a church could accept your “oddities,” then this is the place for you.  You get the point?

As a pastor, I’m probably not supposed to brag about the church I serve, but I do think it is pretty awesome how God has used this little church in Minneapolis.  I may not be the best “salesperson” but I hope you will come and visit sometime.  You’ll be glad you did.