Excerpts from a SPIRIT Address, "Joy Along The Way"

Lutheran Child and Family Services of Michigan
Annual Banquet: "Joy Along the Way"
Frankenmuth, Michigan
February 22, 2003

Thanks so much for this opportunity to speak about the power of God in our midst. We have been given grace unto eternal life in Christ. No one can take that from you. It is your destiny. It is your inheritance. And it is your responsibility. Do you know how much power we have in this room tonight to change the world for Christ? It is enormous – and you here in Michigan have a tremendous and effective agency to reach out with the healing touch of the Master in LCFS. Your CEO and President, Bob Miles, is a great friend; your Board is strong and dynamic.

I have never felt as Lutheran as I do right now here at the at the Bavarian Inn in Frankenmuth, Michigan, with the coats of arms on the wall surrounding us, and the finest chicken dinner in the world under our belts. Do you know what the difference is between here and heaven? NOT MUCH. It will be the same banquet hall, with the same names on the wall, and the same feast. What will change, we're told, is that those who serve here will be served there. So I'm thinking it will be all buffet style in heaven. But the Zehnder family and Karen, your board member, have gotten us ready for the feast above in all the right ways here tonight!

By grace we have been saved, and by grace we live and move. I'm here tonight to talk to you about the power of your baptismal destiny. When you were baptized into Christ you put on Christ, not for a moment or an hour, but forever. You have that assurance of salvation.

And that is what drives us outward into ministries of engagement, discernment, witness and service. You at LCFS are so blessed in the dynamics of your engagement with the world, in your discernment of where you need to be to bring hope to the hopeless and light to the darkness. You understand from the get-go that for us whose names are in the book and on the wall, we will be witnesses to the Truth in word and deed.

There was a pastor back in Germany hundreds of years ago named Philip Nicolai who understood exactly the purpose of his destiny and its power in Christ through baptism. He witnessed the death of 90% of his parishioners and of his own family members due to the black plague. He knew the stakes were life and death. And in the midst of all that grief and tragedy, he wrote a song – it was called "How Lovely Shines the Morning Star." That star, that light is Christ. He knew joy in the midst of tragedy, and he knew he had been called to a higher purpose, to reveal Christ's Light.

That's the way it has been for me and all of us in New York since 9/11/01, and even through the events in our church body and for me personally following the prayer at Yankee Stadium on 9/23/01. We see life differently, from a different perspective.

I'm working right now as the interim CEO at Lutheran Social Services of New York – I'm kind of a mini-Miles in action. And we haven't been blessed as you have with the financial picture I've heard here tonight. We're scraping and scrambling. My office is on the fifth floor of a five story building two blocks from Ground Zero – the building was struck by the engine of the plane that dove into the second tower on 9/11; our employees and our foster children fled for their lives when that engine hit our building. We look out into the gaping pit where the Twin Towers used to stand, and many of our employees cannot even bear to walk that two blocks to visit the site.

We know something there, and I know something in my own personal walk. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the force of spiritual wickedness in high places." We know that. Too often we Christians and we Lutherans have, in the words of President Bush, mis-underestimated the power of the enemy in our midst. I'm here to tell you that we have also mis-underestimated the power of God to solve and conquer, to withstand and push forward.

It's about the healing touch; it's about grabbing the hem of the garment of the Master. It's about tackling fear and anxiety with the strength of Jesus who said, "Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

One night recently I was reading a report from our agency describing what we try to do the same as you – to reach into the cracks and crevices where people get left behind and bring hope. And I was reading about a program to bring counseling to immigrants who have lost so much in New York since 9/11. As I read, I walked into my own church office in Brooklyn. And I realized the guy I was reading about was OUR guy, the program was in OUR church, the immigrants were OUR immigrants, and the counselors were sitting in MY office! My assistant, Jimmy Lalljie from Guyana, has brought folks who need help the most right to where they can get it – that's what I'm talking about when it comes to the healing touch!

You see, lean times don't mean leanness of spirit, but being trim and fit for the battle. That's what your great board and staff are doing where the budget cuts hurt the most here in Michigan, wrestling to the ground those things that would separate people from the love and care and healing touch of God.

Lean times don't mean we fade into the woodwork – in fact we run TO the battle, because there is more human need. We're not running FROM the world, we LOVE the world, because GOD DOES and He is alive in us in Christ Jesus.

Anxious times don't mean we succumb to the anxiety. In New York every trip on the subway is fraught with anxiety, because you look around you and consider that the man next to you could be carrying a bomb, or BE a bomb. Every bridge and every tunnel is manned every hour of every day by police on high alert. It could get to you. It does get to many people.

But we know that we have been CALLED by our baptism to "be anxious about nothing, but in everything make our prayers and supplications known unto God." As we say in New York, "It's OK to pray," now more than ever! We just never pray without working, never talk without acting in love, and know that God blesses us both through word AND deed.

Our Lutheran commitment to inclusion is based on the mission. After all, God so loved – only the Lutherans, right? Of course not! God so loved THE WORLD, and that's where we belong. We have to be out there and taking our risks and our chances where the action is hot and heavy and the comfort and healing needed the most.

I remember on the night of a prayer rally held for me after I was suspended from the clergy roster for praying at Yankee Stadium, a young boy wandered into our church there in Brooklyn dribbling a basketball and asked a guy at the door, "What's up?" The man said, "The pastor was tossed out for praying at Yankee Stadium and we're here to support him." The kid dribbled for awhile, then stopped and with a quizzical look asked, "What happened? Did the Yankees lose?"

Ha! The man had a chance to talk to the boy then about the power of prayer and the need for Christian witness, right inside the church door. Take those opportunities. That's what LCFS is all about.

I related to a crowd of seminarians awhile back that I think of our lives in Christ like the part at the end of the movie "Tin Cup," where the golfer has to hit the perfect shot over a pond of water to win the US Open – OR, he can play it safe. Well, he pulls out his 3 wood and proceeds to hit the perfect shot, except it falls back into the water; then he hits another and another and another. Finally he puts it on the green and into the cup – a loser in the eyes of the tournament, but a winner in terms of putting it all on the line.

Folks, WE'VE ALREADY BEEN IN THE WATER!! We have received our destiny in Christ. GO FOR IT!! Don't hold back. The forces in our denomination and even in the Christian church that keep you away from witness are not on the side of your baptismal destiny – you're operating from heaven's gift by grace into the current realities with all the power to witness that God can give you – GO FOR IT!

Let me tell you something personal. My wife and I haven't been blessed with children; like the "grandma" you have honored for her love for children tonight, we have done our child-rearing a different way. We have been privileged to serve as godparents for four children from our parish, who were born into very difficult circumstances, and who were foster children. One night in my current rendition as a CEO I heard a veteran foster mom of 83 children ("All boys", she said. "Girls are too hard to handle!"), say that being a foster parent is like being a really good godparent. I began to cry a little when I heard her say that, because that's a calling, isn't it? It's a calling to care for children as parents. It's a calling to care for them as godparents. It's a calling to care for them as foster parents – and your agency, with 600 children in foster care, and 197 placed into adoption, leads the way in living up to your calling, in following the healing touch of God as you have received it.

You don't distinguish those kids by color, or class, or background, or religion. You just touch them with the love of God. I represent a District that believes in that mission, and agency that lives in that direction, a parish that loves in that way, and an institute, the SPIRIT institute, that thinks those thoughts. I'll be back here on Good Friday in Saginaw, to share the love of God made good on the Cross of Christ. I know I'll find you in the same way I left you – celebrating the love of God and hard at work to bring the touch of the Master to Michigan!

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