Faith takes the doer and makes him into a tree, and his deeds become fruit.

First there must be a tree, then the fruit.

For apples do not make a tree, but a tree makes apples.

So faith first makes the person, who afterwards performs works.

– Martin Luther, commentary on Galatians 3:10

Beloved of God,

If you’ve ever ventured to the town of Lahaina, Hawaii, on the west side of Maui, it’s impossible to miss: outside the old courthouse is a banyan tree that stands 50 feet tall, is nearly a quarter of a mile around and has over than 10 trunks that anchor it into the ground.  Brought from India as an 8 foot sapling in 1873, it was planted there by William Owen Smith, the sheriff of Old Lahaina Town to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Lahaina’s first Christian Mission.  When our family visited Maui in 2008, we all took turns climbing on those mighty branches, while an art show unfolded beneath its prodigious shade.  The banyan’s properties are unique, for the tree grows by the roots which hang from its branches. These roots, which begin above ground, are like soil-seeking drills, and when enough of them reach the soil, they thicken and provide another trunk to support the tree’s mass.[1]

The world’s greatest banyan tree, located in a botanical garden near Kolkata, India, is over 250 years old and looks more like a forest than an individual tree: the foliage encompasses nearly 5 acres of land!  It has 3772 aerial roots reaching down to the ground as a prop root.[2]

When Luther used a tree as an illustration in his commentary on Galatians, he was thinking of an apple tree, not a banyan tree.  Had he been familiar with the properties of the banyan tree, I wonder what use he would make of it? The communal and interdependent nature of our vocation comes to mind.

Theologian Anne Burghardt points out that “When Luther spoke out in the 16th century on God’s redeeming love, he was not thinking about the environment. Ecological challenges were not in the forefront at that time. However, today many parts of the world face critical environmental challenges.”  Were Luther alive today, would he address our collective failure to adequately care for God’s good creation?  There’s no doubt in my mind.  Again, Burghardt:

“Luther’s intervention at the time of the Reformation reminds us that there are aspects of life on this planet which, for the sake of both earthly and eternal life, should not be commodities and should never be for sale. That includes the good creation God has given us to watch over.”[3]

This month we will once again observe a three-week Season of Creation.  Our goal is to  lift up God’s good creation in ways that help us see it in all its beauty, intricacy, and connectedness; as well as to affirm that this creation is not a commodity for sale but a unique web of relationships upon which all life—including ours—depends.  Like the Great Banyan Tree, God’s good creation maintains its strength and resilience through deeply rooted principles which both anchor and hold up its branches. When we acquire the attributes of a tree, as Luther suggested, we become well equipped to bear fruit.  The kind of fruit, or good works, which the world needs from us at this time in history is fruit that opens our eyes to the devastating effects human choices are having on Earth, our planet home, and fuels a deeper love and devotion to understanding and nurturing community which is sustainable over the long haul.

The decision of President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords is a decision which may well bear fruit—but that fruit will be of the diseased and rotten kind. Addressing climate breakdown—and the myriad substantive environmental issues which flow from it and are already making deep impacts around the world—requires a cooperative and international approach. Gaining the ears of our leaders requires a long and sustained effort.  But alongside that effort we begin with our own lives, taking inventory, making personal and communal choices each day which will bear the kind of fruit which allows life to grow and flourish, as God our Creator intended. Our first vocation, according to Genesis, is Earthkeeper.  Never has that vocation been more important and needful than now.

Pastor Erik

[1] For more about this tree, follow this link: http://www.lahaina.com/content/banyan_tree.html

[2] For more about this tree, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Banyan  You can also read about it in Cynthia Barnett’s book: Rain—A Natural and Cultural History.  (New York: Broadway Books, 2015)

[3] From materials published for the Lutheran World Federation’s 2017 Assembly in Windhoek, Namibia, under the theme: Creation is not for Sale.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

– Galatians 5:1

Beloved of God,

Two of our own, Eldon and Marcia Olson, began their 34 hour flight odyssey this week en route from Southwest Seattle to Southwest Africa for the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) gathering in Windhoek, Namibia. (You can read an article about their journey on page 3 below.)  There they’ll be gathering with representatives from 145 Lutheran church bodies from around the world representing 74 million Lutherans from 98 countries.

This LWF gathering during this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation centers on a central theme and three sub-themes.  The central theme is: Liberated by God’s Grace. This theme articulates two pivotal insights of Lutheran theology: the prevalence of God’s grace when it comes to justification, and the gift of freedom that results from God’s transformative action. The theme tells us that the gracious love of God, through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, opens up opportunities for us as faithful Christians to reach out as healers and as people able to reconcile to a world torn apart by strife and inequality.  “We are liberated by God’s grace,” the theme suggests, “but from what and for what?”  These questions lead to the three sub-themes: CREATION is not for sale; HUMAN BEINGS are not for sale; SALVATION is not for sale. We are freed by the grace of God to engage in this Christian ministry.

The fact that the Lutheran Church of Namibia is hosting the gathering is of particular interest to me because the presiding Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Namibia is Dr. Shekutaamba Nambala, whom I met at Luther Seminary when both of us were students—I working on my M.Div. and he on his PhD.  We met during a class we were both taking on the Holocaust, and our families, who lived in adjacent housing complexes, became acquainted.  I recall riding together and talking with Shekutaamba in the backseat of a car on our way to a Holocaust lecture.  My theological understanding of LIBERATION BY GOD’S GRACE expanded through interactions with Pastor Nambala and other students from around the globe.  Their voices and experiences helped me move from the “WHAT” of freedom in Christ, to the “SO WHAT.” The Lutheran Church in Namibia played important roles both in the liberation struggle against apartheid and in the Namibian struggle for independence. Liberation in the Namibian context meant refusing to “submit to a yoke of slavery” any longer.  As incidents of intertribal conflict and even genocide have unfolded on the African continent over the 30+ years since we met, I’ve often wondered about the trajectory of Dr. Nambala’s ministry.

As I surfed the internet this week I found an article highlighting Dr. Nambala’s comments at the funeral of a regional Namibian political officer.  It seems that on the casket, the flag of the political organization to which she belonged was laid on top of the Namibian national flag.  Bishop Nambala took exception to this practice and called for national unity. The members of competing political parties are all God’s people, he said.  Tolerance towards one another is needed.  He called on his country’s national administration to ensure equal distribution of national wealth and to refrain from serving personal interests.  I think there is much in these statements made in his context that rings true in our own as well.

We have indeed been liberated by God’s grace, as St. Paul, and Martin Luther after him, both affirm. Lutherans have trumpeted that truth for half a millennium now.  Yet the questions remain: From what? And for what?  These are questions each Christian community—wherever its location around the globe—must ask continually.  And the answers we give must be as concrete and enfleshed as the ministry of Jesus himself:  full of invitation, reconciling conversations, bold truth, acts of healing, transforming encounters, gifts of forgiveness, lavish love.  Such liberating gifts as these are not com­modities that can be traded or brokered way.  They are not for sale.  They can only be given away.

Pastor Erik

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the LORD.

– Exodus 12:11

Beloved of God,

After hiking five miles in the snow through fields of standing corn and over frozen lakes in the dead of a Minnesota winter, every one of us in Troop 72 was famished. But we all knew there would be nothing to eat until a fire was going. So, gathering wood quickly, we built a kindling tipi over thin strips of birch bark, put a match to it, and waited—all eight pairs of eyes eager and focused—for smoke and flame to rise. What we were after, what we needed for cooking, were hot coals, so we tended the growing fire with studious care, feeding ever larger pieces into the flames at careful intervals, until the crack and pop of the wood and the enveloping warmth convinced us the fire would succeed.

Then, reaching into our green canvas knapsacks, we took out the foil pouches we’d packed at home before our journey began; pouches filled with chunks of carrot, potato, and onion, and seasoned with pepper and salt, with a large paddy of hamburger in the middle. And as soon as the flames were low enough, we tossed our treasures onto the coals, sat back, and waited for the sizzle and the mouthwatering aroma that signaled dinner was on its way. When the meal was ready we pulled the pouches off the coals with pairs of sticks, opened them up, and dug in to what—even 45 years after the fact—was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.

Meals to remember. What’s on your list? Some meals stand out from the rest. The first date; the wedding feast; the last taste of home before going away; the first meal alone after years of living together. Sometimes the menu or the occasion are everything. Other times it’s neither the menu nor the occasion but the company we keep that’s memorable; or the setting. At the first Passover it’s all of the above. God’s people are poised on the edge of something that they cannot fully grasp, and won’t for many years. The menu is lamb and unleavened bread; the occasion is their last meal together in Egypt; the company they keep is all whose doorposts have been marked with the blood of the lamb; the setting is the land of captivity—Pharaoh’s land—which they will soon be seeing in the rearview mirror.

There’s urgency in the air in this story from Exodus:

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the LORD.

There’s no time for yeast; no time to boil water. No time to prepare the animal in the usual way—just roast it quickly over the fire. Make certain your shoes are laced, your staff is in hand, your clothes are on, your pack is ready; for the time for which you have been waiting, is at hand. In the morning, you will be on your way.

Our Lenten journey comes to a culmination with the Three Days—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil. We’ll mark the final meal Jesus shared with his disciples with two elements: bread and wine. It’s the old meal; a meal celebrating liberation from bondage. And it’s the new meal, the new covenant Jesus instituted on the night he was betrayed.  We take Jesus at his word when he says, THIS IS MY BODY, THIS IS MY BLOOD—trusting he is fully present with us, offering himself with the bread and wine. In his Large Catechism Luther compares the benefit of the Lord’s Supper to a remedy that heals sin’s disease. It is “a pure, wholesome, soothing medicine that aids you and gives life in both soul and body. For where the soul is healed, the body is helped as well.” In other words, forgiveness and healing.

As we cross the threshold together from Good Friday to Easter, the feast of remembrance becomes a Feast of Victory for our God. God’s greatest surprise of raising Jesus from death animates our life together. There is urgency here, too, and energy enough to carry us and our mission forward. Let’s make the journey together, and find our lives renewed.

Pastor Erik