Tag Archives: Sacraments

Disruption at the Communion Table

Like a speed bump not meant to be seen but only felt, the holy surprises you. The holy, or a moment the veil between heaven and earth is lifted, when an ordinary task is accompanied by a deeper and mysterious sense. It is an unexplainable feeling from within that there is more going on than can be seen.

When your day is disrupted by the holy, you know it. And sure, the holy is a beautiful disruption, but still, a disruption. Holiness can really get in the way. As you move through your day and follow your routines, holiness is like the prick of a tiny needle. You remember, if only for a moment, that the air around you is keeping you alive and don’t you forget it. You are alive because all kinds of mini-miracles have occurred in your life. You are alive, caught up in the beauty of life and the mysterious presence of the Spirit.

Last week, when the Communion meal was complete, I was putting the dishes back on the credence table for the thousandth time. I truly love the routine of putting these dishes away after a community has been fed with mercy for the neighbor. When I set down the last of the dishes, the holy, the speed bump, the prick of a needle woke me up. My heart sunk deep in my chest and tears poked at my eyes. It suddenly struck me how incredibly humbling it is to carry the old dishes that have been held by how many pastors before me. They held up the same old silver cup and told the same old, old story of a Savior who would do absolutely anything to fill you with God‘s love, to fill you with God‘s mercy, to fill you with his body and blood. And there I was, disrupted in my routine, pricked by the holy, and all I was attempting to do was stay within the sacred 60-minute bounds of Lutheran worship.

But holiness is a speed bump that cares not how fast you are moving through life, or how smoothly you are handling the everyday routine. The Spirit will remind you in speed bumps and pinpricks that your life is not your own. The air you breathe does not belong to you. The silver dishes I put away do not belong to me. You, mere mortal, beloved child, do not even belong to you.

“Slow down,” the holy nudges. “Take a peek. Here is life.”

Photo by JL Merilles on Unsplash

Watering Can

Today, I imagine God carrying around a watering can.

Do you have indoor plants? For Mother’s Day last year, Marcus gave me a cute, mint green watering can with a big spout that creates a gentle rain shower. Along with the watering can, he gave me a container of pretty succulents which I somehow managed to murder. But the watering can remains cute.

Most preachers have water on the brain this week as we prepare for Baptism of Our Lord Sunday and the story of Jesus being watered by John. Jesus came up out of the water and a voice from heaven proclaimed, “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

We water what we care for: plants, people, animals, our own human body. Water sustains creation.

And there is something in that water.

I imagine God carrying a watering can filled not with water but with mercy. A splash of mercy here, a deluge of it there. Water for the person who will struggle today with addiction. Water for the family contemplating end of life decisions. Water for state legislators who face unlimited demands and limited resources. Water for tired teachers. Water for hectic emergency rooms. Water for the young mom who needs more sleep.

God’s watering can, of course, is not a cute mint green can, but human beings like you. Mercy comes from among us, pouring through our words. Our watering cans get clogged with judgement and scarcity and resentment. And mercy trickles out too slowly.

If you are the one in need of mercy today, even a trickle from the watering can might do. If you have mercy to spare, may it pour out of you in abundance.

Photo Credit: Photo by Hitomi Bremmer on Unsplash

Three Things to Make in Your Own Kitchen

(Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash)

There are a baker’s dozen reasons to hurry things along in the kitchen.

You don’t have much time, you don’t even like to cook, no one ever taught you how, you’ve misplaced all your pots and pans, or you simply prefer take-out. Some shortcuts only make sense: frozen tater tots, canned beans, Annie’s Mac and Cheese, corndogs, your favorite take-out place.

I do wonder, however, if too much efficiency in the kitchen means cutting short the connection to the cooks who came before you and those who will come after you. Like the communion of saints at the Lord’s Table where we are connected with all the saints of every time and place, there is a sacred generational connection that happens among cookbooks and cutting boards.

Perhaps nothing we do in the kitchen is new. Long ago, a cook figured out how to bake bread and cook meat. Sifting and kneading and braising and broiling are human inventions. Not so long ago, my mom taught me some things that her mom taught her. There may come a day when my kids say the same. Cooking leaves a mark in the world.

Tamar Adler put it this way: “Cooking is both simpler and more necessary than we imagine.” The sacred space of a kitchen is occupied by so many generations all at once. And so I offer you three simple and necessary recipes in a moment when the world is occupied by so much anxiety. May your kitchen be a place of peace.

Chef John's Buttermilk Biscuits

Buttermilk Biscuits

You need only 10 minutes to mix them together and 15 minute to bake and 2 minutes to watch them disappear. The only problem is that I tend to consume equal amounts of biscuit dough and baked biscuits.

Original Nestle® Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies

I’m a fan of Tollhouse’s version of chocolate chip cookies because my kitchen growing up was never without them. A friend once told me our house always smelled like them. But again, the problem with the dough…

How to make your own homemade coffee creamer

Coffee Creamer

To the saint before me who invented sweetened condensed milk. Thank you and damn you. If I had to choose only one drink for the rest of my life, it would be sweetened condensed milk. After that, I would choose a good cardiologist. For now, this makes your coffee extra special, which you deserve in the sacred space of your own kitchen shared by so many generations at once.

Against All Odds: Christian Hope

(Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com)

To be a Christian is to carry within ourselves a heavy dose of idealism. Day in and day out we must be idealists to hold hopes for this world that are against all odds.

Against all odds, we hope for a world that recognizes a shared humanity. Where people who are white name our sordid history with people who are not white, and then together propose to make it better.

Against all odds, we (Lutherans) idealistically tell babies at baptism to work for justice and peace throughout their lives, even though my own culture will tell them to perpetuate unjust systems that oppress the poor.

Against all odds, we hope for communities to work together to contend with a global pandemic, even it means wearing a mask to the grocery store and to church. Against all odds, we pray and pray for people to care more about each other than their politics, supporting community leaders and putting a faithful stop to angry Facebook memes.

Today is another day that demands outrageous idealism from each one of us who claims to be a Christian, which means to love our neighbor. Perhaps we might even dare to believe, against all odds, that Jesus Christ would make all things new again today. And maybe even tomorrow. All things. All people. All cultures. All communities.

Against all odds.