Pastor Gary Froseth

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February 2012
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Blind Minds

February 19, 2012 No comments
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Wausau, Wisconsin
The Transfiguration of Our Lord
February 19, 2012
Blind Minds
2 Corinthians 4: 3- 6
The Rev. Gary L. Froseth
audio at www.sslcwausau.com/2012-02-19.mp3

 

Dear friends:  Grace be to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

In Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous creatures.  The term “siren song” refers to an appeal that is hard to resist.  The sirens lured sailors with their enchanting music so that they shipwrecked on the rocky coast of the siren’s island.

In Argonautica, Jason was warned that he needed to take Orpheus along on his journey because Orpheus could play his music more beautifully than the music of the Sirens, thus saving their crew from certain death.  The one sailor on this journey who had particularly good hearing, heard the Sirens, jumped into the sea, and had to be rescued by those with less acute hearing.

Odysseus was curious about the song of the Sirens and so instructed his crew to tie him securely to the mast while they-all plugged their ears with beeswax.  Once he heard that siren song, he begged to be untied, but the crew tied him even tighter.  Only after they passed out of earshot and Odysseus was seen frowning could he be safely released from his bonds.

It is a change from tempting the ears to tempting the eyes, but this is exactly the issue that concerns the Apostle Paul in this morning’s Second Lesson.  It is the reality of “siren songs,” of temptations that exasperates Paul when he refers to “the god of this world” who is blinding the minds of unbelievers.

Every generation believes that it lives in a time that is the worst ever in the history of the faith.  It isn’t really.  It’s just that “the god of this world” keeps adapting in new and creative ways to cover over the good news of all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

I’m not convinced that the distractions of Paul’s time were all that different from those in our time.  Athletics were a huge part of Greek culture. Entertainment was very important. The Greeks prided themselves on the knowledge of their great philosophers.  Paul dealt with public bathhouses, with temple prostitution, and with a pantheon of gods designed to cover any situation in human life.

Paul preached a superior message in that culture.  He proclaimed much the same message that you hear from this pulpit on a weekly basis:  that Jesus Christ is God’s answer to the broken relationship between heaven and humanity.  For a people who can never quite get it right, there is Jesus — who did it right for us.  For a people who get anxious about the chasm between heaven and hell, there is Jesus through whom God keeps God’s promise of salvation in his name.

Your question and my question and Paul’s question, then, is why aren’t the folks flocking to that message?  What is it about the good news of the Gospel that isn’t penetrating into every person’s life?  How is it that anyone can resist such good news?  How is is that anyone can resist worshipping such a gracious and generous God?

Paul blamed “the god of this world” who has “blinded the minds of the unbelievers, and keeps them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.”

In his commentary on 2 Corinthians, Ernest Best argues that these are verses where “Paul seems to answer some who have picked on the failure of his gospel to win everyone and, therefore, criticized him.”  I guess that if everyone in Corinth is not flocking to the church, it must be the preacher’s fault.  Paul preached his heart out in Corinth and, still, people ventured to the bathhouse.  He explained in detail the sacrifice of Christ and, still, they bent their knees in worship of Zeus.

There are as many reasons for non-participation in our time as there were for the great apostle.  Some are repelled that we don’t practice what we preach, that we don’t act very loving.  Some view Sunday morning as a respite from a stressful week.  Some are caught up in an economy that treats Sunday like every other day.  Some are choosing to engage in athletic activities or in the activities of other community organizations because those other groups have discovered that times for worship are negotiable times.  And some — they just have not figured out any reason why God should be relevant in their lives.  We preach a good news that doesn’t resonate with real life, yet.

Peter, James, and John had an advantage that we don’t enjoy.  If you spend any time in Mark’s gospel, the struggle of the disciples becomes very evident — all the way to the end of the narrative.  Mark’s story is very much a story of the disciples’ attempt to figure out who this Jesus is.  They think they might know.  They hope that they know.  But even when Peter gets the words right, his mistaken belief about what the words mean lead Jesus to ask him to just keep quiet about it.

But, as we do every year at this time, today we commemorate that moment in salvation history when Peter and James, and John get a glimpse of the glory of God.  They get a glimpse of the divinity of Jesus.  For them, the veil is lifted in a very tangible way.  Maybe it was the Transfiguration that Martin Luther King had in mind when he preached, “I’ve been to the mountain-top.”  Life can’t get any better for these three chosen ones than it was on that day atop the Mount of Transfiguration.

It has only been six verses (and six days), in Mark’s story, since Jesus termed Peter as satanic.  Obviously, for one to be called satanic must, by definition, mean that one has been blinded by the “god of this world.”  But there is a cure for Peter’s blindness.  In just those six days, he has the opportunity to see for himself the dazzling whiteness of the one who is our Lord.  He had the opportunity to hear for himself the voice from heaven repeat again, “This is my Son, the beloved . . . .”

It is an advantage that we have not been given.  How much easier would it be for us to be able to see with our own eyes?  How much easier would have been for Paul to convince all of the Corinthians if he were to show them the transfigured Jesus?  How much easier would it be for our children to share our faith if they could visit the mountaintop?  How much easier for our friends and neighbors to believe as we believe if they could just hear the words from heaven?  How much easier would it be to conduct this ministry if we could just see, if we could only hear?

It is an advantage that we have not been given.  Among the choices that God made in the creation of humanity was to provide us with the freedom to believe or not, to provide us with the freedom to attend worship or to attend this weekend’s basketball tournament, to provide us with the freedom to follow Jesus or to follow “the god of this world.”  God has given that freedom.  It should not surprise us when some — even many — choose to follow a different path.

The Transfiguration was for the purpose of a witness.  Not everyone needs to climb that mountain.  Not everyone needs to see the glorified Christ.  Everyone doesn’t need to hear the words from heaven.  Just these three who saw and heard in order to give testimony, in order to be a witness.

The good news for this morning is how their witness has come through the centuries into our lives.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, it is a witness that has convinced us that, in this Jesus, God acted in human history to ensure our presence — with him — in the heavenly kingdom.

I find the witness to be so convincing that, like the Apostle Paul, I have a hard time understanding why everyone doesn’t believe, why everyone doesn’t find this time of worship to be as important as it is for me.  I want to reach them all.  I want my preaching to be convincing.  I want our worship experience to be meaningful.  I want our kids to learn everything that I want to teach.

But the temptations are real.  “The gods of this world” are usually more attractive than a promise of salvation that seems to be in a far distant future.  It is exactly in the midst of those temptations that we continue to proclaim the God of the mountaintop.

It is not for us to manage the impact of the message.  We still believe that the working of faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  We give thanks today for all of the ways that the Spirit is constantly at work to convince us of the truth of that mountaintop.

Whether or not this is a time of darkness in the lives of those who we love, we continue to pray that all people might be convinced through the work of the Holy Spirit.  “For it is the God who said, ’Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  Amen.

 

Copyright © 2012 The Rev. Gary L. Froseth.  All rights reserved

 

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A Worker Justice Reader

February 8, 2012 No comments

 

A Worker Justice Reader

by Interfaith Worker Justice

Maryknoll, New York:  Orbis Books (2010)

 

A Worker Justice Reader is intended to be a seminary textbook to provide a historical and theological foundation for the relationship between organized labor and the larger religious community.

As is probably the case with many edited works, the quality of work within the volume varies widely.

The economics of the volume is outdated.  In the current environment, any economic analysis that is written prior to 2009 is not helpful.  By waiting, if necessary, to get the most current information from the Economic Policy Institute (the summary in this volume is from 2006), it seems that Interfaith Worker Justice could have presented an even stronger argument about the crisis currently faced by U.S. workers.

Before seminary I spent ten years as a laborer in a company whose employees were members of the United Rubber Workers (URCLPWA).  I served the union as a member my local’s Committee on Political Education (COPE).  I also served as a shop steward and as the chair of my department.  I continue to maintain an interest in the history and current state of the labor movement.  I recently purchased a history of my former union which, after my ordination, was absorbed into the United Steelworkers.

The history of the church’s concern for justice made it a natural fit with the emerging labor movement.  I didn’t realize, before reading this volume, the religious roots of Labor Temple.  Given the name, it was a “dah” moment for me.  It began in 1910 when the facilities of the Second Presbyterian Church in New York City was transformed by Pastor Charles Stelzle into a “working-man’s church” which “was to be run by workingmen, the men who actually lived in the community.” (page 75)

Once unions became institutionalized, the church’s social justice advocacy was no longer necessary. “Unions turned their attention to technical matters:  negotiating and drawing up contracts and building their institutions.  The tasks were somewhat removed from the basic principle of the right to organize, which provided the religious community’s natural point of entry into the labor debate.” (page 53)  Advocacy turned to the plight of the farm workers.  Even to the issues of sexism and racism within the labor movement itself.

The church’s concern for justice is essentially a history of the Roman Catholic Church.  Three encyclicals form the basis of Catholic social teaching on worker justice:  Rerum Novarum — Leo XIII’s “response to industrialization and the rise of socialism in 1891;” Quadragesimo Anno — Pius XI’s “response to Communism in 1931;” and Laborem Exercens — John Paul II’s 1981 “affirmation of Solidarity in Poland.” (page 200)  All of the teaching revolves around the dignity of work and dignity of the worker.  John Paul observed that “the conflict (between labor and capital) originated in the fact that the workers put their power at the disposal of the entrepreneurs, and these, following the principle of maximum profit, tried to establish the lowest possible wages for the work done by the employees.” (page 202).  Its affirmation of human dignity and its support of families requires the church to enter that conflict on the side of a living, sustainable wage.

Kim Bobo, the Founding and Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice sets out a vision for the organization’s future that calls for a rekindling of the historic relationship between workers (both organized and those unable to organize) and the church.  The task is about organizing — around the country on a congressional district level — and about a worker-friendly legislative agenda.  Obviously, the task is immense.  But it is a strategy that takes a long view.  The education of young religious leaders is the portion of that task to which this book is addressed.

The book concludes with some vignettes of the successes of Interfaith Worker Justice during the first decade of the 21st century.  The presence of the religious changes the power balance when negotiating with corporations and institutions who are adamant in preventing their workers from organizing.

Copyright © 2012 The Rev. Gary L. Froseth.  All rights reserved.

 

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The Social Animal

February 5, 2012 No comments

The Social Animal

The Hidden Sources of love, Character, and Achievement

by David Brooks

New York:  Random House (2011)

 

David Brooks has written 2/3 of a great book.

Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times.  This is not the type of book that I would expect from him.  With experiences at The Weekly Standard, Newsweek, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, and other public-affairs focused institutions, I expect Brooks to write about current affairs.  The place where this book goes bad is when he forces his characters into a presidential campaign and a stint in the White House.  It is like Brooks couldn’t help himself.  The segue seems forced and doesn’t fit well with the rest of the narrative.

The Social Animal uses the characters Erica and Harold to talk about what we have learned about human behavior and the brain.  Brooks has created a very readable way to talk about science.  The book takes its reader from conception to death.

Brooks contrasts the French Enlightenment with thinking in Great Britain.  Where the French emphasized the rational self (or the conscious activities of the brain), the British talked more about the emotional self (the unconscious activities of the brain).  Brooks quotes David Hume’s argument that “reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions.”  This is Brooks’ rationale:  “lack of emotion leads to self-destructive and dangerous behavior.  People who lack emotion don’t lead well-planned logical lives in the manner of coolly rational Mr. Spocks.  They lead foolish lives.  In extreme cases, they become sociopaths, untroubled by barbarism and unable to feel other people’s pain.”

When Erica and Harold meet, it is the emotional self that evaluates the other.  All through the human life cycle, Brooks uses Erica and Harold to describe real life situations and then describes the brain science that lay behind his characters’ behavior.

Brooks describes how people bond, how people learn, who attracts us, and the importance in human life of genetics, history, culture, and institutions.  Our unconscious selves are shaped by all those factors.  Over time we incorporate the messages of those influences into our world view to become the person who we each are.  “Harold,” Brooks argues, “found himself living in an under-institutionalized world.  . . . .  He didn’t belong to any religious congregation (young people today are much less likely to attend church than young people were in the 1970s).  He didn’t have any clear ethnic identity.  His view of the world wasn’t shaped by any local newspaper or single opinion leader (he surfed the Web).  His worldview wasn’t molded by any world historical event such as the Depression or World War II.  He wasn’t even bound down by acute financial pressures.”

The book ends with Harold’s death.  It leaves me wanting more.  I want to walk with Erica through her grief.  It is the only time in the narrative that either character confronts the death of one they love.  If there is a great omission from the book, it is the failure to discuss grief.  Brooks could have dumped the campaign, White House, and the partying with millionaires portion of the book and finished with a discussion of the impact of our griefs.

This is a valuable book for all of us — negotiating the seasons of our lives.  It offers grace to parents, a sense of urgency about education, a realistic appraisal of married life (Erica succumbs to the temptation of a extra-marital encounter), and the vital necessity of life-giving relationships throughout all of the seasons of our lives.

Copyright © 2012 The Rev. Gary L. Froseth.  All rights reserved.

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Writings on Reconciliation and Resistance

February 1, 2012 No comments

Writings on Reconciliation and Resistance

by Will D. Campbell

edited by Richard C. Goode

Eugene, Oregon:  Cascade Books (2010)

It is hard to be prophetic as a parish pastor.  There are too many forces that bend us toward maintenance of the institution.  Prophecy has a cost.  Congregations are resistant to paying the price.

Enter Will Campbell.  Ordained into the Southern Baptist Convention as a 17-year-old, Campbell served only two years (1952-1954) in congregational ministry.  Frankly, he doesn’t have much regard for the institutional church.  Don’t look for him at Sunday morning worship.  It is one of his targets for resistance.

To invite Campbell into your institution is to ask for his critique.  When invited to speak at Emery University’s Candler School of Theology, he addressed the “scandal” of their acceptance of a $100 million gift from Coca Cola. But it wasn’t necessarily the “negotiation” for the gift that scandalized Campbell, it was his assumption that it would just be used for institutional maintenance.

Now these are good people that we’re negotiating with, and we say, “Now you understand that we are from a tithing tradition, so [with] this money we are going to take 10 percent of this $100 million and get people off the streets,  We are going to give people shelter and food, so that men, women, old, young and now increasingly little children, babies, don’t freeze to death on the streets.”  (page 223)

   His critique of the institutional church (which he terms “steeples”) is similarly harsh.  At one point he speaks of institutions, in general:

  Institutions, by their very definition, are evil.  For their raison d’être is always and inevitably self-survival.  They, all of them, when they are threatened will go to any length, tell any lie, engage in any program to protect themselves.  And justify it as being in defense of Almighty God.  That is what Paul was taking about when he spoke of powers and principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places.  (page 156)

   At another, he speaks of the institutional church, in particular.  After noting how the 1960’s had torn down notions of the sacredness of property rights and of neighborhood schools, he observes the immunity of churches from any similar notions:

Only the churches continue to contend that their structures are sacred.  As long as they are sacred, they will be stagnant and sterile.  For a sacred tool is one not to be used but to be fondled and polished.  Howard Moody says the church is an instrument of God literally to be used up in  his service, a service to those not even within it.  There is little evidence at this point in God’s economy that the church is about to go out of business through such usefulness.  (page 110)

   Campbell is wrapped in the cross.  Salvation is a present reality for him.  He rooted his life and work in the idea of reconciliation the Paul discussed in 2 Corinthians 5.  He doesn’t understand any concept of “cheap grace.”  At one point he asks, “what’s a pound of grace worth?  If there’s a price on it — it isn’t grace — it’s a commodity, and we ought to go back to selling it.”  Grace cannot be cheap, Campbell argues, because “it is the price of a lowly Galilean, hanging on a cross . . . .”  (page 83)

I am convicted by Campbell’s prophetic message.  But Richard Goode’s selection of excerpts is laced with repetition.  At one point Campbell says “No one has but one sermon” (page 217).  The context leads me to believe that he intends to say “Everyone has but one sermon.”  It certainly seems to be the case with Campbell.  He has a repeated opening quasi-joke.  There are at least three renditions of a story about a retreat that included a covenant of silence with an “unnamed” denomination (because some in his audience might be Episcopalian).  Surely, the wealth of material that Campbell has produced over 60 years should have enabled Goode to edit out the repetitions.

 

Copyright © 2012 The Rev. Gary L. Froseth.  All rights reserved

 

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Stories of Hope and Salvation

January 29, 2012 No comments

Stories of Hope and Salvation

by Pastor Froseth

 Grace be to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  Amen

   We are still removing Christmas decorations at our house.  Today I need to prepare you for Lent.

Each year I am faced with the question of how to mark this season.  As a time to prepare for the arrival of Easter, Lent is often a time for repentance and renewal.  It is a time for adding depth to one’s spirituality.  We worship more.  We consume less.  We intentionally turn our attention to God.

During my ministry at St. Stephen, we have used this season to study the New Testament books of 1 John and 1 Peter.  Last year we read Real Faith for Real Life:  Living the Six Marks of Discipleship together by Pastor Mike Foss.

This year I would like to draw your attention to some of the lessons from the Easter Vigil.  Lutherans tend to be negligent in our observance of Easter Vigil.  It is a long Easter Eve service — moving the congregation from darkness to light, focusing our attention on the salvation that comes to us on Easter morning.

I am calling the series, Stories of Hope and Salvation.  We will take a new look at the stories of creation, the flood, Sodom/Gomorrah, the exodus, and the dry bones.  We will examine how God is working with humankind in all of those situations to see the many ways that God is at work to bring us to salvation.  We will find the hope — sometimes, in situations of deep despair.

Again this year we will worship on Wednesdays at 12:10 and 6:30.  Shirley Kasten and Phyllis Ament will take charge of soup preparation for our noon service.  I am sure that they will welcome your help.  Don’t be afraid to call.  Harold and Betty Lou Peterson are stepping aside from soup preparations after nearly ten years of service.  If we ask nicely, though, Harold may still be willing to share some of his unique jokes with us.

The Council has already assigned various groups in the congregation with the task of a fellowship meal for Wednesday evening.  Menus are still being developed.  Our time of eating together each Wednesday will extend from 4:45 until the time of the service.

First Communion instruction will also be a part of our Lenten program.  We invite parents of third grade children to consider this opportunity for their family.  St. Stephen teaches that parents should to decide when children are at an appropriate age to receive First Communion — whether that be older or younger than third grade.  Instruction will be on three Tuesday evenings (6:00 – 7:30):  March 20, March 27, and April 3.  Call the church office (715-845-7858) if you are interested.

These are the themes and texts for this Lenten season:

  • February 22 — Ash Wednesday — Holy Communion/Imposition of Ashes at 12:10 and 6:30
  • February 29 – God Works for Life — Genesis 1:1 — 2:4a
  • March 7 — God Preserves Life — Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13
  • March 14 — Does God Ask Too Much? — Genesis 22:1-18
  • March 21 — See the Deliverance — Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21
  • March 28 — You Shall Live — Ezekiel 37:1-14
  • April 1 — Palm Sunday — Worship at 9:00
  • April 5 — Maundy Thursday — Holy Communion at 12:10 at 6:30
  • April 6 — Good Friday — Solemn Worship at 12:10; Tenebrae Service at 7:30
  • April 8 — Easter — Holy Communion at 7:00 and 9:00; Breakfast at 8:00

I pray that Lent might be the kind of blessing for you that it is intended to be — a time for renewal, a time to reorient your life,  a time to be more attentive to God and faith.  Let me know if there are specific ways that I can assist in your spiritual journey.

Blessings to you all!

 

Pastor Gary Froseth

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