Author Archives: hummingbird

Though I’ve never seen the film “Taken,” I have seen some delightful reels of action star Liam Neeson’s intense phone conversations that take place in the movie franchise.

This, alas, is a Neeson-free post (though everyone’s favorite northern Irishman has dabbled in the Divine, voicing the character of “Aslan” in the Narnia movies and providing a cameo as a hobo-esque Jesus in the British show “Rev”).

No, my thoughts are tugged towards a different kind of taken.

If you believe in an open universe, if you believe in the probability of an Unmoved Mover or Real Reality and you believe that that Being Greater Than Which Nothing Can Be Conceived exists, you might believe that that Being is involved the world. You might believe that that Being is a Triune Being and that each person of this Being is somehow active in the world that bears witness to a great deal of order, pattern and sequence. And if you do believe that there might be a more-than-natural First Cause who not only sustains the world but also has interest in it, to put it mildly, then you might believe that this Triune Being, in goodness, providence and infinite power, is greater than your understanding of space and time and what it means to have a past and a future. And that God (in case you hadn’t picked up on who we were talking about) not only communicates through and with creation and creatures, but might even communicate the idea that it would be good for you to do something with your life that communicates about this Being to the world in which you live.

In other words, to be a Christian likely means you have some idea of the notion that God calls humans to serve himself and others, and that God calls some humans in particular to bear special responsibility for what one might call “Christian ministry.”

In further words, to be a Christian likely means that at some point you have or you will allow yourself to listen to a sermon, and that you have or will hear a sermon that pops the question:

“Is God calling you into full-time ministry?”

Accounts of various saints’ calls and experiences reach pretty far back into church history: St. Augustine among the most notable. No one is questioning the important role of communicating these stories to the faithful.

But what about the times when followers of God find themselves less “called” and more “taken”? Sometimes a call to ministry bears the stamp of a certain luxury: the luxury of unfettered response.

There is no biblical account of Joseph “feeling called to go to Egypt and minister there.” No, he certainly had valuable – if poorly handled – dreams: dreams that revealed a future beyond his comprehension. The thing is, no one follows their dreams by being kidnapped, sold, and confined in enforced servitude. That’s not how we “pursue our God-given destiny.” No adviser or mentor suggests this as a route to vocational success. Bound for greatness? Become a slave! Find your passion in 10 easy steps!

No – Joseph was taken to Egypt, not called to go there. There was no beautiful Ruth-and-Naomi moment: “where you go, I will go.” It was not a pretty picture. He was ripped from loved ones, taken at the height and strength of youth, carried to an unknown place by unknown people, suffered for his virtue, left to rot in prison to battle his thoughts of what kind of man he must have been to make his brothers hate him so much.

Friends, sometimes what they meant for evil, God means for good. And you may find yourself where you don’t want to be:

An early widower with young children.

A new citizen of an unfamiliar state due to layoffs, recession and foreclosure.

An employee suffering because of choices not to gossip, backstab and maneuver with ambition.

A divorcee grieving the smoldering ruins of a marriage begun in bright hope.

A normal person working a normal job with a sudden, devastating cancer diagnosis still ringing in your stunned ears.

A loving elder forced by frailty to depend on others, wondering if God has forgotten you after years of faithfully serving him.

A young person with a gritty work ethic, love of family – and no state documentation, through no fault of your own.

An artist wondering if you’ll have to choose between your love of creating and a roof over your head.

How often we are taken to Egypt, in shock and utterly alone, the landscape of our homeland receding in the distance with only the smell of wretched camel to accompany us on the journey. The food is different, the language is different, the traditions are different.

Your soul is homesick, and when you hear people talk about God’s calling, the words sound mocking.

“Called? God called you? That’s fantastic, really great for you. I had dreams, too. Visions for the future. Now I’m working three jobs, dealing with a chronic illness and regularly get passed over for promotion because I’m not willing to lie. Maybe I imagined those dreams. God calls some people, I have faith in that. I’m just not sure how I’m fulfilling my calling by working as a customer service rep during the holidays…Maybe I was mistaken about God’s big plans for my life.”

I’m here to remind you today that you didn’t imagine those dreams. You didn’t imagine that vision. And God has not forgotten you. Perhaps you’ve been taken where you never wished to go. Maybe life has seemed all detour, no destination. Maybe you think that you’ve gone beyond the reach of God’s purposes, serving no useful role in any way that amounts to much.

The truth is that sometimes people are called, and sometimes people are taken. I’ve become more and more convinced that the real growth happens in those circumstances over which you have no control. It’s one thing to bounce up, exclaiming, “here I am! Send me!” It’s quite another to say, “though he slay me, yet will I trust him,” and, “the Lord gives, the Lord takes away – blessed be the name of the Lord…”

Though I end up five states away from my relatives, yet will I trust him.

Though I spend Valentine’s with the aftereffects of chemo, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Though the job my heart yearned for disappeared from my hands, yet will I trust him.

Though a stroke has landed me in a care facility where I share a room with a woman who can’t remember how many children she has, blessed be the name of the Lord.

When you’re taken instead of offered the bright promise of freedom to respond to a call, remember where you’re actually headed; where you’ll actually end up.

The taken always make their way to the lap of Jesus. 

You’re not just taken; you’re taken to Christ. You’re not just detoured from your real purpose; those detours from purpose are shortcuts to the face of Jesus. You’re not just removed from the life of your dreams; you’re removed to the presence of Christ, who wipes away every tear.

Jesus was taken – led away, tied up, beat up, spit on.

And Jesus will take you home.

Warning: this post contains references to the animated feature film “Frozen.” Overexposure to this movie may result in children shrieking song lyrics in the car, a conviction that your front yard snowman can talk, and a commitment to trip over “Frozen”-themed toys for at least the next three years.

You may have seen me in the headlines recently: “Last North American Hold-Out Finally Succumbs, Sees Popular Children’s Movie. Nobody Noticed.” Timing, big life transitions, and overexposure by osmosis eventually led to a situation in which my household, which includes two young children, simply hadn’t seen the film yet. But I’m glad we saw it when we did, all four of us hunkered down with bad colds, the oldest kid now old enough to really appreciate the message.

Because cynics, beware: there is a definite message in “Frozen,” and it’s great. Inane children’s entertainment makes cynics of us all – bland, mindless programming led Stephen Colbert to tell his children they could watch all they wanted of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” because of the intelligence behind the show’s humor. For a long time, Disney slid, slightly out of control like a crooked car on an icy inclined street, veering closer to storyless animated punchlines merchandised primarily through Happy Meals. I won’t argue that “Frozen” showcases the best narrative ever, or even that the music is that good.

But truth, beauty and goodness matter – and finally, we have a Disney film that doesn’t show the hero lying (“Aladdin”), helpless (most classic princess movies), or struggling with grown-up themes a bit beyond the imaginative play stages of children (“The Lion King,” wrestling with guilt over the unjust death of a parent and struggling to find identity and role in society – themes that work well in “Hamlet” but perhaps less so with five-year-old’s).

So if you’re late to the game like me, or you’re a parent who’s only caught bits and pieces of the movie walking through the room carrying clean laundry, or you’re not a big movie watcher and the most recent hit you remember is “A Few Good Men,” here’s why you need to watch “Frozen.”

And if you’ve seen it a million times and you want to strangle the animated snowman and never hear “Let It Go” ever again, here’s a new faith-y take on “Frozen” – a movie, as it turns out, that easily brings John Wesley to mind.

1. I could have spewed a hot beverage into a cloud of spray when I heard a main character say, “love means putting other people’s needs before your own.” Was this a Disney film or “Veggie Tales”? I think we’re seeing what I’ll term “The Veggie Tales Effect” – a renewed appreciation for childhood storytelling in film that showcases true virtue (another recent Disney movie, “Maleficent,” demonstrates this trend). There are plenty of online resources for integrating this message into children’s sermons and resources, and it ought to be done.

What does John Wesley say about this “Olaf” kind of love?

What is then the perfection of which man is capable while he dwells in a corruptible body? It is the complying with that kind command, “My son, give me thy heart.” It is the “loving the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind.” This is the sum of Christian perfection: It is all comprised in that one word, Love. The first branch of it is the love of God: And as he that loves God loves his brother also, it is inseparably connected with the second: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself:” Thou shalt love every man as thy own soul, as Christ loved us. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets:” These contain the whole of Christian perfection. (John Wesley’s sermon “On Perfection”)

2. Plenty of adults need to see a story about frozen hearts and thawed hearts. All the world’s programming about effective Christian witness can’t compete with believers who have warm, thawed hearts, and all the world’s programming about effective Christian witness can’t thaw frozen hearts that sit like a cold stone on an unbending pew, rock-hard, Sunday after Sunday.  And what thaws a frozen heart? An act of true love (contrasted admirably to the trope of “true love’s kiss”).

Here, then, is the sum of the perfect law; this is the true circumcision of the heart. Let the spirit return to God that gave it, with the whole train of its affections. ‘Unto the place from whence all the rivers came thither let them flow again. Other sacrifices from us he would not; but the living sacrifice of the heart he hath chosen. Let it be continual offered up to God through Christ, in flames of holy love.’ (John Wesley, “The Circumcision of the Heart”)

Wesley also cited a beautifully well-worn passage from Ezekiel when he preached,

But the great question is, whether there is any promise in Scripture, that we shall be saved from sin. Undoubtedly there is…Such is that glorious promise given through the Prophet Ezekiel…”A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” (“On Perfection”)

Not all grown-up cynicism springs from overexposure to trite children’s programming after all, as a recently cited thought from G.K. Chesterton reminds us: “for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” We are called to have soft, yielding hearts, the kind that grew in Simon Peter after the series of “do you love me?” questions from Jesus, the kind of heart that Judas wanted but couldn’t quite manage as he threw silver coins in a supreme act of futility, attempting to undo his actions – by going to the high priests and elders instead of Jesus himself.

3. You have ice somewhere in your veins. If only the ice in your veins made itself show in a telltale streak of light hair. The trek towards a heart full of complete, sacrificial love is one in which brittle shards of bitterness and fear melt into forgiveness and boldness – as scripture points out. “Perfect love casts out fear.” It’s true that “some people are worth melting for,” as the dripping snowman exclaimed, and your call and mine is to allow the crackling blaze of the Holy Spirit to chase away the chill that comes with living in an “always winter, never Christmas” world. Thank you, God, for the act of true love we’re getting ready to march towards in Lent, that has set the world melting.

Revelation.

Not of the contents of a carefully wrapped box in your childhood home, hidden from view until enterprising siblings helped you spy out the contents (or were you one of the professional tape-peelers who could lift a flap of wrapping paper without leaving a trace?).

Not of a painful holiday discovery, realizing your daughter has an eating disorder or your sister has cancer or Uncle Joe isn’t who everyone thought he is.

Not of the extravagant new church cantata, rehearsed over months and performed under spotlights in matching robes to an audience in green and red.

Christmas is a revelation, one that trumps even North American preoccupation with the Book of Revelation and end times, because Christmas is Word-Made-Flesh and in him was life and light. And what we know about Christ’s second coming is always framed in what we know of Christ’s first coming, of who Christ is revealed to be through the incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us. We have seen the careful braiding of a whip in the temple, we have seen the mud smeared on a blind man’s eyes, we have seen the gentle drawing in the dirt as a woman shivers and shakes while her accusers drop their rocks, we have seen friends’ gush of tears as they demand, “if you had been here, our brother would not have died,” we have seen the crazed man stumbling naked among the tombs and sitting dressed and in his right mind, we have seen a piercing glance towards Simon’s eyes across a courtyard, we have seen the stumble and fall in blood and sweat and the Cyrene who carried Christ’s instrument of torture and death (what a strange brotherhood).

Who is God? Emmanuel, Word-Made-Flesh, Jesus Christ the fully divine, fully mortal. And the Book of Revelation is understood through Emmanuel, God with us, who makes all things new – new, say, as a newborn, fists tight, eyes blinking, with that delicious newborn smell and tiny tufts of hair.

Our world needs to be new again: reborn, pressed against the chest of its Creator. Do galaxies have a newborn smell? Do subatomic particles dance with the hard-to-predict movements of a newborn’s kicking legs? In the youth of the world, did the trees yawn the contented sigh of a just-nursed newborn?

The earth needs swaddling cloths. How can we be young again? Innocent like a newborn baby? How can we go back, before terrorism or Rwandan genocide or Vietnam or the Holocaust or Hiroshima or the Spanish flu or mustard gas or humans bought and sold or the plague or Mongolian war chiefs or the crusades or martyrs or Hebrew slaves in Egypt or Cain and Abel…how old and jaded the human race feels sometimes.

All things new: our world needs to be new again, but not by going back. We can’t be young again, returning to childhood, peeling tape away from the edge of Rudolph wrapping paper, Citizen Kane whispering, “Rosebud…” How can a man be born again? Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time? “See, I am making all things new:”

Have you ever really, really, really been at the end of your rope?

I don’t mean that you’ve had a long day or that an exam was difficult or that you sprained your ankle while running. I mean the Chevy-Chase-losing-it-in-National-Lampoon’s-Christmas-Vacation kind of meltdown in which you discover that you are at the end of yourself.

Oh, dear friends, so many people in North America have been at the end of their ropes in the past decade (and not just auto workers in the rust belt, as this excellent essay points out). Foreclosures turned one teen into a landlord and spawned many a story of food pantry donors-turned-recipients, middle-class subdivision neighbors sneaking for assistance and afraid that each other would find out, or this shining example, “This Is What Happened When I Drove My Mercedes to Pick Up Food Stamps.”

May I observe something? It’s not “us-and-them.” If the past ten years has taught us anything, it is that it should be just “us,” as so many have discovered. It’s not that “we” have and “they” don’t, so we donate to “them.” We are all in this together.

But a painful lesson it’s been, as I know personally, still flinching at the memory of nearly five Christmases ago when I waddled nine months pregnant into the unemployment office, where I waited an hour and a half to be seen until finally lumbering over to the desk and hissing at a very young employee that I was having contractions and would hate for my water to break on her as-yet dry carpet (alright, I admit I suspected they were Braxton-Hicks contractions, but this was my first child and they could have been the real thing!). Five minutes later and my paperwork had been processed (“it’s a Christmas miracle!”).

This Thanksgiving and Christmas, we need food pantries and nonprofit organizations, churches and kind social workers, homeless shelters and business donations, we need Good Samaritan funds and people who order a coffee in the drive-thru for the guy with the sign at the intersection. The Church is really good at putting programming in place.

Only when you’re at the end of your rope, it’s not always programming that you need. In fact, programming can be a tool to distance ourselves from uncomfortable need.

One time while I was in seminary (and these were the days when thrift shops were cool) a friend said, “hey! There’s a church that runs something basically like a free “Goodwill” store, do you want to go?” Knowing the church, I thought the chances were good that donations would be good quality, so I said sure. At the last minute the others had to back out, so I went alone.

What an eye-opener.

I’d grown up in church, I had a parent, a grandparent and two uncles in ministry. I had answered knocks on the front door from people asking for assistance. During a severe mid-winter power outage we’d had a 94-year-old woman stay with us for several days. Not only had I been brought up to help others, others sometimes liked to try to help out the pastor’s family, like the time when I was 12 and a sweet old lady handed me a bag of clothes she’d picked up for me.

At a garage sale.

It was a bag of underwear.

How could I be shocked by anything?

Yet I was.

This church with the free “Goodwill store” set-up had organized a well-oiled machine of charitable giving. It was efficient, clear, and completely inhuman.  There was hot coffee and plenty of selection; the only thing missing was dignity.

I had arrived early, and when I found the registration table (starting to sound less like a “Goodwill” store), I had to present photo identification, because, the shining white teeth informed me, I was only allowed to come every few months so that the system wouldn’t be taken advantage of, and so that people wouldn’t come and get clothes only to turn around and sell them for profit (because the last thing we want is recipients selling hand-me-down’s?).

I tried, and managed, to imagine reasons for these regulations that seemed excessive but hopefully well-intentioned. But then, dear reader, then, someone assumed I was a volunteer.

Because I was the only Caucasian in the line.

All around me were well-mannered families waiting patiently for their turns, seemingly at ease while I wondered if smoke was beginning to pour from my pale Celtic ears.

“Us” and “them”…

Consider the miracles Jesus performed in which the disciples were forced to receive something. These disciples were sent out, performing miracles themselves sometimes, but when they returned – ah, they needed to have to receive (read Mark 6:6b-13 and 30-44). Before the Holy Spirit poured out on Pentecost, the disciples quickly slid into thinking of themselves as “us,” and of the crowds as “them” – and Jesus always, always pushed them to have to become “them” in his presence. The disciples had gone out healing others but still needed to eat the loaves and fish that Jesus multiplied.

When you’re at the end of your rope, yes, programming may be helpful, but when you’re at the end of your rope, you mostly need very, very kind love – the kind of love that makes you stand taller, that makes you laugh or hope when the world seems drained of humor or goodness. Mother Teresa did not gain notoriety for being an efficiency expert, but for her embracing, laughing love that fought against despair or suicidal thoughts or pink slips or rejection or shame.

“At Vineyard Community Church in Wickliffe, another Cleveland suburb, Brent Paulson, the pastor, said he had to post an employee in the driveway the day the church’s food bank was open to coax people inside, they were so ashamed to ask for help,” reports a 2011 New York Times piece on suburban poverty.

We all want to exercise our best for God, but have “best practices” spawned pride – or shame – in their wake?

So whether you plan to volunteer at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving Day or play Santa for kids in foster care or sing carols in a nursing home ward, remember this.

Every time you take Communion, you stand in line at God’s food pantry. We all stand in line for the bread that is the Body.

We.

 

“O ALMIGHTY God, who in thy wrath did send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of Pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest; Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us, who humbly acknowledge our sins and truly repent us of them, this plague and grievous sickness; that being delivered we may glorify thy Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 

So reads a plea from “The Proposed Book of Common Prayer” of 1689, under the blunt heading, “In the time of any common Plague or Sickness.”

Recently the World Health Organization released a manual providing guidelines that aim to maintain cultural respect and religious reverence for the safe burial of Ebola victims, since a full 20 percent of transmissions occur in the burial process. Officials consulted with Muslim and Christian leaders to explore ways that burials could maintain the rites of religious faith while avoiding the washing of a body or the sharing of a loved one’s possessions that might be contaminated with the virus.

Despite my excellent undergraduate education preparing me for Christian ministry, despite  my thoroughly-enjoyed seminary training, I don’t remember any discussions on how to provide pastoral care during a plague. North America, take note: whatever your thoughts on travel regulations and disease transmission, Ebola and health care, pastors and laypeople everywhere have remembered something anew.

You are not immune.

And currently our sisters and brothers in several African nations (please brush up on your geography if you think Ebola has gripped the entire continent) are wrestling with very pragmatic issues of Christian love, urgent medical need and health and safety.

Re-read the heading of the above prayer: “In the time of any common Plague or Sickness.” What short memories we have. Plague and sickness, very present reminders of mortality abounded not long ago in our own nation. We’re less than a century away from the Spanish Influenza, antibiotics have been utilized for a few short decades and immunizations weren’t available when my Grandmother was a child. In a very little time, we have become shocked by cancer, appalled by heart attacks, distressed by dementia. And rightly so: they are horrible evils.

But we’ve become surprised by our own mortality.

“Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality…”

How deeply does our surprise run? Search “priest” and “plague” on the internet and you’ll find plenty of references – to video games, some of which feature “plague priests” and “plague monks.” But as our featured image shows, the relationship between priests and plagues was something that used to be commonplace.

Hopefully, the current contagion is winding down; hopefully, the outbreak will continue to abate, running itself out in containment. Hopefully, it will no longer spread to other continents – this time, anyway.

Of all people, though, Christians must be conversant in the language of mortality, fluent in the evils of death and the beauty of resurrection, articulate in tragedy and triumph. What else is the rhythm of the church year for, but to practice us in the art of living the pattern of Kingdom life, of Christ-life, of birth, death, and resurrection? We must talk of these things if we have any hope of acting on them, putting hands to ideas. We must all find our inner Mother Teresa and touch the dying – even if you choose to wear three layers of gloves.

And in a moment of strangeness and perplexity, we do actually have some resources available for those who want wisdom in an outbreak, if you’re interested in the writings of one church reformer, Martin Luther. Yes, you may picture him as the rotund, angry reformer nailing his theses to a wooden door. But in the early 1500’s it wasn’t just outrage at the Roman Catholic Church that was sweeping Europe: it was the plague.

So whether you’re staring blankly at a Liberian sunset exhausted from attempting to help recently-made Ebola orphans or whether you’ve got your feet propped up in a recliner with a football game on mute in the background, perhaps these principles will be helpful to you at some point.

Luther wrote “to the Reverend Doctor Johann Hess, pastor at Breslau, and to his fellow-servants of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” on the very interestingly titled subject, “whether one may flee from a deadly plague.”

In other words, is it alright, as a Christian, to leave an area where people may need your help?

And he answers very pastorally, if bluntly – it depends. “Since it is generally true of Christians that few are strong and many are weak, one simply cannot place the same burden upon everyone,” explaining in rather kinder terms, “it takes more than a milk faith to await a death before which most of the saints themselves have been and still are in dread.”

But Luther puts a different burden on those in leadership in both the church and the state. About clergy, he advises:

“Those who are engaged in a spiritual ministry such as preachers and pastors must likewise remain steadfast before the peril of death. For when people are dying, they most need a spiritual ministry which strengthens and comforts their consciences by word and sacrament and in faith overcomes death. However, where enough preachers are available in one locality and they agree to encourage the other clergy to leave in order not to expose themselves needlessly to danger, I do not consider such conduct sinful because spiritual services are provided for and because they would have been ready and willing to stay if it had been necessary.”

Laypeople are not neglected in the discussion, however. “In the case of children who are orphaned, guardians or close friends are under obligation either to stay with them or to arrange diligently for other nursing care for their sick friends. Yes, no one should dare leave his neighbor unless there are others who will take care of the sick in their stead and nurse them.” This is tempered when he continues that if there is enough nursing available, believers have an “equal choice either to flee or to remain.”

Of course, he is not speaking here of mandated quarantine or other 21st-century realities (though quarantine is nothing new: the city of Venice used an island as a quarantine location when it faced the plague several centuries ago). The pastoral response in current contexts must also include care for others by not exposing them frivolously or lightly to that with which one may be infected.

But in a triage situation, many of the principles are still relevant: because before the CDC arrives, or before the world takes note but after your local doctors and nurses have fallen ill with the disease themselves, then what?

First, whether you stay or go, Luther would have you pray and commend yourself to God: “if he feels bound to remain where death rages in order to serve his neighbor, let him commend himself to God and say, ‘Lord, I am in they hands; thou hast kept me here; they will be done.’ If a man is free, however, and can escape, let him commend himself and say, ‘Lord God, I am weak and fearful. Therefore I am running away from evil and am doing what I can to protect myself against it.'”

This pastoral word essentially encourages believers – whether on the front lines or seeking safety – to acknowledge first and foremost that we are submitted to things beyond our control, and that we have committed our spirits to the Lord, aware of our own frailty and mortality.

Second, he gives a word of encouragement to those facing graphic horrors of contagious illness. “When anyone is overcome by horror and repugnance in the presence of a sick person he should take courage and strength in the firm assurance that it is the devil who stirs up such fear and loathing in his heart…[he] also takes delight in making us deathly afraid, worried, and apprehensive so that we should regard dying as horrible and have no rest or peace, [making] us forget and lose Christ…”

How comfortable are you around sick people? Certainly, take sensible precautions: wash your hands, cough into your elbow, take vitamins. But can you bear to be around those who are gravely ill? Are you prepared to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with them so that they are not alone? Does your faith give you the strength to sit next to the person receiving chemo? The point is sharply made when Luther writes, “this I well know, that if it were Christ or his mother who were laid low by illness, everybody would be so solicitous and would gladly become a servant or helper.”

And about burials – which the World Health Organization would appreciate – Luther simply says, “I leave it to the doctors of medicine and others with greater experience than mine in such matters to decide whether it is dangerous to maintain cemeteries within the city limits,” though he urges caution and suggests burial out of town.

So: attend church and hear sermons from the Word on how to live and how to die (he recommends); prepare for death in time to confess and take the sacrament, reconciling with others (he further recommends); and if you want a chaplain or pastor at the time of your death, call them while you’re still in your right mind (he wasn’t a man short on words).

Are you comfortable with mortality? Are you ready to be around the dying?

It’s worth thinking about.

Romans 12:1-2: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Does your driver’s license stipulate that you need to wear glasses or contacts to operate a vehicle?

I’m blind as a bat without glasses. Maybe you don’t have vision problems: maybe you need to wear  a pair of “drunk goggles” that simulate intoxication in order to lose your vision and depth perception.

It’s an incredibly vulnerable feeling, groping for your glasses in the dark, unable to see, or unable to know what threat may (or may not) lurk nearby. This helpless sense is portrayed with a familiar shudder in the film “The Mummy,” in which the characters unleash a curse, setting a horrific monster loose. And of course, a man is fleeing, he trips, he falls – his glasses go flying; the white-knuckled audience can see where the glasses have landed in the dirt but he can’t, and as he gropes the viewer sees the mummy getting closer…

When you can’t see, you’re powerless to act with certainty.

Are there people who have been a light for you? Family members, church members, community members? Those who are not just someone you liked a lot, but All the Saints – all the holy ones – the ones who showed you just a bit better what God is really like?

You are not at the mercy of the dark; even with Halloween approaching, you don’t have to fear the dark. The Gospel of John 1:4-5 tells us, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Ordinary people bear the light – like the lights the acolytes carry down aisles to candles.

And it’s not just a reflected light from Jesus Christ that people see in you and me. After a visit to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, my little boy was entranced with rockets, planets, and stars. Riding in the car early one evening he said “I see a star!”

“No,” I replied, “that’s actually a planet; it doesn’t make its own light, it only reflects the light of the sun.”

And for believers, Jesus wants us not just to tell others about his light, not just to reflect his light – Jesus Christ wants you to be luminous; to glow from the inside out with the love of God.

God wants humans to know, “I love you and sent my Son to die for you!” But that’s not the end. Throughout the New Testament, we read of the heart of the Triune God: “I want you to be transformed – not to talk about light, not to reflect light, but to be my light in the world!”

And the Apostle Paul reminds us, “in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” And if you’re thinking, “I can’t do that!” – of course you can’t.

You’re shattered, you carry darkness in your chest, you’re mean or selfish or scared or distracted.

But God says, “let me transform you!”

You may not realize it at the time, but people will start to see slivers of light shining out of your life; you will do one thing, and for a moment, just a moment – you’ll look startlingly like Jesus…

As you offer yourself to God, the darkness grows smaller, and before you realize it, people will think you know something about the light.

Why?

Because they see more clearly through you; they’re afraid of the dark, and they want a light to see by – and for them, you are that light.

Jesus Christ wants you to glow – not just to see his light, not just to talk about the light of God, not just to reflect his light, but to be transformed into light.

And as we consider saints who illumine the way for us, consider portions from the Acts of the Apostles, chapters six and seven –

“So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses. All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he fell on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he fell asleep.”

Amid plastic Jack-O-Lantern candy buckets and fake spider web and all the superheroes of the “Trick or Treat” season, we give thanks for the Light of the World, Jesus Christ; for the lives of the holy ones, the blessed ones, the saints who are light for us. And I pray that you will not be conformed to this world, not be shaped like the darkness around you, but that you will be transformed into brilliance, the light of Jesus making sense of your life and leading others around you…